WI: No Pearl Harbour

[torten]

Quite simple really. Japanese decide not to go ahead with the Pearl Harbour Attack, and instead decide to give the Americans a decisive battle - use the Aircraft carriers to torpedo some of the battleships and weaken the fleet, and send in the Battleships to finish them off. While the Japanese will need to provide forces for the other fights going on in the pacific (DEI and Phillipines) this at the most might not involve more than heavy cruisers, and maybe some of the old slow Battleships, like the Fuso's and Ise's, which are too old for a fleet action.

So what do the Americans do? Do they charge across the pacific for a decisive battle like the Japanese want or do they bide their time and simply wait for the Japanese to head out and attack somewhere like Midway.

 

[GarethC]

No, the Americans don't charge across the Pacific. Interwar planning (Plan Orange in 1935, then Plan Dog in 1940) had accepted that the Philippines could not be held against Japan unless Congress spent a lot more money than Congress chose to spend on defending them.

 

[cpip]

Ultimately, American planning by the mid-to-late 1930s was to do, more or less, exactly what they did do: build up a fleet, raid on the peripheries, counter the Japanese in a few spots, and eventually island-hop to victory. The last "charge across the Pacific to relieve the Philippines" plans were given up by the end of the 1920s.

 

[Antiochus V]

Quite simple really. Japanese decide not to go ahead with the Pearl Harbour Attack, and instead decide to give the Americans a decisive battle - use the Aircraft carriers to torpedo some of the battleships and weaken the fleet, and send in the Battleships to finish them off. While the Japanese will need to provide forces for the other fights going on in the pacific (DEI and Phillipines) this at the most might not involve more than heavy cruisers, and maybe some of the old slow Battleships, like the Fuso's and Ise's, which are too old for a fleet action.

So what do the Americans do? Do they charge across the pacific for a decisive battle like the Japanese want or do they bide their time and simply wait for the Japanese to head out and attack somewhere like Midway.

As others have said it seems the US plan evolved away from charging blindly into a meat grinder. I think the US in 1941 was very constrained in its responses and with or without the Pearl Harbour raid probably had to follow roughly the same strategy of building up and methodically clearing a path.

The timing of the Pearl Harbour raid worked well for Japan as the various Allied positions in the region were fairly lightly defended allowing Japan the freedom to use the carriers where they thought could do the most damage. I suspect that had Japan waited a year the carriers would have been needed to cover the landings in Malaya and the Phillipines, at that date the US fleet would also have been stronger and might well have taken a more aggressive approach.

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

War Plan Orange. Any version post 1924

Plan Dog

Rainbow Plan/s

WPP-46 Pacific Fleet war plan

For a fictional version based on the 1924 USN wargames take a look at Bywaters 'The Great Pacific War'. this turns the 1920s wargame into a future war in the 1930s.