"No Pearl Harbor" part 2

Here's another interesting tidbit:

On 12/7/41 there were over 22,000 US Army troops in Alaska mostly at Forts Mears and Richardson. Dutch Harbor was an operating US Naval base primarily intended for submarines. Kodiak and Sitka Islands in the Aleutian chain both had operating air bases on them along with the one at Dutch Harbor.

Oh, in the canal zone both entrances were heavily mined even prior to the war with bottom placed command detonated mines (there were operating stations on the shore in sight of where the mines were placed and these were connected by a cable to the mine). There were occasional problems with ships snagging the cables but, these were in place. Interestingly, these mines were Army operated by the Army mine planter service who also manned the ships that maintained them.

 

Ooooh! Command detonated mines! I'd not heard of these before. Where can we read the details?

 

A surface attack on the cannal makes the St Naizzere raid look easy. A conventional air attack is also tough to pull off due to the difficulty in getting land based or naval aircraft carrier planes clsoe enough. Hitting the locks and related equipment enough times with conventional air attack techniques are problematic as well.

I does occur to me the Japanese crusier subs could get their planes close enough undetected (well, better odds than anything else). Further a extremly well planned attack and extremely well rehearsed bombing technique could get hits on the locks into the 30% range. Think of something like the British Dambusters raids. The trick is the float planes could not carry the large bombs needed to damage the locks.

Maybe if a entire fleet with battleships, carriers for air cover, a sheltered refueling site, all the oilers in the IJN, and other bells & whistles made a run for it. With diversionary force to draw the US Pacific fleet off. They could get close enough to hammer the locks with a combination of AP HE ammo and some carrier air strikes. But then you risk losing a major part of the IJN on the far side of the Pacific for a temporary gain.

 

I'll see what I can do on the command detonated mine thing. The Japanese had them too. Don't know about the British or Germans however.

 

I assumed everyone built a few, but am ignorant about how & where they were used. I also wonder if the US Army had anything like gunboats or torpedo boats in the cannal defenses.

 

I think many of the mines ("torpedoes") used in the ACW were command detonated.