An American Pacific Fleet 1941 What If scenario

[Dave Homewood]

With all the threads on here recently about the Pearl Harbour attacks, I thought this might be an interesting one to discuss. A Rear-Admiral called publicly in November 1941 for the US Pacific Fleet to move to Singapore immediately. Here is a newspaper article from the Evening Post, (Wellington, New Zealand) Volume CXXXII, Issue 127, 25 November 1941, Page 6
with the details:

AMERICAN FLEET

SINGAPORE AS BASE

ADMIRAL URGES DISPATCH

WASHINGTON, November 23

The immediate dispatch of the United States Pacific fleet from Hawaii to Singapore is urged by Rear-Admiral Yates Stirling, jun., naval commentator for the United Press. "This is the one chance of stopping Japan," says Rear-Admiral Stirling. "Guarded by this fleet, augmented by British naval forces, Singapore should be safe."

"Japan, however, would probably j never allow such a move to go unchal| lenged," he said. "She has a fleet of at least 12 battleships, nine aircraftcarriers, 40 cruisers, 150 destroyers, and 60 submarines. She also has an air force of 2000 naval planes, and 3000 army planes. "If the United States fleet moved to Singapore, the Japanese would probably be mobilised at Cam Ranh Bay, from which they would take the offensive. The Japanese navy's ships are equal to any in the world. ,j "A war between Japan and the j United States would be long and arduous. For America "to win it would require an all-out effort far exceeding anything most of our people realise.

"The war would be a naval war and would have to be fought in waters of Japan's choosing—waters in which Japan has literally hundreds of bases."

http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bi ... Stirling--

An interesting scenario arises there, the fleet would not have been in Hawaii on December 7th, 1941. In fact they may have even met the Japanese fleet mid-ocean en route to Singapore perhaps. But if they didn't and they'd gotten to Singapore, the defence of that vital base would have been bolstered, and it's likely that Force Z would not have been sent there (only to have its battleship and battle cruiser sunk on the 10th of December 1941). With the US carriers at Singaore the air defence would have been phenominally better alongside all the RAF, RNZAF and RAAF squadrons there. The Japanese fleet headed for Hawaii may well have turned towards Singapore and Malaya and joined the Japanese invasion fleet that was already headed there, and the Japanese bombers in Thailand, in bolstering the attack on the Malayan Peninsular. but perhaps this would have given the Allies an edge in repelling the attacks. I'm sure part of the fleet would alos have he;ped defend other territories such as the Philippines etc. Maybe the Pacific war might have only lasted a few more months if this guy had been listened to.

What do people here think?

[oz rb fan]

Dave
that scenario has a couple of problems(i'm currently reading re fighting the pacific war)
1 if the two fleets hadn't met on water,the Japanese would have bombed the remaining targets...dry docks and fuel storage,a major blow to the us as all the fuel for the pacific fleet was there plus the repair facilities another blow as any badly damaged ships would have had to get to the California for repairs.
2 the whole fleet would have been stuck inside Singapore harbor..could have been a sitting duck,the japanese had much better aircraft(both the zero and kate were the best in their class at the time)singapore is a deep harbor as well(iirc) so no need for special torpedoes.
3 the main invasion force came form on land NOT sea as expected so though a tougher fight with a battle hardened force Singapore probably have still fallen
4 if the two fleets had met on the water it could have been disastrous as the japanese fleet was better equipped..the loss of life could have been much worse(imagine the loss of ships with out the ability to re-float and repair them quickly)
ironically the end result wouldn't have differed much(unless the us public didnt get behind the war as it happened along way from the us therefore didn't alter the isolationist feeling in parts of the us government at the time)
japan would still have lost as they couldn't imagine the ability for the us production machine .
Paul

[the330thbg]

..so it sounds like the only change in history would be 'Singapore Harbor Day' on 7 Dec 1941

[The Inspector]

Yeah, that and we'd all be typing on a Kanji charactered keyboard and taking the family to the local franchised restaurant featuring exotic foods like hamburger and flench flies
If you don't already, you really should put http://www.engrish.com into favorites and check it every day

[Kyleb]

What do people here think?

I'm not sure relocating the fleet to Singapore would have helped. In a recent book I read on the sea battle around Guadalcanal (Neptune's Inferno - excellent book), one of the biggest issues was logistics - particularly fuel for the ships. Given that the supply lines to Singapore would have been even longer and more vulnerable than the supply lines to Guadalcanal, I question whether we had the ability to supply a fleet in that location.

[Garth]

...

With the US carriers at Singaore the air defence would have been phenominally better alongside all the RAF, RNZAF and RAAF squadrons there.

...

What do people here think?

Well, Saratoga was on the West Coast for a refit, so she wouldn't have gone. Of the other two Pacific Fleet carriers, Enterprise had Wildcats (16), but Lex still had her Buffaloes (16 as well). "Phenomenally" might therefore be a relative term - Singapore's air defenses would have been improved numerically, but probably not all that much from a qualitative standpoint (both pilot skills and the capabilities of the fighters).

[The Inspector]

And the entire Pacific Fleet including all the carriers could be resting on the bottom next to Prince of Wales and Repulse-game, set, match and we'd be conversing in japanese

[Dave Homewood]

Dave
that scenario has a couple of problems(i'm currently reading re fighting the pacific war)
1 if the two fleets hadn't met on water,the Japanese would have bombed the remaining targets...dry docks and fuel storage,a major blow to the us as all the fuel for the pacific fleet was there plus the repair facilities another blow as any badly damaged ships would have had to get to the California for repairs.

Or more likely the Japanese spies in Hawaii woiuld have told them the fleet had left and they'd have called off the attack all together, and turned the fleet toward south east Asia.

2 the whole fleet would have been stuck inside Singapore harbor..could have been a sitting duck,the japanese had much better aircraft(both the zero and kate were the best in their class at the time)singapore is a deep harbor as well(iirc) so no need for special torpedoes.

True.

3 the main invasion force came form on land NOT sea as expected so though a tougher fight with a battle hardened force Singapore probably have still fallen

The main invasion force of Singapore island did yes, but they came from up the Malayan Peninsular, and before they got there they were a seaborne invasion force, landing at places like Kohta Baru and Endau, both places where big battles happened between the Allies and Japanese. Had the US fleet have been in the area they may have stopped that invasion force even getting near land.

[Dave Homewood]

..so it sounds like the only change in history would be 'Singapore Harbor Day' on 7 Dec 1941

Well Singapore was indeed attacked on the same day that Pearl Harbor was, only it was the 8th of December 1941 local time due to the International Date Line. Not only that but the Japanese also attacked Malaya that day, some time before the first bombs ever dropped on Pearl Harbor. All the places attacked should be remembered on that day and not just Hawaii, in my opinion.

[pjpahs]

I have to disagree about "game -set- match,we'll be all speaking Japanese". It would be a terrible setback, but the result would have been the same. A victory for the U.S.A. and our allies. Our industrial might was and is overwhelming and as one WIXER puts it in his replies something about you cannot invade the U.S. as there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass.

[oz rb fan]

Dave your right about the spies and that would have probably meant the two fleets meeting on the water and whilst a set back for the allies as a whole (and probably extending the war by a couple of years)or they would have been caught in Singapore harbor,and as the later years showed with air superiority the surface fleet would have had a hard time of it.
A lot of damage done and much longer repair times as they would have been much further from the facilities.
yes the invasion fleet would have had a harder time of it,but with the pearl harbor attack fleet in the area i'm not sure much would have changed. bigger battles maybe and possibly a longer time till Singapore was taken.
As pjpahs has said i don't think it would be a game changer in the long term as the US production machine was not taken into account by the Japanese,and it is this ability as much as the military that won the war.
with this scenario would have extended the war but the allies would have still won.

[Dave Hadfield]

How could FDR ever have authorized the US fleet to leave American territory undefended and go protect British interests, in 1941 "isolationist" America? A total and absolute non-starter.

FDR did everything he could to aid the UK before PH, but he was hamstrung. The attitude exemplified by the "America First" movement was prevalent, and very powerful. People like Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford -- icons we'd call them today -- were leading the US populace away from any intervention ("America First" movement). Example: when FDR gave Churchill the 50 WWI destroyers, when England was alone and in considerable danger from the U-Boat campaign, he had to press for British territorial concessions in return so Congress would swallow it.



And FDR's "Lend Lease" was about supplying goods to the UK, sure, but it was also very profitable for US manufacturers, and wiped away the last of the Depression -- an easy sell in Congress because it brought employment and prosperity.

But taking the Pacific Fleet to the other side of the ocean, and leaving Hawaii unprotected? At a time when the US was decoding secret Japanese documents and was becoming aware of the liklihood of hostile action?

An imaginative idea, but not possible in the 1941 reality.

Dave

[Dave Homewood]

Well it was the idea of a Rear Admiral in the US Navy so he must have had some idea of what was possible, but I see your point.

Perhaps if they simply sent the fleet west in an "exercise" (like is the usual thing now when a fleet wants to flex its muscles and rattle its swords). The Japanese were not reading the US codes, so the knowledge from spies that the fleet had left and not knowing exactly where they were headed, might have staved them off from making any attacks. After all they hit the fleet at Hawaii simply because they were worried about their presenece in the Pacific. if they were unaware of where that fleet was, they might have backed off and returned to the negotiation table.

If they had discovered that they were at or near to Singapore and that Force Z was also arriving there, they may well have also backed off from attacking there too, as that combined force would surely have been quite formidable as a pack on the ocean.

[John Dupre]

If the US was going to forward deploy the fleet it would have been to Subic Bay and not Singapore. Prior to an actual declaration of war there is no way the Congress or the public would have stood for the USN defending a British bastion while Britain was at war and the US was neutral. Even if it had happened there would have been all kinds of logistical nightmares as well as inter allied communication failures as each side held to its own intelligence and decision making. Imagine the uproar if the US fleet was sunk in Singapore and it was found out the British knew the Japanese had launched but the US fleet was not on the list of recipients or vice versa the US fleet ups anchors and gets away while the British sip Gin and Tonic at Raffles wondering what all the fuss is about.

Deploying the fleet to Hawaii was provocative in its own right. Had the fleet stayed in San Diego Pearl Harbor would have been a minor station of not much immediate interest and the Japanese would never have dared approach the US coast. Up to Dec. 7 no one, not even the Japanese, really knew how good they were because they had never really been tested.

In the end those that see the same outcome for the war are right. Don't forget that the Iowa's and Essex's and all the new cruisers, destroyers, auxiliaries and the jeep carriers were already building. The Japanese were never going to stop that even if Yamato had ended up shelling San Francisco.

[JDK]

It's an interesting question, and as Dave's put it, founded in a period view that is fact based.

However as has been said, the big trend of the war was decided essentially by American manufacturing and effort, which I for one am appreciative of as a vital contribution. We must remembr that once the US was entered total war, the Japanese could not win; and we must also remember they expected to arrive at a compromise peace - something the allies decided was not going to happen.

I have to disagree about "game -set- match,we'll be all speaking Japanese". It would be a terrible setback, but the result would have been the same. A victory for the U.S.A. and our allies. Our industrial might was and is overwhelming and as one WIXER puts it in his replies something about you cannot invade the U.S. as there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass.

In the real world there was no real intent by the Japanese to invade the US, and there was no way America would have been 'speaking Japanese' as they just weren't coming in reality. (It was never going to even get to a mainland invasion.) That's W.W.II allied propaganda; excusable then, misleading now. It's probably fair to say the Japanese misread the potential American change of attitude caused by their strike on Pearl Harbor - had they gone for a slower attrition based attack on the British Empire's eastern possessions and those of the occupied Dutch, the Isolationists (as Dave's pointed out) might have continued to put the brakes on US response, and the Japanese might've got what they wanted, which was colonies and empire under the euphemism of the 'Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere'.

Despite the tales of heroism in the early war defensive phase, we must remember that most of the allies' armed forces had outclassed aircraft that were just not combat ready, and aircrew who were mostly green or unaware of their combat ignorance (peacetime exercises were remarkably irrelevant) and easy pickings for the combat hardened Japanese pilots. The 'what setbacks where' was about the detail, and more dependant on combat hardening and quality equipment arrival, IMHO.

Just a few comments,
Regards,