Yamamoto's Plan in action

[m10bob]

In that this is a game, anything is a "what if", even when based on an historical event, and when studying a major event like the Malaysian campaign, and what that conquest gained the victor,(albeit temporarily Singapore,etc.) one might see the possibilities of a Hawiian invasion as viable, if this were given priority?

Is not the concept of the game to see if one might do better than occurred historically?

[DuckofTindalos]

The Malayan campaign and a hypothetical invasion of Hawai'i can't be compared at all. For one thing, the Japanese were infinitely closer to their supply bases (in this case, Indo-China and Thailand) than they would have been in Hawai'i.

[Andrew Brown]

ORIGINAL: el cid again
Well - in a sense I am quoting the many Forum comments "unit x arrived at location y on date z" - it is the de facto standard implied by stock and most mods. But in another sense, it is structural: any attempt to do anything else is unrealistic and improbable UNLESS a serious effort is made to figure out what that might mean? In general, moving things to PTO means they are not in other theaters. Unless they were of no value whatever, that impacts what happens in those other theaters. Less for the Allies should mean more success for the Axis - long term. That ought to mean the war does not end in May 1945 - that Italy may not surrender/change sides on schedule - that Suez may not become a viable route as soon - stuff like that - at least if the sum of such forces removed is great enough. Essentially, I am agreeing with your last sentende: "if the war takes a different course, then the situation is different, and that influence on the arrival of reinforcements changes as well" - but it is a very complicated thing if you think it through: not only have you sent more stuff to PTO in 1942 - you probably have LESS stuff to send in 1944 and certainly in 1945 IF you do that. I will go that way - send more in 1942 - IF you tell me what that means later in the war? Best guess since we have no calculus. A non-rigid freespiel with you as the judge. But you can't just stop with "double air forces sent to PTO" - that is only the beginning. What does cutting air forces everywhere else by 1/3 mean downstream? [In the end doubling is too much - we won't have the slots - but the principle remains: if we increase they by 150% - what will it mean?]

Since I have already stated a couple of times now in this thread what my guesses on what would happen to Allied reinforcements later in the war, I don't need to repeat them again. You can go back through the thread and find them.

But my central point remains - if you don't account for the likely increases in US reinforcements (and not just in 1942, but later as well, with the caveats I already provided above), then this "what-if" scenario is ignoring half the picture. It may be useful as a scenario to test the invasion itself, but would be meaningless for anything medium or long term. If you really do prefer to pretend that there would be no response from the USA to such an invasion, then I guess we will simply have to agree to disagree.

If this scenario ever gets created and playtested it would be interesting to see the results (of the invasion, that is, not the playing out of the campaign), but I do share the concerns expressed by others already - that the WitP system makes it too easy for players to launch invasions such as these.

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

I can be wrong - and I often admit it directly and indirectly - incorporating the corrections into various scenarios.

This is not an occasion on which I am wrong in any sense.

This is my thread: I started it, it is about two (or three if we add OIO) of my scenarios,

THIS thread - and THESE scenarios - are not fantasy mods - about might have beens if something were radically different - or if the impossible somehow became possible.

Anyone who does not like this start does not need to think about it - or to load up and play EOS or AIO. But THIS thread is for those who DO like it - to make CONSTRUCTIVE comments that might make it better.

Well..., that's clear enough. The old playground "I get to pitch because it's my ball" arguement. Though if you are now going to say this thread was only about your "fantasy scenario" you really should have made that plain. I've said several times in this discussion that "It's fun to discuss and play around with..., but in the real world it's nonsense." You bounce back and forth between "game world" and "real world" as if they are interchangeable. I like many of your "game" ideas, and respect the whole RHS project (for which you seem to have carried most of the water). But your "real world" claims are sometimes "all wet"...., and this has been one of them. Good luck to you Sid.

[m10bob]

ORIGINAL: Terminus

The Malayan campaign and a hypothetical invasion of Hawai'i can't be compared at all. For one thing, the Japanese were infinitely closer to their supply bases (in this case, Indo-China and Thailand) than they would have been in Hawai'i.

Ergo the attempt at Midway,(historically).
Surely the Japanese were not foolish enough to believe capturing Midway was going to disrupt any Allied shipping, (of itself)?
Surely it was intended as a stepping stone and a land base for close support of an assault?

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: m10bob

In that this is a game, anything is a "what if", even when based on an historical event, and when studying a major event like the Malaysian campaign, and what that conquest gained the victor,(albeit temporarily Singapore,etc.) one might see the possibilities of a Hawiian invasion as viable, if this were given priority?

Is not the concept of the game to see if one might do better than occurred historically?

Of course. That's what "simulation gaming" is all about. But you can't do "better than historically" unless you limit the game to the historical resources at hand. What's the fun of saying "I'm better than Rommel, I took Alexandria and Cairo", if you gave yourself a division of Abrams Tanks to do it with? Or even just removed all his logistical difficulties? "Different than Historically" does not make "Better than Historically"...., it just makes different. To be worth playing you need to face as many of the original challanges, faced by the original commanders, as can be worked into the game. Your troops are never going to bleed, and you'll never really have to face the difficulties of the Political-Military infighting that actually exists (you're both..., problem solved). But logistical availabilities and the means of supporting your forces across the map can be modeled. Unfortunately WITP doesn't do that very well (one of the big reasons for Sid's attempts in RHS). Truth is the designers "fudged" a LOT to try and make the AI a decent opponant for at least a year of play. But in a "head-to-head" game all that "fudging" allows some very ahistoric possibilities, as players are much better at exploiting advantages than any AI will ever be. And so the invasion of Hawaii becomes possible "in the game" when it wasn't in "reality"...., and 9 pages of forum entries are the result.

[DuckofTindalos]

ORIGINAL: m10bob

ORIGINAL: Terminus

The Malayan campaign and a hypothetical invasion of Hawai'i can't be compared at all. For one thing, the Japanese were infinitely closer to their supply bases (in this case, Indo-China and Thailand) than they would have been in Hawai'i.

Ergo the attempt at Midway,(historically).
Surely the Japanese were not foolish enough to believe capturing Midway was going to disrupt any Allied shipping, (of itself)?
Surely it was intended as a stepping stone and a land base for close support of an assault?

No. Midway wasn't about that little bit of sand out in the middle of the Pacific. It was about forcing the Decisive Battle. Look at the minuscule number of troops and transports that were sent, and please forget Sid's "100,000 troops"; they didn't exist.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown

first of all - many nations that joined the Allies won't join (so for example we don't get the use of the Azores, maybe);

Why do you believe that many nations would not Join the Allies? Which nations? On what basis?

REPLY: Here - once again - my tendency to think long term is coming out. I don't mean that nations that joined the alliance early might not join it. Dec 1941 was very odd indeed: it featured Germany declaring war on the US - not the other way around. It is unclear the US could declare war on Germany on the basis Japan - not a party to WWII as it then existed - had attacked the USA? But Germany - in what may have been a strategic blunder - solved that little legal/technical problem. Rather - I am thinking - first of all - of the Battle of the Atlantic. This was difficult to wage due to an absense of bases in the middle (sans Iceland, which we invaded). Things changed when Dr Salazar declared for the Allies. This was a most unlikely "Ally" - Salazar was a Fashista in almost every sense - and a classic dictator who ruled until his death. But the tide had turned in his view, and better to ride a rising tide than to be swept over by it. OK - with me so far? Now comes along this idea above we might "triple the air power sent to PTO" (from 1/4 to 3/4) - which may or may not have the numbers right - but that was the proposal. And you (Andrew) proposed to double it (from 1/4 to 1/2?)
Either way - the implications are drastic reductions in air power sent to all other theaters. If the above ratios are right, that would be a cut to 1/3 in the first case, and to 2/3 in the latter (i.e. 67% and 33% respectively). So - I wonder - what is the impact on that on the Battle of the Atlantic as well as on the "Air War" in Europe? We already said Torch might not go ahead. Drastic reduction in the sinking of submarines, drastic reduction in the destruction from bombing, no invasion of NOrth Africa or follow on into Italy - why would Salazar see "the handwriting on the wall" enough to declare war? That in turn compounds the complications for the Battle of the Atlantic - we remain without the patrol base in the Azores. That means once again that the loss of submarines - to the extent it was a function of Azores basing - does not happen when it did - maybe never - maybe not for many months or even years. As a logistical thinker, the cumulative effects of this are significant - and the effects of those should have major operational impacts. [Every submarine not sunk as early has a statistical chance of sinking a merchant ship - or sometimes even a warship. N submarines not sunk times whatever the chance a submarine might sink a merchant ship or multiple merchant ships = X merchant ships sunk in EXCESS of IRL. Add to that all the merchant ships not sent to ETO because we now sent them to PTO - whatever the fraction might be. One suggestion above was 2/3 and yours was 1/3. Significantly more sinkings add to 67% or 33% voluntary reductions - you are starting to get to very serious numbers here. But it gets worse: each merchant ship sunk is not only lost - EVERY cargo it would ever deliver - not just the present one - is also not delivered. Logistically thinking, the impact on cumulative cargo by, say, 1944 is getting truly awful - and by 1945 we must measure aggregate cargos not delivered in very large numbers. The impacts of that are likely to be a much bigger X (months Germany remains in the war longer than IRL) than anyone not thinking about this would at first have guessed.

Other cases might be less important. A vast number of nations declared war in 1945 - including Argentina. Argentina was another explicitly Fashist state - Juan Peron was a fan of Francisco Franko - who was in turn the first big foreign ally of Banito Mousillini - and Argentina had/has a substantially Italian population with an influential German minority. I very much doubt that Argentina would feel compelled to join the Allies in 1945 in the circumstances described above. To the extent these nations had any influence at all - it was psychological - insofar as it was neither operational nor economic.
To the psychology of (we cannot know before we game them) possible difficulties in PTO we have a war that - on logistic and forces committed grounds based on our assumptions - must not be going nearly as well in ETO. What might the impacts of these things be on US domestic politics? There is a Presidential race in 1944 I think - and as a veteran of Viet Nam I must say I don't have great confidence in the willingness of the US electorate to sustain a less than clearly successful war effort. [It is an irony of US and military history that the Tet Offensive was a disaster for the enemy that attacked, but it nevertheless broke the back of the political support for the war in the USA] Since we can not know what will happen either in a particular WITP game BEFORE it is played, nor do we have any way to know what happens in other theaters with greatly reduced assets sent there - you may begin to see why I find the idea "the rest of the war remains the same" attractive. It is at least a simple solution - requiring not a single slot or minute of data entry - and no one can question what happens if that is the solution adopted. If we go the other way - I think we better be conservative - and not do too much of a change: the less we shift theater to theater - the less we need to worry about its off map impacts and domestic US impacts. That neatly conspires with the fewer slots and time to enter data needed to account for the smaller proportion - and we might actually have the slots and time to pull it off.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: VSWG

ORIGINAL: ChezDaJez

The arguement here is about LOGISTIC CAPABILITY - and IF Japan truly lacked the LOGISTIC ability to attempt the invasion - they would not have tired to do so. Since they did try - the first 100,000 men were actually sent out on more than 200 ships - there is no reasonable basis to say they could not

These 100,000 men... what units were they and when and where did they embark for a Hawaii operation? What ships were earmarked for escorts? And where did these troops end up?

As an ignorant bystander, I'd really like to know more about this invasion interruptus, too. Do you have an OoB?

Thanks in advance.

Yes and no. There were a number of different invasion concepts advanced over decades of time - starting before WWI.
The vast majority of those in the period running up to the war in the Pacific in 1941 are quite similar to the one you see in EOS or AIO - which is to say the differences between them and regular CVO or RAO. Which is to say not very much. The other form of this attack is the one which really began implementation in June, 1942 - with the invasion of the Aleutians and the attempted invasion of Midway. Interestingly enough, both basic concepts begin with preliminary operations against three or four lesser objectives - only Midway itself is on both lists - and in neither do you see a contemplated day one (or other very early) landings on Oahu. But in BOTH you do see a firm intent to land on Oahu in the fourth or later phase of a campaign IF ALL the earlier phases had gone well. In both you see three divisions of IJA allocated to that operation - and they are identified explicitly in the official history. In both conceptions of the plan - the one Yamamoto thinks should have been adopted in leiu of the PH raid - and the one actually adopted after the Doolittle raid - the first phase of the battle is supposed to cause the USN to sortee and fight to its substantial annhilation - so that it will not be a factor in the later phases. In both the Japanese expect to take the initial islands substantially unopposed - like really happened at Attu and Kiska - and this explains quite well the small force allocated for Midway: Japanese intelligence did not have any sense of what was there, and assumed it was a Marine Defense Battalion similar to the one encountered on Wake. The idea was: sortee, take some preliminary islands from minor forces, put long range seaplane reconnisance on them, and use them to detect a sortee of major US forces - which KB will then destroy. Sort of Midway in reverse - with Japan enjoying the recon advantage.

In the Japanese post war scholarly and military world, Japan lost Midway for two desparate (widely different) reasons:

1) The US had a most unexpected and statistically unlikely ability to read their mail;

2) The Japanese self defeated because many or most staff officers and senior officers were infected with what they call "victory disease." It had been too easy so far. All you had to do was go there - wherever there might be - whatever you might have - and it was another string of victories. Early practice of two phase recon was not done, for example why bother ? We know they are not there- we just are confirming it to be safe. That sort of thing. So inherant Japanese advantages - such as superior search methodology - were not employed. And the number of carriers in KB was only four - it could have included the two sent to Kodiak - but why bother? We won't need em all anyway. That sort of thing.

Considering the concept of an invasion plan early in the war, neither of these conditions applies. The Japanese will enjoy the intel advantage - because peacetime intel gathering is much more effective than wartime - and peacetime enemy forces are more likely to remain pretty much in place. They also won't yet know how effective they will be - and there is no reason to be infected with gross overconfidence of the sort that cost them Midway. They will do what Fukidome and Genda insisted was required: contentrate the carriers. Concentration of force is one of the principles of war and one clearly absent from the Japanese deployments at Midway. It isn't that the Japanese will achieve decisive strategic, operational and tactical surprise on Dec 7 in Hawaii that is what will win: it is the relative strength of the opposing forces in the Central Pacific area. The original idea - come up out of the bases from the Mandates (for the first waves) - did not contemplate sending 1/3 of the carrier power too far away to do any good in the event things went awry.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

ORIGINAL: el cid again

ORIGINAL: witpqs

Sid,

You are totally missing the forest for the trees. Japan did not invade Hawaii. Attu is not Hawaii. Kiska is not Hawaii. They did not even invade Midway - they attacked it. They wanted to invade Midway, but they failed to even begin landings...

Wanting to do something is not the same as doing it. Only doing it is doing it. They did not even land and fail - they never even got close.

The word 'invade' can have a broad definition depending upon the context. One could land even a handful of troops as part of an invasion attempt and get wiped out, one could land in force and seize a place, or anything in between. Those could all be called invasions in the appropriate context. But you cannot redefine the word to mean 'they took steps in that direction, therefore they invaded'. That would be like saying 'the USSR landed men on the moon because they took many steps in that direction'.


EDIT

PS: Even George Carlin has to use the same words as everybody else! If you use words with your own meaning that no one else agrees on, you fail to communicate because it becomes your own language that no one else understands.

Please try to remember the point in contention was the assertion that Japan lacked the logistical capability to invade Hawaii. I was trying to use the fact they decided they DID have the logistical capability to do just that - and actually found and allocated the troops, shipping, air units - everything - when they launched their attempted invasion. Now I did not claim that they succeeded in that invasion attempt - I am not trying to rewrite what happened at Midway - and I doubt there is one question in 100 I would not answer properly about it to your satisfaction. I am/was ONLY trying to say that they MUST have had the logistical ability to make the attack since they really did come up with the invasion plan, allocate the resources (later phases on a contingency basis, to be sure), and attempt to implement it. Saying they "invaded" in that sense only means they tried - not that the invasion succeeded.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: Skyros

Here is a site where they discuss a possible operation. I do not know how valid the info is.

http://www.users.bigpond.com/pacificwar ... wayOp.html

This is a serious article, replete with references to sources and what they said as an explanation for the conventional limited view of Midway. It is a fine summary of the historical case - and a good jumping off point into the world of what was intended after Midway. I had forgotten that the book Midway, by two Japanese officers, which was used as a source by two of the major US historians of the battle, had mentioned both invasions of Johnston and Hawaii itself - but yep - it does. Since the mention was brief and not elaborated on, and picked up by only one of the two US authors - who also didn't elaborate on it - it is easy to see why - although it was there all the time in the oldest of English language materials - most of us didn't appreciate it. I myself missed it until other later authors got it out of the official history - and it isn't until now I realized it was in Fujida's original book in cryptic form.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: Skyros

ANd another perspective.

http://www.combinedfleet.com/pearlops.htm

This is an analysis of the chances for a successful invasion in or after August 1942. It is logistically focused. It also is soundly done. The 1942 variation of the Japanese plan to invade Hawaii had no long term chance of success - however well the first phase of the battle went. That is the jist of this article - and I find not a nit to pick with it. Japan lacked intelligence about the situation on Hawaii just as it did about Midway itself - and these forces were not merely fully alerted - a great deal had been done to increase their military capabilities which had not been done before the war began.


My view is, was and remains that the Japanese plan ONLY had a chance IF implemented at the START of the war - in its pre war form. This is the plan Yamamoto said should have been implemented when he spoke two days after PH. I have at no time claimed that the plan for 1942 was viable - because I don't believe it was.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

ORIGINAL: Skyros

Here is a site where they discuss a possible operation. I do not know how valid the info is.

http://www.users.bigpond.com/pacificwar ... wayOp.html

"Dr Stephan claims in his book that on 9 December 1941 Admiral Yamamoto ordered his chief of staff, Rear Admiral Matome Ugaki, to draw up a plan for an invasion of Hawaii (p.92)." I find it interesting that even in this most "rose-colored" assessment, the notion of actually invading Hawaii doesn't show up until AFTER Pearl Harbor.

Except you have somehow taken the data too literally and out of context. See Hawaii Under the Rising Sun: Japanese planning for invasion of Hawaii dates to 1910. The plan refered to by Dr Stephan (which you should be able to confirm because we have Ukagi's diary - published in translated form under the name Fading Victory by an academic press) is a confirmation of what I wrote at the start of the thread: Adm Yamamoto said they should have invaded when the war began - and he was so serious - he decided to implement a too late variation on that. This was the first stage of planning for what became the Battle of Midway - it was not adopted until after the Doolittle Raid - but Yamamoto was working it up.
But to say the invasion never occurred to anyone until after PH is to misunderstand: as I said 2 or 3 times above, staff had RECOMMENDED this plan INSTEAD of the raid, and Yamamoto had not adopted the suggestion. It was AFTER the raid he came to think they were right. But the plan existed - and had evolved for decades - before PH day.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: aztez

This thread is quite an spectacle or turning into one.

Japanese did not have the transport shipping available to conduct such an massive operation at CenPac nor did they have adequate means and strenght to provide aircover for it. That pretty much sums up any Pearl Harbour invasion fantasy in WW2.

Assertions are not facts. This is a statement of faith, and note it is devoid of actual numbers. Work em out. Japan had two or three close orders of magnitude more logistical power than required for the plans put forward - at least - possibly an order of magnitude more (meaning sheer quantity of shipping under control compared to the quantity that would need to be allocated). Its naval superiority was not as great - it only had about 50 to 100% more naval vessels than would be required. This was ample. No one ever contemplated not implementing the invasion of the SRA in spite of working up plans for this invasion in various forms. One cannot understand Japanese naval thought in the early 20th century outside the context of this planning.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: VSWG

Thanks for the links, skyros.

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

ORIGINAL: Skyros

Here is a site where they discuss a possible operation. I do not know how valid the info is.

http://www.users.bigpond.com/pacificwar ... wayOp.html

"Dr Stephan claims in his book that on 9 December 1941 Admiral Yamamoto ordered his chief of staff, Rear Admiral Matome Ugaki, to draw up a plan for an invasion of Hawaii (p.92)." I find it interesting that even in this most "rose-colored" assessment, the notion of actually invading Hawaii doesn't show up until AFTER Pearl Harbor.

...and that's just the Navy's planning. The army was rather tardy, it seems:

"Dr Stephan claims that on 3 June 1942 (Tokyo Time) Major General Tanaka instructed his subordinates in the Operations Section of Army General Staff to prepare a feasibility study for an assault on Oahu (p.119). On 5 June 1942 (Tokyo Time) the four fleet carriers of the Japanese carrier striking force at Midway were destroyed by SBD dive-bombers of the US Pacific Fleet."

That would be in the context of revised intelligence about things that may have changed since the war began. It should not be read to imply no such study had ever been undertaken before. Regretfully - the Japanese did not tend to regard record keeping in the way we do - they never kept records on the scale we did. This is compounded by explicit orders to destroy all records generally implemented in 1945 - so we are left with only a small fraction of all the originals. This is compounded yet again by the difficulty of reading them. I find even native Japanese speakers who also are linguists with masters degrees and teachers in a rare bilingual school (there are only seven in North America) are unable to contribute very much to understanding even just phrases or single words. My formerly CIA software (now available on the open market for $2000) renders as many as 12 alternate translations per word - and usually 4. Reading this material is not quite as bad as reading JN-25 code without a key - but it is almost as bad. Structurally Japanese is usually expressed on the assumption the listener/reader knows the context - to the point many sentences will only imply the subject (what we are talking/writing about) and not state it as such. When asked by the author of Japan's Secret War if I could read the documents of interest to his book - which he had from archival sources or from Japanese participants - I had to reply "yes and no - not nearly as difinitively as I would like." I gave him the example of a chapter in a book sent to me by the daughter of a LT on I-400 - his book only exists in Japanese - and this chapter was about planned but not built variations on its basic design - which at one point I was working on. I found the chapter title impossible to translate using basic materials - so I went to my daughter's school and spoke to all the Japanese teachers. Only one attempted a translation of the first word - we all agreed the second was "Sansuikan" (submarine - literally 'diving can'). She offered "ehterial" as a possibility. A couple of years later I ran into someone familiar with the material - and he said "it should be translated as 'hypothetical'" - meaning these were plans not implemented. What I am trying to say here is that we do not have all (or even most) of these plans - and that if we did it would not be a casual thing attempting to understand them in a quick examination similar to what we could do if we saw similar British or American plans. But we know they existed - and we know some of the broader features of the significant ones. The reason it took many decades to produce the official history is that it is very hard to do this sort of scholarship. That it was not done in the West is hardly surprising. [Formal translation of modern Japanese for business and/or legal purposes costs $3000 per page - but if you order enough pages they will reduce that to $2000 a page. This is not entirely outrageous - it isn't easy to do.] Yet trying to understand the Japanese point of view is impossible sans primary documents. You are left with a combination of assumptions and ignorance which is deadly to getting at the truth.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown

ORIGINAL: el cid again
Well - in a sense I am quoting the many Forum comments "unit x arrived at location y on date z" - it is the de facto standard implied by stock and most mods. But in another sense, it is structural: any attempt to do anything else is unrealistic and improbable UNLESS a serious effort is made to figure out what that might mean? In general, moving things to PTO means they are not in other theaters. Unless they were of no value whatever, that impacts what happens in those other theaters. Less for the Allies should mean more success for the Axis - long term. That ought to mean the war does not end in May 1945 - that Italy may not surrender/change sides on schedule - that Suez may not become a viable route as soon - stuff like that - at least if the sum of such forces removed is great enough. Essentially, I am agreeing with your last sentende: "if the war takes a different course, then the situation is different, and that influence on the arrival of reinforcements changes as well" - but it is a very complicated thing if you think it through: not only have you sent more stuff to PTO in 1942 - you probably have LESS stuff to send in 1944 and certainly in 1945 IF you do that. I will go that way - send more in 1942 - IF you tell me what that means later in the war? Best guess since we have no calculus. A non-rigid freespiel with you as the judge. But you can't just stop with "double air forces sent to PTO" - that is only the beginning. What does cutting air forces everywhere else by 1/3 mean downstream? [In the end doubling is too much - we won't have the slots - but the principle remains: if we increase they by 150% - what will it mean?]

Since I have already stated a couple of times now in this thread what my guesses on what would happen to Allied reinforcements later in the war, I don't need to repeat them again. You can go back through the thread and find them.

But my central point remains - if you don't account for the likely increases in US reinforcements (and not just in 1942, but later as well, with the caveats I already provided above), then this "what-if" scenario is ignoring half the picture. It may be useful as a scenario to test the invasion itself, but would be meaningless for anything medium or long term. If you really do prefer to pretend that there would be no response from the USA to such an invasion, then I guess we will simply have to agree to disagree.

If this scenario ever gets created and playtested it would be interesting to see the results (of the invasion, that is, not the playing out of the campaign), but I do share the concerns expressed by others already - that the WitP system makes it too easy for players to launch invasions such as these.

Lets be clear: the scenario has been created and it exists - in two forms. It happens that these scenarios are not strictly historical ones - but the Japan Enhansed Scenario (EOS = Empire of the Sun - and its AI oriented variation - AIO) - but we could also use this as an alternate opening for a strictly historical CVO. The difference lies in what was built/organized: in EOS and AIO Japan has a stronger hand to play - and this opening was adopted because it is a better opening move - so it fit that context. But it could be implemented with exactly the historical forces - and OIO (Oahu Invasion Optin) is a proposal to do just that.

In the event - we did change certain ships entering PTO in out years - on the basis that a more threatened United States and United Kingdom might make building decisions on a more conservative (what can we get in time to influence the war) foundation. These were outlined above - and could easily be folded into an OIO variation. But in general - I have honored the principle: things sent to other theaters still go there. I don't think the details of how the war starts in the Pacific change the "Germany First" strategy - the US was economically oriented and probably wisely feared the economically stronger enemy more. But I also admit this assumption "no changes" is far easier to implement: it takes no slots, no time to recode them, and involves no controversy "that assumption is wrong" "that conclusion is invalid" kind of thing. I saw the combination of difficulty making an assessment, lack of slots, lack of time, and controversy as a great reason not to go that way. I also don't think it is likely there could be much more war hysteria than there really was in Dec 1941 - when lots of people - some of them senior - feared an Axis link up - an invasion of the US West coast - and things like that. [My mother was trained to make cameras, film and developer chemicals in any normal US house - so she could be an Army intel photographer operating WITHOUT logistical support in CONUS!!! This in 1942. To indicate a sense of how worried the Army was.]

I do like one idea of yours: no stuff transfers ETO to PTO later in the war frees up slots - and takes slots that show up late in the war (i.e. never get used in almost all games) and lets us put stuff in them that might show up in many games. So I am inclined to go forward down this path of reasoning a bit more. I asked for X - how many months Germany surrenders later - and you said - in effect - forget those transferred units altogether. Certainly simple. And it helps resolve a major problem: slot limits. Other technical changes in RHS - multiple ship units - have also resulted in a lot of empty ship slots - so this is more feasible than it once would have been.

But I wonder how we decide what might have been the immediate impacts in 1942? As it was the Army really did decide to admit non-nurse - non-officer women into the ranks for the first time - and it trained them with dual roles - in case we were invaded they got a different job than if we were not invaded. How much more desperate could we have been?
And - whatever the answer to that may be - how do we interpret that in terms of production rates, replacement rates, whatever?

[m10bob]

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

ORIGINAL: m10bob

In that this is a game, anything is a "what if", even when based on an historical event, and when studying a major event like the Malaysian campaign, and what that conquest gained the victor,(albeit temporarily Singapore,etc.) one might see the possibilities of a Hawiian invasion as viable, if this were given priority?

Is not the concept of the game to see if one might do better than occurred historically?

Of course. That's what "simulation gaming" is all about. But you can't do "better than historically" unless you limit the game to the historical resources at hand. What's the fun of saying "I'm better than Rommel, I took Alexandria and Cairo", if you gave yourself a division of Abrams Tanks to do it with? Or even just removed all his logistical difficulties? "Different than Historically" does not make "Better than Historically"...., it just makes different. To be worth playing you need to face as many of the original challanges, faced by the original commanders, as can be worked into the game. Your troops are never going to bleed, and you'll never really have to face the difficulties of the Political-Military infighting that actually exists (you're both..., problem solved). But logistical availabilities and the means of supporting your forces across the map can be modeled. Unfortunately WITP doesn't do that very well (one of the big reasons for Sid's attempts in RHS). Truth is the designers "fudged" a LOT to try and make the AI a decent opponant for at least a year of play. But in a "head-to-head" game all that "fudging" allows some very ahistoric possibilities, as players are much better at exploiting advantages than any AI will ever be. And so the invasion of Hawaii becomes possible "in the game" when it wasn't in "reality"...., and 9 pages of forum entries are the result.

Mike, this is yet another occasion I agree with you 100%.
I also appreciate the fact you can make valid points without resorting to playground name-calling.
However, I cannot forgive people from Kansas City believing their BBQ is better than that which I tasted in North Carolina, at a roadside greasy spoon near Godwin, just outside of Fayetteville....Bob(Ex-resident of Waynesville MO and fan of Route 66, the ONLY road)..

[JWE]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

ORIGINAL: aztez

This thread is quite an spectacle or turning into one.

Japanese did not have the transport shipping available to conduct such an massive operation at CenPac nor did they have adequate means and strenght to provide aircover for it. That pretty much sums up any Pearl Harbour invasion fantasy in WW2.

Assertions are not facts. This is a statement of faith, and note it is devoid of actual numbers. Work em out. Japan had two or three close orders of magnitude more logistical power than required for the plans put forward - at least - possibly an order of magnitude more (meaning sheer quantity of shipping under control compared to the quantity that would need to be allocated). Its naval superiority was not as great - it only had about 50 to 100% more naval vessels than would be required. This was ample. No one ever contemplated not implementing the invasion of the SRA in spite of working up plans for this invasion in various forms. One cannot understand Japanese naval thought in the early 20th century outside the context of this planning.

Assertions as to non-verifiable events, are always such, but when backed up by factual underpinnings, take on the validity of the basic premise. Logic 101.

Japan did not have the tonnage. At http://www.combinedfleet.com/pearlops.htm the data exists. If it is not quite as detailed as desired, one need only visit Leo’s site, note the ships listed in the various invasion TFs, go to ONI 208, determine their individual tonnages, and perform simple addition. You will find the article is, in fact, quite conservative.

Hitting aztez for making assertions, while making several bald assertions yourself, might be viewed by some as hypocritical. Japan did not have sufficient tonnage, period, much less 2 – 3 orders of magnitude of excess. Case in point: during Guadalcanal ops, the Japanese had to acquire sufficient shipping to meet their reinforcement schedules, by generating a Central Agreement, even though both Army and Navy acknowledged that the additional tonnage taken from merchant shipping would result in a (by then) nominally 20% shortfall of shipping to meet SRA resource acquisition requirements. See Richard B. Frank, “Guadalcanal”, for details of both the Central Agreement and the scale of the shortfall.

If Japan couldn’t even reinforce Guadalcanal without straining their merchant capacity beyond the breaking point, it is indeed a fantasy to suggest they had enough to contemplate a multi-divisional lift to Hawaii.

As to Japanese plans to invade Hawaii; well, plans are plans. We too made plans. Roundup and Sledgehammer come to mind. They were planned extensively and forthrightly, but with the benefit of experience and contemporary hindsight, everyone involved came to realize they would have resulted, not in a lodgement, but a catastrophe. Thus Japan’s plans to invade.

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: m10bob
Mike, this is yet another occasion I agree with you 100%.
I also appreciate the fact you can make valid points without resorting to playground name-calling.
However, I cannot forgive people from Kansas City believing their BBQ is better than that which I tasted in North Carolina, at a roadside greasy spoon near Godwin, just outside of Fayetteville....Bob(Ex-resident of Waynesville MO and fan of Route 66, the ONLY road)..

I'm not from KC..., I just moved here when I retired. And I like Carolina "pulled pork" BBQ as well. Fact is, my waistline tells me I like ALL kinds of BBQ. Also New York and Chicago-style Pizza.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: el cid again
Please try to remember the point in contention was the assertion that Japan lacked the logistical capability to invade Hawaii. I was trying to use the fact they decided they DID have the logistical capability to do just that - and actually found and allocated the troops, shipping, air units - everything - when they launched their attempted invasion. Now I did not claim that they succeeded in that invasion attempt - I am not trying to rewrite what happened at Midway - and I doubt there is one question in 100 I would not answer properly about it to your satisfaction. I am/was ONLY trying to say that they MUST have had the logistical ability to make the attack since they really did come up with the invasion plan, allocate the resources (later phases on a contingency basis, to be sure), and attempt to implement it. Saying they "invaded" in that sense only means they tried - not that the invasion succeeded.

Okay. I urge you to keep in mind that people read what you write - not what you have in mind. When you write something like 'Japan did invade Hawaii', that evokes a reaction along the lines of 'whaaaaat?????' And that takes away from the credibility and seriousness with which they then read other information, analysis, assertions or arguments you put forth.