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ORIGINAL: Mogami

... often because of German gaffs like adding the Norwegian merchant fleet to the Allies by invading

ORIGINAL: mdiehl

Sorry Mo (and most) for putting you through that. I missed the England UBoat war thing but probably would have ignored it.

There are a couple things that activate the hunter-seeker in me. One of them is the endless list of "Gee if Axis power X [funny it's never the Italians by the way, considering that they were building better planes in 1943 than the Japanese] would have done this one OBVIOUS thing it would have WON THEM THE WAR [or bought them a negotiated peace]." Another one is: "Career military men are so knowledgeable that they sh1t gold, so some podunk civvie should not presume to question their word even absent evidence the things they claim make sense."

On the PH oil tank thing I have yet to see any of the True Believers in this matter even frame the question in a way that one might assess the feasibility. "The Pacific Fleet would have to relocate to the West Coast!" [What? ALL of it? Not even one little sub? If one sub, why not two? Why not two subs and a few tenders ... and some DDs .... and a few CAs ... and a CV ir two? See it's not a matter of all or nothing even if you completely destroy all the oil in the oil farms -- an event that as you pointed out is unlikely in the game and was in fact rather unlikely in the real event.]

I've read alot on this matter and never seen a detailed study by anyone who would really know whether or not forcing a substantial rebasing of PacFleet by bombing the oil tanks than attacking the ships directly would have been (a) feasible, (b) more expeditious than sinking the ships directly. Nimitz would not know himself, and I've never seen any attribution to Nimitz of a claim to have read a detailed study on the matter by anyone who would know. So if a person has source(s) on the matter and the author(s) attribute the claim to Nimitz but don't provide details on the report that Nimitz read on the subject, that person is probably reading the wrong d@mned book(s).

Were I FDR and faced with the problem of having NO oil -- zip -- none in PH, I would not ask anyone in the armed forces whether the problem could be solved. I'd go to the Head of Operations of Shell, Esso, and Mobile, and one of Kaiser's operations guys, put them in a room, and say "Draft me a plan for having 60% of PH's oil stocking facility rebuilt and refilled in 120 days, and the rest completed to 100% by the end of 1942." Even if they did not make the 120 day deadline, I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that they'd come real close.

I don't think many of the magic bullet guys here really have a clue about what was possible for the US to attempt logistically. We all beat around the bush, occasionally, mentioning how vastly outproduced the combined shipyards of Italy, Germany, Japan, the UK and the USSR were by US shipyards, or how Ford or GM cranked out more aircraft per week in early 1944 than most Axis manufacturers could build in a month, or how amazing it is that the US had the resources to research the bomb, mobilize the huge arsenal that it did, supply weapons and infrastructure to everyone else (the US freaking GAVE more locomotives to the USSR in 1942-1943 than the Axis powers owned during the entire war), and still live a fairly comfortable life (rationing-wise) in the civilian sector. But we still never really talk about the production and design, err, phenomena (I won't say miracles because it was just the result of smart guys being allowed to do what they COULD do) that occurred from 1941 (the gears were already turning) thorugh mid-1944.

The US started with the 3rd largest merchant marine. The 2nd largest navy. The 19th largest air arm (behind Rumania) and fewer airbase training facilities than Germany. US ground forces would have been substantially outnumbered in a hypothetical war with Poland. By 1944 the US had the production lead in every area of armaments except mechanized artillery. By 1945 the USN was larger than all the navies of all the other combatants combined. Portable harbors took the Axis wholly by surprise because the simply never imagined that anyone would try it. NEED I GO ON? [again?]

So when someone says "the logistics would have been insurmountable" my immediate reaction is a cynical laugh. Yeah, it makes me come across as arrogant. Tough cr@p.

ORIGINAL: Rainerle

Ha, I start a new one :

ORIGINAL: Mogami

... often because of German gaffs like adding the Norwegian merchant fleet to the Allies by invading

It was not a stupid idea to invade norway !

ORIGINAL: PzB

ORIGINAL: Rainerle

Ha, I start a new one :

ORIGINAL: Mogami

... often because of German gaffs like adding the Norwegian merchant fleet to the Allies by invading

It was not a stupid idea to invade norway !

The thousands of norwegians who died during the war will probably disagree with you.....
From a more strategic view point, there were several negative results of invading.

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

Yes, they were caught mapping,

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag
This is why the Allies went to such great lengths after WW II to ensure that the defeated were not once again set up into such an environment that they would once again be headed down the war path.

ORIGINAL: madflava13

mdiehl,
I see what your point is, but what you are missing is that you cannot lose 4,500,000 bbl. of oil and just shrug it off. Even if you can fuel from tankers effectively, you still have to find that oil somewhere. And then ship it. And then refuel. That's the bottleneck. You can't just point to US oil production and say "Gee, we'll just ship more over". In real life that doesn't work. That oil won't be found right away, and even with every AO in the Pacific available, you're still looking at a huge delay (several months) before oil is ready to load into them...

I think ensuring they did not come under Communist influence but sided with the West played more a role than any philanthropic or other idealistic reasons.

I see what your point is, but what you are missing is that you cannot lose 4,500,000 bbl. of oil and just shrug it off. Even if you can fuel from tankers effectively, you still have to find that oil somewhere. And then ship it. And then refuel. That's the bottleneck. You can't just point to US oil production and say "Gee, we'll just ship more over". In real life that doesn't work.

ORIGINAL: Mogami

Hi, If the fuel farm was destroyed. And the BB undamaged. You could fuel the other ships from the BB. (The BB would have to stay home for a while but I bet there was a lot of fuel on board. The Japanese were later forced to salvage fuel from the Mutsu's wreck but it was done.

In any case, an easy way of testing all this in WitP would be to be able to edit the fuel supply points of Pearl Harbor. Will there be an editor for WitP that will allow for base supply and fuel point editing?

I don't think the loss of the fuel would endanger the US in the Pacific. You are correct in all you said, but I do think that loss would delay the progress some months while the stockpile was reformed. I don't think this would be a game/war-ender by any means. I understand the length of the war... I was just saying the loss of the oil would slow down the US' progress somewhat.

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag


Ha, I think your misunderstood me too. I'm simply pointing out that the USN didn't really do anything radical after PH that would have required the fuel anyways. It would have been replaced by the time they started thinking Coral Sea.

Had the BB's been unharmed and the Fuel gone instead, the USN probably would have steamed into certain death with some silly save Mac plan so in effect, it is probably a good thing that it happened the way it did or those sunken BB's would be in Manila instead with no chance of them being raised. [:D]