WW II in the Pacific and Wargaming

[magnus]

I think we are discussing two different matters. Your premise seems to be in the last post of what each country should have done optimally to remain as complete countries and not looking for domination of any kind.

I can agree to disagree about Japan and Germany in WWII and these are my reasons.

The Japanese army was very hidebound to WWI. Their weapons while good enough against the Chinese were shown to be very poor against most other countries WWII weapons. Their machine guns were pretty bad from what I have read and their tanks, lets not even go there. Had Russia wanted to, without having to worry about Hitler, they could have steam rolled them right out of Asia. The Russian army that did so poorly against Finland in 1940, kicked butt against Japan in 1939.

The Japanese had an excellent navy and ships. Their aircraft were very good, except for one caveat. There aviation fuel even by 1943 was much inferior to the US gas. As can seen by the much better performance in the US after being captured and tested. Their infrastructure for building new ships and repairing them was abysmal compared to the US alone without counting in GB.

The war in the Pacific was over by 1944 for all intents and purposes. The US navy could sit where ever it wanted and destroy whatever it felt like at the moment.

I take a different view of the kamikaze than most. At the time the kamikaze where thought up it was the only rational thing to do unless they wanted to surrender. The Japanese pilot training was geared for about 200 pilots per year before the war and into it for awhile. The was no way on this earth that the pilots that the Japanese had in 1944 were going to get closer than fifty miles to a carrier command, without being shot down. That is if they were using ordinary tactics. If you still want to fight on you have to come up with some sort of game plan. The pilots were dead anyway. Look at the Marianas turkey shoot.

The one plane that is always talked about is the Zero. The one thing that is almost always forgotten is against the 109 and Spitfire in 1940 it was a mediocre aircraft. The thing that made it amazing was it was a carrier aircraft in 1940 when everyone else's carrier planes were miles behind it.

I don't see any spot in the Pacific war where Japan had any chance to win. On the other hand it is conceivable at certain times that Germany might have won in Europe.

This does become a moot point with the game changer of the A bomb. Contrary to some lurid semi-history books neither Germany or Japan was remotely close to building one. The consensus was  years ago that Germany was miles ahead of the allies with poison gas technology. They also did have a delivery system. I believe some historians are now questioning if Germany had as much a lead as was once believed with poison gas.

Now back to Pacific wargames, I long for one that actually works on land and sea. I am always hoping the next game will feel right or get it right.

[jomni]

I think we are discussing two different matters. Your premise seems to be in the last post of what each country should have done optimally to remain as complete countries and not looking for domination of any kind.

I can agree to disagree about Japan and Germany in WWII and these are my reasons.

The Japanese army was very hidebound to WWI. Their weapons while good enough against the Chinese were shown to be very poor against most other countries WWII weapons. Their machine guns were pretty bad from what I have read and their tanks, lets not even go there. Had Russia wanted to, without having to worry about Hitler, they could have steam rolled them right out of Asia. The Russian army that did so poorly against Finland in 1940, kicked butt against Japan in 1939.

The Japanese had an excellent navy and ships. Their aircraft were very good, except for one caveat. There aviation fuel even by 1943 was much inferior to the US gas. As can seen by the much better performance in the US after being captured and tested. Their infrastructure for building new ships and repairing them was abysmal compared to the US alone without counting in GB.

The war in the Pacific was over by 1944 for all intents and purposes. The US navy could sit where ever it wanted and destroy whatever it felt like at the moment.

I take a different view of the kamikaze than most. At the time the kamikaze where thought up it was the only rational thing to do unless they wanted to surrender. The Japanese pilot training was geared for about 200 pilots per year before the war and into it for awhile. The was no way on this earth that the pilots that the Japanese had in 1944 were going to get closer than fifty miles to a carrier command, without being shot down. That is if they were using ordinary tactics. If you still want to fight on you have to come up with some sort of game plan. The pilots were dead anyway. Look at the Marianas turkey shoot.

The one plane that is always talked about is the Zero. The one thing that is almost always forgotten is against the 109 and Spitfire in 1940 it was a mediocre aircraft. The thing that made it amazing was it was a carrier aircraft in 1940 when everyone else's carrier planes were miles behind it.

I don't see any spot in the Pacific war where Japan had any chance to win. On the other hand it is conceivable at certain times that Germany might have won in Europe.

This does become a moot point with the game changer of the A bomb. Contrary to some lurid semi-history books neither Germany or Japan was remotely close to building one. The consensus was  years ago that Germany was miles ahead of the allies with poison gas technology. They also did have a delivery system. I believe some historians are now questioning if Germany had as much a lead as was once believed with poison gas.

Now back to Pacific wargames, I long for one that actually works on land and sea. I am always hoping the next game will feel right or get it right.

But if Japan has no chance of winning as stated above, what's the point?

[magnus]

As someone else said, I would much rather have separate campaigns in the Pacific than the complete war.

I really don't see the point in playing two the three years on my life in WITP, to only find out you will lose in the end.

I believe WIF starts in 1936, so with that game you might be able to do something about either Germany or Japan and their infrastructure problems.

In HOI3 you should be able to also.

I assume there are victory conditions in WITP that make it so the Japanese can "win". Much like games where if you play Germany and can last into 1946 you win.

[MengJiao]

Now back to Pacific wargames, I long for one that actually works on land and sea. I am always hoping the next game will feel right or get it right.

I played WitPAE for years.  No more big Pacific games for me.  I'm not sure what king of Pacific game I'd really want to play other than something totally tactical with float planes and PT Boats.  While I think Japan generally is underestimated and that they had far more options than they bothered to consider, at the moment I'd rather play the Combat Command "Last Blitzkrieg" (battle of the Bulge) than any other WWII game except maybe any game that features a nice p-40 (like battle of Moscow?).

[JasonPratt]

UGeek currently has a very good chance of winning his WitP campaign against Kyz. Successfully invading Australia while the Japanese are on a roll through early 42, will do that.

How realistic is that? Eh. Hard to say. I feel like the Japanese would have a lot harder time in Australia against partisan forces (at least) than the game is giving credit for, keeping in mind that Anzac forces were busy elsewhere on the globe. But there ARE winning possibilities.

Also, any theory of a real-life win by one or both of the major Axis powers (Italy was doomed no matter what -- which makes trying to neutral them, or perhaps Spain, in a game very fun  ;) ) is I think feasible, simply because an enemy only has to be annoyed or scared out of continuing to fight.

This was partly, of course, what the Axis Powers thought the remaining Allied Majors would do: they'd fold under pressure. That was a hugely mistaken estimation, based largely on their (somewhat identical) racial and cultural ideologies, but the theory was sound in principle.

Any Axis win theory, then, has to broadly contend with two options -- or three, come to think of it.

1.) Can one or more Allied Majors be convinced to fold? (And if only one or two, would that make enough difference to beat the remainder in a fight to the death?)

2.) If they don't fold, can the Axis win their theaters militarily?

3.) Would it make enough difference in any given scenario if the Axis Majors actually cooperated with each other?

[MengJiao]

This was partly, of course, what the Axis Powers thought the remaining Allied Majors would do: they'd fold under pressure. That was a hugely mistaken estimation, based largely on their (somewhat identical) racial and cultural ideologies, but the theory was sound in principle.

Any Axis win theory, then, has to broadly contend with two options -- or three, come to think of it.

1.) Can one or more Allied Majors be convinced to fold? (And if only one or two, would that make enough difference to beat the remainder in a fight to the death?)

  Taking a USA-centric point of view, the USA had every reason not to fold and to support anyone who fought Japan or Germany for the following simple reasons:
  1) neither Japan nor Germany could really mount a serious threat against the USA UNLESS they knocked out either Russia or the Commonwealth
  2) so the most cost-effective US policy was to support Russia and the Commonwealth as much as possible AND
  3) if necessary go to war to avoid having Japan or Germany mount a serious threat

There were wheels within those wheels -- for example, McArthur in the Philipines might have thought that building up forces there would deter the Japanese, but the build up probably helped push the Japanese into attacking
AND once the Japanese attacked -- notice what happened -- the USA undertook its main thrust against the power (Germany) that posed the largest threat against the Commonwealth and Russia.  Ie the USA maintained the strategy of reducing threats to itself by keeping other allies in the war.  It was a very cost-effective strategy.

[FarAway Sooner]

The critical mistake from the Japanese and German perspectives was underestimating the resolve of the United States, especially after a catastrophic sneak attack.  Like so many authoritarian regimes, they didn't understand the rambunctious nature of democracy, and they therefore badly estimated just how dangerous a foe a democracy can be when it is (finally) unified.

The Germans and even moreso the Japenese thought the Americans were decadent, hedonistic whimps who would settle for any kind of peaceful solution if you just gave them a bloody nose.  The Americans underestimated the Japanese just as badly, but (fortunately for them) they had the materiel to easily correct for that error after the war got going.

The South Pacific from mid-42 until mid-43 makes for an interesting study, because it's about the only time in WW II where the Imperial and Allied forces were evenly matched.  It turned into a grinding war of attrition that chewed up the best the Japanese had to offer (especially in terms of the air war), while only serving to season the Allied forces that would spent the next 2 years knifing through the Japanese defenses like a hot knife through butter.

In terms of the Japanese invading Australia, the Japanese Army was never going to spring for that.  Their designs were in China, much closer to home. 

Had they been willing to get out of China, I'd be curious to know if the Japanese logistical apparatus could have held up, but my own sense is that it could not have done so.  The Japanese were woefully short on freighters and even shorter on destroyers and escorts--once the Americans got their torpedo woes sorted out, the Japanese logistical situation went from poor to terrible.  You look at the sort of logistical shoe string that they were operating on in the Coral Sea, in New Guinea, and then on Guadalcanal in the middle half of 1942, and you realize just how limited their options were for a full-scale offensive against Australian troops 7,000 km from home.

My sense too is that Australian terrain would have highlighted the inferiority of Japanese weapons systems outside of their planes and their capital ships.  The Japanese showed great fighting spirit, but I don't think those banzai charges would have worked so well across open terrain...

[glen55]

But what if the result at Midway had been 180 degrees opposite and the Japanese had eaten the American carriers, burped and turned to the next meal?  Then what?  That was at least as likely as what actually happened.

Would the Americans have just walked away from the Pacific for 2 years until they could return with overwhelming force - allowing the Japanese to have their way with whatever else they didn't have yet - or would they have fed new forces piece-meal into the grinder?

It's sheer speculation to say how that would've played in America politically, because America has never faced that sort of situation.  Given that, I'm not inclined to make the blanket statement that Japan could never have won that war.

[FarAway Sooner]

But what if the result at Midway had been 180 degrees opposite and the Japanese had eaten the American carriers, burped and turned to the next meal?  Then what?  That was at least as likely as what actually happened.

Would the Americans have just walked away from the Pacific for 2 years until they could return with overwhelming force - allowing the Japanese to have their way with whatever else they didn't have yet - or would they have fed new forces piece-meal into the grinder?

It's sheer speculation to say how that would've played in America politically, because America has never faced that sort of situation.  Given that, I'm not inclined to make the blanket statement that Japan could never have won that war.

I'm not sure I'd concur with the bolded part above.  It was the first major setback for the Japanese.  But it wasn't a long shot by any stretch. 

Aside from the Coral Sea, Midway was the first time that the Japanese carrier forces had faced the American "A team" (no disrespect intended to the men in harm's way elsewhere in the Pacific who fought bravely in those early months of the war).  More importantly, Midway was the first time since Pearl Harbor that the Japanese carrier forces had operated inside an area dominated by Allied land-based air power.

Nimitz had the intel drop on the Japanese and correctly surmised that he could catch the Japanese carrier force with their pants down, and that's why he risked his entire Pacific carrier fleet to defend an island of very minimal strategic importance.  He got there with more planes, an unsinkable carrier (Midway), and the benefit of surprise.

That said, if the Japanese had sent the entire US carrier force to the bottom, it's unclear what they could have done next.  The invading force they had for Midway had never practice an opposed amphibious landing, and they were outnumbered 2:1 by American defenders on Midway.  Had they captured that, there's no way the Japanese would have had the logistical muscle to sustain ground operations on Hawaii.  But, if the Japanese had sunk the Yorktown, Hornet, and Enterprise at Midway, I don't think the Japanese would have had the logistical stomach to take on Australia.

It likely would have impacted Operation Torch, but it's hard to know what Roosevelt and Marshall would have made of that situation.

Assuming no further losses in Japanese carriers advancing into the face of land-based Australian air power, the Americans would still have achieved carrier parity by September 1943 and superiority by mid-1944.  There's a great analysis projecting the carrier force pools and production timetables if the US had suffered a disastrous defeat at Midway, available at http://www.combinedfleet.com/economic.htm.  That site is maintained by Jonathan Parshall, who's the co-author of a great Midway title by the name of Shattered Sword, if you haven't run across it. 

Excessive usage of Japanese terminology aside, it's literally the best WW II book I've read in the last 10 or 20 years!