Review: The Pearl Harbor Myth

Another entry in the "Roosevelt knew about Pearl Harbor genre

Spain in the war isn't all good for the Axis

What If The Washington Naval Treaty Talks Collapsed?

More Battleships? A Naval Arms Race? Japan and Britain allies?

How do you get a World War II fought mostly with Biplanes & Battleships

An African Village is nearly wiped out, apparently by rampaging elephants, but the thoroughness of the destruction points to human hands.

Point Of Divergence is an amateur press magazine and also a forum for discussing AH and AH-related ideas.  Here is my comment section.

The era of battleships overlapped the era of biplanes from shortly before World War I until maybe early 1942, when all of the major combatants except to some extent Italy had phased out biplanes, and battleships were increasingly relegated to a secondary role.  The self-imposed rules of this exercise: find scenarios that lead to battles involving either battleships or biplanes (or better yet both) in a prominent role.  To make things more difficult, we’ll rule out shore bombardment scenarios for the battleships.

Scenario 1: The British send an aircraft carrier to Singapore along with the battleship and battle cruiser.  They intended to, but didn’t because the one that they had allocated ran aground in a freak accident.  The admiral in charge was an old school “planes can’t sink battleships” kind of a guy, so he didn’t insist on a replacement, though an old carrier Hermes was available.  Let’s say Repulse and Prince of Wale do have a carrier, or maybe even  two—a modern one plus the Hermes, with them.  That’s probably enough to keep the Japanese air attack from sinking the British capital ships on December 10, 1941.   The Japanese carriers were initially off in the Central Pacific returning from the attack on Pearl Harbor, along with two of Japan’s 10 battleships.  Japan’s super battleships were not available yet.  The Japanese had two battleships of the Kongo class in distant support of their invasion of Malaysia.  The other six were screening against any US attempt to reinforce the Philippines or were in reserve.  These were relatively short-range ships and most of Japan’s refueling capacity was tied up supporting the force that attacked Pearl Harbor, so the Japanese would presumably be reluctant to get those ships too far away from home, though they can if necessary.

The Japanese can’t let two British battleships run around cutting off their supply lines to Malaysia and doing fire support for the defenders for the kind of time it would take for the Japanese carriers to get back to the area.   The logical force to go after the British were the two Japanese battleships covering the invasion.  So we have a battle between two forces of two capital ships each.  Figure that Japanese land-based airpower and the British carrier(s) pretty much cancel each other out.  So we get an old fashion Battleship slugfest.  Who would win?   The  Prince of Wales would have had somewhat more firepower than the Japanese battleships.  The Repulse would be roughly comparable in firepower but weaker in armor.

If the British lost, they would presumably lose the two ships they lost historically, plus possibly as many as two aircraft carriers.  What would  that do to the rest of the British war effort?  The Hermes was sunk by the Japanese in their raid into the Indian ocean in early 1942, so probably not much change there.  Losing the other aircraft carrier would have some impact.  Hard to know what.

If the British won, they would get an initial morale boost, and put a serious crimp in the Japanese timetable for taking Singapore.   They would also probably draw the attention of the Japanese carriers at some point.  The carriers and tankers would probably have to stop back at the home islands to refuel rearm and refit after the long voyage to Pearl Harbor.  If the initial two Japanese battleships are out of action, I suppose it its possible they could send  their six reserve battleships into the fray.  Before the disaster on December 10, the British had intended to reinforce their two initial capital ships with additional forces.  They sent four old battleships and one new fast one to the Indian Ocean, as well as an aircraft carrier.   Depending on how long it would take to get the Japanese carriers into the fight, and how long it would take the British to get additional battleships to the area we might be able to squeeze in one last battleship slugfest between the rest of the Japanese battle line and three or even seven British capital ships.  It would be interesting to see how that played out.   However it worked out, whatever forces the British committed would be in grave danger once the Japanese carriers entered the area.  Anything that didn’t run  would probably get sunk.  Still, it would be interesting to see how a Japanese/British battleship fight would play out.

Scenario 2: The British Abort the Channel Dash –In February of 1942, two German battleships (sometimes classified as battle cruisers due to their comparatively light guns), Scharnhorst and Gneisenau,and a heavy cruiser,succeeded in making a dash through the English Channel with only minor damage.  They were undetected for 12 hours after leaving a French port in which they had taken refuge after doing some commerce raiding.  The British navy was humiliated, though in the long-term the British were better off with the ships back in their home waters.  What if the plan for the dash had been detected early enough for the British to bring some of their own battleships in to intercept the Germans.?  The Germans would have been outgunned, but their ships were well-armored and they did have considerable airpower to bring to bear in the battle.  If the Germans succeed in sinking one or more British capital ships and still get away, it stretches British naval power even more thinly.  If the British manage to sink one or both of the German ships without losing any of their own, then that frees up considerable sea power for other uses.  The Italians might find themselves having a bad day in the Mediterranean, or the Brits might decide to send more battleships to help control the Indian Ocean.  If the Brits try to directly fight the Japanese carrier raid into the Indian Ocean, they would probably lose whatever ships they sent there, which would put them back about where they started.

Scenario 3: Ambush at Pearl Harbor – How can we turn carrier airpower’s single biggest victory over battleships into a battleship versus battleship matchup?  Not easily, but let’s try it.

Let’s say that FDR and company find out or figure out in detail what the Japanese are planning at Pearl Harbor.  Maybe they crack the proper codes early enough.  Maybe they tap into a well-placed spy.  Maybe Kimmel and Short’s local intelligence people just do a brilliant job of analyzing Japanese intentions.  In any case, US commanders in Oahu are pretty sure the Japanese will be launching an air raid on Pearl Harbor sometime between November 28 and December 10.  They suspect it will happen at dawn, and they have December 7 marked down as the most likely morning because that’s when they feel that the fleet is at its most vulnerable and there is a full moon the night before, which would make predawn takeoffs and preparations less risky for the Japanese.   They realize that the short-legged Japanese destroyers and cruisers escorting the carriers cannot make the trip to Oahu without refueling, so they assume that Japanese tankers have to be lurking within a few hundred miles of the taskforce.  

Kimmel and Short quietly do what they can to prepare for exactly that attack within their orders not to alarm the civilian population.   Army anti-aircraft guns are unobtrusively manned—maybe with the gunners playing the role of additional security, and are stocked with ready ammunition.  Fighter pilots are ready to take off on a few minutes warning.  Radar operators are told to remain on duty during the hours between dawn and about 10 am and are given a direct line to army and navy officials authorized to scramble planes and sound a general alert.  The navy makes sure all watertight doors are closed and at least two or three of the battleships in the outer and more exposed row are ready to move if necessary on a few minutes notice.  A couple of destroyers are loaded down with extra anti-aircraft guns and heavy machineguns and put on standby with instructions to move to cover the path any torpedo planes would have to take to attack the battleships.   The two US carriers in the area are ordered to stay out of the harbor but be prepared to go after either the Japanese carriers or the tankers if the Japanese attack.   The navy doesn’t have torpedo nets, but they improvise a drill of moving target ships into the area torpedoes are most likely to have to travel. 

With those advance preparations, the US scrambles planes and mans antiaircraft guns shortly after the Japanese aircraft are detected by US radar.  The battleships with steam up move out of the harbor, while the rest begin getting up steam and get ready to fight from within the harbor.   The Enterprise is close enough to launch plane in support of the Pearl Harbor defense.  By the time the first wave of Japanese planes reach the harbor the sky is full of US fighter planes.  US seaplanes and bombers are searching along the radar plot to find the Japanese carriers, and tankers. 

So, what do you think?  The objective of all of this is to end up with at least some of the US battleships ready to go at the end of the attack—hopefully most of them, and as many of the top-notch Japanese pilots in the raiding force dead.  Sinking a Japanese carrier or two would be nice too, but that’s not all that important if the pilots flying off of them get deceased.

Historically the Japanese lost 29 planes and had 74 more damaged, many of which had to be written off.  Of the planes lost, 20 of them were in the second wave.  Presumably US anti-aircraft would pick up quite a few more kills in both waves if they had around an hour to get ready and were already on heightened alert.  Historically most if not all of the army anti-aircraft batteries didn’t get into action until the attack was over because ammunition was locked up to protect against sabotage.  The 50 Japanese torpedo planes would get really hammered under this scenario because they had to come in extremely low and extremely slow on the initial run.  In the absence of surprise they would probably have been nearly wiped out.  Let’s say that US anti-aircraft gets 40 out of 50 of the torpedo bombers, and another 30 of the rest of the first wave.  US fighters get maybe another 30, while losing at least that many planes.  That’s over half of the first wave, with most of the rest damaged.

Without the extremely vulnerable torpedo bombers in the second wave, the US would have to work harder to up the score, but there would only be 36 Japanese fighters to defend 135 bombers, including over 80 dive bombers.  I would say the US gets about half of Japanese planes—maybe 85 to 90, including cripples that crash on the way back to the carriers.  So overall the Japanese lose just a little under half of the planes and pilots they have in the six carriers, mostly bombers.  Figure that most of the remaining planes are shot up to the point of not being immediately flyable, and while the Japanese can still maintain an effective combat air patrol they have little offensive capability.

By now the US has located the Japanese carriers, and both the Enterprise and the army airforce launch raids on them, right on the tail of the second wave.  The Japanese combat air patrol over the fleet is strong enough to prevent serious damage to most of the carriers, but the Japanese lose more planes as the aircraft of the second wave get back to the carriers while the carriers are under attack and maneuvering at high speed.  By the time the US air attacks end, the Japanese carriers only one carrier is damaged, but the carriers have considerably less than half of their air arm left, and the bulk of that—especially the bombers--is unflyable.  Planes can be replaced eventually, but veteran pilots can’t.  The Japanese carriers are now a much diminished threat.   The US has also lost heavily in the follow-up raids on the Japanese carriers.  While the Enterprise is undamaged, much of its air arm has been destroyed.

 That’s kind of a fun scenario to play with, but how does it give us battleship versus battleship action?  Well, let’s say the US air raids leave one of the Japanese carriers damaged and unable to move fast.  The raids have also required high-speed maneuvering on the part of the carriers and their escorts.  High-speed maneuvering drinks fuel at five times the normal rate for a battleship and over ten times the normal rate for a destroyer.  The carriers can make it back to their refueling ships.  A considerable number of their escorts can’t by the time the air attacks are for the most part over.  The US sends 2 or 3 relatively undamaged battleships out, with the Enterprise’s remaining fighters providing air cover.  The Japanese move the two battleships accompanying the carriers between the US battleships and their wounded carrier.  And that sets up a battleship versus battleship match up.  The US would be likely to win because the Japanese Kongos had only about two-thirds the fire-power of most of the US battleships.

I suppose that with both sides having lost a lot of airpower we might even see a major fleet action between the Japanese battleship fleet and the US, possibly over Wake Island.  Not likely, but fun to play with.

The Germans choose bi-planes.  This has been mostly about battleships, so let’s add in at least one biplane scenario.  In the mid-to-late 1930s the choice between biplanes and monoplanes wasn’t all that clear cut.  Monoplanes were faster.  Biplanes were more maneuverable.  The results of the Spanish Civil War were ambiguous as to which quality was more important.  The Italians decides to squeeze in one more generation of their very maneuverable Fiat CR-series biplanes, though they also produced some monoplanes.  The Soviets produced both monoplanes and biplanes, and tried futilely to coordinate them to get the best of both worlds.  The British went mostly with monoplanes, though they did produce a fair number of Gloster Gladiator biplanes.  The Germans went exclusively with monoplanes and their ME109s made most of the planes in most of the opposing aircraft obsolete.  Let’s say they Germans put much of their energy into producing next generation biplanes roughly comparable to the Gladiator and the Italian CR-42.  Do we end up with biplanes playing a major role in the first part of World War II?  It’s a fun idea to play with, but unlike the Me109, a German fighter biplane wouldn’t obsolete opposing fighters.  Much of the reason Germany was able to bluff at Munich and win over Poland and France was that they went into mass-production of much superior fighter plane, and opposing airforces were scrambling to catch up.  We might still have a World War II, but it might be postponed or take a very different shape.

Posted on Feb 3, 2012.

More Stuff For POD Members Only

What you see here is a truncated on-line version of a larger zine that I contribute to POD, the alternate history APA.  POD members get to look forward to more fun stuff.