COMensarations
Friday, November 04, 2005
The War That Wasn’t — Part 1
What if the Japanese had gone for the gusto?
Long ago in a war, far, far away, A group of Japanese navy types surprised and beat the heck out of the US Navy at a place called Pearl Harbor. They then went on to overrun much of their corner of this ball of dirt, in a fashion similar to the way fascists in Europe had been doing for the previous year and a half.
It surprised and shocked the people of this country in a manner like nothing else before.
As a result this nation did some drastic things to our economy, our ways of thinking of the world and even to some of our own citizens.
In the end, we, this nation and all of our allies, defeated the Empire of Japan as well as the fascists in Europe.
But, it might not have turned out like that....
Not quite so long ago, by half, I came across a very well done strategic naval simulation of the war against imperial Japan by Simulations Publications, Inc. (SPI), titled USN. It came in their magazine, Strategy & Tactics (S&T). It was a good simulation. And playing it against myself, I came to realize that there was a possibility that the Japanese might not have merely surprised and dealt a heavy blow to the US Navy at Pearl Harbor, but they might have, had they had the chutzpah, actually invaded and seized the islands.
Their high command’s misunderstanding of our capabilities lead them to believe that merely beating us down a bit would be enough to make us cower at their might. They were, fortunately, horribly wrong. But, if their high command had said, “Let us be safe and secure and hold the United States at bay by holding the only superb base between us and them,” things might have turned out remarkably different. Not just with respect to how we fought the war against Japan, but also for all the parties in the Second World War; US, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Russia and China.
Coming closer to current time, SPI had gone away, but not before it had inspired other historical simulators to come up with their own efforts. In 1985, Victory Games released Pacific War. A ‘mega-game’, if you will. Over 2000 playing pieces to be strewn over a huge, brightly colored map with numerous charts and intricate detail in their effort to come up with the most accurate recreation of the war in the Pacific available.
It is fought at the strategic and operational levels. It takes into account all aspects of combat power offered by air, land and naval units. It has extensive consideration of both command-control and, most importantly, logistics. It’s REALLY good. But, it’s also REALLY big. It’s taken me several days to set the fool thing up. The distaff is not going to be able to use the big table in the Game Room for sewing activities for quite some time.
Why have I suborned her efforts at turning our house in to a more lavish home? She’ll have to troop up and down the stairs from her Sewing Room on the third floor to the large Dining Room table in order to work on the sheers for the Library windows.
Well, it has to do with a ‘discussion’ over on Vox Popoli.
Vox Day, the operator of that blog, a fellow M and a regular columnist at WorldNetDaily (WND) , is in a snit with the luscious Michelle Malkin, another columnist at WND. He seems to get into snits with a number of his associates there. Not sure exactly why. I suspect it’s because he doesn’t play well with others. That’s apparent from what he does to others on his blog.
At any rate, the Malkin-snit is about the necessity of the (in)famous Japanese Internment of the Second World War. I won’t go into the gory details here, but suffice it to say that during the course of expressing his [hot] disdain for Malkin, he stated that it was “IMPOSSIBLE” for Imperial Japan to have invaded the West Coast or the Hawaiian Islands.
This rang a bell in my head regarding the idea I had in the 70s, that it WAS possible. So, I finally got up the nerve to set up the mega-game to test my theory. And, ever since I announced my intentions to do so, Vox, God bless him [with knowledge and understand and wisdom AND humility], has been doing his best/worst to convince me I am on a fool’s errand.
However, all his efforts have been in vain, except perhaps to provide some additional information to improve the effort AND provide me with a code name for the operation; COCONUT.
The execution of this project is going to take quite some time. As I see it, even months. Why? Because I plan on testing the possibility that this change in the Imperial Japanese strategy for conduct of the war would result in an ultimate victory for not only themselves, but for the European fascists too.
I solicit people’s advice on forces involved, capabilities of various equipment and even their help in planning/playing out the various operations that will make up the entire war effort. Some of which we’ll be able to put people up for their visiting to assist in the play of the simulation.
I’ll make postings on the blog about the state of affairs as they develop.
The current Situation Report (SITREP) is that the map has been populated with the forces in play on 7 December 1941. All allied forces are in their appropriate locations, in accordance with the scenario set-up for the strategic game. All Japanese forces on the Asian mainland are in their appropriate locations, in accordance with the same.
For the purpose of testing this theory, that the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) could not only attack, but also invade and seize the Hawaiian Islands, the Japanese forces in the Pacific basin area are only partially deployed. Those on the home islands are set aside for consideration of what could be used to carry off such a bold operation.
I’m in the process of formulating the Order of Battle (OB) for the strike and invasion task forces. I’m also considering how to best carry off the conquest of the rest of the southwestern Pacific, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, India and Australia.
More to follow.....