Yamamoto's Plan in action

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

ORIGINAL: el cid again

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl




Yes, as I explained to Andy above, I meant barrels rather than tons. But read that farther and you will see. "The real point was that the Japanese used 98.2 % of their entire "Strategic Oil Reserve" in the first year of the conflict, and from that time forward were literally fighting "hand to mouth". This was without implementing "the Prolonged Hawaiian Adventure" which would haved sucked down oil by the millions of barrels." We're talking about the real world here..., the one in which the Japanese Battleships rarely left home waters because they burned too much oil. In real life, the Midway Operation was pretty much a "raid"...., yet it burned the entire IJN planned allocation of feul oil for the entire year. Turn it into a Campaign of several months duration to conquer Hawaii (more than 1000 miles farther away) and Japan collapses in mid-1942 from lack of oil. It's really that simple. Japan was totally dependent on it's merchant marine for it's economy to function at all. No oil, no merchant marine, no economy. And blythly stating "Oil isn't a problem" doesn't change that. Basing a campaign on the possibility of capturing feul from the other side wasn't a good idea in 1944 for the Germans, and it wasn't a good idea for the Japanese in 1941-42 either. Logistically, you are confusing "the game" with reality when judging logistical potential.

Somehow you still don't get it: Hawaii has as much oil as BOTH the Army and Navy stockpiles total. It is not only removed from play as a US asset - but some significant fraction of it must appear on the other side of the table.
We cannot even do justice to this in our game - you will only get a tiny fraction of the oil Japan would have got IRL.

Another factor is that somehow you seem to pretend the ships sent to Hawaii were NOT using oil when sent somewhere else. The fuel usage does not essentially change. Wherever they go - the consume about the same amount of oil. Going one direction vice another direction does not increase the requirment for fuel. Only to the extent we send idle ships does that increase the cost. And that is neatly balanced by the fuel that should be captured if this is not botched - much more than balanced - although how much more is impossible to know before the fact.

It is the opposite of your charge: The game does not permit us to put in most of the oil; the game does not understand the problem of trying to get rid of oil in such a quantity and won't hand over enough of what is in it; the game does not permit Japanese players to have about half their AKs of reality. Whatever happens, we are forcing it to be harder than it would really have been.

I for one don't think Yamamoto was a logistic fool. I don't think he was wrong and I think you are wholly discounting his view in framing your own.

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: el cid again
IF to this you add Hawaii - you DOUBLE the petroleum reserves potentially. It won't be that good - because some of that is going to be lost. We spent decades moving the oil to Hawaii - so much that we cannot put it in the database - because it cannot accept such numbers! It would take Japan at least two years to move it IF only 10% were captured - and IF they sent tankers there instead of to the NEI to get it. But they must capture much more than half of it - see US Army studies on the subject - and they would hardly send tankers to a more distant point (meaning less oil shipped per year due to fewer round trips). What you end up is a situation in which the oil in Hawaii fuels any ship that goes there for any reason - say to haul in food - haul out refugees - bring soldiers or munitions.

What? Japan's Strategic Oil Reserve (Army, Navy, and Civilian) was about 53,000,000 Barrels at the start of the War. The US Oil Stockpile in Hawaii was 4,500,000. What kind of math do you use to get 53,000,000 + 4,500,000 to equal 106,000,000? I give up Cid. You want to play fast and loose with reality, fine. Have a good time.

[JeffroK]

I always wondered why I talk tactics, but it must put me in the same rank with Rommel !!!!
 
Assuming the japanese navy could put 3 Divisions ashore on Oahu on 7 Dec, at what level do you think the US defenders were, what would be required to bottle up the ships in Pearl Harbor.
 
What sort of garrison would be needed to hold the islands?
 
(I have read Turtledove's Day of Infamy, any advances on that?)

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

ORIGINAL: el cid again
IF to this you add Hawaii - you DOUBLE the petroleum reserves potentially. It won't be that good - because some of that is going to be lost. We spent decades moving the oil to Hawaii - so much that we cannot put it in the database - because it cannot accept such numbers! It would take Japan at least two years to move it IF only 10% were captured - and IF they sent tankers there instead of to the NEI to get it. But they must capture much more than half of it - see US Army studies on the subject - and they would hardly send tankers to a more distant point (meaning less oil shipped per year due to fewer round trips). What you end up is a situation in which the oil in Hawaii fuels any ship that goes there for any reason - say to haul in food - haul out refugees - bring soldiers or munitions.

What? Japan's Strategic Oil Reserve (Army, Navy, and Civilian) was about 53,000,000 Barrels at the start of the War. The US Oil Stockpile in Hawaii was 4,500,000. What kind of math do you use to get 53,000,000 + 4,500,000 to equal 106,000,000? I give up Cid. You want to play fast and loose with reality, fine. Have a good time.

Well - I am using numbers off the top of my head - not looking them up. Perhaps - as you confused tons and bbl earlier in the thread - I somehow did that long ago. But when I tried (and failed) to get the oil stocks right at Panama, Hawaii and San Francisco - I think I remember that the Hawaii stocks were about the same size as Japan.

Also - I note above you posted the 53 million bbl figure was NAVY stocks - now you are saying it is three sets of stocks - and something does not compute here. For one thing - unless you count commercial holdings as a "strategic reserve" - there wasn't any civilian strategic reserve. So the above statement is at least misleading - not to mention contradicting your earlier wording indicating it was navy.

Whatever the numbers are - and Joe and I looked them up over a year ago when trying to work out the game economic model - we decided to reduce them to adjust for fuels not consumed by ships (because he pointed out "fuel" in the game is purely for ships, but oil fuel IRL is for other things as well).

FYI I have examined this material with US soldiers - and the Oahu petroleum reserves were very large - certainly much larger than I had understood before we looked at it. One problem you may have is looking at figures for just one type of fuel. I found there were several kinds - and figures for each.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: JeffK

I always wondered why I talk tactics, but it must put me in the same rank with Rommel !!!!

Assuming the japanese navy could put 3 Divisions ashore on Oahu on 7 Dec, at what level do you think the US defenders were, what would be required to bottle up the ships in Pearl Harbor.

What sort of garrison would be needed to hold the islands?

(I have read Turtledove's Day of Infamy, any advances on that?)

The problem is neither the size of the defending force (in divisions) nor the fleet. Neither was going to stand up to a single IJA division cum 1941. That is, IJA could count on winning a ground battle against a force twice its size - and more or less Hawaii had two divisions. [It started with one square division and two understrength national guard regiments. These were activated and split - so you got two divisions with two regular regiments and one understrength NG regiment. It was complicated by the fact about a quarter of the NG troops were ethnic Japanese - and not trusted: these were removed to form the 100th Battalion - so the understrength NG regiments ended up even more understrength! Finally they were combined into a single regiment and a Washington NG regiment added to the mix. But when the war began you had two divisions of about 8 battalion size - 6 regular army and 3 understrength NG battalions per division.]

The fleet does not fight a division ashore. Nor would there be a fleet around to fight a division ashore: the fleet surely would have been destroyed either by air strikes or fighting the approach/landings. IF you postulate a division got ashore at all - the fleet would not be a factor against it.

But COULD a division land? Big problem here. The defense that matters is those 114 coast defense guns - many of them not manned - actually all of them not manned on a Sunday morning - but you can bet they would have been some days later. [Houses were knocked down so they had fields of fire. And ANYONE could man them - the fire control system permitted remote control from the island FDC - in the sense of solving fire control problems. You just had to line up your pointer with their transmitted pointer.] One pair of these guns - at Fort Ruger - were M1919 sixteen inch - the most powerful guns ever made for the US - whose range is not even known (one shot was once lost down range - out of sight of observers). They could hit a ship offshore on any side of Oahu. On the first shot too. There were two other 16 inch guns, two 14 inch, four 12 inch, twenty 12 inch mortars, and large numbers of smaller guns. Almost all were vulnerable to air attack - or pre war to sabotage. The smaller weapons could be moved - by truck or special trains - and it is not possible they all would be out. The reason for three divisions is mainly to insure one gets ashore - after losses during the approach to naval battles (including units on ships sent back due to damage - if they went back they are not ashore) - and during the landings as such. The US always assumed landings on the North shore - where coast defenses didn't exist (except those guns at Fort Ruger and a few sites for mobile rail guns of 8 inch caliber). The curator of the museum on Oahu thinks that is also right - Japan didn't like to land in the teeth of coast defenses - but they could and did (in spite of allegations they didn't - see Kota Bahru). Intel should have showed that exercises ALWAYS sent the troops north - and I think the Japanese would prefer to land where they were not - fight em after you are organized ashore.

Anyway - that is the problem - one I started work for a gigantic monster game on but never finished it - 2 km per hex.
Company level. It is a big problem. In 1941 the US air power was too weak - in every sense - numbers - types of planes - skills - training. It was a problem that was solvable in 1941 but would not have been even in the second half of 1942 - IMHO. Can you defeat the enemy fleet as it approaches? In Dec 1941, any ships approaching Kiddo Butai - never mind Kiddo Butai supported by land based air out of Johnston and Midway - are going to be lost. Only air strikes are going to stop the fleet - and all the bombers in Hawaii plus all the ones that can fly in from the USA are not enough. The fighters will survive less than a week as a viable force. Game it and see. IF the Japanese can get a division or more ashore as in tact fighting units - and IF the Japanese have proper air support from nearby islands and gunfire support from the fleet - Oahu's ports and airfields are more or less doomed (although resistence for years is feasible in its mountain jungles).

The US defense should be

a) Assemble the carriers as a single force (3 in a few days - in the Eastern Pacific)

b) Do NOT oppose the enemy main forces - but nibble at lesser targets as opportunity permits

c) Send submarines to EVERY POINT on the enemy SLOC - every predictable place they need to be/go -

d) EVACUATE Pearl itself (of ships, not troops or planes) - except for vessels you regard as expendable - say PT boats. [Fight like a modern NATO soldier - do NOT stand before a major thrust too powerful to resist - or you will be crushed. Get out of the way - let the wave crash over the fixed points - and adopt mobile tactics.] The official plan was that Oahu was an ARMY defense responsibility - no one imagined ships in port or inshore were going to work as a defense. And the PT boats IRL were a failure at Pearl - they work in the game but could not actually work in the peculiar waves of Hawaii IRL.

This may or may not save Pearl itself - enemies usually lose when they screw up - but YOU don't have to screw up with the fleet - don't lose it - use it when and if you can on Nimitze "calculated risk" principle - and HAVE IT survive to fight whatever happens at Pearl. Similarly, expending every B-17 unit in Western Command may be unwise - and definitely ONLY commit them when they are rated high in morale - make any losses count. If you wait a few days your immense engineering and supply stocks will restore the airfields - THEN send in SOME of the B-17s - as many as you can afford to lose. Make em pay - but don't lose the game by fighting battles you cannot win - until you can win them.

Consider Malaya: Yamashita was offered five divisions - but elected to use only three - on logistic grounds - and on the basis he had a "strong army" that was inherantly superior to a Western one at that time. He was outnumbered 2:1 by every measure (troop count, guns, tanks, ships, planes) according to his chief of operations - and chief of planning - Tsuji (see his book). [Note Churchill - in The Hinge of Fate - grossly overstates the number of Japanese divisions - apparently unwilling to believe the real numbers could have won] Yamashita also had the only tank brigade committed to fight in the Southern Offensive - it probably mattered a lot against enemies with no AT weapons worth mention. We are postulating an op led by this same Yamashita, planned by this same Tsuji.

[TIMJOT]

Consider Malaya: Yamashita was offered five divisions - but elected to use only three - on logistic grounds - and on the basis he had a "strong army" that was inherantly superior to a Western one at that time. He was outnumbered 2:1 by every measure (troop count, guns, tanks, ships, planes) according to his chief of operations - and chief of planning - Tsuji (see his book).

If I may interject, Tsuji was a notoriously unreliable source, a liar, a war criminal and flat out WRONG if he included being out numbered in tanks, ships and planes in his estimates.

Yamashita also had the only tank brigade committed to fight in the Southern Offensive - it probably mattered a lot against enemies with no AT weapons worth mention.

Yes, but there were other tank REGIMENTS committed in both the PI and NEIs which correct me if I am wrong were part of the "Southern Offensive"

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: el cid again
Also - I note above you posted the 53 million bbl figure was NAVY stocks - now you are saying it is three sets of stocks - and something does not compute here. For one thing - unless you count commercial holdings as a "strategic reserve" - there wasn't any civilian strategic reserve. So the above statement is at least misleading - not to mention contradicting your earlier wording indicating it was navy.

" Japan started the war with approximately a 53,000,000 ton oil reserve...," I don't see any designation of that as being NAVY stocks. JAPAN is a pretty much all-inclusive term...., IJN, IJA, and anything else on hand. Hardly misleading. Let it go, Cid. I don't want to be involved in this anymore. Fantacize to your heart's content...., and good luck to you.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: TIMJOT

Consider Malaya: Yamashita was offered five divisions - but elected to use only three - on logistic grounds - and on the basis he had a "strong army" that was inherantly superior to a Western one at that time. He was outnumbered 2:1 by every measure (troop count, guns, tanks, ships, planes) according to his chief of operations - and chief of planning - Tsuji (see his book).

If I may interject, Tsuji was a notoriously unreliable source, a liar, a war criminal and flat out WRONG if he included being out numbered in tanks, ships and planes in his estimates.



You may so interject. However, you may NOT allege a person never charged, never mind convicted of any war crime, is a war criminal and honor American standards of legal principle. Only the loosest of usage permits the allegation at all: you cannot show he was tried - because he was not. Even had he been arrested I seriously doubt he would have been tried. A much bigger fish - if I can be equally loose and allege someone was a war criminal who was never tried - was an industrialist named Noguchi. Among other things he had the rank of a Rear Admiral, and was Governor of the Northern part of Korea. One of only two industrialists in the world (the other was head of Union Minere du Haut Katangs which controled the richest uranium mine ever found and made its fortune inflating a monopoly on radium) to understand the significance of uranium in the 1930s, he set up the largest heavy water production facilities in the world at Hungnam (Konan to the Japanese). This site became the center for wartime Japanese atomic research - and was operated by the Russians until 1948 - was bombed by B-29s during the Korean war (specifically to destroy an "atomic plant") - and other things you probably never heard of. [See Japan's Secret War, second edition, which is about to go into a third edition, because so much has been learned] Anyway - Noguchi - who became a shadowy figure in Cold War politics and intelligence - BOUGHT his way out of a trial - with hundreds of thousands of dollars of radium - burried in Tsuji's front yard!


As for being a liar - this is almost certainly false. Tsuji was the extreme case of a fanatical Japanese staff officer. He was a nationalist. It was no part of his mind set to lie - except possibly as a ruse de guerre - he might decieve you on a battlefield. His writing style should convince you. The man is able to admit mistakes - often - great or small - and he is able to admire enemies like Winston Churchill (whom, he figures, must really study Zen). He might say something factually wrong - just as I might - but not deliberately: he is wholly innocent of that charge. You cannot show he deliberately lied, in any matter, on any subject - ever - in the sense he said something or misrepresented something he knew in his heart was wrong. The nearest thing I admit to his being a war criminal is the execution of Chief Justice Santos of the Philippines - something he forced on the commander of the islands. Seems that in Tsuji's mind, there was nothing worse than being an Asian who served a colonial regime - so that made Santo's a kind of traitor - not to Japan - but to Asia! The other possibility is the allegation he is responsible for the Bataan Death March. But I am balikbayan - the word does not translate but it means I do not enter the Philippines as an alien even though I was never a citizen - and my connections were always on Luzon - the island where it took place. I have visited virtually every historical site and museum and spoken to many witnesses and survivors. The evidence is pretty strong: whatever staff officers might have said or wished for - the actions were pretty much spontaneous - and not altogether different in kind from IJA behaviors in other places or other times. My mother in law witnessed a baby tossed up and cought with bayonettes - not exactly the behavior of troops under military control - nor of historical Japanese army troops - which before the late 1930s had the best record in the world for honoring WESTERN conduct on the battlefield (having been trained in the Geneva Conventions even before WWI - we see them this way even in the Russo Japanese war). [See Warriors of the Rising Sun and Soldiers of the Sun for English language scholarship on this] Tsuji OPPOSED uncivilized behavior by IJA in Malaya - wanted passionately to have offenders shot - see his book - he is still mad after the war - and I doubt his attitude was different in the Philippines.

You may (probably must - by his choice) regard Tsuji as a terrible enemy. You may dislike his politics and concepts of ethics. But Tsjui was far too fanatical to have ever been a liar. It isn't in his character to even consider it. [Curiously - he was not unique. Tojo - whatever his mental limitations - and who WAS convicted of war crimes - was not corrupt - never enriched himself - and never lied.]

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: TIMJOT

Yamashita also had the only tank brigade committed to fight in the Southern Offensive - it probably mattered a lot against enemies with no AT weapons worth mention.

Yes, but there were other tank REGIMENTS committed in both the PI and NEIs which correct me if I am wrong were part of the "Southern Offensive"

Oh yes, you are correct. Two tank battalions (called regiments) went to Luzon - and three to Malaya - two of these latter formed a tank brigade almost never identified as such in OBs - and as far as I know present only in RHS of all forms of WITP - we at least introduced it.

The Japanese tank regiment was unique. Not able to draw support from higher formations - which mostly were not motorized - it had what we would call second and third echelon support organic. It even carried spare tanks - of both kinds ("light" and "medium") - which normally would be part of the logistical trail higher level workshop parks. It had a very high proportion of what in game terms would be called motorized support. Its weakness was in infantry - which it had only in a technical sense - and it was supposed to draw that from other formations. But only the mechanized infantry of the tank regiment was properly mobile and wholly familiar with tanks. Like all tank battalions, it also lacked artillery - except in the direct fire sense of tank guns. But it did have AAA and engineers - moving on primitive road conditions made the latter a necessity.

For that reason - Yamashita decided to create a different organization - and he also believed in training oriented to function - so he created (first) the tank brigade (four formed before the war began) - and (second) the tank division (four formed in 1942, in the summer). This latter added infantry, artillery and lots more engineers. The tank brigade had two tank regiments (battalions) while the division got three motorized and one mechanized infantry battalions - for a proper 2:1 mix - excluding a reconnaissance element. The tankers trained in their regiment, the infantry in their regiment, the armored infantry in their battalion, the artillery in their artillery unit: but in a battle task forces would be drawn from all elements - normally two would form in theory - very like US Task Force A and B theory later in the war - but this was pre war theory (presented in a formal recommendation late in 1941, after visiting the battlefields of the Eastern Front). The tank divisions had not yet formed by the start of the war - and only one of the brigades left the North - so probably only in Malaya do you get to see this theory in practice. There - Yamashita himself commanded - and there was the most motorized of all the Japanese divisions in the offensive - the 5th - itself able provided with considerable motorized support elements. Mixing the tankers with motorized infantry was probably more feasible where you had both a brigade formed and trained to the new standard - and a motorized division - under the general leadership of the architect of the new theory in IJA.

FYI in RHS we represent the tank divisions by adding four "motorized brigades" to the four tank brigades - since we cannot have the tank brigades grow into divisions. They should be used together - in the same hex - but crudely can be used to represent two somewhat dissimilar task forces in different hexes. Our motorized brigade represents everything in a division not in the tank brigade.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

ORIGINAL: el cid again
Also - I note above you posted the 53 million bbl figure was NAVY stocks - now you are saying it is three sets of stocks - and something does not compute here. For one thing - unless you count commercial holdings as a "strategic reserve" - there wasn't any civilian strategic reserve. So the above statement is at least misleading - not to mention contradicting your earlier wording indicating it was navy.

" Japan started the war with approximately a 53,000,000 ton oil reserve...," I don't see any designation of that as being NAVY stocks. JAPAN is a pretty much all-inclusive term...., IJN, IJA, and anything else on hand. Hardly misleading. Let it go, Cid. I don't want to be involved in this anymore. Fantacize to your heart's content...., and good luck to you.

Whatever else can be said - we are not talking about fantasy. It is history. Japan planned to invade Hawaii since 1910.
It did attempt to invade it in 1942. Adm Yamamoto thought they should have tried in 1941. This is in the Official History and, mainly not drawn from that, but from independent documents, you can read about it in the University of Hawaii's translations: see Hawaii Under the Rising Sun.

As for fuel, you have missed the big picture somehow. Whatever the details of numbers - stored or consumed the war is fought over oil supplies. Pinning the US Navy to the Eastern and Central Pacific only means that Japan's quest for oil is much more likely to succeed - and that it will have more time to establish an autarky and build stocks of the very fuel you worry about.

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: TIMJOT

If I may interject, Tsuji was a notoriously unreliable source, a liar, a war criminal and flat out WRONG if he included being out numbered in tanks, ships and planes in his estimates.

Being a "Hawk" ish type staff officer, Tsuji is best taken with a grain of salt, i agree. Controversey seemed to follow in his wake. His stories and versions of battlefield accounts tended to draw scoffs from other IJA circles and he didn't enamor himself much of front line commanders who felt him intrusive, rudely so at times. 26th Infantry regiment C/O Colonel Sumi Shin' inchiro certainly called him a liar on one occasion post war, accusing him of slander in 'his book' and forcing a retraction later. This doesn't mean he's always wrong....but as I said, you have to take it with a grain of salt and compare it with other accounts. He definately looked out for his own interests and tended to smooth over rough spots if it suited him.

[JeffroK]

To explain my early comment, The japanese need to take Dutch Harbour to protect their left flank, USN forces basing out of DH would have access to the long supply lines to PH.
 
If you could get 3 Divs to the HI (my idea was to land on 7/12) it would be overkill but also have the forces to hold the HI in place rather than ship them in as well.
 
Tsuji, as mentioned, a very doubtful character, his book is interesting but full of inaccuracies, some seem to be poorly translated, but as Churchill exagerates the japanese army, I feel Tsuji understates it for the opposite reason.  He even counts the Bren Carrier as a tank.
 
As to numbers, the japanese (being smart) had the numbers at the right place, the Singapore defenders & 8 Aust Div shouldnt be counted until the battle reached the south. So th japanese used it numbers to continually push against smaller numbers, chewed them up and advanced to the next battle. Late arrivals, 18 Brit Inf Div was a case of too little too late, and then they even got the easier sector to defend on Singapore Is.

[spence]

Logistically speaking, Midway is much longer than 3 weeks. It took a long time to get into position, and longer still to build up the supplies and fuel reserves at forward points. It involved more than 200 ships - and was virtually the same size as an invasion of Hawaii in 1941 would have been in terms of ship counts.

Given that all the logistics preparation took more than 3 weeks the fact remains that whatever the preparation the Combined Fleet burned 1/3rd of their yearly planned expediture sailing around for about 3 weeks.


The Midway Operation put 200 ships to sea but the lift of ground forces was 2 battalions of assault troops and a base force because most were warships....somehow I find the assertion that the same transport force could have lifted 3 assault divisions (presumably plus support/occupation forces) unsupportable.

[JeffroK]

Iff the japanese got the HI how long would the Allied counterinvasion take.
 
I would assume that OZ would be left to its own devices and the 1st Marine Div & Americal kep to defend the Fatherland. "Torch" would have been put on hold and many Air units that IRL went to Europe/Africa would be kept on the West Coast
 
As the landings at Tarawa showed, the US still had a lot to learn about Amphib landings, and its a long haul from the West Coast to HI in the face of the japanese subs and Betties.

[spence]

The Japanese were not the ones to learn from though. Their Khota Bharu landing put a division ashore in the face of a battalion of enemy stretched over 20 miles of coast. Their landing at Wake very nearly didn't succeed in the face of 350 odd Marine infantrymen. They had doctrine in place for neither naval nor air support of landings.
Their plan to invade Midway had two battalions that couldn't even talk to each other or their ships or friendly a/c with nothing more than a couple of mortars in support wading through 200 yards of surf to assault 2500 odd fully alerted defenders.

The Germans had been planning to conquer France in 1914 for many years...it didn't work out the way they planned. The Japanese may have been planning to invade Hawaii since 1910 as Cid indicates but the IJN had not taken even the most rudimentary measures to develop an amphibious force and doctrine capable of overcoming beach defenders who might oppose their designs.

I really don't see that the operation is even possible logistically. Beyond that I don't see that the Japanese plans, such as they were, were likely to survive even 10 minutes beyond contact with the enemy. Historically, neither the IJN or the IJA was very good about improvising once "The Plan" (any plan) had started to unravel, so I find the likelihood of success in the game to simply be a creation of the game system/mechanics rather than any reflection of reality.

[Nikademus]

In terms of amphibious operations, the IJA was the most experienced of the major powers by 1941. However in terms of amphibious assault, they enchewed this, like the British, they felt it was not a feasible option. Only the USMC studied the concept of assault with enthusiasm though it would take real life practice to work out the kinks. (and a generous supply of dedicated assault craft) There is some dispute in sources other than Shattered Sword as to coordination with air and sea bombardment support that say it was there though not to the level of a late war assault.

The Wake Island op is IMO an unfair comparison....it was an inadequate effort using 2nd team materials and they paid the price for their lack of preperation. Same goes for Midway.....the force levels deployed were totally inadequate to the realities present as the Japanese assumed the advantage of suprise was in their favor. Wake was also an example of Amphibious Assault if a reletively weak garrison. Had the Japanese taken the Island more seriously (as every WitP player does) it would probably have not been the fiasco it was initially.

As for Hawaii.....if the Japanese were to have had any chance it would have had to have been around the time of Pearl Harbor. By Midway, SS makes it pretty clear that the force levels at Oahu would have been all but impossible to crack. The sea lift required combined with the distances would have been cost prohibitive with a high chance of failure and/or bogging down. I don't buy the "One Japanese division is worth Two Allied divisions" blanket statement. It depends on the specific opponent. And IIRC, the 25th Inf Div was regular army...not conscript/National Guard. They would not have rolled over and played dead. Nor do I assume the Japanese would have captured substantial oil reserves from the assault. Its just as likely these reserves would have been torched rather than be let fall into enemy hands. Taking Hawaii would be a great blow to the US but not IMO worth holding up the SRA ops (from which the force levels would have to be taken from to do this operation) Japan needed the SRA for her future economy and Hawaii is no substitute for that, nor would Hawaii's fall bring the US to the peace table.

[DuckofTindalos]

The argument that the Japs would have "captured oil stocks" doesn't hold up any better for them than it did for the Germans during the Ardennes offensive (or the Caucasus offensive, for that matter). Very flimsy...

[Nikademus]

Its certainly risky. While the Japanese had been able to capture supplies in some campaigns to propell their operations one can't count on it in all situations. The Imphal campaign is a good example there. They came close to capturing a major supply dump but close wasn't good enough in the end. Capturing oil in quantity....any assumption that they would is definately best case scenario.......but worst case scenario planning is often better, and more likely to occur.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

ORIGINAL: TIMJOT

If I may interject, Tsuji was a notoriously unreliable source, a liar, a war criminal and flat out WRONG if he included being out numbered in tanks, ships and planes in his estimates.

Being a "Hawk" ish type staff officer, Tsuji is best taken with a grain of salt, i agree. Controversey seemed to follow in his wake. His stories and versions of battlefield accounts tended to draw scoffs from other IJA circles and he didn't enamor himself much of front line commanders who felt him intrusive, rudely so at times. 26th Infantry regiment C/O Colonel Sumi Shin' inchiro certainly called him a liar on one occasion post war, accusing him of slander in 'his book' and forcing a retraction later. This doesn't mean he's always wrong....but as I said, you have to take it with a grain of salt and compare it with other accounts. He definately looked out for his own interests and tended to smooth over rough spots if it suited him.

It appears that Tsuji was able to get along with people as diverse as Adm Yamamoto and the later Prime Minister of Thailand. Also, and somewhat remarkably, with KMT officers - whom he spent a good deal of time with after the war (when officially he was supposed to be in hiding). Remarkable he could do that among his nominal erstwhile enemies.
But here, if you get technical about it, he admits to a form of lieing - or at least attempted lieing: he tried (and ultimately failed) to pass himself as a Chinese doctor. Since he was a serving officer under orders, and since he apparently became a Cold War era intelligence officer, I regard that sort of lieing as in the same league as ruse de guerre: a fact of professional life. That Tsuji was a nationalist is clear - aside from his direct testimony - because he headed the Nationalist party in the Diet in the early 1950s.

To think that because he is a Japanese nationalist and a strong willed one means he is a liar is, in my view, to misunderstand his character. I know a US Army officer who, like Tsuji spent many years as a staff officer, and who never made general, who reminds me of Tsuji: he is an American nationalist, proud of it, and something of a fanatic who scares his friends and associates from time to time - so strong are his ideas. He wrote we should create free fire zones along US borders and defend them against crossers with artillery fire - in fairness just one of a range of tactics as opposed to the only one - but you get the drift: this person is not entirely in touch with political realities - nor that concerned with human rights - and he is willing to lose US citizens who are in the wrong place at the wrong time. But this person would never think of lieing to you. Fanatic nationalists are like that. They are so convinced of the righteousness of their cause they would not dream it wasn't obvious to any "reasonable" person they are right.

It also should be said that the political and social situation has changed so much, and history is studied so little in our country, and so much of what passes for history here is nationalistic in its own right, that many here will not understand the way things looked to Asians (East and South) in the WWII era. If the US China policy was better than that of other nations, it was still a colonial power, it still claimed and exercised extraterritorial rights in China and the Philippines,
and it still supported commercial enterprises of a sort that would not be acceptable in the present day. By supported I mean with gunboats and Marines type support. Asia for the Asiatics was not concieved as a bit of propaganda - something like Marxist theory was used to generate support for communist regimes. It was a genuine intellectual and academic movement, and it managed to enlist support from some people in power - including no less than Prime Minister Tojo. Granted he didn't push it when his bosses balked at the idea of the Foreign Ministry controlling things outside Japan - the idea was on the table - and the Foreign Ministry would have behaved quite differently than IJA did. Tsuji was part of the faction which originally had taken over Manchukuo - and did so on a basis you never read about in the West: attempting to build a multi-ethnic nation based on small enterprise. All during the Great Depression Manchukuo boomed - it attracted literally millions of people EACH from China, Russia, Japan and Korea (it had been largely depopulated).
This faction believed - for sound geographic reasons - that Japan had a big problem with resources - and sought to solve them in North Asia - by letting people who were enterpreunerial reward themselves. [Note] They OPPOSED invading China - which was the most populate country in the world - and nearly impossible for Japan to control. In Tsuji's eyes, Chinese were "brother Asiatics" - and this is probably a big part of why he could hide among Chinese soldiers for long periods when required to do so. He was enough of a nationalist to believe other nations had points of view - and so he advocated the Thai do what was in their own interests - and seems to have continued to admire the prime minister even AFTER he turned out to have been in cahoots with the Western Allies - spiriting numbers of them into the country and orchestrating the down fall of the former (and later) strongman. [At least he wrote nice things about him years later]

Note: The Japanese regime attempted to get Jews from Germany in numbers - about 6,000 made the journey but they wanted vast numbers more - because of their professional skills and work ethics. The Japanese succeeded in getting the Germans and others on board - but failed to win support from the United States - which was involved because of the proposed immigration routes for larger numbers than could cross the USSR. For details of this strange chapter in history, including photographs and documents entirely drawn from the Jewish community that ended up in Shanghai rather than Manchukuo - see The Fugu Plan. The point is that the faction that tried to develop Manchukuo were open minded in a sense we do not usually see Axis nationalists - granted for their own interests sake.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: JeffK

To explain my early comment, The japanese need to take Dutch Harbour to protect their left flank, USN forces basing out of DH would have access to the long supply lines to PH.

If you could get 3 Divs to the HI (my idea was to land on 7/12) it would be overkill but also have the forces to hold the HI in place rather than ship them in as well.

Tsuji, as mentioned, a very doubtful character, his book is interesting but full of inaccuracies, some seem to be poorly translated, but as Churchill exagerates the japanese army, I feel Tsuji understates it for the opposite reason.  He even counts the Bren Carrier as a tank.

This is cultural and linguistic - and practical. In the experience of the Japanese - mainly in China - a Bren Carrier WAS a tank. Or more properly a tankette. Japanese tanketts were in fact variations on - actual improvements of - Western tankette design concepts. There was even a compartment for carrying ammunition at the back - and a tiny tracked trailer for it to tow with still more ammunition. But the Japanese came to see them as very useful weapons - mainly because of how things were in China. If Bren Carriers are not tanks, then so also are Japanese tankettes not tanks. Whatever you count - or not - count it - or not. Some of the vehicles in our game - and in theater in fact even if not in our game - are not tanks as we think of them. But they were regarded as "good enough" tanks for Asia. There is even one sense in which that was right: the bridges of the area could not generally support what we would call tanks.