Change one single event of the War...

Totenkopf, you asked for an opinion. In many ways it sounds like a repeat of Dieppe only a changed location and expanded numbers risked. I don't think the Allies would have repeated themselves at that high a risk after waiting that long to build up men, supplies, and technology (i.e. the Mulberrys).

 

Mustang's "live's lost "is A great one, and I salut you for it!
I would have liked to stop the German attack in the Ardennes, and the Malmedie massacre. ( I know I'm speling it wrong, in a hurry sorry!)









"-War is such a sad thing." Dick Winters.

 

after gen.montgomerys brilliant normandy battle,the allied armies should have gone on a single thrust,instead of a broad front.gen.bradley should have been in command of the single thrust imo.cheers.

 

Probably, I'd change the the battle of Dunkirk, let the Germans attack with air force and panzers, thus capturing the surrounded soldiers, thus Churchill would have probably accepted Hitlers peace offer because he wont have the troops to defend. Germany builds up their airforce (gets some 262s earleir)
attacks in surprise... invades Briton, then turns fill attention to Russia, conquers Moscow, and so on....

 

The loss of more of the BEF at Dunkirk would change little. Germany does not have a navy and without one to challenge the Royal Navy effectively any invasion will fail.

As for the Me 262, it changes nothing of substance either:

http://www.ww2f.com/what-if/20325-what-if-me-262-created-earlier.html

*I did warn you to do your homework

 

They were SURROUNDED at Dunkirk ?? LOL. You may want to read some of the numerous "What If?" threads already posted on some of what you posted. The ME-262 myth is one of those debated over and over.

http://www.ww2f.com/what-if/22100-dunkirk-what-if.html

http://www.ww2f.com/what-if/11866-dunkirk.html

 

Amen! here's a quote from Bud Anderson's site ( Bud Anderson's P-51 Mustang "Old Crow" Web Page ) on the Me-262s

"

1. Did you encounter the ME262 jet fighters and were they a problem?

I did see ME262s but was never in a position to shoot one down. The ME262 jet fighters were about 100 knots faster than the Mustang. However, if they tried to engage the P51 in a turning dogfight they would quickly lose the advantage as we could easily out turn the ME262. Our 357th Fighter Group shot down 17 ME262’s, the most in the 8th Air Force. Even if the ME262 had been used properly in combat operations it probably would not have effected the outcome of the war. We had so many fighters we could have waited for them to land at their home base."

 

Eeek! Is this what you call 'shooting down' newbies?

 

No. Not at all . Just pointing him in the right direction in order to get some more info and imput on the subject . That way perhaps it may help him in making a better judgement with the other opinions,views and and the facts .

 

The following people suffer lethal and/or crippling brain aneurysms immediately after the invasion of Poland:

-Hitler
-Nazi Party Members
-Stalin
-Wehrmacht generals
-Japan's War Cabinet
-Chamberlain
-That French general, I don't even want to utter his name.
-Mussolini
-Black Shirts
-you get the picture.

The following people suffer from sterility:

-Ancestor's of modern "revisionists". Especially the Japanese ones.
-Ancestors of Neo Nazis.
-you get the picture.


I've always been concerned with net lives saved. For me, war is only justifiable in that name.

 

If Italo Balbo wasn't killed by "friendly fire" (whatever you want to call it). Would it lead to a better lead Italian army?

Hmmph.

 

I'd put Rommel in charge of the entire german army. Hitler was a horrible leader/commander.

 

If I could change a single event it would be in a way that didn't truly effect anything. I would say that when Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto's plane was shot down that he survived, though spending the rest of the war recovering and unable to command. I would have liked reading his personal memoirs, Interviews after the war, etc.

 

Now there's something that truly would have been interesting. I don't think Yamamoto would have been able to do any better than Koga, Toyoda, or Ozawa, maybe not even as well. I would love to have read his explanation of what he was thinking when he insisted on the Pearl Harbor attack, and get his take on his miserable failure at Midway.

 

Well, i would want the american carriers to be present during the attack on pearl harbor while the battleships to be out at sea.

This will force the americans to rely more on battleships during the war. I would love to see more battleship vs battleship scenarios.

 

And would you love to see the allies loose the war?

 

Placing the two fleet carriers that were in Hawaiian waters in early December, 1941, at Pearl Harbor wouldn't have materially changed the USN's reliance on carriers. There would have still been five US fleet carriers available after Pearl Harbor, and it would have been possible to salvage and repair the two at Pearl Harbor much more quickly than the battleships that were historically there. So by the late spring of 1942, the US would have all the carriers it actually had historically, and would be using them and the same tactics it actually used during the war.

The problem with the battleships at Pearl harbor was that they were old, slow, and obsolete. The USN recognized that carriers were the new arbiters of sea control, and planned from the beginning to fight the Pacific war primarily with aircraft carriers. The USN continued to build battleships during WW II only because other navies had them, but it was the carriers that from 1940 had absolute top priority in construction and repair. Battleships had passed into obsolescence around 1937-38; it only remained to be proven beyond a doubt in the early days of the Pacific War.

 

And what reason would that many battleships have to be out to sea during a time of peace (for America. The rest of the world had already been at war for years). At most there could have been three carriers present. All that would have happened is a delay in carrier operations in the Pacific as they transfered others from the Atlantic. The only times the Japanese allowed there battleships to be used in battle was in an attempt to bring about the decisive battle. As their intelligence service failed them many times I doubt they would have been deployed anyways. Of course with a limited number of carriers early on, Port Morsby would have fallen without the Coral Sea battle. No Midway, since there is no need to draw out American carriers, but by late 42 to early 43 when American production was putting out ships left and right, it wouldn't have mattered. While Pearl Harbor forced America to use the carrier as the main attack weapon in the Pacific, had they been sunk instead of the battleships I feel America would have seen the way Japan had just used theirs and drawn the same conclusions anyways. Realizing that that many Japanese carriers were out there they would have waited to attack anyways. Don't want the battleships sunk before they could engage other surface ships. It may have taken longer to win the war, but by that time Japan would have been seriously lacking in oil and they wouldn't have been able to use there ships even if they wanted to.

There was a reason for so few Battleship on battleship engagements. They were a dying breed.

 

I generally agree with your assessment of the situation, but when Admiral Halsey, flying his flag on the Enterprise, left Pearl Harbor on November 28, 1941, there was live ready ammunition in the gun mounts, and the pilots had orders to shoot down, "in a friendly fashion" any Japanese planes they encountered, or so my father, who was an SBD pilot aboard the Enterprise at the time, claimed. Admiral Kimmel, who had ordered Halsey to ferry air reinforcements to Wake, had offered to let him take the Pacific Fleet battleships with him, but Halsey had refused, saying if he had to run, he didn't want any "damned BB's" slowing him down.

As for the number of carriers in The central Pacific, there were only two, Enterprise and Lexington; Saratoga was in San Diego picking up her airgroup after an overhaul at Puget Sound Navy Yard, Ranger and Yorktown were still with the Atlantic Fleet, and Hornet was still on shakedown in the Atlantic. Thus, at most, the US would have lost only two carriers at Pearl Harbor, and both of those almost surely would have been salvaged and repaired as quickly as possible.

The US Navy was actually well ahead of the Japanese Navy in carrier battle doctrine, at least in theory. When Congress passed the Two Ocean Navy act in 1940, the Navy gave an absolute top priority to building and launching the numerous Essex-class carriers over every other type of ship including battleships. Admiral King, in the 1938 Fleet Problem (exercises) had pioneered using carriers massed into a single task force and developed the doctrine that would come to be used later in the war. The reason such large task forces were not used early in the war had more to do with logistics than tactics.

As early as 1938, the USN began gearing up to train the large numbers of carrier plots that would be needed in the Pacific War. My father who enlisted in the Navy in early1939, was in one of the first batches of pilots turned out by this program. That is why the USN was able to field the huge numbers of well trained pilots that essentially stopped the Japanese within six months of the opening of the war. The Japanese with no such foresight, and expecting to win a very short war, were unable to match the USN's pilot training program.

After War Plan Orange morphed into Rainbow 5 in the late 1930's, it was never planned to use the Pacific Fleet battleships in an offensive mode without carriers. They were to stand on the defensive until such time as they were needed for shore bombardment and escort of troop convoys in the Central Pacific offensive. And this is just what happened; the old, slow BB's at Pearl were sent back to the West Coast where they swung around their anchor chains until the US went over to the offensive.

 

I'd read that before, so I would say your fathers claims are correct. He also ordered that all planes would take off with a 500 lb GP bomb as well IIRC. Coincidently one pilot actually reported while on patrol a sighting of a large Japanese fleet during the cruise. Though post war analysis proved no Japanese ships were in the area at the time.

I agree that at most only two could possibly be in port at the time ( if neither was ferrying aircraft, or returning from it) but in the spirit of the WI I included Saratoga. It could be worse, he could of included the Atlantic carriers at pearl