How could Japan have won the Pacific War?

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"

>>1720306
Attack Australia
>Get pure Anglo soldiers
>Conquer the world

>>1720349
>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.

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>>1720306
Repeat after me.

Japan could not win against the US.

>>1720423
The problem with this of course was that Midway was an American trap.

>>1720306
>Muh China was great

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

>>1720395
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.

>>1720306

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.

>>1720423

Not really.

http://www.combinedfleet.com/economic.htm

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>>1720306

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.

>>1720428
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

>>1720509
So many things are incredibly wrong with this post.

>>1720452

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.

>>1720512
Please, enlighten us

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>>1720509
>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.

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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?

>>1720349
those megalomaniac generals were the ones ruling the government desu

>>1720535
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Midway
Read the first part and come back anon

>>1720556
>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.

>>1720556
the US would eventually join the allies anyway pearl harbor just sped it up

>>1720561
Just because they shot down a bunch of old, outdated torpedo planes didn't mean they were any close to winning the battle.

>>1720566
The US would have fought Germany, but not Japan.
The end of British and Dutch empires meant very little to the American public.

>>1720349
>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.

>>1720564
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

>>1720587

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.

>>1720556
It all would've come to a grinding halt without oil, which the US was well aware of.

>>1720525
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.

>>1720377
They tried that though.

>>1720525

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';
http://www.midway42.org/RoundTableBook/Update_Flight_to_Nowhere.aspx
http://www.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;
https://blog.usni.org/2009/09/26/flightdeck-friday-smoke-and-the-battle-of-midway

tl;dr: lots of speculation/cover-up

>>1720616
No, they did'nt. They were planing on starving them out

>>1720568
cry more fag

>>1720581
Licensed production from Germany and also the oil they probably would get from the east indies or Australia maybe? If they invaded it.

>>1720676
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.

>>1720687
Australia
Oil
>Not a thing wrong there

>>1720700
They bombed Darwin once aaaand that's it.

>>1720704
>once

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

>>1720704
>>1720715

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.

>>1720704
>Bomb a minor port in northern Australia
>Claim a great victory for the Emperor

>>1720430
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)

>>1720306
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.

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>>1720306
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?

>>1720832
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.

https://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.

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

>>1720839
It's doubtful they could occupy Midway. Invading Hawaii even more so.

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

>>1720876
thank you for this. I'll be sifting through this for hours.

>>1720890
It'd be quite impossible for them to invade Hawaii actually.

>>1720892
Use waifus, invade Midway while enemy soldiers sleep.

>>1720306
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.

>>1720306
>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

>>1720437
Soviets don't want to fight though so I don't see your point?

>>1720452
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.

>>1720306
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

>>1720306
Invent Atomic Bomb first.

>>1720449
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.

>>1720611
>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.

>>1721761
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.

>>1720349
>Invade Soviets instead
And get wrecked just like in 1938 and 1939?
>Get Tigers from Germany
>Tigers were good tanks

Okay senpai.

>>1720509
>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.

>>1721761
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?

>>1720522
>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.

>>1722321
North Carolina class had 2 ships. You're thinking of and missing the South Dakota class that had 4 ships.

>>1722340
Right, I fucked up.

>>1720452
That picture was a great read, thanks.

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>>1720684
Eat shit, weeb.

>>1720574
Fuckin' Redcoats.

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

>>1722357
not an argument

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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

>>1720452
Great article.

>>1722321

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

>>1720522
>>1722321
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.

>>1723049
Wasn't meant to be.

>>1720306
Do a better job at Pearl Harbor, make a deal with the weak americans so they keep selling you oil

>>1720306
Honestly if America were the aggressor they might be able to pull a nam>>1720306

>>1720306
>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

>>1723499

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?

>>1720509

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...

>>1723802
>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.

>>1723877

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

>>1720322
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

>>1721338

>soviets dont want to fight in eastern siberia

"no"

>>1720423

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.

>>1725931
>good number
what does that make the american carriers then? bonanzasupermegadoubleplusgood number?

>>1720349
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.

>>1721761
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.

>>1726388
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.

>>1725942
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

>>1720306

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.

>>1726485
>My guess is the US would've focused on Japan, as control of the pacific is more important
Uh, nope. Even before the outbreak of war, the U.S. held a Germany first strategy.

>>1726388

No one serious actually thinks America would give up even if there was a stunning Japanese victory. But that would have bought alot of time for the Japs to prepare for the next wave.

They underestimated American resolve prior to Pearl Harbour but i think people also overestimate it as well. The American public wouldnt be so supportive if their naval fleet gets destroyed 10 times and 1 million marines die during the island hoping campaign as a hypothetical example but the chances of that happening are extremely slim.

In such a ridiculous example the Soviets would have long wiped them off the mainland and would be preparing for an invasion from the west which would have made the American invasions look like a nice picnic.

But anyways thats alt history for you

>>1726484

>all this
>post monroe-doctrine

It would never, ever have worked.

>>1720377
The emus would drive 'em out

>Japan will never join the Allies and send their navy westward to beat up on the Italians

feelsbadman

>>1728535

To be honest, if we entertain some bizarre hypothetical in which Japan joined the western allies, sending the IJN is not likely to be a very good move. Pitting carriers up against land based planes that dominated the Med usually ends badly for the CVP.

If I were in overall command, and assuming the Japanese were up for it, they'd probably be better employed bolstering convoy defenses in the Atlantic, and leave mediterranean operations to just good old fashioned zeroes and kates based from North Africa.

>>1728609
A more interesting (radically) alternative history scenario is that of friendly relations between the USA and Japan.

USA realizes that Japan can be held to be as a reliable trade partner, as it is ensuring the independence of Asian nations from colonial rule and thus trading natural resources from Asia with the United States directly, and both also trade industrial products with each other.

The USA and Japan would redesing the map of the Pacific together, cooperating in terms of strategy, military and specially economics, and they would see each other as good partners.

>>1728706

The main problem with that sort of setup is the bulk of the trade between the U.S. and Japan historically in the 30s and early 40s wasn't industrial products with each other, it was raw materials to Japan, industrial products to the U.S.; Japan had far more of a hunger for raw materials, and the U.S. had only barely begun to outstrip its secondary consumption of primary resources, and there are far closer and better sources in places like Canada, Mexico, and South America than extending a trade net all the way across the Pacific.

Nah, Japan isn't likely to be ensuring some idealistic Pan-Asian Independence movement, rather replacing old colonial overlords with new colonial overlords, in a setup that doesn't have a huge amount of benefit to the U.S.

More likely is one where ultimately Japan backs down, probably in a world where their military never gets the same kind of internal political influence that it did historically, and were essentially ok with being economically and thus politically in a loose orbit of America, not as equal partners, but it's ok, because they're getting rich doing so.

>>1720306
>How could Japan have won the Pacific War?

Japs have access to lots of oil.

Japs have a properly set up naval logistics system with sufficient naval escorts.

Japs have more carriers.

>>1729757
>Japs have more carriers.
How will they do that against a power that built nine times more carriers than Japan, whose economy is like 20 times the size of Japan's, who has about 5–10 times the steel and coal output and so on.

>>1729769
>How will they do that against a power that built nine times more carriers than Japan, whose economy is like 20 times the size of Japan's, who has about 5–10 times the steel and coal output and so on.

Don't get me wrong, the premise itself is ridiculous since the Japs were outmatched for a protracted war.

Say if the Japs had went balls to the wall shitting out carriers instead of anything above a cruiser before the war they'd have stood a better chance early on. Of course, without the oil they needed it wouldn't matter at all.

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>>1721106
Well they were developing the flea bomb and tested it in unoccupied parts of China.

>mfw the Japs were gonna launch biological bombs in San Diego but surrendered five weeks before this plan took fruition

1. Don't actually bomb Pearl Harbour
2. Stop building retarded Battleship that do nothing but jerk eachother off in their ports.
3. Stop with the retarded Navy v Army rivalary
4. Don't even bother with Soviets
5. Don't overextend in China
6. Invade Sumatra/Malaysia and pray to sky jap gods that US doesn't declare war
7. Get oil
8. Get tanks and motorized infantary
8. Roll through China and British India/SEA
9.Wow now your navy has a meaningful job!!!!
10. Now help Krauts