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mdiehl -> RE: Are the Japanese now TOO powerful?? (8/9/2006 6:50:01 PM)
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@Pauk -
I agree that all those pro-Axis historical alternatives are potentially interesting scenarios but I think that they are extremely unlikely in comparison with the pro-Allied alternatives that I mentioned.
Sure, preparing for Sea Lion properly could have been done. But such preparations would have had to be well underway (and rather obvious) in 1935. Britain was not going to be invaded by means of low-draft Rhine Barges towed by fast torpedo boats &c. That in turn almost certainly guarantees that invading Britain becomes more difficult because to anyone in Britain a German "invasion fleet in being" could have only one obvious use, and the UK would have compensated accordingly.
These other technological marvels.... more jets, surface to air missiles, and so forth were all possibilities that Germany realistically could not develop into a really useful design nor produce in sufficient quantity. And had they, the Allies would have reacted with the new designs of their own. If you want a maufacturing decision that COULD have made a difference it would be to continue the PZV, don't make any versions of the PzVI, standardize on one or two models of transport trucks rather than Krazy Adolf's Used Car Lot, and shift production to mostly FW190s as soon as that plane became available.
Not invading Russia seems to me like the most obvious and plausible pro-Axis alternative. On the other hand, a happy state of paranoid neutrality could only be sustained for so long, because the USSR had its own plans for invading Germany. Two tyrants coveting each others' lands and girding for war could not have been a stable long term state IMO.
The alternatives that I mentioned, however, like dimming the east coastal US lights, firing Ernie King, and implementing convoy systems don't require that we assume fancy tech or better production. All they require is that the US take the war seriously enough from the outset to listen to the good advice that they were receiving from the Admiralty and implement that advice by, say, February 1942 rather than December 1942.
In the end I just don't agree that the War In Europe could only have played out the same or worse for the Allies. I think in some ways the Allies handed the EuroAxis a number of "unearned runs" so to speak.
@Chez -
Yes but the point is those 28K airframes were (a) not strategically viable because an engine failure grounded the whole plane. Probably the cumulative worth of those 28K planes each with one engine was equal to 5000 aircraft with sufficient supplies of spare parts. And (b) increased produciton in ships didn't matter because Japan lacked the capacity to repair ships at a sufficient rate in the face of normal wear and tear... much of Japanese merchant shipping effectively ceased to exist because engines and so forth could not be serviced at the rate they were being worn out, and (c) the increases in aircraft production had less to do with access to the SRA than they did with rationalizing the post manufacturing refuse and some of the manufacturing processes, and (d) for ex. those built ships, the iron used to make the steel came from Korea, not the PI, Borneo, Malaya, Indonesia, or New Guinea. About all that the Japanese obtained in the SRA that was directly and easily usable to them was rice (and other foodstuffs like fish), rubber, and oil.
The point is that Japan still required 15 years of peace, substantial investment in domestic infrastructure, conversion of more of the civilian sector to an industrial economy, good relations with China, south Korea and the PI for access to food, &c, before they were going to catch up to the US 12/41 capacity, much less US capacity in 1944.
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