ORIGINAL: irrelevant
That is excessively pessimistic, I'd say. He has barely gotten on the ground on Ceylon. He still has many ops in front of him before India could be considered to be in the bag. Unless of course, he is just much better at WitP than you are....[;)]
Have you read the AAR? Singapore and Java are already gone. That means he has 7 divisions plus tons of other troops from Singapore and then whatever troops he wants to bring from Java already on the way to India. Plus he already landed 20,000+ troops on Ceylon.
So within a week or so, Japan will have in excess of 6 divisions landed on the mainland of India. He’ll only be limited by what his naval lift capacity is, if he can bring more than 6 divisions I bet he will.
There is absolutely no way the allies can make a fight of it in India against this kind of Japanese force in Jan. 42. If it were March 42, I’d say it would still be almost impossible, but Jan. 42, forget it, no chance. It takes weeks to march to Karachi from northeastern India, if G.H. doesn't react now, it'll be too late if Japan sails up the west coast and lands at bombay.
He can make a redoubt defense at Karachi and probably do quite well, but if he tries to defend the entire country, he’ll face Japanese columns of 2-3 divisions plus other troops zooming along each rail line, and he’ll swiftly be outflanked and isolated.
Unless you know of a way to magically create another 4 allied divisions in India right now, I’d love to hear your plan for defending the entire country with just four 1/3rd strength divisions (basically each weaker than a brigade right now) and 7 brigades. All of which are very low experienced units as well. I doubt any of his armor units have more than 5 tanks in them right now.
Jim
