What if history scenarios

[Kangaroos4eva]

Not to mention STAVKA.

They made some preparations for Moscow falling in late 41, but by the time a bomb would have been ready (if they were able to deliver it...), the organisational structure was all well and truly back in place. Add to that that Stalin wouldn't have left a clear line of succession (and whatever manouvering there was for this would have been mostly been in Moscow and thus ruined anyway), and the Soviets would have been close to anarchy.

Especially in the aftermath of the purges, famine and terror of the 1930s, Baltic and Ukrainian resentment towards the Stalinist system, the civil war might have begun anew with nationalist uprisings like after 1989.

 

[sydney eagle]

Only two aircraft carriers were based at Pearl at the time: Lexington and Enterprise. The other Pacific Fleet carrier, Saratoga, was on the West Coast after a refit. Yorktown and Wasp were in the Atlantic and Hornet had only recently been commissioned. So even had Lexington and Enterprise been sunk at Pearl the US could theoretically have concentrated four modern carriers in the Pacific relatively quickly.

http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq66-9.htm

You left out "Ranger" which spent the entire war in the Atlantic.

 

[sydney eagle]

The problem with the light and CVE carriers for an actual fight was that they weren't made to take a hit...No armour, and ammo/fuel storage poorly located, etc. The CVEs were also very slow (about half the speed of the CVs). The were used, but had they been at Midway/Coral sea there would have been carnage.

Few U S carriers in WWII had much in the way of armour, certainly not on their decks. They had belts (very thin ones) and anti torpedo bulkheads and that's about it. Only Britain and to a lesser extent Japan had armoured decks on their carriers in World War II.

 

[Kangaroos4eva]

Few U S carriers in WWII had much in the way of armour, certainly not on their decks. They had belts (very thin ones) and anti torpedo bulkheads and that's about it. Only Britain and to a lesser extent Japan had armoured decks on their carriers in World War II.

Mass production is maybe a reason for the USA's second world carrier designs. Just look at the Sherman tanks for example, not much of a tank, but in numbers, they were very important in wearing down the limited German panzer reserves and their limited fuel and ammunition.

 

[sydney eagle]

Mass production is maybe a reason for the USA's second world carrier designs. Just look at the Sherman tanks for example, not much of a tank, but in numbers, they were very important in wearing down the limited German panzer reserves and their limited fuel and ammunition.

I wasn't looking at reasons, just explaining to "Telsor" that it was ALL U S carriers that were thinly armoured. Yes the Sherman was important in wearing down the German armour because of its numbers, but no more so than the T-34.

 

[GreyCrow]

If the Nazis had the A bomb I don't think I'd be here to post this. They would have almost certainly used it against London, and they would have eyed Moscow too. Might have been enough to convince the US to back out of the war.

Don't agree they would have targeted London. Not saying it would be an impossible scenario , but you would think , as the Americans with Japan , that London would have been left alone (atomically) and a major centre such as Manchester/Liverpool etc would have been targeted ( just as Nagasaki and Hiroshima were)

The Royal Family would have been shot but one of the Kaisers children would have been installed

 

[GreyCrow]

Has anyone mentioned what would have happened if Joan D'Arc just stayed the peasants daughter she was

 

[Kangaroos4eva]

Has anyone mentioned what would have happened if Joan D'Arc just stayed the peasants daughter she was

By her time, English power was in decline, particularly in France and the French were already instituting military reforms that would in the long term gain the French victory, but just a bit longer than what really happened.

 

[theyellowsash]

Don't agree they would have targeted London. Not saying it would be an impossible scenario , but you would think , as the Americans with Japan , that London would have been left alone (atomically) and a major centre such as Manchester/Liverpool etc would have been targeted ( just as Nagasaki and Hiroshima were)

The Royal Family would have been shot but one of the Kaisers children would have been installed

The Nazis didn't actually do most of the demolition of Poland most of the damage was during the Russian assault on occupied Poland. The Nazis saw the logic in occupying but getting the infrastructure so they wouldn't have to rebuild everything.

 

[GreyCrow]

By her time, English power was in decline, particularly in France and the French were already instituting military reforms that would in the long term gain the French victory, but just a bit longer than what really happened.

Kind of agree. Actually the death of Henry V might have been a bigger game changer than Joan , but she was significant that she rallied a France , and a French leadership that had about given up.

From wiki

In 1428 the English had begun the siege of Orléans, one of the few remaining cities still loyal to Charles VII and an important objective since it held a strategic position along the Loire River, which made it the last obstacle to an assault on the remainder of the French heartland. In the words of one modern historian, "On the fate of Orléans hung that of the entire kingdom."[22] No one was optimistic that the city could long withstand the siege.[23

 

[telsor]

Kind of agree. Actually the death of Henry V might have been a bigger game changer than Joan , but she was significant that she rallied a France , and a French leadership that had about given up.

Agree about Henry. While he lived, the French were just too intimidated to rally, but he died 'young' leaving an infant son as king (said kid being both an imbecile and largely in the care of his French mother), a situation that led to the War of the Roses (which was the real end for English ideas about France).

Joan was just in the right place at the right time, and if she hadn't come along, someone else would have. (although I do love the Irony that it was the French who killed off their own hero/patron saint).


On the other hand if Henry had lived another 10 years or so, he probably would have secured things well enough that English rule might have stood a chance of lasting, Joan or no.

 

[rdhopkins2]

What if WW2 Japan successfully invaded Australia. Would the USA help kick them out?

 

[Kangaroos4eva]

What if WW2 Japan successfully invaded Australia. Would the USA help kick them out?

The Japanese would have been dangerously over stretched in men, logistics and shipping if they ever attempted to invade Australia. This is due to their massive commitments in Burma and China.

In real history, they never wanted to seize the Australian interior, but cut us off at the ports by blockade or seizure.

If the Japanese had seized Australia's ports and coastal cities, the Americans would have diverted more manpower to recapture their man base of operations and support in the southern pacific.

 

[Happy Mastenator]

Trouble with invasion Australia in the north at that time I s that you are still a million miles from anywhere important in Australia, while being dangerously extended

 

[MaddAdam]

What if the Brits hadn't executed the leaders of the Easter Rising but instead appealed to the Irish sentiment about the tens of thousands of their men serving on the Western Front and promised Home Rule when the war ended.

Would Ireland ever have been independent? Would it be like Scotland now - self governing for health and education, but very much part of the United Kingdom for major defence and sovereignty issues?

 

[MaddAdam]

Nixon wins in 1960 would be a good sliding doors discussion.

Does Vietnam happen in the same way is the big one there.

 

[little graham]

If the Japanese had seized Australia's ports and coastal cities, the Americans would have diverted more manpower to recapture their man base of operations and support in the southern pacific.

Its scary to think that America planed invading Normandy in the summer of 43 with 270 divisions. But decided to wait a year and only use 90 divisions.

 

[Happy Mastenator]

What if the Brits hadn't executed the leaders of the Easter Rising but instead appealed to the Irish sentiment about the tens of thousands of their men serving on the Western Front and promised Home Rule when the war ended.

Would Ireland ever have been independent? Would it be like Scotland now - self governing for health and education, but very much part of the United Kingdom for major defence and sovereignty issues?

Nope, the Irish have always been much more independent minded than the Scots. Was always going to happen.

 

[Gough]

Does Vietnam happen in the same way is the big one there.

Hard to say, isolationism was pretty popular with the Republicans back then, but I suspect Nixon's instinct was to fight though.

 

[MaddAdam]

Nope, the Irish have always been much more independent minded than the Scots. Was always going to happen.

The Rising was not popular and Home Rule as per 1912 had widespread support. It was only the British brutality after the Rising that switched mainstream Irish sentiment.

More likely is that an exhausted and broke Britain does grant Home Rule in 1918 but then civil war immediately erupts via Protestants in the North taking up as per Carson and the pledge.

I don't see it ending without violence, but it could have been very very different.

 

[Kangaroos4eva]

Its scary to think that America planed invading Normandy in the summer of 43 with 270 divisions. But decided to wait a year and only use 90 divisions.

That was to do with supplies and space more than anything, as poor as the defences were in Normandy, if the Allies went even harder at D-Day, the Germans would have diverted their panzer divisions a lot earlier from Calias to hold the Allied advance. In addition, with no deep water port, the Allies would have struggled big time to supply their troops and the Germans fortified the French ports to the teeth, with some not even surrendering until the end of May 1945.

One of the reasons why I believe the Germans didn't commit their tanks earlier in Normandy was due to what happened to their tankers at the Anzio landings in Italy. The Germans were on the verge of driving the Allies into the sea at Anzio, but Allied naval guns slaughtered the German tanks, forcing them to retreat. They couldn't afford to lose so many tanks at Normandy, to hold the breakout and Caen.

I would have been more interested in how many more casualties the allies would have suffered had they attacked Calias instead, with the Germans on full alert and prepared with much stronger defences than Utah, Sword and Juno beaches in Normandy, which were meager at best.

 

[Kangaroos4eva]

Trouble with invasion Australia in the north at that time I s that you are still a million miles from anywhere important in Australia, while being dangerously extended

Debate between the Army and Navy
Japan's success in the early months of the Pacific War led elements of the Imperial Japanese Navy to propose invading Australia. In December 1941 the Navy proposed including an invasion of Northern Australia as one of Japan's 'stage two' war objectives after South-East Asia was conquered. This proposal was most strongly pushed by Captain Sadatoshi Tomioka, the head of the Navy General Staff's Planning section, on the grounds that the United States was likely to use Australia as a base to launch a counter-offensive in the South-West Pacific. The Navy headquarters argued that this invasion could be carried out by a small landing force as this area of Australia was lightly defended and isolated from Australia's main population centres.[4] There was not universal support for this proposal within the Navy, however, and Isoroku Yamamoto, the commander of the Combined Fleet, consistently opposed it.[5]

The Japanese Army opposed the Navy's proposal as being impractical. The Army's focus was on defending the perimeter of Japan's conquests, and it believed that invading Australia would over-extend these defence lines. Moreover, the Army was not willing to release the large number of troops it calculated were needed for such an operation from the Kwantung Army in Manchuria as it both feared that the Soviet Union would enter the Pacific War and wanted to preserve an option for Japan to invade Siberia.[6]

Prime Minister Hideki Tojo also consistently opposed invading Australia. Instead, Tojo favoured a policy of forcing Australia to submit by cutting its lines of communication with the US.[7] In his last interview before being executed for war crimes Tojo stated that:[8]

We never had enough troops to [invade Australia]. We had already far out-stretched our lines of communication. We did not have the armed strength or the supply facilities to mount such a terrific extension of our already over-strained and too thinly spread forces. We expected to occupy all New Guinea, to maintain Rabaul as a holding base, and to raid Northern Australia by air. But actual physical invasion—no, at no time.

 

[little graham]

That was to do with supplies and space more than anything, as poor as the defences were in Normandy, if the Allies went even harder at D-Day, the Germans would have diverted their panzer divisions a lot earlier from Calias to hold the Allied advance. In addition, with no deep water port, the Allies would have struggled big time to supply their troops and the Germans fortified the French ports to the teeth, with some not even surrendering until the end of May 1945.

cough cough bullshit cough cough...

They thought the Germans were going to push the reds over the Urals and very concerned with the prospect of the Suez canal falling.They planned to hit hard as the war would almost be lost then. When the Germans got pushed back from Stalingrad the whole situation changed and they decided to only do enough so the Russians would be destroyed destroying the Germans

Its actually a matter of public record and taught in american military collages by american military historians.


Ignorance is a choice.

 

[Happy Mastenator]

Ignorance is a choice.

Some make that choice more than others.........

 

[Kangaroos4eva]

cough cough bullshit cough cough...

They thought the Germans were going to push the reds over the Urals and very concerned with the prospect of the Suez canal falling.They planned to hit hard as the war would almost be lost then. When the Germans got pushed back from Stalingrad the whole situation changed and they decided to only do enough so the Russians would be destroyed destroying the Germans

Its actually a matter of public record and taught in american military collages by american military historians.


Ignorance is a choice.

You don't have to be a complete classless campaigner about it.

I never said they were never planning to in 1943, but by mounting a smaller invasion, as German archival evidence proves, the Germans believed that the landings were a feint right up to the afternoon on June 6. They believed that Calias was the main target still, delaying most of the panzer divisions in Northern France by a good day, despite Panzer Lehr Division being ready to move out against the Allies moving inland. Hitler's interference with German high command was also a main factor behind their delay. If the allies invaded Normandy in 1943, they would have had it a lot easier in terms of defences, but Rommel's appointment led to the defences in Normandy by mid 1944 being bolstered through the Todt organisation and other labour detachments.


The small scale of the landings in 1944 were to minimalise causalities to a degree, but also to tie down the large German reserves in France that could have been devoted to the Italian and Eastern Fronts. Also by 1943, the Allies hadn't fully worn down the Luftwaffe, which the Allies concentrated on from mid 1943 to 1944, which helped the 1944 landings immensely.


If the Western Allies used 270 divisions in 1943 they would have won out in the end, because the state of the defences in Normandy, but they may have suffered similiar to higher causalities to the 1944 campaign, due to increased German air and panzer reserves as well as their control of the ports.

The 1944 landings and their smaller scale weren't about simply bleeding the Russians (they did that with Berlin in 1945 however and a few other situations/battles from 1944-45), but to tie down badly needed German reserves that were needed on the Eastern and Italian Fronts, minimalising causalities and taking full advantage of their aerial and naval power, which they did to great effect.

Being a classless campaigner is a choice.