Alternate Histories

[Anthropoid]

Because of my interest in the eclipse of big guns, and also as a result of Termies thread on the Russo-Japanese War, I was reading the Battle of Tsushima wiki page and I was struck by this quote

The Russians could have sailed through one of three possible straits to reach Vladivostok: La Perouse, Tsugaru, and Tsushima. Admiral Rozhestvensky chose Tsushima in an effort to simplify his route. Admiral Togo, based at Pusan, Korea also believed Tsushima would be the preferred Russian course.

There is an alternate-alternate history version of War Plan Orange called Western Citadel created by Engineer--really quite an amazingly good mod--that I found excellent. The central premise of this alternate history was that a Japanese admiral who had died on Titanic did not actually die because Titanic did not sink, and as a consequence there are all these rippling effects of historical events different than reality. The sum result being a much more tense situation in the Pacific in 1924 and a stronger US fortress at Guam.

I found this bit about Rozhestvensky decision to go through Tsushima to be a perhaps promising hinge point for other fascinating alternate histories. If Roz had NOT gone through Tsushima, would the battle have been such a decisive Japanese victory? If the Japanese had not achieved such a decisive victory, what might have transpired different in the decades that followed?

[flaggelant]

why not a better reinforced PI or navy assets, instead of ... Guam..?

guam just kinda seems irrelevant?

[Anthropoid]

Wish I could find my links to Engineers stuff, and I unfortunately no longer have it on this machine, though I may have it on an HD at work. He had an incredibly good back story all written up, almost like a little book in fact. It all made sense in the way he presented it, and IIRC, he based the idea for the "Western Citadel" premise, i.e., beefed up Guam, on some real debates in Congress in the 1920s about a proposal to allocate a bunch of money to beef up Guam. At the time, it evidently had very good strategic reasons behind it, but it got killed for political and economic expedience reasons. Engineer is still active on here sometimes, maybe we can attract his attention and get him to provide links to the stuff if it is still online.
 
The other thing about Guam is that it was just about ideal distance between PI and PH to be a coaling station. In the 1910s that would still have been a serious consideration. You have to keep in mind that the War Plan Orange game (in itself a mod to WiTP) takes place in the mid-1920s when a lot (all??) ships were still coal burners.