mike scholl 1 -> RE: OT question about Japan invading Hawaii (12/15/2012 11:21:30 PM)
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ORIGINAL: aspqrz quote:
ORIGINAL: mike scholl 1 Well stated and thought out. Only thing I'd dissagree with is the "12-knot" invasion convoy. While the Japs certainly had some attack transports that could manage this, they lacked any attack cargo vessels and would be using impressed merchant steamers. With these involved, I'd say a "9-knot" convoy was more likely. All in all, it was an operation that might work in a wargame, but not in real life (or even a good simulation game.). ISTR reading somewhere that the *average* speed of Japanese Marus was about two thirds that - 5-6 kts - because they couldn't produce the required high pressure valves and other ironmongery for their merchant marine in the amount required. (Conversely, the average speed of Allied Merchanters was evidently 9 kts) I'd suspect they could manage an initial invasion convoy of 9-12 kt ships, but the resupply pipeline would have to be mostly the 5-6 knot variety ... some calculations were done on soc.history.what-if and soc.history.wwii some years ago and it was roughly figured that supplying a modest sized Japanese force in Hawaii would eat up pretty much all of the available Japanese shipping used to move the forces to invade the PI, Malaysia, and the DEI. And not be certainly enough to enable a sufficient force stationed in the Islands to be able to hold them ... and what would be the strategic point, anyway? You'd be forgoing any chance of getting the oil you need within 180 days (actually probably a year, Japanese book-keeping was pathetically bad ... worse than their military planning) before your entire modern economy grinds to a complete halt and starvation looms ... for what? Several Islands with no resources worth spit? I'm not saying the Japanese couldn't have somehow deluded themselves into believing it would somehow be a knockout blow and force the US to give them all the oil they wanted, but that seems way more deluded than anything else they managed to believe. YMMV. Phil I was assuming they would use the best/fastest ships available forsuch an operation..., but you are right in that the great majority of Japanese Maru's were pretty slow. Another thing to keep in mind was that on December 6th, 1941, the Japanese were using over 10,000,000 tons of merchant shipping to keep their economy and war effort functioning. As of December 8th, this fell to a bit over 6,000,000 tons. The remainder had been composed of hired foriegn ships which immediately headed for Allied or neutral ports when the war broke out. The Japanese were able to capture a number of these, but the reality was that an already week merchant marine was drastically reduced just at the moment when the need increased. As I said earlier, for Japan, the entire war was "operation shoestring".
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