An interesting discussion around a what-if scenario caught my ear in a recent Q&A episode of the Unauthorized History of the Pacific War. It was suggested what would’ve happened if the Empire of Japan had seized Sumatra and other islands in the Southern Resource Area but had not attacked Pearl Harbor or the Philippines. In this blog, I’ll explore this alternate scenario and how it could’ve brought about the very thing the Imperial Japanese Navy had sought since the start of the war—Kantai Kessen (naval fleet decisive battle).
The Counterfactual Problem: Wargaming and Military Strategy
One of the immediate problems with this counterfactual is that it ignores the Japanese wargaming conclusion pre-war and basic military strategy. As John Parshall stated on the podcast in response to this question, the Japanese had concluded that an attack on the Dutch, British, or Americans would lead to a war with all three.
So, if war were inevitable with the US by attacking Sumatra and the resource-rich areas in this part of the Pacific, they would not bypass the Philippines or leave Pearl Harbor unscathed. The second problem is the Philippines itself. As a bastion of US air power, it stands in a critical place that could threaten the shipping lanes from Sumatra and surrounding areas back to the home islands where extracted resources would’ve been processed. Thus, they would be forced to attack, at the very least, the Philippines to secure these supply lines, bringing the US into the war.
Now, if the Japanese, for some reason, went against all military doctrine and wargaming learnings, their attacks on these territories would probably not bring the US into the war. But that has no chance of happening. But there’s another scenario that, with our hindsight today, might have achieved what the Japanese wanted from the beginning of the war. And that was the great decisive naval battle they called Kantai Kessen, which they tried to force time and time again (Midway) but failed to achieve mainly because of the advent of the aircraft carrier to overtook the battleship as the most lethal weapon of the high seas.
The Problem of Pearl Harbor
The Philippines would’ve been a thorn in the Japanese side if they had not attacked them when they seized the Southern Resource Area. So what if they had attacked the Philippines and taken Sumatra and surrounding resource-rich areas, leaving Pearl Harbor untouched?
In our timeline, it made sense why the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. If war was inevitable with the US, it made sense to hit Pearl Harbor so that the US Pacific Fleet couldn’t counterattack, flanking the Japanese southern advance. Yet, one of the critical flaws of the attack on Pearl Harbor was that it was so shallow. Six of the eight battleships struck at Pearl Harbor were repaired and sent to fight in the war. If they were sunk in deep water, that would’ve not been the case.
Kantai Kessan Near the Philippines
While this is some serious foresight and ignores some key facts of the time (like Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who was in charge of the Japanese Combined Fleet and advocated attacking Pearl Harbor), if the Japanese wanted to achieve Kantai Kessen, they could’ve emptied Pearl Harbor by leaving it alone. In that scenario, the US Pacific Fleet, with the Philippines under attack, would’ve followed War Plan Orange with the surface force intact. This would have meant a major naval clash near the Philippines or the Palaus.
It’s unclear how the carriers would factor into it in such a clash. Both sides still had their battleship camps, as the aircraft carrier had not yet proven its dominance over this old way of thinking. Assuming the carriers are not involved in such an engagement, it’s hard to predict how that would’ve ended. Neither force would’ve had radar-guided firing systems, so that it would’ve been truly an old-school gun battle at sea.
If the battle happened at night, the advantage would most likely go to the Japanese, who, throughout the early stages of the war, proved to be superior night fighters on the high seas. If it was a daytime battle, both sides have a fighter’s chance of winning. In such a scenario, intentionally avoiding attacking Pearl Harbor would mean the Japanese had planned for such a battle. That obviously would’ve taken some serious foresight, but that’s unrealistic, given how events played out. Still, it’s an interesting scenario, for it seems one of the few I’ve heard that could’ve brought about Kantai Kessan.
If the US Pacific fleet had been sunk in deep water, that would’ve put the US Navy in even more dire straits, though I am not convinced it would’ve led to the US pursuing peace. If the carriers were spared from the fight, we would see an alternate version of what we saw in our timeline play out. Heads would roll with such a devastating defeat, and whoever took over would have only the carriers and the submarines at their disposal to hold the Japanese off until the surface fleet could be reconstituted.
Images:
Commentaires