Michele
10/29/2009 10:06:00 AM
"Allen W. McDonnell" <tanada@peakoil.com> ha scritto nel messaggio
news:hc8bdg$8qs$1@news.eternal-september.org...
>
> The only realistic way I have ever read of that they could manage this is
> by concentrating all their navy building on Submarines, long range, well
> armed and very plentiful. Probably need then to be equipped with
> Schnorkle gear and the best available passive sonar, plus excellent
> tactics and training for the crews. Give them all that and they can pre
> position wolf packs and take out the Enterprise task force and the
> Lexington task force on December 7th, then use their battleships as bait
> to draw the American battleships out to sea and ambush them via submarine
> as well. The USN and RN both had a sad faith in ASDIC/SONAR and it took
> many hard lessons before improvements came along to make finding
> submarines much more than luck.
That might happen, with the advantage of surprise.
>
> With an effective submarine blockade set to hit anything coming through
> Panama and destroying the merchant marine that was already in the Pacific
> it becomes virtually impossible for the USA to hold onto anything in the
> Pacific, they can not resupply bases anywhere and they will fall one by
> one as they run out of food and or ammunition. Oahu can hold out the
> longest, it has a lot of Army and Marine troops on it and a halfway
> descend capacity for food if emergency measures are taken to plant as much
> land as possible to crops, but airborne reinforcements and supplies from
> California to Hawaii will soon be one way flights as aviation gasoline
> supplies on the islands run out.
>
That ain't going to happen. Even German wolf packs were mainly effective
against slooow convoys, and they tended to fare badly once the convoys had
their own airborne ASW capabilities. The Pacific is bigger than the Northern
Atlantic. So the Japanese might initially hamper US shipping with their
all-sub navy, but they aren't going to hit many carriers and battleships,
once they have no longer the surprise, and later on, even merchant convoys,
if escorted by carriers with ASW aircraft, are going to have fine chances to
get through.
On top of that, the all-sub IJN isn't going to be able to carry out massive
landing operations. They'd still need carriers for air power, battleships
for bombardment, and above all cruisers and destroyers to escort their troop
ships. If they cut on all of that, the Allied subs and aircraft will shred
the Japanese invasion forces, even if there is not one Allied warship still
afloat thanks to the all-sub IJN.
Remember, the point is to seize Dutch oil and Singapore rubber. You can't do
that with subs and cargo ships only.
On top of that, the all-sub IJN isn't going to be able to protect the
_Japanese_ convoys. The Allies still have subs of their own.
Taking a step back, it is possible, though not certain given the level of
closedness of the Japanese society, that somebody spots the major, dramatic
shift in Japanese building programs. And reacts accordingly.
If nobody noticed that timely, then they will notice during the war, and the
USA still have the industrial power to make good for the delay.
Note how hard was the sub war against the Kriegsmarine. Incredibly high
figures of lost shipping, materials and men. Apparently unsustainable
percentages. Yet the Allies sustained them. Even if the all-sub IJN is ten
times stronger than the German U-Boot arm, the Pacific remains larger, with
more destinations than the British Isles, and there are limits to the
realistically feasible speed and range of subs. Add that the British were
reading the U-Boote's mail some of the time, but the US will be reading the
all-sub IJN's mail all of the time.
Any measure short of an all-out sub-only navy is going to help the Japanese
some, sure. The war won't be the same. More embarrassments for the Allies.
But a Japanese victory? Nah.