Germany with Japan's navy

What if Germany had Japan's navy at beginning of world war 2? Were Japanese battleships better than the Brits. I'm sure that the Japs had better aircraft carrier tactics and aircraft.

Japanese navy was magnitudes better but still no match for the Royal navy.

You know, I'm not sure that it would make a huge difference because I'm not sure that Germany even had enough facilities and support structures in place to manage a fleet the size of Japan's. They would be able to give the Royal Navy a potentially lethal thrashing, however.

>Japanese navy was magnitudes better but still no match for the Royal navy.

Based on what happened with Prince of Wales and Repulse, I'd say that Japan was quite capable of dealing with the Royal Navy.

Years before the Kriegsmarine built itself up to anything like that, Britain and France invade. The naval arms race was one of the key instigating factors in WW1, and there's no way in hell the British are going to allow Germany to rebuild to a similar strength on the water.

Britain and France both displayed a naive willingness to allow Germany to engage in rapid military build-up during the years leading up to WW2.

>Based on what happened with Prince of Wales and Repulse, I'd say that Japan was quite capable of dealing with the Royal Navy.
PoW and Repulse were sunk by landbased twin-engine bombers.

I forgot this comes with the assumption that Germany had enough port facilities and other things needed to maintain a large navy

But the Japanese navy btfo the Royal navy, it was only stopped when America started pumping out an aircraft carrier every month

Pretty sure if the Japanese navy sent a token force half a world away to Europe without a proper escort in range of 200 twin-engine bombers they would've gotten btfo too.

I don't think having an larger escort would have made any difference, honestly. If there is one thing that the Pacific Theater proved, it's that surface ships without air cover are incredibly vulnerable to air attack.

What if Erich Raeder was an anaconda?

Then Germany would have successfully invaded and occupied Britain i have no doubts about it whatsoever.

>What if Erich Raeder was an anaconda?
Then Germany would have successfully invaded and occupied Britain i have no doubts about it whatsoever.

>Were Japanese battleships better than the Brits

Not really, only gun armed capital ships that Japanese had that were outright superior to what Brits had were Yamato&Musashi and those would still be in middle of construction during '39.

Nagato was superior to anything before the KGV class.

Escorts can mean a carrier and it's task group providing air cover.

Debatable, it's very comparable with the Nelrods, with the Nelrods having better armor while the Nagato was faster.

>Germany had the least relevant surface fleet of the major Axis powers
Really induces thought

Nelrods also had trouble turning at all, and took damage whenever they fired their guns. Even if Nelrods' issues were forced by treaty limitations, it's not debatable that Nagato was the far superior boat.

Nagato and the Nelrods have obsolete armor designs and in the case of the Nagato a really bizarre armor design. Would have been shit on by any of the modern battleship classes

>Would have been shit on by any of the modern battleship classes
Not a big deal considering there were like 10 modern battleships in the world altogether, due to treaty limitations.

And a significant portion of them are Italian, German, or French. Or in other words ships not likely to face the Nagato. But the British were rightfully afraid of the Italian navy in the Mediterranean and the supposed possibility of the French fleet falling into the hands of the Germans.

Their armor scheme wasn't obsolete at all.

Nagato had a reasonable armor scheme for the time. It's about as well protected on the belt as Bismarck, but some 15 years earlier. It shares the same faults with lightly armored turrets and barbettes.

Nelson's armor scheme is excellent, it has an inclined internal armor belt, thick deck armor, and a void/liquid/void TDS. It's protection is not that much worse than the American South Dakota class, the downside is awkward turret placement and slow.

The Royal Navy was still superior to the Japanese by a decent amount, but if the Germans did magically spawn such a fleet out of nowhere Britain would be in big fucking trouble. Britain would not for example be able to both contest the med, and keep the German navy blocked in port like they did in ww1. So North Africa, Malta and suez would be seized. If after conquering the Med the German and Italian navies could link up, they may seek and engagement with the Royal navy. The outcome of such a battle of several smaller ones is not clear. It depends on several factors, most importantly the status of the French navy at this point in the war. If the Royal navy is defeated, Britain is either starved out of the war or invaded. if the royal navy prevails, the ships it will have left wouldn't be able to operate much outside the british isles. it could defend against invasions, but German subs might now be able to still starve Britain out of the war, merely slower then in scenario 1. Brits may sue for seperate peace in that scenario offering the transfer of quite a number of colonial holdings in Africa and Asia.

Not OP, but I'm not sure how much of a force the French navy would be; at the outset, they had 1 carrier, and 6 battleships, 4 of them really obsolete and 2 of them basically similar to the Scharnhorst and Gnisenau. I'm not sure about the cruiser fleet, but I doubt it would make much difference.

> So North Africa, Malta and suez would be seized.
This does not follow; even overwhelming German/Italian dominance in the Med would not increase port capacity in Libya, nor would it stop supplies delivered through Suez, or magically build a railroad from Tripoli to Alexandria. As it was, the British were undergunned more often than not in the Med, and the Axis were still unable to press to the Nile.

Honestly, the bigger problem is that the British have a colossal and necessary shipping network which is hugely vulnerable. They had enough trouble with a handful of submarines, but a fleet that could give them a real workout is going to be enormously dangerous to the convoy war.

Assuming Germainy had the means to maintain such a fleet, they would have crushed the Royal Navy in a few months. Forget about battleships. Even taking the Yamatos and others out of the equation, the UK simply didn't have anything that could rival the Kido Butai at the start of the war, and their battleships have no way to defend against them.

UK had more carriers than IJN. RN planes had radar and thus were capable of night ops. It's not as clear cut as the memes in your head say.

Not him, but at September 1st, 1939, the Brits had four "real" carriers, Ark Royal, Furious, Glorious, and Courageous, as well as 3 lighter carriers/seaplane tenders Eagle, Argus, and Hermes.

The Japanese had 5m Kaga, Akagi, Soryu, Hiryu, Ryujo, and the smaller Hosho.

To be honest though, if you pack those fleets into the North Sea, either carrier force is going to be overshadowed by the land based planes. It's not like the Pacific atoll fighting where distances are huge and airbase space is enormously limited.

If Ryujo and Hosho count as "real" carriers the Eagle most certainly does.

I wouldn't count the Hosho, but the Ryujo carried 48 planes, which is as more than the Furious did.

The Jap's had far better carrier planes though, at least in 1940-41 when the war really got going.

Brit carrier bombers had RADAR and could operate in the dark.

>the Ryujo carried 48 planes
I'm pretty sure Ryujo never carried 48 planes for an actual op and wouldn't have been able to, no matter what Wikipedia says. She was built for 30~ planes.

>Well the Japanese army air force sunk a battleship and battlecruiser, so their navy was superior
Do you read what you write?

The Japanese navy was probably better than the English one.
Their biggest problem in the war was that they had the second best navy and they ended up facing the best one.

There's no reason to think that the Japanese navy was better other than memes.

>Less tonnage
>Less aircraft carriers
>Needed to copy RN raid on Taranto for Pearl Harbor
Yeah, great navy

I don't remember nips having radar equipped swordfish at night and using them.

Wrong that was the Japanese navy air force. G4Ms and G3ms were IJN.