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From Pacific War to WITP/AE you'll likely never see a commercial war game that addresses these self-inflicted issues and others. Because as one sided as things already stand, what competitor wants to play a Japan burdened with all these crippling problems as well? Which is why a game probably isn't the best model to plan your alternate history on.

Good stuff, Ranger Joe. A bunch of incompetents then. El Cid (RHS) told us zillion of times to use the ships rationally!

I'm trying to find the mathematical proof somewhere but to no avail. It should be something like this: what was the last outpost the Japanese could afford to invade? When did they reach the 10%, the 40% of their capacity... where should we draw the line in the sand or "eat this cake and stop"...?

warspite1 wrote: Sat Nov 19, 2022 5:38 pm

Platoonist wrote: Sat Nov 19, 2022 5:22 pm

warspite1 wrote: Sat Nov 19, 2022 4:36 pm
What?? So you need a Grigsby game to know the relative value of carriers to battleships in WWII?

It's interesting to note for all the credibility that is being bestowed on Gary Grigsby's name being on a MS-DOS title from 1992, that Gary himself doesn't take any acknowledgement for anything beyond design, programming and rules in the game's credit notes. Historical research done by others. That's not to disparage the research that was done. Just that it's likely the lion's share of it wasn't done by G. Grigsby.


PacWar Credits.jpg

warspite1

What is bonkers is that these factors are being quoted as though they mean anything. It's 2022, those of us interested in WWII have had many - a great many in some cases! - years to study the subject. Who, genuinely, still needs a subjective point score from a wargame to understand the relative value of a battleship vs carrier in WWII? We know how naval warfare developed during the war. What we also have is some idea of what various key figures understood about the relative merits at the time. And it is that that's important to these discussions.

And carriers as a weapons system. at least in my humble opinion, were pretty much an unkown at the beginning. I mean. today, we all know that they became King of the Sea. But in 1939-41, battleships were still on top. Until land based Nells sank the Prince of Wales and Repulse. Two big warships under power and able to manuver.

We have to remember, that Yamamoto was willing to exchange carriers for battleships. Hardly something you would do in a game. Unless the exchange wins you the game.

Aurelian wrote: Sat Nov 19, 2022 9:35 pm
We have to remember, that Yamamoto was willing to exchange carriers for battleships. Hardly something you would do in a game. Unless the exchange wins you the game.

Even when it was readily apparent that carriers ruled the sea now, the battleship still held a prime place in many an admiral's way of thinking. The loss of the battleship Hiei, the emperor’s favorite battleship in November 1942, stunned Admiral Yamamoto and the Japanese navy leadership, perhaps even more than the loss of the carriers at Midway. The purpose of the carriers, cruisers, and destroyers was to whittle down the American fleet before the ultimate clash of battleships that would decide the war, according to two decades of Japanese naval planning and doctrine. Losing some of the former was expected. Losing a battleship was unacceptable. Rear Admiral Abe and Captain Nishida paid for the loss of Hiei with their careers and were promptly retired. Admiral Nagumo despite his staggering loss of four carriers at Midway wasn't.

Admiral Ugaki noted that the shock of losing the BB Kirishima almost a day after the loss of Hiei deeply impacted the Navy's future decision to give up on the battle on Guadalcanal despite Japan still having an edge at sea in carriers. Losing two battleships in two days was too much.

Platoonist wrote: Sat Nov 19, 2022 10:23 pm

Aurelian wrote: Sat Nov 19, 2022 9:35 pm
We have to remember, that Yamamoto was willing to exchange carriers for battleships. Hardly something you would do in a game. Unless the exchange wins you the game.

Even when it was readily apparent that carriers ruled the sea now, the battleship still held a prime place in many an admiral's way of thinking. The loss of the battleship Hiei, the emperor’s favorite battleship in November 1942, stunned Admiral Yamamoto and the Japanese navy leadership, perhaps even more than the loss of the carriers at Midway. The purpose of the carriers, cruisers, and destroyers was to whittle down the American fleet before the ultimate clash of battleships that would decide the war, according to two decades of Japanese naval planning and doctrine. Losing some of the former was expected. Losing a battleship was unacceptable. Rear Admiral Abe and Captain Nishida paid for the loss of Hiei with their careers and were promptly retired. Admiral Nagumo despite his staggering loss of four carriers at Midway wasn't.

Admiral Ugaki noted that the shock of losing the BB Kirishima almost a day after the loss of Hiei deeply impacted the Navy's future decision to give up on the battle on Guadalcanal despite Japan still having an edge at sea in carriers. Losing two battleships in two days was too much.

I remember reading that Yamamoto said that to win Guadalcanal, he'd bring the Yamato down the Slot. Or should I say, the Hotel Yamato?

Aurelian wrote: Sat Nov 19, 2022 11:07 pm
I remember reading that Yamamoto said that to win Guadalcanal, he'd bring the Yamato down the Slot. Or should I say, the Hotel Yamato?

Yeah, John Toland in his two-volume history; The Rising Sun makes mention of a meeting between IJA Colonel Masanobu Tsuji and Admiral Yamamoto onboard the Yamato at Truk anchorage where he makes this solemn promise to bring the Yamato alongside Guadalcanal to bombard it. Supposedly, with tears in his eyes after personally hearing from Tsuji about the dire supply conditions of the 17th Army troops there.

A promise eventually broken, of course. The only role the BB Yamato ever played at Guadalcanal was as a giant floating fuel depot to siphon gas from for those units that did put to sea. I guess Admiral Yamamoto's sumptuous suite of air-conditioned offices and quarters on the Yamato were far too important to risk in battle.

TulliusDetritus wrote: Sat Nov 19, 2022 7:44 pm

Sardaukar wrote: Sat Nov 19, 2022 7:14 pm And if other people have difficulties to understand military logistics, I don't. Those had to be studied if you were member of professional military in any planning capacity.

Your IJN planner affirms the invasion is impossible, yet the shattered sword guys say it's possible, what has "if other people have difficulties to understand military logistics" to do with this? And it's the very base or whole economic life that needs to be understood here. Only when this is grasped the militaries will be able to play with their toys: "this is what we really have or can afford". Where's the economic historian? He's the one that will answer these questions.

edited Grant Piper, a freelance writer, researcher, and content creator is certainly not what I am looking for

Since YOU don't grasp that very small possibility does mean that it is possible but highly improbable, why should we try to educate you?

If one is too lazy to do his/her own research, he/she is then unable to absorb whatever research others do. Or be critical of any of it.

RangerJoe wrote: Sat Nov 19, 2022 8:02 pm My understanding was that merchant ships were assigned to the army and navy separately, not combined nor coordinated with civilian needs. So frequently fully laden ships would pass empty ships, then return empty while other ships would load cargoes to go to the originating port of the loaded ships, then return empty.

Indeed.

Neither service agreed to sail in other service's task force. Thus in Midway operation, both Army and Navy amphibious units sailed in separate task forces from different ports.

Field Marshal Willian Slim wrote about Japanese Army some things that captures very well the mindset of Japanese Army generals:

"The Japanese were ruthless and bold as ants when their plans went well, but if their plans were disturbed or thrown out - ant-like again - they fell into confusion, were slow to re-adjust themselves, and invariably clung too long to their original schemes. This, to their commanders with their unquenchable military optimism, which rarely allowed in their narrow administrative margins for any setback or delay, was particularly dangerous. The fundamental fault of their generalship was a lack of moral, as distinct from physical courage.
They were not prepared to admit they had made a mistake, that their plans had misfired and needed recasting
...

Rather than confess that, they passed on to their subordinates, unchanged, the order that they themselves had received, well knowing that with the resources available the tasks demanded were impossible. Time and time again, this blind passing of responsibility ran down a chain of disaster.
...

They scored highly by determination; they paid heavily for lack of flexibility."

- Shattered Sword p. 413 and H.P. Willmott: Empires in Balance p.242

This inflexibility (and inherent complexity) with rigid timetables was easily seen also in Yamamoto's and his staff's planning for Operation MI (Midway).

So where are we with Curtis Lemay’s plan?

Sadly not too further forward because of a refusal to provide any detail. Even though he’s said he’s played this out successfully on a number of realistic sims, I am unsure how that happened. For example, Curtis Lemay believed that Zeros could fly to the HI and there was also no mention of destroyers needing to be converted. There was talk of at least a couple of islands around Oahu being occupied but this was scaled back to one. There is also now a belated realisation that Midway needs to be occupied.

But, undeterred, Curtis Lemay has stuck to his guns and believes his plan is workable and, was something the Japanese could have agreed on.

So what is ‘the plan’?

1. The biggest element is that the timing of Japan going to war is now completely flexible. The Japanese will only launch the raid on Pearl Harbor once a number of aircraft carriers (that Curtis Lemay won’t specify) are in Pearl.

2. All historical plans will then proceed, in line with the raid, except the attack on Luzon (but with the addition of Midway). The raid itself is expanded so that, in conjunction with the raid, four battalions of infantry, air ground crew etc. are landed on Maui so that Bettys (that have bombed Pearl) then fly onto Maui so that they can take up operations to reduce the defences on Oahu.

a. Japan going to war

The key to this plan is that Yamamoto was sufficiently converted to the idea that battleships have been replaced by the aircraft carrier as the primary naval weapon. So much so that unless the US Pacific Fleet carriers can be destroyed, then the Pearl Harbor raid is not worth it. Curtis Lemay won’t say whether this means one, two or three carriers need to be destroyed, but I think that if Yamamoto is effectively saying Japan can’t go to war without the carriers being sunk, he probably means all three.

Of course there is absolutely no evidence that Yamamoto was this advanced in his thinking – indeed his thought process at Midway and elsewhere suggests he still believed that the BB was the primary weapon.

But Curtis Lemay believes that the Japanese leadership would have been sold on the idea that Japan would only go to war if the carriers can be sunk. This despite the fact that such an idea simply means Japan’s strategic position continues to worsen through the reduction of oil reserves – a reduction ironically that is increased because an enlarged KB and other invasion task forces keep sailing for targets – only then to be recalled because the carriers aren’t home…..

So under this ‘plan’ Japan have absolutely no idea when, and no guarantee if, they will ever go to war. Sounds feasible right?

b. The invasion of Maui

The next big change to the Pearl Operation is that it is expanded to allow for two? battalions of infantry, equipment, transport, air force ground crew, aircraft spare parts, ammunition, AA weaponry to be landed on Maui. No detail has been given but I assume these are army troops and so there is the small matter of how the army is persuaded to release these units for a naval operation that they can’t evidence they can supply even if they land.

But in any case, Japan did not have the vessels to allow this to happen and so it’s envisaged that Yamamoto would have had the foresight to do something about it. This ‘something’ involves more than 10% of the IJN destroyer fleet being converted. The conversion would need to be resourced, and dock space found (in competition with all the competing needs of other areas of the navy – the carrier program and the battleship program to name but two) and the need for this to be realised sufficiently early so that there is time for all ships to be converted.

Even if we could accept that Yamamoto would think of this, even if we accept that priority would be given in preference to carriers and battleships, when would he have actually had to have had this brain wave? How long would each conversion take?

But getting the destroyers available is only the beginning of the problem. Two battalions of infantry plus the support units will be crammed into these vessels for potentially weeks/months at a time, sailing up and down the treacherous North Pacific – from time to time replenished by tankers en route - waiting for the green light. Really?

We have no detail as to how and when these ships will sail for Maui, where they will wait for the order to land, how long that would take, when the troops (assuming they land) would need to secure the airfield and round up the islands defenders. Essentially it’s all just assumed that it will happen, they will not be detected at any point and everything goes like clockwork.

An unspecified number of unidentified Bettys will then fly thousands of miles to bomb Pearl (no mention of when in terms of the initial attack – but presumably has to be afterwards when defences on Pearl have been alerted) with no fighter protection and safely land on the airfield that has (obviously) been secured on Maui. The destroyer flotillas have brought enough AA weaponry to safeguard the Bettys and also enough bombs and ammunition, fuel, spare parts etc to keep the unescorted Bettys flying in the coming days and weeks to reduce Oahu.

The destroyers then depart to rendezvous with the KB and head for home.

c. The invasion of Malaya and the NEI etc.

The plan calls for the invasions elsewhere to all happen as per the historical (but in line with the Pearl raid) except Luzon. So while the enlarged KB are tooling around the North Pacific waiting for the carriers, the units tasked with these operations have to sail to their targets (to maintain co-ordination) but then return each time the KB is told the carriers aren’t at home. They will continue to do this, burning up fuel, fraying the nerves of the combat units and increasing chances of detection until those pesky carriers – “where the **** is Saratoga anyway?” (in Japanese) are found to be in port.

As said there is now one additional invasion required. Along with other changes that Curtis Lemay realised needed to be made, he realised that Midway would need to be taken to help with the operation. Sadly no details about Midway’s defences, the Japanese units required to take the island or the timing was given. Given the problems the Japanese found at Wake and given the importance of taking Midway, I would have thought he would have some idea worked out but….

We are told that because the attack on Luzon isn’t happening there is plenty of oil to go around. All that I see is that this revised operation delays, for an indeterminate length of time, the receipt of oil from the NEI, while the enlarged and expanded operations are costing Japan much more oil than historically.

Of course without Curtis Lemay identifying the ships, aircraft and troops being used for all these new operations, we can’t know what that would mean in terms of follow-up operations. For example how many Bettys used in the PI were then needed in NEI or elsewhere? Curtis Lemay blithely writes off the loss of 80-100 front-line aircraft and precious aircrew, but Japan just didn’t have that luxury given replacement rates.

I say again, the war wasn’t fought in silos. Changes to one area means a knock-on effect elsewhere. Curtis Lemay couldn’t grasp that with Spain/Turkey and he still hasn’t grasped the concept here. This is particularly important when discussing Japan because their military and economic resources were so thinly stretched.

I think there is so much about this ‘plan’ that simply doesn’t get past first base, but the biggest obstacle is clearly this:
Going to war is a huge undertaking. Why would a country recognise they have a pressing strategic need to go to war but then, having decided that would happen, dictate that they will only do so if and when three warships are in port…..?

Sardaukar wrote: Sun Nov 20, 2022 10:23 am

TulliusDetritus wrote: Sat Nov 19, 2022 7:44 pm edited Grant Piper, a freelance writer, researcher, and content creator is certainly not what I am looking for

Since YOU don't grasp that very small possibility does mean that it is possible but highly improbable, why should we try to educate you?

If one is too lazy to do his/her own research, he/she is then unable to absorb whatever research others do. Or be critical of any of it.

A Japanese victory was "highly improbable" too and yet here we are, Mr Logistician, they started the war

This Piper guy seems to be writing about a lot of things (the very definition of an aficionado eh). Problem is I want a specialist. Wake me up when you find him / her

TulliusDetritus wrote: Sun Nov 20, 2022 12:11 pm

Sardaukar wrote: Sun Nov 20, 2022 10:23 am

TulliusDetritus wrote: Sat Nov 19, 2022 7:44 pm edited Grant Piper, a freelance writer, researcher, and content creator is certainly not what I am looking for

Since YOU don't grasp that very small possibility does mean that it is possible but highly improbable, why should we try to educate you?

If one is too lazy to do his/her own research, he/she is then unable to absorb whatever research others do. Or be critical of any of it.

A Japanese victory was "highly improbable" too and yet here we are, Mr Logistician, they started the war

This Piper guy seems to be writing about a lot of things (the very definition of an aficionado eh). Problem is I want a specialist. Wake me up when you find him / her

They totally miscalculated.

They knew they had advantage of surprise and better planning...plus very unprepared enemy.

Yamamoto himself said that he could give them 6 months of victories, but being one that studied in USA and had first-hand knowledge about USA, he didn't give any guarantees.

Japanese were stuck in their "decisive battle" doctrine, thinking that like in Tsushima, one decisive battle would bring USA on it's knees. Grave miscalculation.

You don't seem to be unable to get Pacific War books and read them yourself. Or do your own research. Thus I am inclined to think that you are just trolling and will not be responding to you after this post.

Have a nice day!

Sardaukar wrote: Sun Nov 20, 2022 12:17 pm They totally miscalculated.

They knew they had advantage of surprise and better planning...plus very unprepared enemy.

Yamamoto himself said that he could give them 6 months of victories, but being one that studied in USA and had first-hand knowledge about USA, he didn't give any guarantees.

Japanese were stuck in their "decisive battle" doctrine, thinking that like in Tsushima, one decisive battle would bring USA on it's knees. Grave miscalculation.

As if we didn't know this

Cesar was crazy too, leading a 60.000 legionary army into Gaul: you're breaking all laws of logistics, bro, I'm sure someone lectured him. Alexander the Great too, another lunatic.

Give my warmest regards to Mr Piper.

TulliusDetritus wrote: Sun Nov 20, 2022 12:11 pm

Sardaukar wrote: Sun Nov 20, 2022 10:23 am

TulliusDetritus wrote: Sat Nov 19, 2022 7:44 pm edited Grant Piper, a freelance writer, researcher, and content creator is certainly not what I am looking for

Since YOU don't grasp that very small possibility does mean that it is possible but highly improbable, why should we try to educate you?

If one is too lazy to do his/her own research, he/she is then unable to absorb whatever research others do. Or be critical of any of it.

A Japanese victory was "highly improbable" too and yet here we are, Mr Logistician, they started the war

This Piper guy seems to be writing about a lot of things (the very definition of an aficionado eh). Problem is I want a specialist. Wake me up when you find him / her

If you want to contact a logistical specialist, there is one on the forums but he has not posted for a few months. But someone else may know how he is.

warspite1 wrote: Sun Nov 20, 2022 11:56 am So where are we with Curtis Lemay’s plan?

Sadly not too further forward because of a refusal to provide any detail. Even though he’s said he’s played this out successfully on a number of realistic sims, I am unsure how that happened. For example, Curtis Lemay believed that Zeros could fly to the HI and there was also no mention of destroyers needing to be converted. There was talk of at least a couple of islands around Oahu being occupied but this was scaled back to one. There is also now a belated realisation that Midway needs to be occupied.

What I said was that I have captured the HI in every Pacific wargame I've played - but years ago. I've not gamed this specific plan.

So what is ‘the plan’?

1. The biggest element is that the timing of Japan going to war is now completely flexible. The Japanese will only launch the raid on Pearl Harbor once a number of aircraft carriers (that Curtis Lemay won’t specify) are in Pearl.

We've agreed on two.

2. All historical plans will then proceed, in line with the raid, except the attack on Luzon (but with the addition of Midway). The raid itself is expanded so that, in conjunction with the raid, four battalions of infantry, air ground crew etc. are landed on Maui so that Bettys (that have bombed Pearl) then fly onto Maui so that they can take up operations to reduce the defences on Oahu.

Two battalions of infantry, not four.

a. Japan going to war

The key to this plan is that Yamamoto was sufficiently converted to the idea that battleships have been replaced by the aircraft carrier as the primary naval weapon. So much so that unless the US Pacific Fleet carriers can be destroyed, then the Pearl Harbor raid is not worth it. Curtis Lemay won’t say whether this means one, two or three carriers need to be destroyed, but I think that if Yamamoto is effectively saying Japan can’t go to war without the carriers being sunk, he probably means all three.

Of course there is absolutely no evidence that Yamamoto was this advanced in his thinking – indeed his thought process at Midway and elsewhere suggests he still believed that the BB was the primary weapon.

Yamamoto didn't survive the war so never got to write about his beliefs about this. Rather than engage in mind reading, I say his beliefs should be deduced from his ACTIONS. And his actions were to launch a carrier strike on Pearl Harbor. Not a battleship strike (as the Japanese did in the R-J war). He clearly was inspired by Taranto. He wanted to repeat it. The idea that he intended his carriers to be torched in the Pearl raid is insane. Furthermore, the Bismarck was crippled by a carrier and that probably was the reason it was later sunk. Sure, Japan, like every other navy at this time, had proponents of the battleship. But they were opposed by proponents of carriers. The evidence deduced from their actions seems pretty clear that the carrier side was on top at this time.

But Curtis Lemay believes that the Japanese leadership would have been sold on the idea that Japan would only go to war if the carriers can be sunk. This despite the fact that such an idea simply means Japan’s strategic position continues to worsen through the reduction of oil reserves – a reduction ironically that is increased because an enlarged KB and other invasion task forces keep sailing for targets – only then to be recalled because the carriers aren’t home…..

So under this ‘plan’ Japan have absolutely no idea when, and no guarantee if, they will ever go to war. Sounds feasible right?

Sound flexible to me. Sort of like Eisenhower and Overlord.

b. The invasion of Maui

The next big change to the Pearl Operation is that it is expanded to allow for two? battalions of infantry, equipment, transport, air force ground crew, aircraft spare parts, ammunition, AA weaponry to be landed on Maui. No detail has been given but I assume these are army troops and so there is the small matter of how the army is persuaded to release these units for a naval operation that they can’t evidence they can supply even if they land.

But in any case, Japan did not have the vessels to allow this to happen and so it’s envisaged that Yamamoto would have had the foresight to do something about it. This ‘something’ involves more than 10% of the IJN destroyer fleet being converted. The conversion would need to be resourced, and dock space found (in competition with all the competing needs of other areas of the navy – the carrier program and the battleship program to name but two) and the need for this to be realised sufficiently early so that there is time for all ships to be converted.

Postponement of Luzon frees up plenty of infantry, supplies, ships, and aircraft. The Luzon invasion was huge - lots of ground combat tactically supported by air and naval. The overall supply needs of the entire Pacific have no NET increase due to this postponement.

Even if we could accept that Yamamoto would think of this, even if we accept that priority would be given in preference to carriers and battleships, when would he have actually had to have had this brain wave? How long would each conversion take?

I think taking the 3 turrets and 2 torpedo bays out could be done in a week. The rest of the work doesn't require even dock space. So...12 weeks for 12 destroyers. All using just one port berth anywhere in the entire Japanese empire.

But getting the destroyers available is only the beginning of the problem. Two battalions of infantry plus the support units will be crammed into these vessels for potentially weeks/months at a time, sailing up and down the treacherous North Pacific – from time to time replenished by tankers en route - waiting for the green light. Really?

Compare this "hardship" to being a Kamakaze!

We have no detail as to how and when these ships will sail for Maui, where they will wait for the order to land, how long that would take, when the troops (assuming they land) would need to secure the airfield and round up the islands defenders. Essentially it’s all just assumed that it will happen, they will not be detected at any point and everything goes like clockwork.

It's a 400 mile roundtrip from the launch point. The destroyers can do 1400 miles before needing to be refueled. That's 1000 miles of slack for the above purposes. That's all the detail anyone should need.

An unspecified number of unidentified Bettys will then fly thousands of miles to bomb Pearl (no mention of when in terms of the initial attack – but presumably has to be afterwards when defences on Pearl have been alerted) with no fighter protection and safely land on the airfield that has (obviously) been secured on Maui. The destroyer flotillas have brought enough AA weaponry to safeguard the Bettys and also enough bombs and ammunition, fuel, spare parts etc to keep the unescorted Bettys flying in the coming days and weeks to reduce Oahu.

Gosh! How could the Japanese coordinate two groups of bombers and fighters? Why they would have to have watches and radios....oh, wait. The carriers are providing fighter cover. And the aircraft on Oahu are being smashed.

It is a risk-reward option. Very little is being risked. The reward is huge.

c. The invasion of Malaya and the NEI etc.

The plan calls for the invasions elsewhere to all happen as per the historical (but in line with the Pearl raid) except Luzon. So while the enlarged KB are tooling around the North Pacific waiting for the carriers, the units tasked with these operations have to sail to their targets (to maintain co-ordination) but then return each time the KB is told the carriers aren’t at home. They will continue to do this, burning up fuel, fraying the nerves of the combat units and increasing chances of detection until those pesky carriers – “where the **** is Saratoga anyway?” (in Japanese) are found to be in port.

As said there is now one additional invasion required. Along with other changes that Curtis Lemay realised needed to be made, he realised that Midway would need to be taken to help with the operation. Sadly no details about Midway’s defences, the Japanese units required to take the island or the timing was given. Given the problems the Japanese found at Wake and given the importance of taking Midway, I would have thought he would have some idea worked out but….

This is a bonus. The postponement of Luzon frees up enough ground forces that Midway's fall can be ensured. Especially with the carriers in support. No Battle of Midway required later on.

We are told that because the attack on Luzon isn’t happening there is plenty of oil to go around. All that I see is that this revised operation delays, for an indeterminate length of time, the receipt of oil from the NEI, while the enlarged and expanded operations are costing Japan much more oil than historically.

Luzon is a huge operation needing lots of logistical support. Postponing it will reduce the Pacific-wide supply needs.

Of course without Curtis Lemay identifying the ships, aircraft and troops being used for all these new operations, we can’t know what that would mean in terms of follow-up operations. For example how many Bettys used in the PI were then needed in NEI or elsewhere? Curtis Lemay blithely writes off the loss of 80-100 front-line aircraft and precious aircrew, but Japan just didn’t have that luxury given replacement rates.

They have that luxury if it results in a years delay in US response - which was what Nimitz felt it would entail.

I say again, the war wasn’t fought in silos. Changes to one area means a knock-on effect elsewhere. Curtis Lemay couldn’t grasp that with Spain/Turkey and he still hasn’t grasped the concept here. This is particularly important when discussing Japan because their military and economic resources were so thinly stretched.

I was right about the southern strategy, and the change in the Luzon invasion accounts for the additions elsewhere.

I think there is so much about this ‘plan’ that simply doesn’t get past first base, but the biggest obstacle is clearly this:
Going to war is a huge undertaking. Why would a country recognise they have a pressing strategic need to go to war but then, having decided that would happen, dictate that they will only do so if and when three warships are in port…..?

Again, Eisenhower and Overlord.

The viability of the plan depends entirely on the value of carriers vs. battleships. If, as Grigsby says, carriers are worth 10x battleships, the plan is a no brainer. The evidence was already out there that that was the case. And the evidence is that Yamamoto was on that side of the issue.

Curtis Lemay wrote: Sun Nov 20, 2022 4:37 pm
We've agreed on two.

warspite1

No, not at all. You couldn't be bothered to detail a requirement so I tried a number to get things kick-started. But if you are saying Yamamoto was so certain about the carriers and their importance (such that he would be prepared to delay a war), then it would make sense that he would insist on two.

Curtis Lemay wrote: Sun Nov 20, 2022 4:37 pm
The idea that he intended his carriers to be torched in the Pearl raid is insane.

warspite1

When did I say anything like this? Don't you dare put words in my mouth.

Curtis Lemay wrote: Sun Nov 20, 2022 4:37 pm
Compare this "hardship" to being a Kamakaze!

warspite1

So you relate everything to kamakazes????? Pathetic.

Curtis Lemay wrote: Sun Nov 20, 2022 4:37 pm
The carriers are providing fighter cover. And the aircraft on Oahu are being smashed.

warspite1

Hilarious. You simply can't get your story straight. You've changed this so many times its embarrassing. The KB remain off HI providing air cover, then the KB are sailing away as per history, then the KB are providing assistance to the Midway landings. It's all muddled nonsense.

warspite1 wrote: Sun Nov 20, 2022 4:57 pm

Curtis Lemay wrote: Sun Nov 20, 2022 4:37 pm
We've agreed on two.

warspite1

No, not at all. You couldn't be bothered to detail a requirement so I tried a number to get things kick-started. But if you are saying Yamamoto was so certain about the carriers and their importance (such that he would be prepared to delay a war), then it would make sense that he would insist on two.

I've posted it more than once. Try to keep up.