Malaya What If
- Thread starter Fatboy Coxy
- Start date
Question, Des Div 57 was the unit sent OTL, they with their tender Black Hawk were at Balikpapan, Borneo, DesDiv 58 was with the Squadron CO in DD Paul Jones and the CL Marblehead at Tarakan, Borneo much further away.
This was an ad Hoc set up, each 3" battery was manned by 1 platoon from each of the rifle companies of th Marine Rifle companies, and the AAMGs were manned by the Weapons company. The 2 Independent Marine Battalions were at full strength plus. HQHQ Company, 3 Rifle Companies, and a Weapons Company. Since April 1941 Hart had stopped forwarding replacements to the 4th Marines in China. He was afraid the Sate Department would dither about pulling the Regiment out in time. As is the Marines arrived from China on December 4th, barely enough time to integrate the Olongapo Battalion as 3rd Battalion and move the extra men to fill out 1st and 2nd Battalions out. As is 2oo Marines ad a skeleton crew on the PG Oahu were captured because State Department did dither and delay. The State Department, very wrongly believed that the Peking and Tensin Marines would be classed as diplomatic personnel and exchanged . They were not ! Those marines were the first American military personnel to enter the Hell of the Japanese POW system.
There were over 100 G3M and G4M stationed by the IJNAF on Formosa in addition to over 200 Vals, Kates, Claudes, and Zeros. Had Hart moved the Asiatic Fleet to intercept the Japanese invasion force that is what they would have faced with no air cover.
He wasn't expecting aircraft carrying aerial torpedoes to be able to reach him. That's the critical point - Torpedoes are big and heavy beasts, and there's a hard limit to what a particular engine power (fairly well known) could lift off the ground. Within that weight you need to allocate aerostructure, fuel, crew, weaponry, armour, etc.
The mistake made by the British (and indeed everybody else) was in assuming that the Japanese would come to the same conclusion that they themselves (and indeed everyone else) had, that a balanced design was necessary to give acceptable crew survivability against first-class opposition. In reality the Japanese decided to trade off armour/aerostructure and defensive weaponry against fuel capacity, giving a long ranged but very vulnerable aircraft. My view is that later war experience showed this to be a mistaken design trade-off, but it's one that fits in with Japanese doctrine of the time.
His whole plan was meant to deliver his force outside what he believed to be the air threat envelope by daylight. It was meant to be a surprise night strike against the Japanese landing convoy. And he planned to hightail it as soon as it seemed like the element of surprise was lost. Which he did when spotted from the air. He managed to lose the shadowers in evening fog and overnight effectively disappeared from the Japanese eye. The Japanese strike actually very nearly never found him. They had been far to the south and were on their return flight, quite low on fuel. In fact, Phillips came very close to not being spotted at all, as the scout plane that found him was out of position and low on fuel itself.
Not an unreasonable assumption given the range. In fact, most of the attack was actually armed with bombs which were dropped at level and did very little damage.
Ramp-Rat
Monthly Donor
Admiral Phillips was both personally brave and a competent Naval Commander, however he had IOTL a major problem. Not only was he commanding a totally inadequate force, lacking as it did an accompanying aircraft carrier , to provide much needed organic air support. It didn’t have the requisite numbers of anti air destroyers or an anti aircraft cruiser or two, let alone the cruisers and standard destroyers, that the two capital ships required. Add to this he was operating in the shadow of two other Admirals, William Whitworth, who had taken a battleship into a Norwegian fiord in Narvik, and A B C, Andrew Cunningham, who stood by the Army in Crete, no matter the odds. So while the sensible thing to do was stay in harbour in Singapore and wait until he had a clear idea of what was happening, and a firm plan arranged for the provision of air cover. He instead in the finest traditions of the Royal Navy sailed out towards the sound of guns metaphorically and did his very best to support the Army. In his own mind had no option, he had to put to sea, ITTL given that he will not be under as much pressure as he was IOTL, and with the RAF being under a far superior commander, there is the possibility of him being provided with limited air cover. And with a very competent Land commander in the person of Gort, there is a good possibility that he will be asked to remain in Singapore until the situation has become clear and the two of them can formulate a combined plan going forward. Phillips is not as free ITTL, as he was IOTL to make decisions and policy, he has to consult with at least three others, the Governor, Gort and Park.
RR.
RR.
Not just your view, but an established fact. G4Ms (and their crews) suffered horrendous casualties in the face of massed defensive firepower. And of course the supreme irony is that the man responsible for conceiving the G4M concept (Admiral Yamamoto) lost his life riding in one.
From memory, Admiral Sir Henry Leach (1st Sea Lord during the Falklands Conflict who essentially told Maggie to man up and understand that the RN's ships were there to go to war) remembered his father (Captain John Leach, Prince of Wales) as melancholy about his chances of survival on their last meeting - Henry was a Midshipman and due to be posted to Prince of Wales until his father got command and his posting was changed to HMS Mauritius instead. They met for the last time two days before POW sailed to her fate.
Umm, Philips is at sea executing Operation PICADOR, by agreement with Gort. Gort BTW is not just "Land Commander", he's GOC Far East Command, which includes Malaya Command and RAF Far East.
No other nation's aircraft ever had to fly into the sort of defensive firepower that the USN was able to put up in 1944-45, which is why I'm a little reluctant to treat this as a fact rather than opinion.
- When HMS Illustrious was attacked by Fligerkorps X in January 1941 she was armed with 8x twin 4.5" DP guns and 6x Octuple Pom-Pom. For the time this was an extremely powerful AA armament.
- When USS Franklin was attacked in March 1945 (a far weaker attack than that on Illustrious as it happens) she was armed with 12x single 5" DP guns (I assume with proximity fuses), 32x 40mm Bofors - fewer barrels but far more effective than the Pom-Pom, and 46x 20mm Oerlikon guns. Due to the nature of the ship, many other ships in the fleet were rather better armed.
As an example the Asiatic Fleet; Cruisers; USS Houston 8 x 1 x5'/25 AA (TF=Timed Fuses) 2 x 1 x3"/50 AA(TF) 4 x 4 x 1.1"(28mm) MAAA(IF=Impact fuse) 8 x 1 x .50Cal AAMG, USS Boise 8 x 1 x 5"/25 AA(TF), 4 x 4 x 1.1"MAA(IF) 8 x 1 x .50 cal AAMG, USS Marblehead 6 x 1 x 3"/50 Cal AA(TF) 6 x 1 x .50cal AAMG. Destroyers, 1-2 x3'/23 cal MAA (TF) 4-8 x .50 cal AAMG .
No, they'd never seen them drop torpedoes. The first time they saw that was the during the sinking of the Repulse & Prince of Wales. Up till that moment they had no idea the G3M Nell crews had been trained for torpedo attacks. Clearly it came as a profound surprise. That was just one of the many surprises the Allies had waiting for them.
Prior to 1941, the IJNAF had never conducted combat torpedo drops using their twin engined land based bombers. No Allied observers would have been present to witness the training drops. Came into service in 1935, sure. But there is absolutely zero evidence that Allied intel knew anything beyond 'this plane exists'. Indeed, more than one Allied pilot misidentified G3Ms and G4Ms as 'Japanese flown Heinkel 111s' or 'Me 110s' during the South East Asian campaigns and expressed amazement at their speed. This to me indicates Allied intel knew next to nothing.
Fatboy Coxy
Monthly Donor
While Allied intelligence might have no firm intelligence that the G3M was torpedo capable, everyone else had been developing twin engined torpedo bombers from the mid thirties, and I believe they thought the Japanese had that capability, just that the range the aircraft had was far greater than expected.
Fatboy Coxy
Monthly Donor
Hi edgeworthy, the one I know is Big Bubble, from the cockney rhyming slang of bubble and squeak. He was at the Battle of Cape Matapan, on the battleship HMS Valiant,
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Figured that.. also remember that there is 20, 000 pounds of US aerial ordinance in Singapore, which will fit just fine on any of the PBYs which at this time had a bomb load of
3,000 lbs,, for a reduction of 40% in max range. Cache would include bombs up to 500 lbs. 325 lb depth Charges, and possibly Mk XIII aerial torps. My money would be on mostly depth charges but possibly maybe a half dozen torps. But at this time PBY-5s could not carry 2 torps, usually 1 torp. and 1,000 lbs of bombs on the other wing
I know that the Royal Marines used ...
"Phil the Greek"
(Yes, there was a time when Elizabeth II was a sex symbol)