Why build a separate glider for tanks when you have this:
en.wikipedia.org
Munich Shuffle: 1938-1942
- Thread starter Garrison
- Start date
An invasion of Malta with Allied aerial and naval superiority using literal meme machines that's what people think of when they mention "Nazi super weapons." A totally rational decision from the Nazi leadership indeed.
Jokes aside, is the situation on the Eastern Front any different or just the same as OTL?
Jokes aside, is the situation on the Eastern Front any different or just the same as OTL?
Garrison
Donor
Probably tactically better for the Heer as they have better models of the Pz III and IV as well as better assault guns. Strategically Stalingrad is still going to be a disaster.
Unless they decide to simply, [looks carefully over my should as the following words may attract a certain someone], encircle the city, at least on three sides, Ideally four and lay siege to the city ala Lenningrad, without entering, then I honestly don't see any other outcome.
1st February– 18th April 1942 – Malaya and Burma - Operation Yari – Part I – Japan - Planning the Final Blow
Garrison
Donor
1st February– 18th April 1942 – Malaya and Burma - Operation Yari – Part I – Japan - Planning the Final Blow
An invasion of Burma had been planned by the Japanese for the latter part of December, only to be postponed as the situation in Malaya remained in flux and they had no choice but to call it off completely after the failure to breakthrough at the Swettenham Line and the possible threat of a British counterattack. This was a reasonable decision, and the next logical step would have been to concentrate all available forces on Malaya, focusing on either breaking through the Swettenham Line or mounting a fresh attack from Thailand down the eastern coast, isolating and destroying the defenders at Khota Baru and advancing south capturing other ports and airfields as they went. Initially the Japanese 55th Division, originally earmarked for the attack on Burma, was assigned to strike down the eastern coast, with the expectation of the renewed offensive being launched at the end of January [1].
This straightforward, and eminently reasonable, plan soon fell victim to what came to be called the Japanese ‘victory disease’ After the astonishing success of the Japanese attacks launched on December 7th there was a sense that Japan was unstoppable and fated to win, setbacks in Malaya and at Wake Island notwithstanding. Even among the Allies some seemed to share this sentiment, the shock of defeat now painted the Japanese soldier not as a buck toothed, glasses wearing weaklings, but as fanatical warrior willing, even eager, to die for the emperor and able to march for days without rest through the most appalling conditions sustained by little more than a handful of rice. Montgomery would have a few choice words about such sentiments when he was asked his opinion of the Japanese army, he had a degree of respect for the determination, but was keenly aware that it was married to incredible recklessness both tactically and strategically [2].
The Japanese of course wholeheartedly agreed with this new characterization of their armies as almost superhuman and in the air of exhilaration abroad in Tokyo in January 1942 no one was willing to brook the derailment of the grand plan of conquest owing to one or two minor setbacks. The British in Malaya must be not merely defeated but crushed showing the White colonialists that their time in Asia was done and that they had no choice but to make peace. This view went along with the hollow rhetoric of ‘Asia for the Asians’, where the only Asians worthy of controlling the region were the Japanese. This attitude meant the soon to be corrected setback in Malaya could not be used as an excuse to completely abandon an invasion of Burma for the foreseeable future. A better solution, from the perspective of the leadership in Tokyo, was a simultaneous strike in both Malaya and Burma, overwhelming what had to be thin British defences and taking complete control of the vital resources of the region. In their wildest ambitions Tokyo saw this victory perhaps even opening the door to a future invasion of India itself [3].
What emerged as Operation Yari was bluntly a strategic monstrosity that went unchecked because no one dared to openly argue against anything other than the fine details for fear of attracting the wrath of the senior officers who had embraced it wholeheartedly, and indeed the only major revision that was eventually incorporated served to make it even more unwieldy and complex. In addition to spearheads striking into eastern Malaya and Burma, as well as a renewed attack on the Swettenham Line, a fresh amphibious assault at Kuala Dungun in support of the eastern spearhead was added in the middle of February. The idea was that the once the British committed their forces to engage the spearhead attacking out of Thailand the amphibious force would land behind them. This would theoretically encircle the British forces, allowing for their complete destruction and leaving the Japanese a clear line of advance down the eastern coast. This idea received short shrift from the IJN, who had their own plans for inflicting a decisive defeat on the Allies. This the army would have to mount the amphibious assault with whatever it could scrape together out of its own resources [4].
The ever more complex plan required yet more changes to the Japanese order of battle and those fine details where arguments did take place almost entirely centred around the allocation of troops and equipment to the separate assault formations. The aforementioned 55th Division graphically illustrated the problems caused by these constant revisions. The divisional HQ had been relocated to the east to begin organizing their attack on Malaya under the original straightforward version of the plan. They had barely gotten settled in and started work when orders were issued suspending the movement of the division. Then a further ‘refinement’ meant Lieutenant-General Takeuchi, commanding the 55th, was advised that his division was being divided up, with part of it now providing the infantry for the amphibious assault, only for this to be cancelled as well in favour of using the whole division for the attack on Burma, the very task it had supposed to undertake in December. In one final twist one regiment was belatedly reassigned to the amphibious assault. By the end of February Takeuchi complained in his diary, ‘The British have more idea where my soldiers are than I do’ [5].
Takeuchi would have been shocked to discover just how much truth there was in his bitter joke. The endless discussions over the organization of Operation Yari generated plenty of radio traffic for British signals intelligence to work with and they were able to glean enough to establish the broad outline of the operation, most importantly the plans for Burma and the amphibious assault. This information was supplemented by the fact that within a very short time of occupying Thailand and the area of western Malaya north of the Swettenham Line the Japanese had alienated large parts of the native population. The Japanese could not contain their contempt for the native peoples even when it was in their strategic interest to do and the people of Malaya and Thailand were treated as less than even second-class citizens by the Japanese, subjected to casual brutality practically as a matter of policy by their soldiers and even this paled compared to the ruthless repression carried out by the Kempeitai. Notionally a police force the Kempeitai’s real role was akin to that of the Gestapo, clamping down on anti-Japanese sentiment whether real or imagined and their treatment of POWs was legendarily appalling. The Kempeitai may have been effective at brutalizing peasants and POWs, they were far less effective at preventing information being passed to the British and given the necessity of involving Thai officials and workers in organizing transport and shipping for Operation Yari there was a steady stream of information being received from those who, while not necessarily sympathetic to the British Empire, were eager to see the back of the Japanese at the earliest opportunity [6].
On the other side of the intelligence equation the Japanese proved extremely lax about gathering detailed information on exactly what the British were doing in Malaya and Burma during the spring of 1942. Some cynically suggested that this was because no one wanted to produce any facts that might contradict the expressed opinions of the leaders in Tokyo who were certain that the British in Asia were on their last legs and the Japanese Empire would soon raise its flag over New Delhi as well as Rangoon and Singapore. There seems to have been some truth to this idea, reports that contradicted the optimistic assumptions of Operation Yari were dismissed or simply never sent up the chain of command. Overall though the real issue seems to have been the internal squabbles over the allocation of forces to Burma and Malaya, with no one willing to sacrifice their chance for glory in the name of such mundanities as logistics or concentration of force. This led to different parts of intelligence reports that were submitted being latched on to in support of a particular position, while other parts were dismissed or denied. There was also a level of exaggeration in many quarters, over the capabilities of the Japanese troops and the deficiencies of the British, all of which served to badly muddy the waters as far as the real strategic situation was concerned.
All of this can be summarised as the Japanese needing to be able to win with the forces they could gather by the middle of March when Yari was due to be launched, therefore the unchallengeable assumption was made that British could not possibly have mustered the forces necessary to thwart that goal. This display of victory disease would prove fatal for Japanese ambitions in South East Asia [7].
[1] It was a sensible plan; so it was never going to survive the ambition of the Japanese command in Tokyo.
[2] In some ways this attitude mirrors that adopted by the allies after the Fall of France, overestimating the enemy as way of excusing their own failures.
[3] Overreach is something the Axis nations seemed to be determined to outdo one another at.
[4] The IJN plan will involve the Kido Butai, in an operation, or a pair of operations that will make OTL Midway look sensible.
[5] Essentially a case of too many glasses and not enough bottles to fill them.
[6] Again a common theme with the Axis, either through ideology or short-term necessity they alienated populations who might have supported them.
[7] They are assuming the British will conform to their plans and there are no contingencies if they should deviate from their assigned roles, not dissimilar from what happened with Operation MI in OTL.
Asian Jumbo
Monthly Donor
As you are offering us strategic “master strokes“ from both IJA and IJN at the same time! Take all the time you need, this looks like it’s going to be fun…
Well, the Japanese saw Italy getting throughly humiliated, so they decided that they were jealous and wanted some humiliation of their own...
Garrison
Donor
Well both the IJN and the IJA are competing with one another to deliver the victory that will force the British, the Americans, or both to accept Japan's dominance in South East Asia and neither is willing to accept that its a hopeless fantasy.
The Japanese problem is magnified by Victory Disease and some early successes, winning the war seems almost within their grasp, if you ignore, economics, logisitics and the sheer determination of the USA in particular to crush them.
David Flin
Gone Fishin'
It's almost as if neither the Japanese nor the German top command were entirely rational and objective in their assessments.
I can't see this. Pearl Harbor was brilliant, but it was a hit-and-run raid. It wasn't evidence of Japanese forces engaging and destroying their adversaries in strength. After all, anybody can be caught off guard. OTL Singapore, by contrast, was such evidence. That was where Japan contracted "victory disease". The Japanese were already seriously overconfident - but Singapore confirmed that attitude. Followed, of course, by Java Sea, Burma, and Philippines. And the Indian Ocean raid (the British ran away). ITTL none of that happened.
I'm not denying the Japanese could still be so overconfident ITTL they would attempt the outlined plan; but not because of Pearl Harbor.
Garrison
Donor
I was including Hong Kong and the Philippines in their run of successes that began on the 7th.
Look More Closely Later
Gone Fishin'
Americans were still holding out in the Philippines into April 1941 in the original timeline (at Corregidor) but I guess they may have collapsed faster in this timeline.
Garrison
Donor
Not really, more that the initial American collapse played into the Japanese belief in their own inevitable victory and places like Malaya and Wake Island that contradict that belief are seen as mere bumps in the road. Whether that is actually arrogance or a form of denial is something I will leave to the reader.
1st February– 18th April 1942 – Malaya and Burma - Operation Yari – Part II – Britain - No Longer a Backwater
Garrison
Donor
1st February– 18th April 1942 – Malaya and Burma - Operation Yari – Part II – Britain - No Longer a Backwater
Even though they were unaware of the decision of the Japanese to postpone the invasion of Burma at the time it was a godsend for the British. It would be unfair to say that General Auchinleck had ignored the threat to Burma, but given the fact that Malaya was seen as the more likely target he had to allocate the available resources accordingly and after the arrival of Montgomery, with whom Auchinleck would eventually establish a solid working relationship, Malaya drew in the lion’s share of the additional soldiers and equipment available. After the initial assault on Malaya Auchinleck assumed that Burma might be well be targeted if the Japanese decided to bypass Malaya and threaten India and he was determined to reinforce it accordingly. To this end he now recalled the 10th Indian Infantry Division from the Middle East and successfully lobbied for the dispatch of the 1st Cavalry Division. and the mechanized elements that had been attached to form it into a flying column, as well. Some were sceptical about the deployment, but Auchinleck was adamant that if the Japanese could use bicycles for mobility he could use cavalry, not to mention the attached armoured cars and light tanks. Both divisions arrived in theatre in the middle of January, with General Slim being given overall command of what was effectively a Corps formed of the two divisions, though this would expand in response to Auchinleck’s demands for the dispatch of more armour and infantry [1].
That both Mark VI B and the Matilda II had proven invaluable in the defence of the Swettenham Line helped make Auchinleck’s case that there was indeed a place for tanks in South East Asia. He was willing to accept the dispatch of more of the tanks considered obsolescent for combat in the Mediterranean and Europe in the light of developments with the Wehrmacht’s Panzer and South East Asia would become the final battleground for many a Cruiser IV and Matilda II. These would however be leavened with a number of late model Crusader and Valentine tanks as the fighting in the Middle East had made it clear the ability to fire an effective HE shell was invaluable, especially in the infantry support role. In many respects however the best tank to see service in the theatre in the first half of 1942 was the American M3 Stuart light tank.
The British had received 150 Stuarts in the Autumn of 1941, without any great enthusiasm it must be said. At a point in time when it appeared that if there were to be any further armoured clashes in Libya it would be with a revived Afrika Korps there was no desire to deploy more light tanks considering the fate of so many Mark VI Bs. There was also a more political concern that accepting the Stuart into frontline service would open the door for the M3 Lee to be introduced at the expense of the tanks the army actually wanted, the A22 Black Prince and A24 Churchill infantry tanks, and the A27 Centaur cruiser tank, though with the latter two the line between infantry and cruiser tank had already blurred and they would be succeeded by a single tank that could carry out both roles [2].
Politics also played its part in the fact that these tanks were not dispatched to the Far East before December 7th. There had been some grumbling in Washington military and political circles that so much of the hardware shipped to Britain had been dispatched to ‘backwaters’. They were particularly aggrieved at the dispatch of so many P40s, at that point one of the most modern fighters in the USAAF’s inventory, to Australia and South East Asia. At this point in time the British were still worried that Americans would discover how much of the surplus equipment they had supplied to a desperate Britain in 1940 was now in the hands of the Italians and Germans courtesy of the fall of Greece. It was thus considered too risky diplomatically to dispatch the Stuarts to Malaya while it remained at peace, the situation changed drastically after December 7th.
Those soldiers in Burma and Malaya who found themselves being expected to crew the Stuarts, many converting over from the Mark VI B, were deeply dubious that they were once again getting the short end of the stick. That the Stuart soon came to be known affectionately as the Honey by its crews indicates how quickly that attitude. The Stuart was an excellent light tank, offering better protection and firepower than the MK VI B while still being quick and small enough to operate in the jungles of South East Asia. As it acquired a stellar reputation with the British forces in the Far East it was greeted with far less enthusiasm by the Japanese who had to face it. The Stuart remained in service in South East Asia long after tanks like the Sherman, Centaur and Churchill had come to dominate the Allied armoured divisions in Europe [3].
Equally important to the defence of Malaya and Burma were the radar systems dispatched to the Far East to allow for the creation of an integrated air defence system. Just as in Eagle Days over Southern England the radar proved a massive force multiplier, removing the need for constant combat air patrols and alert fighters on the ground, conserving resources and allowing available fighters to be concentrated in the right place. This meant that as both sides looked to strengthen their available air strength for the next major engagement the RAF and RAAF forces would enjoy a critical advantage that helped offset the fact that for the time being the IJA still retained numerical superiority [4].
The dispatch of so much equipment and manpower to Burma and Malaya does beg the question of why the Japanese didn’t make a serious effort to interdict British shipping. Certainly, it was possible for the British to avoid some of the more obvious shipping routes, especially when it came to running supplies to Burma and the British did their best to time their movements based on intelligence about IJN dispositions. Fast convoys sometimes assembled in Rangoon to make a swift run to Singapore when they knew the Japanese were preoccupied with operations in the Pacific. They were even able to make critical supply runs to the grab bag of Allied forces still holding out on Java, the inability to finally secure the Dutch East Indies providing another powerful incentive to conquer Malaya and Burma [5].
Still the approaches to Singapore were an obvious choke point and with Force Z still licking its wounds in Ceylon and awaiting the reinforcements that would transform it into a fully-fledged fleet, there was little available at that time to stop the IJN from attacking the convoys. The interservice rivalries that plagued the Japanese armed forces played a major part in this and there was also a certain amount of wounded pride that needed assuaging after the IJN had failed in December to either intercept Force Z or prevent the relief of Wake Island and if anyone were going to deliver the decisive blow that forced the Allies to seek terms Yamamoto and his staff were determined that it be struck by the navy not the army. This meant that even as the Army needed all support possible for their overambitious plan of attack the IJN was focused on their own grand scheme to finally bring both the Royal Navy and the United States Navy to battle and achieve the elusive decisive victory that had eluded them so far. This meant that the army was on its own in Malaya and Burma and the British could run convoys through the area with only air attacks from the IJAAF to worry about, and they had to run the gauntlet of the air defences around Singapore itself [6].
Together this all meant that the Japanese belief that one more push would drive the British out of South East Asia was wide of the mark to say the least. The defenders in Burma and Malaya in March of 1942 were far stronger than they had been in December 1941 and the window of opportunity for an easy victory had closed, if it ever existed. Much the same could be said for the Pacific War as a whole, though it would be some time before both sides realized that the initiative was swinging towards the Allies [7].
[1] The British have the most valuable commodity of all courtesy of the ever-expanding nature of Operation Yari, time.
[2] You can guess the name of that single replacement tank.
[3] To be clear the Lee isn’t actually bad; it just doesn’t suit the British when their own tanks have performed better and been upgraded sooner.
[4} The Japanese have more aircraft, but they will be given multiple task that negate much of that advantage besides radar.
[5] The Japanese forces fighting in the DEI are even more of a mixed bag thrown together at the last minute than the Allies, which combined with the fact that the Canadian troops thrown away in Hong Kong wound up in the DEI instead has allowed the Allies to bare cling on to a foothold.
[6] The IJNs plan will be discussed in detail after Operation Yari is done.
[7] The next two updates cover the fighting in Burma and Malaya respectively.
Looking forward to the Burma update Thursday, I wonder how much initial success will the IJA have before they stall out. I doubt they take Rangoon, but I wonder if they even get close to the city.
Seems like the IJN will have to really step their game up if they want to out do the IJA at screwing up, but I believe they can do it.
Seems like the IJN will have to really step their game up if they want to out do the IJA at screwing up, but I believe they can do it.