"What if Japan attacked the Philippines but not Pearl Harbor?" Topic

"Suppose the Japanese did what they did historically in December 1941 except attack PH. Instead of going to Oahu the Kido Butai waited for the USN to come to it, or try to save the Philippines. I understand the USN was reluctant to come, because war-games determined its ships were likely to suffer high losses, notably from torpedoes. But could FDR have let the Pacific fleet just sit there while American forces were being crushed in the Philippines? Assuming he came under great pressure to "do something" and ordered the US fleet to the Philippines, where the feared outcome occurred, and the IJN destroyed over half the US Pacific fleet, what effect would that have had on the Pacific war ?…"

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Armand

Tough strategic dilemma. Kimmel's war plan was to strike the Japanese outposts in the Marshalls- but not necessarily to seek an all-out engagement with the Combined Fleet in the early days of the war- particularly since his fleet train was limited, and the force was tethered to Hawaii.

I doubt they would have been any better prepared than they were if the Japanese had simply invaded the Philippines without hitting Hawaii first. Their ability to advance rapidly and force decisive battles in Malaya, Burma and the Philippines in the early days of the war significantly exceeded Allied expectations, and would probably have overwhelmed those garrisons even if the fleet wasn't knocked out.

Admiral James O Richardson's "On the Treadmill To Pearl Harbor" was published after the war, and it pretty clearly illustrates how unready we were in 1941. Like every other country, our plans assumed preparedness for war in 1943; the problem was that everyone's favorite animal-loving vegetarian eschatologist teetotaller decided not to wait until he was ready, and that set a lot of other uncontrollable events in motion.

I assume you are considering an attack Australia first policy.
Some good what if naval battles.

I think the Japanese lost the war in the shipyards of the USA. By 1943 there were so many ships coming off the stocks the Japanese had no hope.

If the Japanese had attacked the Philippines first and were thoughtful and if the USN stuck to War Plan Orange (which called for a sortie of the Pacific Fleet to relieve the Philippines) then Kidō Butai – First Carrier Fleet – could have, with the sort of attention to detail that Yamamoto was noted for, sunk most of the US fleet in deep water – then they would have had the chance to bring the US to the bargaining table, having never attacked US soil directly

Kind of unlikely, but possible

In 1941, the Philippines were just as much U.S. soil as Hawaii was! (A U.S. Territory)

+1 Frederick
Had the Japanese lured the American fleet out to sea, we were not ready at all. Look at how easy they dealt with the Prince of Wales and Repulse.
We re-floated most of the battleships lost at Pearl Harbor. Not to mention the much greater loss of sailors' lives had their ships been sunk at sea.

In my opinion, it would have been a better plan for the Japanese. 🤷

Agreed, John and Frederick. The plan was the "Interception and Attrition Strategy." if necessary. The IJN Combined Fleet practiced this methodology throughout the mid to late 30s. I.E., sink the American incursion fleet at sea, which was feasible.

The Japanese government's strategic aim was to keep the US out the war as long as possible or until the East Asia was under complete Japanese control. The weakness of the strategic plan was the Japanese designs on the Philippines, which would likely invite an American retaliation.

One must not underestimate the anti war sentiment in the U.S. during this period. Only an unprovoked attack on US territory would change this passivity. Accordingly, it would be preferable for the Japanese to bypass the Philippines until such time that Asia was firmly under Japanese control.

In simple terms this was the strategic and operational modus operandi of Japanese forces and government, for which the Japanese constantly trained for. Enter the disruptor, Admiral Yamamoto. He vainly tried to persuade the IJN Staff to strike America with a surprise attack on Pearl harbor with the hope of neutralizing the US pacific Fleet. Senior IJN officers thought it was an unnecessary risk that would interfere with the invasion plans for Asia.

Utilizing his star power, Yamamoto bypassed the Naval Staff and appealed to the Emperor. The emperor endorsed Yamamoto's plan and of course the Naval Admiralty had to obey despite their justifiable misgivings. And the rest is now history.

It's also interesting to see for how long the USN operated without battleships. We had no battleships at the Coral Sea, nor at Midway. If American admirals had had battleships there, what kind of mischief would they have engaged in?
Attitudes towards "the Japs" were belittling and condescending. And our torpedoes didn't work and our powder was old.

It may seem counter intuitive, but Thank God for Pearl Harbor. 🙄🤷

We actually did have some old BBs available by Midway and the start of Guadalcanal. I don't remember the names and number but around 3-4.

There were 2 problems with utilizing them:

1) they were about 10 knots slower than the carrier centered task forces,

2) they were fuel guzzlers and the USN was short of oilers at that time.

As Murvihill pointed above, things started to get a whole lot better in late '42 and early '43.

War Plan Orange was not in effect in 1941; it had been replaced by Rainbow 5, which acknowledged the likely reality that the US would soon be at war with multiple Axis nations, and that the main coalition effort would first be made in the Atlantic.

To that end, the Pacific Fleet's war plan, WPPAC-46, set out the tasks for the fleet in wartime. You can read it here:
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It's pretty clearly the case that the fleet's mission at that stage of the war was the defense of Hawaii, and, as soon as practicable, raids on the Marshall Islands, and subsequently the Caroline Islands. Not mentioned, but important, is that the British had asked the US Government to consider basing the Battle Fleet on Singapore to assure the defense of the Malay Barrier. The US did not agree with that request, instead committing the fleet to the task of distracting Japanese fleet assets away from any attacks on the Philippines and the Malay Barrier, while still staying closer to Hawaii.

The US strategy for the Philippines had for nearly twenty years to consider them indefensible; then, in the summer of 1941, the administration spontaneously reversed itself, and decided to dispatch sufficient troops to hold them- aiming to contest Japanese naval superiority in the area with submarines and B-17s that had been rushed out in late 1941. The buildup was ongoing on Dec 7, but the shortage of shipping that was to hobble the US effort in the Pacific until 1943 meant that a lot of men and equipment (including an entire infantry division) never made it to reinforce the Philippines.

I don't know that US war planners ever tackled the basic conundrum that we were sending reinforcements into a strategic cut-de-sac, but even had the fleet not been incapacitated, it seems unlikely that it would have been risked to save the Philippines. By May, 1942 TF1 had seven battleships assembled in San Francisco that were collectively far more capable than the fleet that was sunk at Pearl Harbor, but they stayed on the West Coast- largely because there simply weren't enough oilers to support them at sea along with the carriers and the necessary escort ships.

The Philippines might have had a chance to hold on if the US had six additional months to reinforce them, but it did not- and all the will in the world wouldn't give the Navy the resources it needed to launch offensives on a truly strategic scale until mid-1943.

Thanks

Armand

We would of had some major battleship actions early on.

Played a game of Axis and Allies were Japan through everything at Russia instead, Japan was defeated 2 turns early then normally.

Was touch and go for the Russians.

Up to almost the point where the US and UK realized Japanese troop convoys were headed south from Formosa, Indochina and the Inland Sea toward unknown destinations, US military and naval intelligence firmly believed that Japan's best military option was to attack the USSR's Maritime provinces in the East. They were probably right. It made more strategic sense than the plan they ultimately adopted. That view went straight to the top of the Navy and War Departments- that was the time when Admiral Turner wrote on one apprehensive appraisal of Japanese intentions, "I don't believe the Japs will jump, now or ever!" What neither he nor anyone else reckoned with was the degree to which the Japanese leadership was willing to run risks.

Once it became clear that the invasion convoys were in motion, everyone's attention was fixed on Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, and the Philippines- because those were the areas where it looked like an attack was shaping up. To some extent, this had been anticipated by the US-UK discussions about how to defend the Malay Barrier, and the plans at the time anticipated efforts by the combined Allied fleets that were already in that area- Force Z, the US Asiatic Fleet, the Dutch, etc.

One of the most devastating unplanned consequences of this was to rivet everyone's attention on those regions- and not on Pearl Harbor.

The US had embargoed oil to Japan and they had to strike south to grab the oilfields in the Indonesia area. Striking at the USSR's maritime provinces would not have filled the oil reserves. When they bombed Pearl Harbor, they had a finite amount of oil and much of their naval decisions revolved around how much they had remaining and how much would they burn in given operation. It's one reason they didn't sortie from Truk with many battleships during the Guadalcanal Campaign. It took longer for them to repair the damage to the Indonesian oil fields and refineries than planned and then the American submarine warfare on the Japanese maritime shipping started taking a bite out of how much they oil they could ship to Japan.

The oil embargo was definitely critical to Japanese decision making, but US policymakers in DC seem not to have fully realized how close was was until late November- and then they were looking the wrong way, not necessarily without justification.

Layton's memoirs are very good on this point, as is Roberta Wohlstetter's "Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision."

That is a great thread of responses, on what is a very complex subject.

The attack on Pearl harbour was a miracle;

It filled the US with a "terrible resolve"

The carriers were not there

The battleships sank in shallow water, so most of the crew members were saved.

Most capital ships were salvaged and refitted, now far more capable to take on the Japanese surface fleet.

The pilots mostly never took off, so survived, and they were far more valuable than a bunch of P40s

The repair and oil storage facilities were largely intact

Nevada did not sink in the only exit channel

Neosho was filled with highly inflammable storage but untouched. It could have wiped out the entire fleet, if hit.

It forced the USN into a carrier war, rather than facing Long Lance Torpedoes (Just look at the Java Sea) in a fleet action.

Thank God for Pearl Harbour and then how it turned out in the attack on the fleet, that day.

"Thank God for Pearl Harbor" takes "counterintuitive" to a whole new level.

Thanks also…

Armand

Absolutely counterintuitive, I agree, but worth considering nonetheless. Trapped in the West Virginia or Oklahoma, with no hope of rescue, badly burnt while escaping the Arizona, shot down and killed by friendly fire was horrific.

But it could have turned out far, far, worse looking at every feature I mentioned above (and there are more)

I posted in another discussion about the "What If's?" about Japan ignoring the USA in 1941 and simply striking British and Dutch possessions, isolating the Philippines, paying no heed to Hawaii -- might they have put together a defensive perimeter with the resources they craved in SE Asia and East Indies and dared the US to do anything about it? And fight a defensive war if Uncle Sam decided to go to war all the same? And would the US public have tolerated an indecisive but costly "war of choice" against the Japanese Empire once it was a fait accompli?

Interesting to read above that Yamamoto was an instigator of the Pearl Harbor attack when he's conventionally depicted in movies as a reluctant warrior who thinks war with the US is a bad idea. I need to dig into some actual history books and check this out and get the facts.

I don't buy it. The US Navy had seven old battleships operable in the Pacific before Midway- and they stayed tethered to docks in San Francisco when they weren't training. There was never a serious intention on anyone's part to take them to seek out a decisive battle west of the Marshalls (or for that matter, even Midway), because the responsible admirals knew they didn't have the fleet train to support them, or a reasonable chance of forcing a successful full scale fleet engagement. They knew this before Pearl Harbor; that's why WPPAC-46 envisioned large scale offensive fleet operations by the full battle line only in a distant future. Pearl Harbor didn't preserve us from some hypothetical future in which the Pacific Fleet's admirals led it on a death ride: their own appraisal of the logistical and preparedness situation did that.

A couple of other comments- while the sinking of Force Z and Pearl Harbor are typically cited as the moment when air power became dominant over surface ships, it's arguably the case that Dec 6-7 came at a point when the superiority of the bomber over the surface ships was temporarily and artificially inflated by problems with AA gunnery in both the USN and RN. The British had not yet made the hasty fixes to their High Angle Control System (http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-117.php) that would convince the US to share its proximity fuzes with the RN, and the fleet at Pearl Harbor was still armed with the inefficient 1.1" AA gun and the .50 caliber MG; fire direction could have been better (had the directors been manned), but better and heavier weapons had not yet been installed. Both navies remedied many of these problems (and added the proximity fuze) over the next two years of the war, so that American fast battleships in the Pacific, far from being inherently vulnerable, provided heavy volumes of AA fire to carrier groups.

Moreover, I am skeptical about the argument that the Pacific Fleet was somehow "better off" by being sunk at its moorings; when the attack began, none of the ships were at General Quarters, and they only initiated the process of closing up the ships after the attack began- meaning they had essentially no watertight compartmentalization, which meant almost every ship that received underwater damage suffered significantly worse flooding than it would likely have done had the ship been closed up (mercifully symmetrical for most ships, but tragically asymmetrical for "Oklahoma," which suffered five torpedo hits in ten minutes). Moreover, peacetime storage practices for fuel and some ammunition also contributed – "Nevada's" damage control efforts were hampered by gasoline fires, and "Arizona" suffered a gasoline fire forward in the minutes before the explosion- which the Navy has known for decades was probably the triggering event that detonated the black powder charges for the catapults stowed (against the rules) between Turrets 1 and 2, which detonated the forward magazines. Attacked at sea, closed for action and in motion (and consequently harder to hit), it's hard to conceive that any of them would have suffered such damage, except possibly "Oklahoma" ("Barham" was sunk by a U-boat in the Med with a similarly-sized spread). US battleships were attacked and damaged by aircraft many times during the Pacific War; only at Pearl Harbor were they sunk.

Only one modern Allied battleship was lost to air attack ("Prince of Wales"), and in that case the volume of the attacks was overwhelming, much as they were on "Yamato" or "Musashi" (which also met their opponents with less effective AA fire than was technically possible at the time). It took an early smart weapon to sink "Roma"; the modern battleships that the Germans lost purely to air attack were sunk while stationary (Tirpitz, Gneisenau), after suffering cumulative damage from air raids while at anchor. It's arguably the case that a battleship was better off at sea, where it could evade and fire back, than as a sitting duck in harbor.

Fascinating. Read and reread these responses and learnt much.

The Arizona gasoline fire triggering the black powder for the catapults, badly placed. Now that is totally new to me and not even hinted at in my many books on PH and Arizona specifically. That I really want to learn further.

Great expertise here. I am an enthusiast, but no more than that.

As noted, even with the losses at Pearl Harbor, the US Navy by transferring BBs from the Atlantic and quickly repairing some of the more lightly damaged Pearl Harbor survivors had assembled 8 fully operational battleships on the west coast by February 1942. They were in a formation called 'Task Force 1'. And as noted above, there they sat until the very end of 1942 due both to their huge demand for fuel and a general reluctance to commit them.

If there had been no Pearl Harbor attack and Admiral Kimmel had resisted the urge to counterattack immediately, then who knows what sort of force he might have been able to assemble? Twelve battleships and five aircraft carriers? It wasn't impossible. And the Japanese did have other commitments for their navy than just wait for the Americans to show up. No telling what might have happened.

Quite interesting indeed….

Armand

If you're interested in the topic, the source for some of the info on Pearl Harbor is Norman Friedman's "US Battleships: An Illustrated Design History," a fascinating book that includes substantial information, not just on design, but on the performance of the ships in question during the war (and he did companion books for various types, which I may finish before I die or retire).

You might find this video, 8mm footage taken at Pearl Harbor, to be interesting – YouTube link

Friedman's book includes the comment (IIRC) that a gasoline fire was visible on "Arizona's" forecastle immediately before the explosion, but in looking at this, all I can see there is some wispy smoke that may or may not even have come from "Arizona." Nevertheless, it's different from the scene as I imagined it, or as the movies portrayed it- slower, less cinematic, less crowded with obvious visual effects. Still tragic, though.

I'm strictly an amateur myself…..

Thanks for the link. Obviously the first minute or so is a reconstruction using USN planes, with their wheels down to look like Vals I guess.

I have never seen that clip of what seems to be Nevada (or is it Oklahoma?) with that false bow wave. Again it all seems very tranquil.

Funny how often the Arizona film is shown flipped like this. The cameraman was on the Solace and the Arizona was facing to his right in reality. Also worth noticing the masts of Oklahoma beyond it and just how quickly they are tilting. What were the chances that he would have been filming at just that instant, to make history?

Thanks for the link also…

Armand