Sir John Valentine Carden Survives. Part 2.

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Derwent Water

kelgar04 said:
Hmm big advantage of the Burma invasion not going in is going to be that the Burma road will stay open longer for all the good it will do.
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I wonder if the Burma Road could be expanded to allow more freight or even a light railroad. I know the terrain is an absolute nightmare but compared to some of things US engineers and material managed during the war it should be doable and less of a challenge than the OTL air bridge
 

MattII

Finbarr the Fair said:
Mostly the former, including the civil administration. The Imperial War Cabinet and Chiefs of Staffs made mistskes but had rather a lot of other issues to deal with and inadequate resources.
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Um, why are local commanders to blame for the fall if they aren't given the resources to hold out?
 

Derwent Water

Derwent Water said:
The situation in the TL at present (forgive me if Iive missed anything).

North Africa is in British and Commonwealth hands or in the currently playing nuetral Vichy French. It seems likely that the French on the ground would allow Italian and German forces to move in, even if they could get them across the Mediterranean and maintain them in North Africa. Malta is safe, ships can make it through the Mediterranean if escorted properly (with some losses). Create remains in Greek hands and there are Greek forces in training. These Forces along with the British and Commonwealth forces in theater (with not a lot to do) are likely to do some liberating of the Greek Islands over the next year while the amphibious capability to try something more ambitious is built up. This would likely mean a build up of Axis forces in mainland Greece to counter a real or imagined Allied invasion (up to Allen which way the Allies go as there plenty of good reasons either way).

Russia remains as OTL and although over the next couple of months the winter counter offensives push the Germans back, the spring will come and the snows thaw will heral the Germans to renew their invasion and no one in the West knows if Russia will survive.

In the Far East its reasonably safe to make some speculative predictions. Like OTL Doug Out Doug's performance in the Philippines (begrudgingly also lack of overall preparedness might also be a factor) mean the Philippines will fall as OTL. Britain thanks to having some proper tanks and veteran formations in the right places for a change likely holds (at least) Southern Malaya. The Japanese Burmese offensive (and the invasion of much of the DEI) is for the Japanese at best delayed and more likely called off until Malaya is occupied. This does alow the British (OK mostly Indians and Australians) the time to reinforce South East Asia.

In this scenario what does the US do? If they agree with the Germany first strategy where can they fight and when? There's no active fronts and an invasion of North West Europe is out until substantial forces are transported across the Atlantic. Side shows in the Mediterranean are an option with perhaps the assault on Sicily taking the place of Operation Torch towards the end of 1942. There's not even the OTL yoyo battles in the desert to give US equipment some testing and for politicians something to point at to show the US electorate what their taxes are doing to win the war.

But there's one active front where even small amounts of troups and planes (and in the spring of 1942 that's all the US Army had available to deploy) could make a big difference and that's Malaya and THE DEI! If the US do get involved this could fundamentally change the Pacific War. A major joint offensive to liberate Thailand and FIC before linking up with Chinese could be a viable (and arguably potentially cheaper in lives and material) alternative that the OTL island hopping campaign.
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I completely agree with your perspective. Although in OTL serious thought was given in the dark days of 1942 of deploying a US Armoured Division to Egypt, then there was Operation Torch which wasn't in the main theatre and Italy wasn't exactly the main event either.

I was visualising a major campaign in Thailand and China where multiple corps of the US Army could potentially deploy. Why would the Army not want to win the war against the Japanese with the US Navy doing what its meant to do (giving the Army a ride to war)! It has the added benefit of directly aiding the brave Chinese in thir fight against Japanese aggression.

However Ramp Rat's right. There where good reasons why the Pacific war played out the way it did.
 

dmg86

The infrastructure in China and East Asia probably couldn't support a large US force without major improvements. And furthermore the US Army considered Europe to be more important.
 

Merrick

MattII said:
The British are making this look easy.
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If it looks easy, it means you're doing it right ;)

The Ledge operation as described TTL had three things that were missing from OTL's Krohcol - armour support, experienced troops and effective organisation.
OTL, the column consists of a single battalion of Indian troops - no support units apart from the sappers - mounted in lorries and Bren carriers. The operation started late, because additional forces (another infantry battalion and an artillery battery) that were meant to have been part of the operation had not turned up. Opposition from the Thais and felled trees across the road delayed the column further, and it did not reach Betong until evening. Having arranged a truce with the Thais, the commander then decided to make camp for the night and push on to the Ledge in the morning - and the next day (10th Dec) Krohcol lost the race for the Ledge by about two hours, the battalion running into the lead elements of the Japanese 42nd Infantry Regiment (with tank support) about a mile south of the Ledge. The battalion then spent the next two days being pushed steadily southwards in confused fighting against superior Japanese numbers, armour and artillery.
 

Merrick

Ramp-Rat said:
Singapore will ITTL be the base for one of the two major fleets facing the Japanese, with Pearl Harbour being the other. The largest fleet will be the American Pacific Fleet, while the British Far East Fleet, will concentrate on operations in the South China Sea, and around the various British and Dutch islands. The major problem will be when the Americans request facilities for their relief of the Philippines fleet. Yes Guam is roughly the same distance from the Philippines as Singapore is, however Guam is an undeveloped island in the Pacific, and Singapore has in addition to one of the worlds largest natural harbours, and a significant local industrial base to draw on. It might be much further away from the Continental United States, but it will be able to draw on shipping from both the east and west coasts, plus what ever the Empire can spare. You could even see a two pronged attack from both Singapore and Guam.
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As a base for operations against the Japanese in the West Pacific or China Sea, Guam has three problems:
1) It's a small island with no infrastructure
2) It's a long way from anywhere important - 1,000 miles east of the Philippines and 1,500 miles south of Japan - and even further from anything that could be call a logistical base (best part of 4,000 miles from Pearl Harbor)
3) It's almost certainly going to be occupied by Japan in the early phases of the war.

All through the inter-war era, the USN planners were grappling with the problem that in a war with Japan, the Japanese would occupy the Philippines and Guam, thus depriving the USN of its bases in the West Pacific. And without a base in the West Pacific, the USN could not support major fleet operations in Japanese or Philippine waters. (There weren't enough tankers to support a fleet over those distances, and if every damaged ship had to go all the way to Pearl Harbor for repairs the US Pacific Fleet would quickly lose its margin of superiority over the IJN.)

Derwent Water said:
I was visualising a major campaign in Thailand and China where multiple corps of the US Army could potentially deploy. Why would the Army not want to win the war against the Japanese with the US Navy doing what its meant to do (giving the Army a ride to war)! It has the added benefit of directly aiding the brave Chinese in thir fight against Japanese aggression.

However Ramp Rat's right. There where good reasons why the Pacific war played out the way it did.
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It's worth remembering that in 1941 it wasn't clear whether the "island-hopping" strategy would be logistically feasible. There were plenty of people arguing that recapturing the Philippines - let alone invading Japan - would be impossible without control of a developed port somewhere in the vicinity, and the only developed ports anywhere near were on the Asian mainland, so the first order of business would be a land offensive into Southern China to gain control of a port like Canton or Haiphong. There was even a plan for the US Army to fight its way the entire length of the Chinese coast and round the Yellow Sea, finally invading the Japanese home islands from Korea!

It never happened OTL, partly for political reasons, partly because Japanese advances in China and SE Asia deprived the proposed operation of its bases, partly because supplying an army in China via the Burma Road turned out to be an even harder logistical problem than supplying an army in the Philippines from across the Pacific and partly because the success of the island-hopping Central Pacific drive rendered it unnecessary.
 

MattII

kelgar04 said:
How is that an improvement? Aside from giving them some extra ventilation for the survivors.
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Not sure. The fact that each tank can take multiple shots without necessarily being 'killed' is kind of outweighed by the fact that they're showing up in penny-packet numbers.

Derek Pullem said:
Logistics, dear chap, logistics! :biggrin:

Poor Matildas will be running out of ammunition if every tank needs three hits to be sure of stopping
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Only if they come in a mass. Each Matilda II carries 93 rounds, so at three rounds per tin-can, each Matilda II can stop 31 tin-cans.
 
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