Author Topic: No Pearl Harbour Attack?  (Read 12261 times)

Offline GTX_Admin

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No Pearl Harbour Attack?
« on: July 07, 2013, 06:40:00 AM »
What would be the effect if Japan did not attack the USA?
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Offline elmayerle

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Re: No Pearl Harbour Attack?
« Reply #1 on: July 07, 2013, 10:25:18 AM »
I presume not just at Pearl Harbor but also the Phillipines and some of the Southwest Pacific islands?

Offline Volkodav

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Re: No Pearl Harbour Attack?
« Reply #2 on: July 07, 2013, 12:42:45 PM »
Are you thinking along the lines of Japan declaring war on the allies but deliberately not the US giving all their territories and areas of interest a wide berth?  Would the US have entered the war without a direct attack on their sovereignty, would Roosevelt have been able to convince the nation that entering the war was in their interest if Japan was making it very clear they did not want war with the US?

Very Interesting.

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Re: No Pearl Harbour Attack?
« Reply #3 on: July 07, 2013, 02:45:02 PM »
Are you thinking along the lines of Japan declaring war on the allies but deliberately not the US giving all their territories and areas of interest a wide berth?  Would the US have entered the war without a direct attack on their sovereignty, would Roosevelt have been able to convince the nation that entering the war was in their interest if Japan was making it very clear they did not want war with the US?

Very Interesting.

Yes - very interesting.
Germany and Japan both have time to increase strength.  While US sends arms to allies.  US arms production increase is not "all out".  Isolationist/peace organizations still have influence.  Japan sucks up SE Asia land and resources.  Increases its production base, military bases and amount of arms on them.  IJN increases number of combat and logistical ships as fast as possible.  Longer US stays out of war,,, Japan gains more combat experience and force size.  Germany expands Middle East holdings and has more forces to throw at Russia.
Later; when US enters war, the situation is more precarious than in Dec 1941.
Think - Luft/Japan 46 and beyond - Nazi atomic bomb & missile & jet progress - without hindrance of US bombing attacks all German production and research can be greater.
Lotz to consider here..........
« Last Edit: July 07, 2013, 03:28:44 PM by finsrin »

Offline Volkodav

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Re: No Pearl Harbour Attack?
« Reply #4 on: July 07, 2013, 03:05:17 PM »
Manhattan Project (called something else) set up in Australia, Canada or South Africa, maybe even New Zealand.

Offline GTX_Admin

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Re: No Pearl Harbour Attack?
« Reply #5 on: July 07, 2013, 04:26:25 PM »
I presume not just at Pearl Harbor but also the Phillipines and some of the Southwest Pacific islands?

Correct.  Basically Japan takes the Siberia option.  Though maybe they still take British, French and Dutch possessions in the SE Asia region.
« Last Edit: July 07, 2013, 04:28:23 PM by GTX_Admin »
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Offline elmayerle

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Re: No Pearl Harbour Attack?
« Reply #6 on: July 08, 2013, 12:25:06 AM »
Going North instead of South at that time would have the advantage of the Soviet Union already reeling from the German attacks.  A concerted effort toward Siberia might work quite well for them.

Offline jcf

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Re: No Pearl Harbour Attack?
« Reply #7 on: July 08, 2013, 02:59:42 AM »
The Japanese did not go into Siberia because they had already tried that and the Soviets
handed them their ass on a plate. Nomonhan was a hard lesson and they had no reason
to expect a different result if they tried again, the IJA simply weren't equipped to face the
Red Army on an equal footing, regardless of the German invasion, and the IJN would be
of no use in a land war. The loss at Nomonhan was one of the reasons that the Imperial
command started looking to the South for resources, and any move into the European-US
zone of control was going to involve conflict with the US.

An attack on solely European Colonial possessions only combined with a scrupulous avoidance
of US targets in the Philipines would require a very careful use and placement of IJN carrier
groups. Basically you'd need to have them placed to give support when needed, but also be
placed to intercept any direct US response, if one came. An attack on solely colonial targets
and avoidance of US territories would put the US government in a very difficult position,
especially as the hardcore of the organised isolationists were almost fanatically anti-British,
so intervention would be a hard-sell. This would probably lead to a political delay which,
combined with the logistical and purely temporal realities of the USN sortieing from Pearl,
would give the Imperial forces a breathing period of at least several weeks, possibly as
much as six months.

However none of this means that the US would not become involved as the realities of already
existing US involvement in the Atlantic submarine war, and the depth of materiel support and
financial involvement, meant that the US was going to be directly involved at some point.
The Pearl Harbor attack served to advance the timeline.
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Offline raafif

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Re: No Pearl Harbour Attack?
« Reply #8 on: July 08, 2013, 04:51:21 AM »
I discussed this in the "Japan invades Australia" scenario .... Japan is sucessful in Manchuria but Russia stops them from heading west.  Instead they head south so no Pearl Harbor but they do take Guam & the Phillipines .... to the USA, the loss of Guam and the Philippines is a bitter blow - but coupled with the government's non-combative policies & the established civilian desire to stay out of the war in Europe, with no direct attack on Hawaii or the US mainland America is set to continue it's passive stance.

With no US involvement in the Pacific or European wars the A-bomb is not invented.

Offline jcf

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Re: No Pearl Harbour Attack?
« Reply #9 on: July 08, 2013, 08:41:23 AM »
Japan controlled Manchuria from 1932 to 1945, so I'd say they were very successful.

The US government under FDR was not non-combative, they were very interventionist and
regularly skirted the edges of the Neutrality Act, as Republicans in Congress constantly
pointed out. The US was also in the midst of massive rearmament schemes and force
expansion well prior to Pearl Harbor, and an official position of neutrality should not be
confused with a passive stance. The US had been involved in an all out economic war on
Japan for years prior to actual combat, and had taken part in naval actions against
the Germans in the Atlantic. The US was going to go to war, the only question was when
and why.

Any attack on the Philippines would have been considered a direct attack on the US.

British and US atomic bomb research projects predate Pearl Harbor, and the proposal to
coordinate programs dates from October of 1941. No Pearl Harbor attack does not equal
'no bomb'.
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Offline Nexus1171

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Re: No Pearl Harbour Attack?
« Reply #10 on: September 29, 2013, 09:10:02 AM »
I agree with JCF here, even if Pearl Harbor never got socked, we'd probably gone to war over if they went into the Philipines

Offline Volkodav

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Re: No Pearl Harbour Attack?
« Reply #11 on: September 29, 2013, 09:51:42 AM »
How about Japan throws a real spanner in the works and sides with their old friend England when Germany invades Poland, they then go a step further and declare war on the USSR when they join Germanys adventure in Poland.  Japan avoids a land war with the USSR but attacks and harasses from the sea, while providing limited support to the Allies in western Europe.

Japan uses their new alliances to gain access to previously denied natural resources  and ramps up production for their own forces and in support of their allies as well as negotiating territorial gains and diplomatic recognition of previous gains in exchange for their support.

Japan was burnt and shamed following WWI and perceived that they were being treated more as a vanquished opponent than a victorious ally , maybe instead of turning to the dark side, as it were, they do some very effective negotiation and gain much of what they need through diplomacy while providing material support to the UK.  After the Netherlands fall for instance the UK could force the Dutch to cede territory to Japan in exchange for other assistance.

Offline Cliffy B

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Re: No Pearl Harbour Attack?
« Reply #12 on: September 29, 2013, 09:58:49 AM »
Now there's an idea!!!  Wonder how that would play out in the future?
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Offline elmayerle

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Re: No Pearl Harbour Attack?
« Reply #13 on: September 29, 2013, 12:26:51 PM »
Given Roosevelt's documented interventionist attitudes and his efforts, both directly and through his partisans in the media and elsewhere, to attack and destroy those who opposed him, I can see him pushing things for war with Japan in the event of an attack on the Phillipines and/or Guam and then working to expand it to include Nazi Germany.  The people of the US might not have wanted it, but Roosevelt needed that war to deal with the unemployment problem and economic problems his first two terms had continued and exacerbated.

SeeLindbergh vs. Roosevelt, The Rivalry That Divided America by James P. Duffy for a whole lot more exposition on this.

Imperial Japan would have to renounce their treaty with Germany and Italy, or never sign it, for Volkodav's scenario to occur, but that could mean, or lead to, other differences between that Japan and what happened here.

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Re: No Pearl Harbour Attack?
« Reply #14 on: September 29, 2013, 12:53:16 PM »
Having Japan Allied with the UK but also attacking the UK's allies could get really messy politically.  I suppose the deciding factor for the UK would be what level of support the Japanese were giving in the fight against Germany.
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Offline Brian da Basher

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Re: No Pearl Harbour Attack?
« Reply #15 on: September 30, 2013, 04:27:53 AM »
I'm afraid you're mistaken regarding the U.S. needing to become a belligerent in W.W. II to ease the depression, Ev. Actually, after 1938, unemployment became less of a problem as the western allies rearmed and looked to U.S. arms manufacturers to fill gaps in their own countries' production.

The Roosevelt administration's focus was on Europe, even to the detriment of U.S. preparedness in the Pacific. Most statements to the contrary have been proven false not only by historians, but by archival sources that have been declassified since 1945. It might be helpful to keep in mind that the U.S. was rated the 15th most powerful military, behind even Portugal, in 1939. Given that, only someone without any grasp of reality would seek war with Nazi Germany.

Brian da Basher


Offline GTX_Admin

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Re: No Pearl Harbour Attack?
« Reply #16 on: September 30, 2013, 04:30:08 AM »
Let's leave the personal politics out of the discussion please.  One could argue both sides of this endlessly without ever getting anywhere (except angry and frustrated).  However given we are now some 70+ years down the track without the full facts available or ever likely to be, we are not going to get anywhere.

Continue with the discussion of the scenario by all means and please feel free to develop ideas that contribute to modelling in all its forms, but leave the personal political aspect out of it. C:-)


« Last Edit: September 30, 2013, 04:38:55 AM by GTX_Admin »
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Offline elmayerle

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Re: No Pearl Harbour Attack?
« Reply #17 on: September 30, 2013, 06:49:26 AM »
Okay, so no Pearl Harbor (the Japanese high command didn't believe Yamamoto could pull it off) but a much stronger attack against the Phillipines and Guam, which the US would likely lose faster.  Given an intact base to work from, would the USN be more able to intervene between the Japanese and the resources they wanted?

Another thought, it was the destruction of the Battle Line at Pearl Harbor that pushed the US to much more reliance on Carriers and Submarines; without that loss of battleships, would the US strategy have focused on the same units?

Offline Alvis 3.1

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Re: No Pearl Harbour Attack?
« Reply #18 on: September 30, 2013, 02:11:32 PM »
I think the Battleship Admirals would have fallen back to their old methods, and tried to break the Japanese fleet with their battleship tactics. I imagine a battle off the Phillipines, where the US Task Force is annihilated by Japanese airpower and some skillful battleship tactics as well. This time, the US is a lot slower to recover, as those ships would be at the bottom of the Pacific, along with their crews. This then would leave all of the Pacific open for the Japanese to run free until the US gets it's collective butt in gear and unleash the subs. The loss of the crews would be a much harder load to bear, and would most likely shift the US participation in the war to the Pacific front, as the home front would be screaming for revenge.

Hawaii would have been left vulnerable if enough USN assets were sunk. Yamamoto might have been able to make his case to attack it again, this time to wipe out the fuel and repair facilities. That would have been a critical blow. A feint at the Aleutians and Midway would draw off the USN surface forces, leaving Pearl wide open.

 Australia would most likely be invaded before the US could get into place to prevent that. I can see the US being forced to team up with the British in India/Burma instead of an island hopping campaign. Admiral King just might be forced to resign in the face of losing so much of his resources, opening the door to better cooperation with the RN. Retaking Australia may have been a high priority in this scenario over the Phillipines. If MacArthur was killed or captured before escaping Corregidor the whole idea of returning there would have been less popular.

I can see the whole war dragging on longer due to the massive USN losses caused by open water sinkings by the Japanese. The USN in reality came close to losing their carrier advantage more than once, and some bad luck could wipe out most or all of the carriers as well. A longer war in Europe would be a result of the US diverting more to the Pacific, with the Russians eventually taking even more of Eastern Europe and possibly being in a position to invade Japan itself before the US could.

In the long run, Pearl Harbor likely was a good thing for the allies, in a totally non-conspiracy way. I can see way more problems with the USN trying to take on the Japanese in direct surface actions for the first year of the war

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Offline Volkodav

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Re: No Pearl Harbour Attack?
« Reply #19 on: September 30, 2013, 05:34:11 PM »
Interesting the only issue I have with that scenario is the Japanese Army did not believe an invasion of Australia was viable or actually likely of success.  The logistics were daunting and there was the reasonably recent example of what Australian mounted forces had done in the middle east in WWI. 

Offline Old Wombat

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Re: No Pearl Harbour Attack?
« Reply #20 on: October 03, 2013, 12:01:39 AM »
My thoughts: ;)

There is, also, the highly likely possibility that not attacking Pearl Harbor would have been part of an over-arching "let's not piss off the Americans" strategy. So, it is unlikely that either the Phillipines or Guam would have been attacked, with the Japanese actually actively avoiding US territories or protectorates, with the Japanese moving more through South East Asia, the East Indies & Papua New Guinea, & focussing on the Gilbert & Ellice Island groups in the Pacific.

Thus the plan to isolate Australia may well have worked & worked much more rapidly, with the Japanese not having to maintain the large forces they did to counter the Americans. So the long-term goal of occupying Australia may have come to fruition, after they had kicked the British back into (&, possibly, through) India. Say in about 1945.

They may have had more success in China, too.

Would the US have become involved? Maybe (but I'm guessing not) because, without the network of mutual support treaties that Europe had, the Roosevelt government would have found it difficult to find sufficient reason/cause/excuse to push an aggressive action against the Japanese through Congress. Perhaps by about 1950, without a war to push them along, the US would have been ready to take on Japan but by then the Japanese may have been too strong for the US to overcome, even on a war footing.

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Offline MaxHeadroom

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Re: No Pearl Harbour Attack?
« Reply #21 on: December 16, 2015, 01:24:18 AM »
I think, without the Pearl-Harbour-raid AND the Phillippinian-assault (Both operation are siamese twins!) F.D.R hadn't a reason to declare war to Japan the day after!
Without Pearl Harbour Hitler (and Mussolini) didn't declare war to the USA at Dec., 11th 1941.

BUT:
Sooner or later, (I think: sooner) the german Kriegsmarine -in special: the german U-Boats- has given to F.D.R. a welcome pretext to declare war at Nazigermany (remember the isolationist feeling of the US-people)!
THEN, Rome and Tokyo were forced by the agreements of the axis-treaty to declare war to the USA!
The result would be the same - nearly.
Maybe the difference would be: the war would be over in late 1945 or mid 1946 and beause of the longer time, not only Nagasaki and Hiroshima would be victims of the A-bomb, Berlin, Frankurt at river Main also.

Norbert

Offline Volkodav

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Re: No Pearl Harbour Attack?
« Reply #22 on: October 11, 2016, 01:49:46 AM »
Just watched an interesting doco on the campaign in North Africa during WWII and the extent the British went to in trying to get the US to engage in the war from 1940.  What was particularly interesting is the access to every aspect of British Military operations granted to the US Military Attaché at the embassy in Cairo, in the hope of impressing the US and gaining further support.  From this it is quite clear that the Roosevelt and the General staff were keen on entering the war irrespective of Japan. 

The general staff apparently wanted to invade Europe and saw the Mediterranean as nothing but a distraction, but the Cairo Military Attaché, one Colonel Bonner Fellers was keen to get involved in North Africa and managed to get Roosevelt (who had personal access to Fellers extensive reports and opinions) on side.  I am surprised I had never heard of Fellers before such was his impact on that entire theatre and quite possibly the way as a whole, especially having seen a second, more revealing doco and read further on him.

Fellers would send five or so highly detailed coded reports through the embassy to Washington each day, using the State Departments Code 11 (he apparently queried the security of this system but was ordered to use it).  These reports contained British troop dispositions, strengths, equipment, plans, tactics, logistics as well as his observations (and probably quite biased opinions) on morale, quality of leadership and standard of equipment as well.  He was apparently thought by others in the US army to be an Anglophobe, with his reports highly critical of the British Army and its continual failures in the Western Desert.  He was also apparently intensely disliked by Eisenhower and many other senior officers (Macarthur being the exception). 

The irony is the Italians had acquired Code 11 from the US embassy in Rome so each and every one of Fellows reports landed on Rommels desk within eight hours of transmission, giving him a better understanding of the British deployment than many of the British formation commanders had.  Fellers hyper critical reports on the failures of the British are doubly ironic as would the British have performed so badly, or Rommel so well had Fellers intercepted reports not been so detailed?  Triply ironic is that Fellers belief the British were about to collapse through incompetence, poor leadership and poor moral were actually in accurate and gave Rommel a false sense of superiority that eventually led to him over extending while attempting to give the British that one final, fatal blow that Fellers predicted would do them in.

Could be worth  what if of its own.  What if the British didn't provide access to Fellers, what if Fellers concerns on the security of the code had been listened to, what if the Attaché had been a less anti British individual or one who had been more conservative with the information provided in the reports?  But for this intelligence leak would the British have performed better in the Mediterranean as a whole?  Would Rommel have been as successful, would British losses of men and materiel been less?  Without this fiasco could the British have defeated Rommel on their own, earlier and less expensively?  What effect could these extra, battle hardened troops, not wasted in the desert due to an intelligence failure, have made in Italy or France?  With or without Pearl harbour, with or without US troops etc?

Offline Rickshaw

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Re: No Pearl Harbour Attack?
« Reply #23 on: October 11, 2016, 11:18:52 AM »
Straying from the premise of the thread however, the issue of Fellers and his coded reports is quite significant IMHO.  I've long pointed out that it, in combination with the German intercept unit under Rommel's command in North Africa were significant in building the mythos of the "Desert Fox" up.  When the intercept unit was captured (wholus-bolus) at Tel el Eisa (north-west of Alamein) by the Australian 9 Division Rommel was effectively blinded and from then on, he suffered defeats only.  With it, as has been noted, he was as aware of the 8th Army's dispositions as was it's commander.   If the Italians had not stolen the Black Code in Rome or if his intercept unit had been destroyed earlier, then it is likely he would have been defeated earlier IMHO.

Offline Volkodav

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Re: No Pearl Harbour Attack?
« Reply #24 on: October 11, 2016, 04:47:13 PM »
Quite ironic that the problem was detected by an Ultra intercept where the question arose, "how did the Germans know the British knew the location of the Luftwaffe's North African headquarters"?  But so sensitive was Ultra that the British had to be very careful how they investigated what was an obvious leak out of Cairo.

Miles off topic but the entire situation of Fellers being given access to the command information in the first place was due to British and American elements at the highest level trying to get the US into the war in Europe.  Had Pearl harbour not occurred, or had Japan remained neutral, it appears the gears of war were already very much in motion and it was a question of when rather than if the US entered the fray in Europe and maybe the Middle East / Africa.