IJN carriers

The war was inevitable as Japan was running out of the fuel required to support it war in China, let alone a war of agression throughout the Pacific.

The reason that Dec 1941 was selected as the date for the ainvasion was that Japan’s logisticians calculated that by that date there would remain enough fuel to support a rapid advance to the East Indies oil fields, and supply the IJ military while the East Indies fields were brought back on line.

The timing was driven by the fuel situation.

As for not attacking the US, there was no way the Imperial Japanese General Staff was going to go to war with their left flank left exposed. Any drive to the East Indies would require the Phillipines to be neutralised in the opening moves, otherwise it would provide a base for the US military to build up and menace Japan’s oil pipeline to the home islands.

There was never any real liklihood of the US and Japan not going to war, the Japanese saw only two options one the oil embargo cut in, capitulation or conflict.

Given the mindset of the Japanese military of the time, conflict was the only option.

Unicorn

AAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!:D

Let me guess what you think about Ise and Hyuga….

The maximum capacity of Shinano was to be ~135 aircraft… of which only 45 would be flight-ready. The others were to be made flight-ready as aircraft were lost from the entire force… and, as Tiornu said, she was to act as a forward servicing base.

Which, is why I don’t like aircraft carrier conversions as a whole with the possible exception of the Saratoga and Lexington Class Battle Cruisers/Carriers. Clearly, a waste of valuble resources…………:(

Time to nitpick Ja…
“is mute on the bases”

should be “is moot on the basis”

THANK YOU Obi Wan!!!!!!! Only person who got the gist of my original question!!!! I just thought it would be neat to imagine Sinano or even Taiho with a mid 50s style rebuild.

Shinano was a clumsy conversion and Taiho was a singleton unit. Both ships were eventually lost due to poor damage control, not to mention generally poor shipbuilding practices.

Unlike the United States, which produced 24 Essex class hulls and 3 Midways, the Japanese lacked a coherent carrier building program – which in turn reflected the shortcomings of Imperial Japan’s limited industrial base, failed economic policies and poor military leadership.

Didnt mean to start a discussion on ww2. But seeing as how I DID open Pandora’s box as it were, consider this: What would the course of ww2, IN THE PACIFIC, have been like if Japan had not attacked Pearl Harbor? In fact had not attacked ANY US targets at all? Just British and Dutch areas?

Japan was doomed to failure from 1937 onward. The invasion of China speaks volumes about the purposeless aggression of the military regime in Japan. Japan lacked any plausible strategy for outright victory over the Chinese and in the end accomplished little more than a largely unproductive occupation of the Chinese seaboard while tying down massive numbers of Japanese troops along a hugely expansive, bogged down inland front.

At the end of 1941, Japan wasn’t any closer to final victory in China than at the end of the 1937, when Japanese forces had very intentionally attacked the USS Panay. Of course, the United States was in a far different position in 1941 than in 1937, with the largest rearmament program in history, full conscription and a president that was very anxious to go to war to save Britain.

Public support in the United States for war against Japan would have been more limited if Japan hadn’t attacked Pearl Habor and had bypassed the Philipines in its invasion of British and Dutch colonial possessions, but war with the United States, and Japanese defeat, was still inevitable.

You forget dude, the whole reason why Japan attacked America was because they were the biggest threat to Japans expansion in the Pacific. America also had major bases in the Phillipines.

Britain and America were close before Pearl, the US was sending volunteers over to Britain to help them fight the war.

The question is mute on the bases that Japan’s plans were simply revenge from the 1851 industrialisation of it’s home soil.

American carrier forces would have begun raiding targets in the Mandates. I don’t believe there were any facilities west of Pearl that could have supported the Pacific Fleet, and since Kimmel was not the sort of fellow to throw the battle fleet ahead of its logistics, there may have been some time before any decisive fleet encounter. The Philippines would have been an even tougher nut to crack, so the resources gained in the East Indies would have been more difficult to get to the Japanese home islands.
There’s no doubt the Americans would have intervened.

THANK YOU Obi Wan!!!!!!! Only person who got the gist of my original question!!!! I just thought it would be neat to imagine Sinano or even Taiho with a mid 50s style rebuild. Didnt mean to start a discussion on ww2. But seeing as how I DID open Pandora’s box as it were, consider this: What would the course of ww2, IN THE PACIFIC, have been like if Japan had not attacked Pearl Harbor? In fact had not attacked ANY US targets at all? Just British and Dutch areas?

The Shinano was a sign of Japanese desperation similar to their hybrid battleship/carrier conversions, ill found vessels of limited utility that achieved nothing as aircraft carrying vessels. Ultimately, as others have said, the industrial/economic imbalance in the Pacific war was so huge that short of Japan obtaining WMD and an effective delivery system they were never going to win, it’s often forgotten that in addition to the actual Pacific war the theatres in China and South East Asia were also a huge drain on Japanese resources that steadily eroded their fighting capacity.

I think the only way to make the scenario work would be if the Pearl Harbour attack had gone exactly to plan, ie catching the US Pcaific fleet carriers in port and the aborted third wave destroying the port facilities. Even then America would have probably transferred much of the Atlantic fleets heavy units to the Pacific (The Atlantic campaign was more suited to Destroyers and Frigates/corvettes than to Battleships and fleet carriers, the RN would have to give higher priority to the fleet carrier construction program, Colossus class possibly arriving earlier, etc etc. A lot of knock on effects here.) and they would have to be based on the west coast for the first six months-1 year while Pearl was repaired. This may have bought the Japanese another six months in the Pacific campaign until the US was ready to hit back but Midway (ie descisive showdown between fleets, not necessarily in the same location) would still have happened at some point. The A bomb still happens in the same time frame so Japan only has until August 45 to do things differently.

As to Shinano, the original point of the question, if Japan had managed to keep the US out of the war altogether as planned then would she have been converted at all? As converted though, her flight deck was more than wide enough to accept an angle deck without the need to add a sponson to the port side (as in the original British conversions of the 50s) though she could also have a ‘Midway’ style large sonson to maximise deck space. The latesttheory I heard about her was that the Japanese were planning to use her as a base for their adaptation of the German Me262 (both the IJN and IJAAF had their own separate versions under development) and this at least would have been better use of such a large carrier than forward maintenance base. In the end it was all a pipe dream, as by the time she and the jets would have been ready Japan would have been out of fuel and even without the A bomb Allied troops would have been ashore on the mainland.

The maximum capacity of Shinano was to be ~135 aircraft… of which only 45 would be flight-ready. The others were to be made flight-ready as aircraft were lost from the entire force… and, as Tiornu said, she was to act as a forward servicing base.

Midway made it very apparent that carrier battles would not be protracted affairs, but short encounters that would be won or lost in a brief series of maximum effort strikes. “Alpha strikes” were important, not attrition reserves.

As a second line aircraft transport, equivilent in role to the far smaller HMS Unicorn, Shinano might have been marginably survivable, but as a forward deployed carrier with an undersized active airgroup, she would have quickly been lost. Perhaps the Japanese were lucky to have lost Shinano before she was fully manned and fitted out.

The maximum capacity of Shinano was to be ~135 aircraft… of which only 45 would be flight-ready. The others were to be made flight-ready as aircraft were lost from the entire force… and, as Tiornu said, she was to act as a forward servicing base.

Description of Shinano as a ferry-type ship has given rise to misconceptions regarding her capabilities and intended role. While it’s true she had an anticipated air group of about 45 planes–a seeming absurdity for a 62,000-ton ship–she was also intended to operate aircraft other than her own. The Japanese battle plan was for Shinano and other armored ships (like Ise, Hyuga, and Taiho) to steam into relative proximity of the enemy while flimsier ships like the Unryus held back and launched their aircraft at extreme range. These planes would make their attack, land aboard the armored carriers for refueling and rearming, then make their return flight after attacking again.
Somewhere or other, I have a copy of a CinCPac paper translated from captured papers of the Yokosuka air group detailing this idea. The date of the Japanese draft is 1943.

Really bored right now….so……”What if” ww2 had ended differently for Japan……..could Shinano have been modernized with an angle deck?

1. The Second World War could never have “ended differently for Japan.” Victory against Japan was always a certainty for the United States. After America’s overwhelming response to the partially failed Pearl Habor attack, the Japanese leadership knew that defeat was inevitable.

2. The Shinano was a poorly executed carrier conversion of an almost useless Yamato-class battleship hull. Shinano was never intended to be a first line carrier, but only a sort of auxilary carrier that would act as a second line support ship for the true fleet carriers. Shinano’s speed was lacking, and despite a massive displacement that would only be exceeded with the coming of the Forrestals, this ship was probably inferior in terms of anti-aircraft armament and aviation facilities to even the smaller Essex class.

The longevity and success of the contemporary Midway class could never have been matched by the Shinano conversion.

Oh and Hawk: Mate why call your self Hawkdriver and have pics of Eagles in formation 😉

The question I’ve always wanted to ask:D

Actualy….the picture is a MK.9 Hawk……only was in one episode…….

It could have been but mor importantly would the island structure have swapped sides? Remember Akagi had her island on the opposing side to other carriers (kinda think maybe this is why she was my favourite carrier- that and the fact that she had three flight decks originally- 2 for flying off and one for landing).

More importantly along these lines, would Ise and her sister have kept their flight decks aft and would they have employed either Helo’s or Harriers?

Always made me think about Moskva and Leningradski if they would have ever been deployed with Forgers?

Oh and Hawk: Mate why call your self Hawkdriver and have pics of Eagles in formation 😉