Was the Japanese Empire the last enemy of near-equal status the US fought?

>near-equal status

>They pretty much singlehandedly took on the USA, Australia, New Zealand, India, China, European colonists in SE Asia and Indochina

Germany took on all of those, except China and Indo China, and the Soviet Union, France, Poland, Greece and Jugoslavia.

The US and British also concentrated more of their industrial output and military strength on the European theater of war rather than Pacific.

Let's say the Brits had not been at war with Germany, then the Japs would not have been able to take Singapore for instance.

Fighting China in the korean war was the last time an American war was back and forth

>Let's say the Brits had not been at war with Germany, then the Japs would not have been able to take Singapore for instance

Are you arguing that Singapore's defence was somehow reduced when war with Germany began?

>near-equal or equal enemy was the War of 1812
>US is nearly as powerful as Britain in 1812
Nowhere near, not even close. Britain had 10 times the economy and industrial capacity alone (without empire), a MUCH larger navy and a larger army.
What the fuck are you saying?

Yes, obviously the British allocated most of their military arms and supplies to the European theater

The british were running out of food, water and ammo at Singapore.

Nah. It's 10 times with empire

As early as mid-1940, Singapore was described by its officers as weak. They were low on supplies because depots had been captured by the Japanese.

I can accept that the British would have been in a much better position to retake it, but I don't think the state of initial defences would be any different.

Santa Ana’s Mexico was at parity and somewhat even better at some things. They may have lost, but he was called the “Napoleon of the New World” for a reason. And everything that made Stonewall Jackson great he learned from fighting the Mexicans.

Ok.

Mid-1940 the British and Germans were already at war, kiddo.

And that’s without adding Wellington to the equation. 1812 could have gone very differently if Parliament had decided to get serious about us.

We still thrashed you at sea and the lake fights, though, you limey bastards, so HA!

I'm sure the IJN defeated the British Eastern fleet with/without their war with Germany, and secured IJA occupation of Singapore.
They were simply unstoppable at that point.

Oh i don't deny Britain got its ass handed to them on many occassions in the 1812 war, it's just that an user asserted that the US was nearly equal to UK at that time

>Ok
>Kiddo
Don't falter now

>Near-equal
No. The more I've read about the Pacific war, the more I've come to realize how fundamentally un-equal it was. Japan had no chance of winning. Take a look at this chart if you doubt what I'm saying.

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Even yamamoto said it was impossible

The Mexican-American War was the last time the US fought an enemy that had some level of parity with itself. I suppose the Civil War as well, but as the war wore on the Union only got more powerful while the Confederacy weakened.

The confederates actually had a very decent shot at winning. All they would have to do in order to win would be to stop Abraham Lincoln from getting re-elected in 1864.

A Royal Navy not held up in Europe would have had a much higher presence in the Pacific.

Token forces like Force Z would have been small fish compared to what they could have fielded instead. Did they even have any aircraft carriers in the pacific at the time of Singapore? Imagine the british ship fielding the Ark Royal, Illustrious and Formideable in the pacific. It would have been a game changer.

>It would have been a game changer.
I don't think so, given the fact that British carriers got BTFO shortly after Singapore as well and their carrier-borne planes such as Fulmar, Hurricane and Swordfish were no match for their IJN counterparts such as Zero (in its prime), Type 97 and Type 99.
The IJN was really powerful at that point; not only carrier fleets but those formidable surface combatants, ranging from dangerous cruisers and destroyers loaded with Long Lance torpedoes, to Yamato class battleship..

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>2 carriers lost to 5 carriers
Hmmmmmmmmm

Are you suggesting the the british navy would not have been a game changer for the conflict compared to the skeleton force that was?

Are you retarded?

Yes.
The IJN would've easily raped a reinforced British fleet as well, and unlike the US, the UK didn't have the capability to churn out ships to compensate for the losses in a short period. Of course, in the long run, they would've managed to retake Singapore with the US, but they couldn't stop Japan at that point.

>The IJN would've easily raped a reinforced British fleet as well
How?

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They could have won in the first battle If they weren't complete fucking idiots

This is beyond delusional.
THey had no way of replacing pilots and capable seamen. They still wouldn't have protected their convoys. They would still have poor damage control and their losses would have been even higher than they were.

Actually, that's not so relevant, because no matter how many carriers you have it's useless as long as carrier-borne planes are subpar. British carrier fleets were not so much of a threat to Japan at the point of Singapore.

Maybe at the time of singapore
But...

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Britain had a much stronger industry than Japan and Germany

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That's GDP per capita you fucking retard

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But we're talking about the point of Singapore.

I can't find actual industry comparison but this GDP chart probably gives a good substitute.
For reference the US is about $800billion
British empire is about $700billion

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>European colonists in SE Asia and Indochina

This sure was an intense fight

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>This is what grorious Nihon nationalism actually believes

I don't think anyone believes the IJN could've defeated the entire RN

If the RN is fighting by themselves without American involvement, then Japanese victory is a real possibility. Britain will never be able to commit their entire navy to the pacific, they'll have to hold some of it in reserve to protect the home islands. The fraction that does get deployed to the Pacific won't be able to easily overwhelm the IJN.

I think an user was suggesting that the IJN was more powerful than the RN in total

The amount diverted to the Pacific would be a sizeable chunk of the fleet should the demand be high. The IJN were great at a lot of things, but a war of attrition was not it.

The Brits were simply much better at war than the Nips ever were.

Why would it be a war of attrition?

because the brits would not give up, which is what japanese strategy depended on happening

If the British fleet gets destroyed then it doesn't really matter whether they formally surrender or not. Here is my point, it took the Americans close to 4 years to defeat Imperial Japan, and the Americans were working with a vastly larger navy than what Britain had available. Britain's much smaller force is not going to be able to defeat the Japanese. So it seems reasonable to assume that it will take 5 years or longer for Britain to defeat Japan if they're fighting on their own, and that's assuming that Japan never scores any kind of major naval victory. If Japanese does manage to score some kind of major naval victory, then Britain might simply be expelled from the region.

Important members of the conservative cabinet were trying to get a peace deal right before the evacuation of Dunkirk.

Only Churchill's resolve held through.

Dont think the Brits would automatically have fought to the death two oceans away.

There is no way the Royal Navy would have gotten destroyed. There is simply no way in hell. It's much bigger and with endlessly more resources at it's disposal.

They did and they would have.

>Here is my point, it took the Americans close to 4 years to defeat Imperial Japan, and the Americans were working with a vastly larger navy
Americans didn't have a vastly larger fleet in the Pacific until the end of 1943 though.

>here are some reasons that X scenario may have panned out
>Nuh in!

>There is simply no way in hell

Thats not true? There is definitely a good chance.

The British would not send the entire fleet to fight the japanese.

So you tell us how many ships from the RN could be realistically committed to the war and we'll tell you if that is enough or not.

Japanese navy is much smaller than royal navy and US navy was roughly same size

>It's much bigger
Is it really? The Imperial Japanese Navy started the Pacific War with 10 aircraft carriers. How many carriers did the British have in 1941? And always remember that Britain simply cannot deploy their entire fleet to the pacific, they will always have to hold a significant fraction in reserve to maintain their home fleet.

The British would have sent as many as they deemed necessary to keep on to their colonies - which would be a lot. More than the Japanese could handle.

Wait are we talking about the UK not fighting Germany at the same time?

Is the British empire completely involved?

Is America selling oil and guns to both sides?

Let's set the parameters here

If you arent willing to give numbers then I guess you dont know yourself.

>hold a significant fraction in reserve to maintain their home fleet.
Why? The kriegsmarine is shite and Britain won the battle of Britain

Britain doesn't have the ability to just make new battleships/carrier appear out of thin air. If they ever reach a point where they've simply lost too many ships, they're going to have to pull out whether they like it or not.

I thought that we were pretending that Germany didn't exist in this scenario.

>Here is my point, it took the Americans close to 4 years to defeat Imperial Japan, and the Americans were working with a vastly larger navy than what Britain had available

The Americans had agreed to "Germany First". It took them 4 years to defeat Japan *as a secondary front of their war effort*.

Japan will loose too many first

Actually Japan was comically bad at killing Americans except for a couple of exceptions like Iwo Jima. About 3 times as many American casualties were in the European theaters as opposed to the PTO.

>And the projected casualties for the Battle of Kyushu alone exceeded total casualties in the entire Northwest European theate
Yeah a fantasy battle.

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Maybe, maybe not, but even if Britain does end up winning, it would be a very long, bitter struggle that would probably take at least 5 years or longer. In the end it would be a pyrrhic victory.

>The Imperial Japanese Navy started the Pacific War with 10 aircraft carriers.
Of those 10, only 6 were fleet carriers.

>How many carriers did the British have in 1941?
Assuming no war with Germany, UK would have 8 fleet carriers and 3 smaller carriers by Dec 1941.

You do realize in the IOR the British fleet located and bombed the Jap fleet twice without the Jap fleet being able to retaliate even once, right? All Japs managed was to hunt down outdated ships left at port.

It would have been enough to sink undefended convoys coming into the UK and pick off lone ships leaving.

Also

>no navy left in the UK

A small german squad could then just roll up and mine the harbours or even stage a direct raid. You cant rely on coastal batteries or just the RAF.

SOME number of ships need to remain in Britain and protect shipping lanes.

>the japanese were comically bad at killing americans
I guess so were the germans, considering that the ratio between deaths on the western front vs deaths on the eastern front is nearly 1:1

*pacific front

More like 3:1

The casualty rate for US forces employed in the pacific was nearly 4x higher than forces employed in europe
pwencycl.kgbudge.com/C/a/Casualties.htm

You are kidding right? Japan was a joke. The last time the US fought an enemy where them winning militarily wasn't almost guaranteed was when they scuffled with the Brits in 1812.

Apples and oranges. A lot of troops were landed in Europe and never saw action. It's the nature of a major land warfare. Meanwhile, only the most essential troops were landed on tiny coral atolls and most saw action. It's a testament to Japanese incompetence that the casualty rate is only 4x higher.

This.
Had China not directly assisted the NKs there would be only one Korea.

> 3 times as many American casualties were in the European theaters as opposed to the PTO
Outright lie, see:
>a fantasy battle
Are you trying to be retarded? It was a battle that never got to happen because the USA developed nukes and decided to just fling them at Japan until they gave up. Do you think the Germans would have managed to kill so much as a single ground soldier if the USA had nukes when they were fighting Germany?

The table's units are in rates of thousand men COMMITTED per day, you nigger, it literally only includes frontline combat units.

You are literally trying to use a battle that never happened as proof that Japanese were fierce fighters. Try telling me that's not the epitome of retardation, retard.

>You are literally trying to use a battle that never happened
I'm using the Americans' own projections of that battle, retard, which they based off of their previous engagements with the Japanese. The point was that the Japanese had four and a half million troops they never got to use, because the Americans had nukes by the time they were about to invade. Again, if the Americans had nukes when invading Germany and just decided to fling them at Germany until they gave up, how many Americans do you think the Germans would have killed?

4.5 million troops without artillery or vehicles. Invasion of the Japanese mainlands would've gone the way of 99% of US-Japan battles, even if people like to focus on the 2 that were hard.

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>4.5 million troops without artillery or vehicles
Another lie from a retard. They had 5,300 tanks and 13,700 artillery pieces plus 13,500 aircraft (mostly to be used as kamikazes).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall#Available_equipment_for_defenders

please respond to

>this link
So basically they had 4,742 heavy artillery pieces for 4.5m soldiers and
>5000 tanks
which were not protected against rifle fire.
I think the Japs would've been in for a bad time if those 4.5 million had to fight.
Oh and a bunch of untrained pilots who were told to literally kill themselves.

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>4,242 artillery pieces for 4.5m soldiers
Stop being retarded, they had 13,700 pieces of 60mm or above. Japanese light artillery was very effective and was noted as such in American intelligence briefings. Most British, German, and Soviet artillery was also below 100mm in caliber.
>5000 tanks which were protected against rifle fire
Another lie, the majority were Type 97 (25-30mm armor all around) with a slightly smaller number of Type 95 (15-20mm) and several hundred actual mediums (most notably the Chi-Nu with 20-50mm of armor). They were all rifle-proof and overall similar to what everyone was using from 1939 to 1942. Obsolete, but still a considerable amount of armor.
>oh and a bunch of pilots who were told to literally kill themselves
At Okinawa kamikazes killed 1.79 Americans and wounded about the same number for every kamikaze lost, a total of 3.5 casualties per kamikaze. They also sunk 36 warships of ~40,000 tons (including 12 destroyers) and inflicted varying levels of damage on 368 more, which is about 28 tons sunk and 0.26 ships damaged per kamikaze. During a prospective Battle of Kyushu, projected to last at least 4 months, the Japanese had 2,637 on Kyushu itself another 4,500 ready to go in southern Honshu, and the American fleet was nowhere near as well-protected as it was at Okinawa. If they did no better at Kyushu than they did at Okinawa, which is ridiculous because the density of air defenses at Okinawa was not matched by any other fleet assembled in human history and was greater than the Olympic fleet, there would have been ~180 US ships of ~200,000 tons sunk, literally every single ship in the fleet being damaged, and 25,000 Americans becoming casualties just at sea.

>I think the Japs would've been in for a bad time if those 4.5 million had to fight.
Again, you're retarded. The US military itself did extensive research on this subject in preparation for the invasion. Their estimates were mouth-wateringly optimistic, using previous battles with Japan as a basis but underestimating Japanese kamikaze strength by x4 and land strength by x2.

The US Sixth Army, the formation tasked with carrying out the major land fighting on Kyushu, estimated a figure of 394,859 casualties serious enough to be permanently removed from unit roll calls during the first 120 days on Kyushu. MacArthur's Intelligence Chief, Maj. Gen. Charles A. Willoughby, warned of between 210,000 and 280,000 battle casualties in the push to the "stop line" one-third of the way up Kyushu. In order to sustain the campaign on Kyushu, planners estimated a replacement stream of 100,000 men per month would be necessary. These are the figures the US military actually used and was fighting the war based on. And they were, again, derived after under-stating Japan's strength (545,000 men with 2,000-2,500 kamikazes instead of the 916,828 men and 9,000+ kamikazes they actually had).

Something in the 200,000 - 400,000 range is a bare minimum here. This is just Kyushu, which contained less than a fifth of Japan's military power and less than a tenth of its population.

Longer version of this, per data from D.M. Giangreco's "Hell to Pay".

There was a direct method of estimating casualties derived from the US experience on Okinawa, and mirrored in other locations toward the end of the Pacific War. The 'Sinister Formula', created by MacArthur's intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Charles A Willoughby, essentially states that 2 to 2.5 Japanese 'division-equivalents' could extract approximately 40,000 American battle casualties on land, i.e, one casualty for every Japanese defender.

However, whereas on Okinawa the heart of the Japanese garrison (completely under the guns of the US Pacific Fleet throughout) consisted of only two Type B divisions, the 24th, the 62nd, and an Independent Mixed Brigade, the First and Second General Armies on the mainland had access to a much more formidable assortment of units that considerably outstripped Ushijima's divisions in both numbers and firepower. Nevertheless, keeping the original 20,000 casualties per division-equivalent and applying it to the Japanese defense plans for Kyushu (not counting kamikazes):

For Mutsu-Go, Lt. Gen Yokoyama's plan to confront Operation Olympic, the defense of southern Kyushu fell primarily to the 40th and 57th Armies (9 divisions, 2 tank brigades, 3 independent mixed brigades) plus reserves of 2 divisions, 3 mixed brigades, a tank brigade, and a tank regiment coming from the 56th Army. Additionally, it was expected that the 15th Area Army in Chugoku be able to send an additional 2 to 4 divisions across the strait from Shimonoseki. The remaining 4 divisions in Northern Kyushu (3 infantry and 1 AA) were relatively immobile and not directly factored in to fighting an invasion in the south. Thus, having to grind through between 19 and 21 'division-equivalents,' Krueger's Sixth Army could be expected to incur some 400,000 casualties (including between around 100,000 to 110,000 killed and missing) on Kyushu before Japanese resistance could be broken.

>All these brits thinking they could have defeated Japan by themselves when it took America almost 4 years and nuclear weapons to defeat japan IRL

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here's more recent numbers from The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy, p. 200

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It's almost sad, if you look at actual combat deaths in the pacific it's almost pathetic how many marines died. I seem to remember 300k total deaths from everything (sickness and combat etc) and japan lost untold numbers.

Japan did the right thing, but high risk high reward doesnt always pay off.

"High Risk, High Reward" only applies if there is an actual chance of succeeding. The only way that Japan could have won is if after Pearl Harbor, the United States was suddenly struck by a massive asteroid, or the yellowstone volcano erupted, or both.

no
Japan is overrated by weeaboos in every single aspect

Well they have a better chance than just doing nothing and losing their hard fought gains of the last 60 years. I understand the odds being high, but high risk high reward was their only chance.

The same could be said for Germany.