FatR
Posts: 2522
Joined: 10/23/2009 From: St.Petersburg, Russia Status: offline
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58 Hey, buddy, I wasn't the person who used "rout." Maybe we have a differnet definition of the word. I would agree, for example, that the performance of the Red Army in the first months of Barbarossa was a rout. Historic, epic even. And there you would be wrong. Because the central Pacific campaign starting from the invasion of Gilberts was far more of an one-sided beatdown, if for no other reason. quote:
ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58 Leyte Gulf woud have been an American disaster if the Japanese main force had kept coming and attacked the landing beaches. The IJN would have ultimately lost, yes, but they would have set back the invasion of the PI 6-9 months or more, and scored a propaganda victory on a tiring US public of immense value. It was almost a miracle that the Japanese main body was allowed to get past San Bernardino strait at all. If they got to the invasion beaches... they most likely wouldn't have been able to inflict catastrophic damage you take as a given, before getting cornered by American taskforces converging on them, due to exhaustion of ammo stores, accumulating damage from continuing air attacks, and, oh, continuing air attacks. What makes you think, that Japanese gunfire suddenly would have become much more efficient than it was in the battle against escort carriers, which they still needed to exterminated before striking at the landing beaches, had they pressed on? The invasion wouldn't have been set back by anywhere near 6 months in any case, considering that enough troops and materials were unloaded already to make unseating Americans from Leyte impossible, and that Allies had more than enough shipping to cover losses. Only loss of specialized amphibious assault ships might have been a problem, like, at all. So, while it was certainly possible for Japanese to inflict greater damage and to make the sacrifice of the Combined Fleet less empty, I see no grounds for assuming that it was possible for them to inflict enough damage to even cause a major delay in the American campaign. Consider, that the entire Guadalcanal campaign was resolved faster that your supposed 6-month delay, even though the balance of forces then and there was infinitely more favorable to Japanese, and IJN managed to chase off American transports before they finished unloading. As about "propaganda victory"... did I just found the first poster on this forum who thinks that a conditional peace was possible to achieve for Japan, in 1944 of all times? quote:
ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58 Tell that to the men who died on Iwo Jima. FWIW, I don't agree with your definition. If that is used, Japan was routed on December 8, 1941. No, you merely fail or refuse to undertand it. "Inability to take meaningful defensive actions" means that you are incapable of contesting the enemy's advance, unable to take initiative, is reduced to passively sitting and waiting for your doom, because every attempt to counterpunch the enemy ends with your forces getting destroyed for no significant results. Japan de-facto fell into this state around November of 1943, and by the end of February of 1944 it was patently clear, that USN owns the ocean and can rampage through their defenses almost at will. Appeal to the dead veterans is a nice debating move (although no, it isn't), but the fact remains that the outcome of Iwo Jima battle was predetermined the instant US planners decided that they want this island, and Japanese, even doing their best, had no ability to change this fact. And this is true for all the other battles before, starting from the point I've mentioned above. And so, returning to Allied subs, while their activities past this point were, no doubt, a very cost-efficient way of administering coup de grace to the enemy, this does not change the fact that the enemy was already mortally wounded, with no hope of recovery, by the time the sub campaign reached its peak. But a lot of AFBs (regardless of the separate and real, although now hopefully fixed, super-E issue) seem to expect that subs should win the war by themselves, even when they don't really try or very much fail to ensure that their opponent wouldn't be able to devote a humongous portion of his resources to combatting subs, instead of the small portion Japanese were able to devote IRL, due to pressure on all fronts.
|