A lot depends on the DEI. If Ambon or the Celebes stay in allied hands than blockade runners can get through to extend the siege a bit longer and if they separate the commands then resistance in the rest of the PI can continue long enough to organize a dedicated resistance movement
Malaya What If
- Thread starter Fatboy Coxy
- Start date
Yes, it may be debatable how close they came, but the 271 of 1941 wasn't that good at the time. The radar that Duke of York used was a 273Q, a much more evolved system. The radar in POW in 1941 wasn't working well because it wasn't tropicalized to handle the heat and humidity. Even with the radar improvements during 1942 the Japanese could still get the upper hand. Radar & ship to ship communications in night battles were still evolving.
With the exception of the USN Stocks destroyed by Hart and his marines the majority fell into Japanese hands. Hart destroyed 6 months of dry stores and uniforms, a warehouse full of lumber that was stored in Manila. Hart barely got his AA control radar evacuated from Cavite and his search set from 100 miles south, to Bataan.
Sounds like a bit of a personal problem. Something you only really need to be aware of if you visit downunder...
Did ADM Hart check with MSGT Bilko and COL Hart first, to get their permission to destroy the USN stocks?
As an Australian, I have no idea. I do not even recognise what a "BB gun" is.
Nah nothing like that. The cultural difference is that after a school shooting the British government has decided not to offer "thoughts and prayers" (i.e. do nothing) but actually pass laws to try and stop such a thing happening again. So the airgun regulations mentioned were part of a package of firearm laws passed after the Dundee school shooting in 1968.
Certainly a bit more paperwork for those who want to play with guns, but on the other hand exponentially fewer school shootings and dead children. To judge by the lack of complaint or any NRA type body the British public has been happy with this approach.
From the air the differences are more apparent than looking at sea level. At Denmark Straight the British at first mistook Prinz Eugen for Bismarck. They had a very similar silhouette, and she was leading Bismarck. From the air no one would make that mistake. Pilots calling destroyers, or cruisers battleships happens when they see the ship by itself with nothing to compare it against. No one in the air will think Exeter is Repulse.
Fatboy Coxy
Monthly Donor
Hi DDM, now that's a very interesting point, something I've not given any thought over. Does the US have much on any of the other islands, Luzon was the most significant and where the main defence was planned, a bit like Java for the Dutch East Indies. I'll have to look more closely at the maps, but everything revolves around airfields, and a potent air force to work from them.
9 Nell’s from Genzen air group who were searching for Force Z mistook the destroyer Tenedos for a Battleship when they came across her. Perspective is difficult from above, particularly at angles when you are supposed to be maintaining formation. Ships regularly got misidentified as larger than they were.
Seems pretty possible for a ship close in size and gun layout to be mistaken for Repulse.
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This is why HMAS Australia became a bit of a Kamikaze magnet because she was a large ship and drew the eye a lot more. And with the refitted Exeter, you've got 2 turrets forwards, one aft, 2 funnels, she's moving quickly and has a more modern bridge layout, she could, during the time you're being shot at, which is definately a significant emotional event, be mistaken for something like the Renown or Repulse.
Sure you could probably fix that if you was a recon plane and was able to orbit the formation and get a good long look without being shot at but the bombers are going to be going into the teeth of a pretty hefty AA barrage, sure not up to 1944 - 45 standards but far more than they've ever faced before. Plus you've got the different doctrine.
IJN naval formations trained that really the main defence against air attack was use of the helm and radical manouvering to throw off bombs/torpedoes. RN practice was for tight formations with helm being directed from the larger ships to keep them together for mutual protection. So even though the RN ships are not packing (many if any) 20mm or 40mm bofors there's still going to be pom-pom's hammering away.
IIRC the RN doctrine at the time was to have multiple overlapping box barrages. A box barrage is where you fill a part of the sky with your shots but once you're past that, you have a fairly easy run in.
But because the octuple pom-pom's spat out so many rounds and had such a large ammo capacity you could use a single octuple pom-pom with make a box barrage on its own. So depending on the number of octuple's available you can make overlapping areas of the sky which have flak being pumped into them.
I do recall something earlier in this story where folks recognised that there was ammo storage issues in high heat/humidity, so if this has been passed onto the RN you might not get the jamming issues that affected the RN guns on the day.
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Coulsdon Eagle
Monthly Donor
Another reason would be that, from the birth of their country, the damned Colonials had enemies on their doorstep, be they King George's men of the native Amercians, and so had firearms at home for protection or for calling out the militia (or for hunting dinner).
England (yes) no longer had enemies raiding the borders (the Scots) or crossing the Channel; when we did the arms of the Fyrd & it's successors were longbows & swords. Very few British homes would have had a firearm, whereas most American homes would. Nothing in a constitution (don't have one) and now part of our culture, much as gun ownership became in the USA.
Ramp-Rat
Monthly Donor
Aircraft, ship and military equipment identification of all sorts, is a very specialist field, and needs to be both taught and studied extensively for people to build up the skills necessary. At the beginning of WWII in Britain you had the Battle of Barking Creek were two formations of RAF Fighters attacked each other. And the channel convoys were notorious for opening fire on any aircraft that they saw irrespective of which side it was from. It was only with the introduction of training of aircrews that the situation improved, and RAF pilots could be trusted to not shoot their own side down 90% of the time. Things were so bad that by D-Day the Navy couldn’t trust the numerous crews on the ship not to open fire at anything with wings, and given the large numbers of aircraft that were going to be flying around, this was a major problem. The solution to which was to take a large number of older men who were members of the ROC, Royal Observer Corps, who were experts at aircraft recognition, these guys could at a glance tell the difference between ours and theirs. And could normally given a good look tell the difference between various Marks of an aircraft, again from either side. These men were taken onboard ships of the invasion fleet, and unless they identified the aircraft as hostile, you could not open fire. There is no question that at a quick glance, while under fire, the difference between POW, Repulse and Exeter are not so obvious, all three have two turrets forward and one aft, and all three had two funnels. Which given a brief glance by an aircrew suffering a significant emotional moment, could easily result in confusion. The only outlier was Cornwall which had two turrets forward and the same aft, with three funnels, which made her distinctive, of all the ships in Force Z. Yes a long service man from the pre war British Navy might be able to tell you what class of ship he was looking at, if it was British, and might have a good idea when it came to German, French and Italian ships, but unless he had served in the Far East or on the Caribbean station, he was unlikely to have much of a clue about Japanese or American ships. It’s only the ultimate nerds, who spent their life studying ships who would have any idea about a random ship that they have seen. Most people relied on looking a ship up in Janes and that is why virtually all naval vessels carried a copy.
RR.
RR.
The point @Belisarius II is making is that in those kind of cases the mistaken identity happened with ships sailing alone (EDIT: or in company of similar sized units) When Tenedos was identified as a battleship it was sailing independently towards Singapore. If she had been in the company of actual battleships this wouldn't have happened because the battleships would look more like battleships than Tenedos did. If the Japanese attack Force Z they will not misidentify cruisers or destroyers as there are battleships serving as comparison.
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Untrue, Exeter and Repulse look similar enough that I can definitely see the Japanese mistaking the cruiser for the Battlecruiser.
The Japanese did launch an air attack with forty odd bombers against USS Marblehead, who was sailing in company with a single Clemson class Destroyer. The Japanese airstrike somehow managed to mistake USS Jacob Jones I think it was for USS Marblehead thus the cruiser watched semi-amused as Jacob Jones maneuvered for her life dodging bombs.
Your faith in identification is very strong and not really borne out by history. Many times aircraft attacked mixed formations of ships and reported multiple battleships when it was in reality a battleship with a screen including cruisers.