Peter G. Tsouras Read online
Table of Contents
Contributors
Introduction
1. Hokushin
2. Be Careful What You Wish For
3. Pearl Harbor
4. Coral and Purple
5. Nagumo's Luck
6. Samurai Down Under
7. The Japanese Raj
8. Guadalcanal
9. There Are Such Things as Miracles
10. Victory Rides the Divine Wind
RISING SUN VICTORIOUS
Copyright © 1995 by Peter Tsouras
This electronic format is published by Tantor eBooks,
a division of Tantor Media, Inc, and was produced in the year 2012, All rights reserved.
Contents
Contributors
Introduction
1. Hokushin
The Second Russo-Japanese War
Peter G. Tsouras
2. Be Careful What You Wish For
The Plan Orange Disaster
Wade G. Dudley
3. Pearl Harbor
Irredeemable Defeat
Frank R. Shirer
4. Coral and Purple
The Lost Advantage
James R. Arnold
5. Nagumo's Luck
The Battles of Midway and California
Forrest R. Lindsey
6. Samurai Down Under
The Japanese Invasion of Australia
John H. Gill
7. The Japanese Raj
The Conquest of India
David C. Isby
8. Guadalcanal
The Broken Shoestring
John D. Burtt
9. There Are Such Things as Miracles
Halsey and Kurita at Leyte Gulf
Christopher J. Anderson
10. Victory Rides the Divine Wind
The Kamikaze and the Invasion of Kyushu
D. M. Giangreco
Maps
1. Japanese and Soviet Border Fortifications, Eastern Manchuria and Maritime Province, 1941
2. Japanese Attack in Mo River Area, Soviet Maritime Province, August 7, 1941
3. The Failure of War Plan Orange: Key Engagements
4. Oahu and Environs: Lines of Japanese Attack
5. The Main Targets: Pearl Harbor and Hickam Field
6. Coral Sea: Theater of Operations, May 1942
7. Battle of the Coral Sea
8. Japanese Naval Attacks, October 8-10, 1942
9. Australia: Ground Force Dispositions, May 1942
10. Operational Situation in Northeastern Australia, October 1942
11. Japanese Invasion and Occupation of India
12. Japanese Offensive at Guadalcanal: Disposition of Forces, October 7–8, 1942
13. Naval Battle of Guadalcanal 2305, October 13, 1942
14. Sho-1: Japan's Last Chance
15. Provisional Layout of Fighter Defense
All maps by John Richards, except maps 9 and 10 by John H. Gill, and map 15 (CINCPAC).
Contributors
CHRISTOPHER J. ANDERSON is a lifelong student of World War II and the associate editor of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History and World War II magazine. He is the author of several volumes in Greenhill Books' series GI.: A Photographic History of the American Soldier and is working on a history of the 327/401st Glider Regiment.
JAMES R. ARNOLD is a professional writer who specializes in military history. He has published over twenty books roughly divided into three major topic areas: the Napoleonic era; the American Civil War; and the modern period. His two most recent books are a Napoleonic campaign study, Marengo and Hohenlinden: Napoleon's Rise to Power and Jeff Davis's Own: Cavalry, Comanche's, and the Battle for the Texas Frontier. He has also contributed numerous essays to military journals, including the British Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research and the American journals Army History, Army Magazine, and Navy History. His chapter in this book reflects his interest in the influence of intelligence and espionage upon military events.
JOHN D. BURTT is the editor of Paper Wars Magazine, an independent review journal devoted to war games. In his day job persona he is an advisory nuclear engineer consulting for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. However, his real love is military history. A former marine sergeant and a veteran of Vietnam, he holds a master's degree in military history and is pursuing a Ph.D. in the same field. He has written for Command Magazine, Strategy & Tactics, and The Wargamer, and was the original editor of Counter Attack magazine.
WADE G. DUDLEY returned to academia after almost two decades with Procter & Gamble to earn a master's degree in maritime history and nautical archaeology from East Carolina University in 1997 and a doctorate in history from the University of Alabama in 1999. He contributed “Drake at Cadiz” to Sarpedon's Great Raids in History, while a monograph, A Comparative Evaluation of Blockades in the Late Age of Sail, and a book, Without Some Risk: A Reassessment of the British Blockade of the United States, 1812-1815, are due to be published shortly. He is employed as a visiting assistant professor of history at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina and is currently working on a history of naval blockades and a novel about privateers during the War of 1812.
D. M. GIANGRECO is an editor for the U.S. Army's professional journal, Military Review. He has lectured widely on U.S. national security matters and has written six books on military and political subjects, including Dear Harry . . . Truman's Mailroom, 1945-1953: The Truman Administration Through Correspondence with “Everyday Americans” and War in Korea. He has also written articles for many U.S. and international publications, including “Casualty Projections for the U.S. Invasion of Japan: 1945-1946” and “The Truth About Kamikazes,” and on such topics as the Falkland Islands' sovereignty question, decentralization of the Soviet air force command and control structure, Persian Gulf pipeline construction, and the human interface with rapidly changing technologies.
JOHN H. GILL is the author of With Eagles to Glory: Napoleon and His German Allies in the 1809 Campaign and the editor of A Soldier for Napoleon, providing commentary on the letters and diaries of a Bavarian infantry lieutenant during the Napoleonic Wars. In addition to numerous articles and papers on Napoleonic military affairs and a chapter in The Peninsular War, he has contributed chapters to two other alternate history collections, The Hitler Options and The Napoleon Options. He has a B.A. in history and German and an M.A. in international relations. A lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, he is assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency as Assistant Defense Intelligence Officer for South Asia.
DAVID C. ISBY is a Washington-based attorney and national security consultant and adjunct professor at American Military University. He has a B.A. in history and a J.D. in international law. A former editor of Strategy & Tactics magazine, he has also served as a congressional staff member. He has designed nineteen conflict simulations and been awarded two Charles Roberts awards for excellence in this field. He has written or edited twenty books, including several dealing with World War II: G.I. Victory, The Luftwaffe Fighter Force: The View from the Cockpit, and Fighting the Invasion: The German Army at D-Day.
LIEUTENANT COLONEL FORREST R. LINDSEY, USMC (Ret.) served nearly thirty years in the U.S. Marine Corps, including time in combat in Vietnam. His assignments included nuclear weapons testing with the Defense Nuclear Agency, service as a United Nations truce supervisor in Egypt, and as an arms control treaty inspection team leader in the former Soviet Union. His artillery duties included battalion operations officer, regimental logistics officer, and commanding officer of the 5th Battalion, 11th Marines. Upon retirement from active duty in 1996, he continued working with the Marine Corps as
senior engineer for the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, responsible for weapons experimentation and precision targeting. He has written several articles on professional military issues in the Marine Corps Gazette. He has a B.Sc. in mechanical engineering technology and is pursuing a master's degree in business administration.
FRANK R. SHIRER is a historian with the U.S. Army Center of Military History at Fort McNair, Washington, D.C., specializing in oral history, World War II, and the Soviet military. An army veteran with twenty years enlisted and commissioned service in the U.S. Army, he has served in Field Artillery as a fire direction specialist and forward observer, and received a direct commission in Military Intelligence, where he served as an armored cavalry squadron S-2 and 3rd Armored Division Artillery S-2. He has also served on the DCSINT staff at the Pentagon, as a Soviet analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency, and as an order of battle analyst at the U.S. Army Intelligence and Threat Analysis Center. Since retiring in 1994 he has worked for the U.S. Army Gulf War Declassification Project and the U.S. Army Declassification Activity, and has been with the CMH since 1995. He has assisted in the research for several works of military history.
PETER G. TSOURAS is a senior intelligence analyst at the U.S. Army National Ground Intelligence Center's Washington office. He has served in the army as an armor officer in the 1st Bn/64th Armor Regiment in Germany and subsequently in intelligence and Adjutant Generals Corps assignments. He retired from the Army Reserve as a lieutenant colonel after serving as a civil affairs officer. His assignments have taken him to Somalia, Russia, Ukraine, and Japan. He is the author or editor of twenty books on international military themes, military history, and alternate history, including Disaster at D-Day, Gettysburg: An Alternate History, The Great Patriotic War, The Anvil of War, Fighting in Hell, and The Greenhill Dictionary of Military Quotations.
Introduction
The Pacific War was a war of extremes: extremes of distance and climate, of opportunity, chance, boldness, and of technology, from the samurai sword to the atom bomb. It was, as the ancient Greeks would have said, the “Dancing Floor of War.” And in no other theater were there so many possibilities from which the players could choose. Again and again earthshaking opportunities paraded past Japanese and American commanders and even common soldiers and sailors. History turned on how wisely and how boldly they seized them—or not. The interplay between chance and opportunity is the heartbeat of war. Clausewitz touched on it when he said “War is the realm of chance. No other human activity gives it greater scope: no other has such incessant and varied dealings with this intruder. Chance makes everything more uncertain and interferes with the whole course of events”1 And Napoleon defined the relationship: “War is composed of nothing but accidents, and . . . a general should never lose sight of everything to enable him to profit from these accidents; that is the mark of genius.”2 This book examines the ways not taken, the stillborn possibilities that could have grown to mighty events. Each chapter examines a plausible opportunity for decisive advantages to be won by the arms of Imperial Japan.
Each of the ten chapters takes a well-known episode in the history of the Pacific War and spins it off in a new direction. Each is a self-contained examination of one particular battle or campaign in the context of its own alternate reality; the new paths created in one chapter do not run into the next. Since each chapter sets in motion new events, each generates new ground from the historian's perspective. If the Japanese win the Battle of Midway, for example, different historical works will appear in time. These different works appear in the endnotes along with those reflecting actual events. Where the one takes over from the other is the shimmering gateway into alternate history. The use of such “alternate reality” notes, of course, poses a risk to the unwary reader who may make strenuous efforts to acquire a new and fascinating source. To avoid an epidemic of frustrating and futile searches, the “alternate” notes are indicated by an asterisk.
My own contribution, “Hokushin: The Second Russo-Japanese War,” does not even address the alternatives of the course of the Pacific War. It examines the very decision to attack the United States. Until the middle of 1941 such a course was not inevitable. Equal weight was given within the Japanese leadership to the proposal to attack the Soviet Union. It could have been Stalin who addressed his nation about a certain date “which would live in infamy” More than eighty percent of Japanese divisions were earmarked for such a struggle. The consequences would have been incalculable had the Japanese attack been the straw that broke the camel's back and dragged down the Soviet Union to defeat at Hitler's hands. Wade G. Dudley's chapter, “Be Careful What You Wish For: The Plan Orange Disaster,” explores the consequences of the U.S. Navy implementing the plans for war with Japan, in which the Pacific Fleet was to sail into Japanese-controlled waters for the showdown battle. Had the Japanese not attacked Pearl Harbor, just such a scenario might have come to pass. The consequences for the Pacific Fleet, deficient in both training and readiness compared to its Japanese counterpart at the time, are vividly evoked.
Most of the chapters deal with the fluid and desperate months of the early part of the war, when Japanese resources were at their greatest and its martial skills gave them a significant advantage against their opponents. Frank R. Shirer, in “Pearl Harbor: Irredeemable Defeat,” tackles this heady period by refighting Nagumo's battle. What might have happened had Nagumo been sure that it would not be too risky to send in the third wave? James Arnold, in “Coral and Purple,” looks at the loss of one of the few advantages the United States had in those fearful months: signals intelligence. John D. Burtt addresses the issue of the character of command in the Guadalcanal campaign, in “Guadalcanal: The Broken Shoestring.” Had the aggressive and tenacious warrior Admiral Halsey not been placed in command the campaign's desperate naval engagements and severe losses might well have overwhelmed his predecessor despite the valor and success of Vandegrift's Marines ashore.
In fact, it was Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy's Combined Fleet, who correctly forecast the balance of power between Japan and the Allies, especially the United States: “If you insist on my going ahead I can promise to give them hell for a year or a year and a half, but can guarantee nothing as to what will happen after that.”3 Indeed he was more optimistic than events were to justify. The first great disaster to befall the Japanese occurred at Midway less than seven months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. After that, the initiative slipped away from the Japanese. The weight of American industrial production was so great that Japan was doomed. But the opportunity of the United States to marshal its material and human resources was not inevitable. The crucial victory at Midway essentially depended on the decision of a navy lieutenant commander to follow, with his dive-bombers, the last direction given for the Japanese fleet. His aircraft were already low on fuel, and he could easily have decided instead to fly to Midway Island and refuel. History pivoted on one man's intrepidity. What if he had chosen safety first? Forrest R. Lindsey, in “Nagumo's Luck,” shows how the American carriers would probably have gone to the bottom as a result. How would America have begun its way back had the next step been to defend the West Coast? It would have been a different war, in which American cities, not Japanese, would have borne the brunt.
John H. Gill and David C. Isby tackle the Japanese invasions that might have been: of Australia and India. Australia's fate hung in the balance at the Battle of the Coral Sea. The battle was essentially a tactical defeat for the U.S. Navy, but it stung the Japanese enough to draw them away from their attack on Port Moresby. Had Coral Sea gone worse, the Japanese invasion fleet would have continued on to seize Moresby. Then Australia would have been cut off and vulnerable. Douglas MacArthur had just escaped to Australia from Corregidor and been placed in command of Australian and American forces, all green and underequipped. Against a veteran and victorious army, led by the Tiger of Malaya himself, how would he have fared? John H. Gill, in “Samurai Down Under,” bring
s to mind the terror of the old cry, “Hannibal at the gate!”
Few people today realize how unstable the British hold on India was in the panicked months after the fall of Singapore, especially when Admiral Nagumo trailed his coat through the Bay of Bengal. A concerted Japanese push might well have brought down the two-hundred-year-old British Raj and sent the imperial crown of India to Tokyo. Carried away by victory fever, the Japanese could well have been pulled into the subcontinent. Gandhi would have had the opportunity to find out how the Japanese reacted to protest, nonviolent or otherwise. British imperialism might then have suddenly looked a little better. David C. Isby, in “The Japanese Raj,” points out how limited Japan's resources were even in the face of incredible opportunity. A land war across the subcontinent might well have been one of the most brutal in the entire Second World War; the scope for human suffering would have only been rivaled in China and Russia.
By June 1942, Japan's hope of winning the war through offensive strategy was gone. Still, even in the catastrophic years of 1944 and 1945, opportunities appeared. It was only by the slightest of chances that Admiral Halsey's failure to properly protect the invasion fleet in Leyte Gulf did not result in catastrophic slaughter. Christopher J. Anderson, in “There Are Such Things as Miracles,” shows how good fortune might have fallen instead to Admiral Kurita. How long would it have taken the United States to recover had Kurita been able to ravage the huge herd of American transports and merchant ships in Leyte Gulf? My father, Theodore P. Tsouras, was then third officer on the SS Alcoa Pioneer, a merchant ship in Leyte Gulf filled with fuel and supplies for the forces fighting ashore. He still recalled decades later how hundreds of ships lay at anchor, and none had “steam up” when the news of the sudden arrival of the Japanese battle fleet spread fear and panic through their crews.
Even at the last moment of the war, the invasion of Japan with all the weight of a fully mobilized America behind it, was threatened by the severe underestimation of the increased lethality of the kamikaze fighters in close quarters off the coast of Japan. Looking back at the roll of victories as one island garrison after another was annihilated the student of the Pacific War might understandably consider the planned invasion of Kyushu in late 1945 simply a larger version of these earlier successes. D. M. Giangreco, in “Victory Rides the Divine Wind” describes the incredible planning for the invasion of Japan, which depended upon the closest of timing margins and did not give sufficient credit to Japan's massed suicide weapon, the kamikaze. The severe losses suffered by the U.S. Navy off Okinawa were not by any means an accurate foretaste of the losses to be suffered off the Japanese home islands themselves. An invasion of Japan would have seen the advantages of the Divine Wind multiplied many times over.