A_Bluenoser posted:

Victorian Royal Navy was a uniquely incompetent organization, obsessed only with trivialities and appearance

Nenonen posted:

Bad Navy Island???

Okay, that was terrible. Instead, tell me what would Japan have done if a war hadn't broken in Europe in 1939.

Cythereal posted:

Exactly what they did irl. Japan's actions had nothing to do with what was happening in Europe until 1943 or so.

Nenonen posted:

Bad Navy Island???

Okay, that was terrible. Instead, tell me what would Japan have done if a war hadn't broken in Europe in 1939.

Nenonen posted:

French Indochina?

13th KRRC War Diary, 14th Apr 1918 posted:

A working party of 6 Officers and 150 men was called for, for work in the PURPLE LINE, which started at 8 a.m. and since a task was allotted they had finished at 1 p.m. The work was considered highly satisfactory and complimentary letters were sent by the Colonel Commanding the 9th Btn. North Staffs. the Pioneer Btn. of the Division for whom the work was done.
Officers from here go down to Transport where baths are prepared by the details there - owing to conditions it is very necessary to take every opportunity of keeping clean.
Rations here come up early which facilitate their distribution.

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

No war in Europe means that the United States devotes all of its military might against Japan instead of just 25% of it so I don’t see that ending very well for them.

RFC2324 posted:

dazzle camo was awesome.

SeanBeansShako posted:

Haha, cute.


Oh well drat .


shine on your little drunk monkey bastard son.

Cythereal posted:

* European colonial powers would be able to divert more forces to defend their colonial holdings. Given the mood in Europe at the time, I'm not sure just how hard the European powers would fight for their colonies versus the enormous local superiority of the Japanese (see Indian Ocean Raid and the fate of Task Force Z, and the Battle of Singapore).

feedmegin posted:

You are absolutely high if you think peacetime Britain and France would let their colonies just be invaded without a full scale response. And I doubt the Japanese would be dumb enough to try. They'd take MUCH more of a bloody nose than either would be expecting mind you. Bear in mind at this point everyone in both countries still thinks battleships are king.

A_Bluenoser posted:

My point is that the Victorian Royal Navy was not some uniquely incompetent organization, obsessed only with trivialities and appearance, as many later authors would have it, and that portrayal is as much a product of the politics of the Fisher reforms as anything to do with reality.

Cythereal posted:

And Japan proved quite handily that no, battleships are not in fact king. Japan was already very much intent on invading the Pacific colonies - they'd been planning the invasion of Malaysia and Singapore for years.

Imperial Japan's leadership was not particularly rational, and the IJN's early war performance - see the Indian Ocean Raid and ABDA - makes me think Japan would probably have had a distinct advantage cutting off any British/French/Dutch relief efforts.

The Soviet Union is the European power to watch out for during this time period, not Britain or France.

feedmegin posted:

My point is Britain and France did not know this at the time, so they would absolutely send a big fleet out for their colonies rather than shrug and let them go. Anything else would be totally out of step with public opinion at the time, especially given they thought the battleship was decisive and also racism leading to underestimation of the Japanese.

That fleet probably takes a pasting. Now Japan faces two leading naval powers, on its own, both of whom will be building carriers as fast as they can, plus a US that may remain neutral but whose interests are in Japan being beaten.

The Soviet Union is the European power to watch within Europe . They have essentially no ability to project force anywhere else though.

RFC2324 posted:

dazzle camo was awesome.

Cythereal posted:

And Japan proved quite handily that no, battleships are not in fact king. Japan was already very much intent on invading the Pacific colonies - they'd been planning the invasion of Malaysia and Singapore for years.

Imperial Japan's leadership was not particularly rational, and the IJN's early war performance - see the Indian Ocean Raid and ABDA - makes me think Japan would probably have had a distinct advantage cutting off any British/French/Dutch relief efforts.

Tomn posted:

Also I distinctly recall reading that the Japanese leadership was NOT confident - in fact there was a lot of private hand-wringing about their odds of success, a sense that they had no other choice but to do what they did and that they were being forced into it, and in particular the attack on America had a strong dose of "If we don't attack now we're definitely going to lose later when we run out of oil as we're already doing now, we might have bad odds now but it's better than certain defeat." I do recall that in public meetings neither Army nor Navy ministers were usually willing to admit the possibility of defeat, for fear of losing face before the other branch, but in private meetings each were usually obliquely in support of peace negotiations. Japanese leadership was hosed, but I'm not certain they're as single-minded as you make them out to be, especially when they're worried about taking on the full power of three world class navies.

Tomn posted:

How much of Japan's willingness to attack was predicated on the assumption that not only were the colonial powers focused on Hitler, Hitler was actively about to defeat them and they had better declare war quick to get a cut of the spoils, though? I'll have to double-check my sources, but I seem to recall that the Axis alliance was at first seen as a guarantor for peace - the idea being that Hitler was strong enough that nobody would dare to attack Japan and risk having to deal with Hitler as well, as well as the diplomat in charge having slightly screwy ideas of Americans "only respecting strength." Later when the Germans had blitzed France, that's when they started viewing the Asian colonies as easy meat.

Cythereal posted:

This was primarily Yamamoto in private. More than one Army and Navy leader seen as overly pessimistic or too fond of peace was assassinated by pro-war factions in the 20s and 30s. Other leaders, it's hard to say - in Japanese culture, there is an enormous gulf between one's private thoughts and what one will ever show in public.

Cythereal posted:

This was primarily Yamamoto in private. More than one Army and Navy leader seen as overly pessimistic or too fond of peace was assassinated by pro-war factions in the 20s and 30s. Other leaders, it's hard to say - in Japanese culture, there is an enormous gulf between one's private thoughts and what one will ever show in public.

Basically, Japan was expecting their wars in the Pacific to go like the Russo-Japanese War did: one or two big battles fought near Japan where they had local superiority over colonial expeditions far from their home bases that would convince the European powers to surrender their colonies rather than get into prolonged wars they might not be able to win against a power they deemed inferior for racial reasons. This is the practical foundation of the decisive battle doctrine as envisioned by Japan: take advantage of being on the other side of the planet near your own supply lines, and smash the enemy colonies and expeditions who are a long way from home when they have no chance of reinforcement from their homelands.

In real history, this actually more or less happened against the British and Dutch.


From what I've read, the Axis alliance in Japan was seen as reassurance for what Japan was planning to do anyway.

Cythereal posted:

Fair, but I'm still not sold that Britain and France would devote all their forces to Japan in the event of this hypothetical because Germany and the Soviet Union are presumably still there and threatening.

Tomn posted:

Overall the impression I get is that Imperial Japan's leadership wasn't confident so much as it was organizationally hosed and incapable of open, honest assessments on a policy level. Which, yeah, if things were different that probably meant the Imperial Japanese response might not have been the most coldly calculated, but they weren't entirely blind to the forces arrayed against them. If France and the UK were capable of concentrating their full force on Japan I think it's a bit of a stretch to insist that Japan would absolutely do exactly the same thing, for sure, no dispute, because they were just that confident. They weren't, and there was plenty of internal debate played out over the idea of fighting just America and the distracted Allies. Throw in the undivided attention of the Allies and the peace faction has a lot more cards to play, and the Navy has more space to say "Yes, we're confident we can take on any two nations for sure absolutely, but three is too much so maybe we should ask for peace" without losing as much face.

feedmegin posted:

The Soviet Union isn't threatening either France or Britain in peacetime (assuming no Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact). They'd have to go through Germany to get at either and they have no navy to speak of.

It's not like the entire RN and French navy would be steaming off to the Far East, but most of it would be, because the German navy is not huge and, also, people in 1939 were expecting that a European war would be WW1: The Remix with the Germans battering themselves out on the Maginot line, not blitzkrieg. You do have to bear in mind when inferring people's intentions here that everyone in 1939 was operating with 1939 assumptions and prejudices (like: the British Empire is built on the strongest navy in the world and will last centuries to come; Japanese are incompetent non-white people whose aeroplanes are built out of cardboard; aircraft carriers are a weird novelty that's mainly good for scouting for the battleships that will win the decisive naval actions) - not what we can see in hindsight from the 21st century.

Cythereal posted:

Fair enough for the most part, but you're wrong about the aircraft carriers. Japan didn't start invading places other than China until around the start of 1941, and 1941 is when they developed the Kido Butai. 1939 is a weird time to pick for alt-history centering on Imperial Japan, nothing that important happened in Japan's sphere between 1937 and December 1940.

Cyrano4747 posted:

Carriers also weren’t as disregarded as that. Pretty much every country that bothered to build any befor the war had an influential contingent of officers who understood the power of naval aviation and who were influential enough to get some built. Even people who didn’t see them as so decisively obsoleeting BBs thought them useful for ducking treaty tonnage limits.

feedmegin posted:

The 'they' I'm talking about are the big-gun admirals in the British and French navies. Japan absolutely did get it. I'm saying '1939' really meaning 'immediately before World War 2 kicked off in real life', because absent that, what people believed in peacetime at the end of the 30s is going to keep being believed until it collides with reality, if you see what I mean.

Epicurius posted:

I've recommended it before, but I''ll recommend again Eri Hotta's "Japan, 1941", which is a look at Japanese planning leading up to Pearl Harbor. One of the things that her book focuses on was how most of the Japanese higher ups thought it was a bad idea, but that, first, they didn't see any good alternative, and second, everybody was afraid to speak out against it, because they thought that everyone else supported it, and didn't want to take a political risk by speaking out and being the only one.

FluffieDuckie posted:

Cythereal posted:

And Japan proved quite handily that no, battleships are not in fact king.

Chillbro Baggins posted:

Are you referring to Pearl Harbor or Yamato and Musashi? Either way, the other works as the punchline.

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

It's important to keep in mind that if Japan takes on say, the Dutch, are the British and French going to rush to their aid? Sure, probably - but it's going to be a bit of a different response than the invasion of Poland by the Germans. After all, the DEI are a long way away. Then, the "victory condition" for the Japanese is a lot different than actual WWII - you just have to gently caress up some boats, land the Rikusentai, hold your territory, and wait. The Allies are either going to have to come dig you out (and note this is without US support), in which case you can hopefully bloody their noses a few more times, or they're going to have to accept ceding colonies. Although the various imperialist factions in the Allied countries would raise an almighty stink, this isn't the same thing as an existential threat to your nation - it's traditional Great Power colonial warfare and spoils-divvying. Not to say this is a particularly likely outcome of this alternate history debacle, but it's possible and you can see a path from A to B. You can't really do that with the war Japan got. Once you have the US involved things get really different.

feedmegin posted:

This is true. Japan can nibble away at some colonies, particularly those of smaller countries, and get away with it. That's a lot different from eg taking Singapore, though. The UK can't let that go if it wants to keep an Empire at all, it would completely expose them as unable to protect their possessions and interests abroad and thus forfeit their status as a Great Power (see: actual history post Suez). It all depends how far Japan feels it needs to go I guess.

System Metternich posted:

Archaeologists found the early medieval grave of a man in Italy who had at some point lost one of his hands and replaced it with a loving knife prosthesis. There is no big enough

Epicurius posted:

Ok, that is pretty badass.

Back to Pearl Harbor, though, also, remember that part of the inspiration for the attack was the British raid on Taranto in 1940, where planes off a British carrier used torpedoes against Italian battleships at harbor. Now, the Japanese were already working on the concept of striking at a docked fleet with planes, but the Taranto raid certainly served as proof of concept.

Cythereal posted:

According to the guy who came up with the Kido Butai formation, though, he was inspired much earlier than that - remember that the Indian Ocean Raid was the first major carrier-lead battle after a few paltry efforts during WW1, and it stunned the world when Kido Butai smashed the British fleet.

Pearl Harbor was years later, after the power and capability of the massive carrier strike was already well established.