How could Japan have won the Pacific War?

I just want a logical answer so that Japan WINS
The following answers are not valid
>Japan could not win against the US
>Muh China was great

Other urls found in this thread:

combinedfleet.com/economic.htm
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Midway
midway42.org/RoundTableBook/Update_Flight_to_Nowhere.aspx
usni.org/magazines/navalhistory/2012-05/mitscher-and-mystery-midway
blog.usni.org/2009/09/26/flightdeck-friday-smoke-and-the-battle-of-midway
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War#Japanese_casualties
alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/japan-wins-battle-of-midway-now-what.134444/
youtube.com/watch?v=f6U-mRvUPGQ
twitter.com/AnonBabble

You must build additional carriers

>Don't Attack US
>Invade Soviets instead
>Reform the army. Stop abuse towards soldiers, kick out megalomaniac generals, and so on and so on
>Get Tigers from Germany
>Better logistics
>No more bullshit like "muh Samurai spirit" or "mu Banzai Attack"

Attack Australia
>Get pure Anglo soldiers
>Conquer the world

>invade soviets
>haul your ass through thousands of kilometers of land so sparesly populated your troops would eat birch leaves by third month
>any strategic resources are so far away, they're not even worth it
>other than magadan, kolyma and vladivostok, all your gains are just shitload of trees and an army of mosquitos

WEW
E
W

The only conceivable chance of victory Japan had was if they could cripple the US navy at Midway.

Repeat after me.

Japan could not win against the US.

The problem with this of course was that Midway was an American trap.

>Muh China was great

Wasn't most of the Japanese Imperial Army locked down fighting the Nationalists, though?

Why march through the land?
Germany is on the other side.
Have soviets march through the land if they want to fight and weaken their german front.

The only chance they had, and it wasn't a particularly good chance, is to call FDR"s bluff concerning the NEI, wait for America to declare war on them, try to cast it as another case of big bad whitey bullying Asia around, and playing to the notions of the American public, try to outlast the U.S.

Being outproduced 8:1, there's no hope of victory in a direct attritional war.

Not really.

combinedfleet.com/economic.htm

If they had been right about Pearl Harbor (or perhaps had been more successful and got the carriers and fuel dumps) or found some other way to convince the US of a mutual interest in a "well managed East Asia," that's the only conceivable path to victory.

"Japan could not win against the US" is valid because their intention was always to sidestep war. We had rolled over when attacked previously, hitting Pearl was surely bigger but again, had they been more successful, it's much more likely direct confrontation would have at least been significantly delayed, giving them more time to present some mutual economic resolution.

And yet, the Japanese almost won.
The only reason the US won at Midway was that a bomber wing happened to find the Japanese navy.
If the Japanese had deployed their planes, it would have been a massacre. The A6M Zeroes were incredibly superior to the Wildcat.
>True story

So many things are incredibly wrong with this post.

To clarify, I'm not saying they were right to think money was our God, but certain elements of the political climate at the time could have made an economic, rather than military, resolution to Pearl Harbor at least plausible.

There was no Japanese intention to invade Australia or America as the armchair generals like to imagine, and an East Asia governed by Imperial Japan could have been functionally beneficial (much more so with hindsight) to the US.

the army and air forces were poorly run and badly organized. The navy was actually decent as far as WW2 navies go, but their obsession with battleships and not cycling out their best pilots to train new ones were big blunders.

But the only realistic option was to be happy with North East China, Taiwan and extracting little coastal colonies while the nationalists and communists found each other.

I wonder if Japan could have circumvented Philippines and just took the Dutch East Indies directly. Or what if they attacked only the Philippines instead of Pearl Harbour if that would have made a big difference in american readiness for war.

Please, enlighten us

>And yet, the Japanese almost won
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Playing into the enemy's endgame and losing 4 carriers for every 1 you sink is not nearly winning, my friend. But then again, this is the Millennial generation where everyone gets a participation trophy.

Japan sinks all the ships at Pearl, including the 3 carriers, instead of just damaging them.

Japan bombards successfully the refuel, resupply and repair stations at Pearl.

The guy who defended Iwo Jima would have been in charge since the beggining.

Japan wins an absolute victory at Midway.

It's simple, they win every battle they fight. Duh.

Give sacrifices to the Shinto gods to summon forth a modern japanese warship from the future to wreck havoc on foreign barbarians.

What would have happened if, say, Japan did not attack Pearl Harbor and instead just kept expanding in Asia?

Would the US declare war on them? How?

those megalomaniac generals were the ones ruling the government desu

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Midway
Read the first part and come back user

>Would the US declare war on them? How?

No but the USA embargo on oil meant the Japanese were critically short on supplies needed for a modern war. Their military would have ground to a halt in China and they would be forced to retreat.

Basically they wanted their cake and eat it too and the only realistic options to get independent oil was in south east asia or in siberia.

Siberia would have been a nightmare option so that left them with the Dutch East Indies route which meant kicking uncle sam in the hairy balls and hope hes actually a pussy despite all history at even that point saying otherwise.

the US would eventually join the allies anyway pearl harbor just sped it up

Just because they shot down a bunch of old, outdated torpedo planes didn't mean they were any close to winning the battle.

The US would have fought Germany, but not Japan.
The end of British and Dutch empires meant very little to the American public.

>Get Tigers from Germany
How?

>Invade Soviets
With what oil?

Don't fight. Come to an agreement with America to recognize Manchukuo in exchange for pulling out of China, and support puppet governments in Indonesia and Indochina under the guise of liberation. That might've worked for a while.

Couldn't they go to the Dutch East Indies without raping the Philippines? I mean, it's not like it's landlocked. Plus you can make a bridge through Indochina -> Japanese China > Japan

They could have gone around but the Japanese would have had an extremely difficult time taking the dutch east indies without having the philippines as a sort of resupply and organizational hub in between.

I am also sure the US would do everything short of outright war to prevent the japanese from carrying out such operations anyways since they didnt want the war continuing tin china or spreading southwards next to american clay.

It all would've come to a grinding halt without oil, which the US was well aware of.

Well first off, it wasn't as something as simple as "bombers found the Japanese fleet." There were so many factors that came into play why they were able to find and sink 3 Japanese carriers in 5 minutes.

And the vast overestimation of the Zero is also very wrong. Wildcats were able to achieve parity easily with the Zero. While not as fast as the Zero, it had plenty of other factors that they had over the Zero like more armor, self-sealing tanks, and higher diving speed. Literally the meme of "Zero is the best plane ever!" is overestimated because people keep hearing it dogfights well. Well newsflash, Wildcat pilots didn't always dogfight Zeroes and in fact were discouraged to do so. Wildcat pilots were able to kill Zeroes using other tactics like the Thach Weave and Boom and Zoom.

They tried that though.

Not him, but I assume he's talking about the several instances of serendipity that played out.

Hornet, her air groups, and the 'Flight to Nowhere';
midway42.org/RoundTableBook/Update_Flight_to_Nowhere.aspx
usni.org/magazines/navalhistory/2012-05/mitscher-and-mystery-midway

Why the torpedo bombers were massacred without doing any damage, and why the dive bombers were so successful;
blog.usni.org/2009/09/26/flightdeck-friday-smoke-and-the-battle-of-midway

tl;dr: lots of speculation/cover-up

No, they did'nt. They were planing on starving them out

cry more fag

Licensed production from Germany and also the oil they probably would get from the east indies or Australia maybe? If they invaded it.

No, they did attack Australia. They invaded Australian external territories and bombed the Australian mainland.

They did not have a coherent policy on what to do in the end though. There was a split between the Japanese navy and army on whether to invade or isolate the Australian mainland.

Australia
Oil
>Not a thing wrong there

They bombed Darwin once aaaand that's it.

>once

They bombed/strafed Darwin sixty-three times until 1943 when the Spitfire squadrons arrived.

Also the Sydney submarine attack, and dozens of ships that were sunk. Papua New Guinea was an Australian territory at that point as well, which was invaded.

>Bomb a minor port in northern Australia
>Claim a great victory for the Emperor

The IJA took just as many casualties in CBI than they did in the POA and SWPA. Really, they took more casualties in the POA and SWPA in terms of length of involvement (4 years vs. 8 years)

The plan was to make it so the US didn't have a fleet for a couple years, and then take over enough to sue for peace. Japan knew they could never win vs the US, and they didn't want to have to fight them in the first place.

Pearl Harbor was a good plan, but they got unlucky when they actually did it.

The pacific war turns on Midway and Guadalcanal.

The decisive destruction of the american carrier fleet, and the occupation of midway islands gives the Japanese a lot of options and a lot more time before American industrial capacity overwhelms them, and their fleet gets destroyed.

Its basically an air war, where if you set up air bases here and there you can cordon off whole sections of ocean from supply and troop ships. At Guadalcanal they where trying to cut off Australia from the rest of the world.

So say then win both and Australia is isolated and the US Navy's carrier task forces are out of the game. Do they have enough time before the Americans rebuild their carriers to finish off china? And even if they could manage that could they then use those troops to invade Hawaii, Australia, or Alaska?

Actually I lied. I thought they were on equal parity but I was wrong. Between 39% and 22% of Japanese military deaths happened in China, nowhere close to a majority.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War#Japanese_casualties

The Second-Sino Japanese War seems a little overblown.

Dude check out this thread from alternatehistory.com .....

This thread makes a good case for why winning at Midway was not the savior of Japan. Basically after Midway the US could strike at the Japanese fleet with submarines etc from Hawaii and thus force the Japanese into a war of attrition.

alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/japan-wins-battle-of-midway-now-what.134444/

It's doubtful they could occupy Midway. Invading Hawaii even more so.

Use stronger codes.... Maybe win battle of Midway.

thank you for this. I'll be sifting through this for hours.

It'd be quite impossible for them to invade Hawaii actually.

Use waifus, invade Midway while enemy soldiers sleep.

Japan would of had to invest more in science and develop a bomb weapon of their own.
Definitely they needed to research radar and other shit.
Japan had the potential to maybe keep America from progressing far across the ocean in mass troop numbers but they just hadn't figured out how.

>The following answers are not valid
>>Japan could not win against the US
>>Muh China was great
but OP, those two answers are the two most valid answers

because the only way japan wins if magical godlike being somehow increases their industrial outpot about tenfold, and provides them with a magical horn of cornucopia which spews forth oil and metal and rubber

Soviets don't want to fight though so I don't see your point?

What is it that ensures the blond beast remains dormant rather than completely extinct? Prosperity usually has that effect. Japan has lost its imperial spirit for example. Compare with Germany.

Japan had a lesser chance in winning the war than Germany ever did.

Hyperextending their forces like shit in numerous unfinished fronts is such a shit strategy, they deserved everything that hapened to them.

iirc there was some statistic along the line if that if every ship in the USN was magically sunk on Dec. 7, 41, and the IJN didn't lose a single ship in the coming years, assuming similar rates of production to OTL the USN would still be bigger by '44.
>>Japan could not win against the US
is right OP

Invent Atomic Bomb first.

If we assume victories at the Coral Sea, Miday, etc, it sets back the entire island hopping campaign. Even though they could outproduce the japs there isn't any way of knowing for certain how repeated disastrous defeats would influence the US approach to the war.

>Wildcat pilots were able to kill Zeroes using other tactics like the Thach Weave and Boom and Zoom.

Confirmed for War Thunder player pretending to know things about history.

The fuck does War Thunder have to do with anything. Those tactics are literally what the pilots used. Maybe you should learn more about history.

>Invade Soviets instead
And get wrecked just like in 1938 and 1939?
>Get Tigers from Germany
>Tigers were good tanks

Okay senpai.

>The A6M Zeroes were incredibly superior to the Wildcat.
Every available data proves you wrong.

Zeroes were based off incredibly outdated doctrine. Unable to make better engines, Japanese made the lightest and most "agile" fighter they could.

As a result it was quickly the slow low attitude sitting duck.

Those were literally the Wildcat's strengths you fucking moron. How else do you think they shot down as many Zeros as they did without being able to dogfight the thing?

>their obsession with battleships
In the years before WW2 they've built total 2 battleships and 8 aircraft carriers.

North Carolina class alone had 4 ships. Iowa another 4. Montana was about to get green-light for another 4 ships but the war ended.

North Carolina class had 2 ships. You're thinking of and missing the South Dakota class that had 4 ships.

Right, I fucked up.

That picture was a great read, thanks.

Eat shit, weeb.

Fuckin' Redcoats.

Thread theme?
youtube.com/watch?v=f6U-mRvUPGQ

not an argument

I posted this in a thread before, but it seems relevant.

>july 2014
>take part in historic MUN model simulation
>it's about ww2 and it starts in january 1942
>be yamamoto in the japanese gabinet
>everything is going well in ground campaing, germany beat off D-Day and was on its way to moscow, italy had the med in control, IJA troops were on the doorstep of bangladesh and the chinese truce did not prevail
>start strongly advocating for island hopping, seeing the allies had no presence in the pacific as far as hawaii
>everyone says i'm dumb and get ignored
>instead they decide the best idea is to keep the entirety of the IJN in the docks of the mainland
>mfw
>in early 1945 allies realized the IJN was doing shit and take over the entire ocean, leaving japan surroundered by their ships
>they also drop a nuke in tokyo and everyone died
>mfw

Great article.

To be fair, a lot of that had to do with them being almost full for their treaty limits on battleships anyway.

Battleships weren't even that bad of an idea when used correctly.
As far as I know Murricans have retooled theirs into basically being anti air support platforms and it worked for them.

Wasn't meant to be.

Do a better job at Pearl Harbor, make a deal with the weak americans so they keep selling you oil

Honestly if America were the aggressor they might be able to pull a nam

>destroy the infrastructure at pearl harbor not just the ships.
>knock the Brits out of Australia and papa.
>deflect nuclear bombs
not really sure how to do that last one

You shouldn't be sure how to do any of them? You look up raids that put ports out of action, like the one on St Nazaire, and we're talking multiple strikes with hundreds of massive 4 engined bombers, not a handful of carrier planes. And even then, when the efforts are taken to repair them, it's often a matter of weeks, a month or two at the most.

And how the fuck are you going to knock the Brits out of Australia and Papa New Guinea? With another million troops you don't have?

The Japanese were nowhere near winning Midway. By the time they attacked the Yorktown, had already lost 3 carriers.

The Nips played out extensive war games before the battle, where the us fleet on several occasions surprised, attacked and sunk japanese carriers. These results were just ignored. The Japs were not ready for warfare on a grand scale, they were strategically incompetent. Tactically superior, maybe, but that wont get you far...

>These results were just ignored.
Because it's a wargame. The point of the whole exercise is to test your battle plan in full, not get 30% of the way in and go "oh, whoops, those carriers got sunk, games are over." You're supposed to continue on in that instance.

However, it is entirely on Yamamoto for not learning from those games and recognizing the possibility of his striking force being undone in that exact way.

No, The point is to find weaknesses in your plan and adjust accordingly. The nips just ignored their findings and got blown up.

They did that though. By the end of the war they still had a good number of carriers ready to use. What they lacked was

>Planes
>Pilots
>Fuel
>Engineers
>Captains and admirals who weren't completely retarded

>soviets dont want to fight in eastern siberia

"no"

Nah. At Midway, the losses were 4 Japanese carriers for 1 American. Even if the result had been reversed, the battle still wouldn't have meant anything because the US could just have pooped twice that number of carriers in a matter of months while Jap forces would've just kept dwindling with no way to replace them because they were literally running on fumes. the difference in industrial capacity was just too big.

>good number
what does that make the american carriers then? bonanzasupermegadoubleplusgood number?

Bullshit. After the US cut the oil imports, Japan had exact two options.
>adjust politics according to the USA
>wage war against the USA

Other than the japanese sinking or seriously damaging multiple US carriers, I see no scenario of a japanese victory. And even then it would only be a partial victory because japanese resources would not be enough to wage a mainland invasion.

Consider why a semi simulator would have planes excelling at aerial maneuver and tactics while sucking at other tactics.

Why do people think victory at Midway would mean America would give up? It'd just be prolonged war.

Pearl Harbor just made them angry, but repeated defeats would very quickly change the public opinion no matter how many ships the navy could line up, at least that's what Yamamoto was counting on. You gotta remember that up until that point, Japan was essentially winning the war.

USA had the strongest industry in that period so their numbers of stuff produced are way outside the norm, yes.

>dont attack USA
>do everything the same
>take Korea
>take everything not owned by the US
>do nothing else
>bargain your way to keeping as much as you can

The US aircraft carriers were at pearl harbor during the attack, instead of out on exercises, and sunk. Additionally, Japan attacks with even heavier force, making sure the US can't raise and repair the ships they did.

This allows Japan to conquer the Pacific, and fortify it's holdings. By the time the US is able to get back into a navy war, they are up against very well defended Japanese Islands, leading to the US being able to conquer some, but not all of the pacific as it did. The US would then have to choose to focus on Japan or Germany solely.

My guess is the US would've focused on Japan, as control of the pacific is more important, and Hitler was doomed from the start, even if the US didn't get involved.