Comments by "" (@VersusARCH) on "The Drydock - Episode 109" video.
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00:54:48 Russian blood was up after the surprise attack at Port Arthur and they were bigger yet they lost. Granted, 1940s US and 1904 Russia has vastly different production capacities and the technology has advanced immensely, air power for instance, (the same applies to USSR vs 1904 Russia too). But high blood does not decide battles. It was still possible (albeit very difficult) for Japan to badly repel every US invasion fleet they produced and sent (and capital ships take long to produce, crews than need to be trained...). Of course they would have had to have done many things differently (pilot training x10 and MUCH better ASW), had a lot more luck (Midway), had much better intelligence (basically having their own ULTRA) and greater (and earlier) technology exchange with Germany (aircraft engines, radars, AAA...) .
Nuke Japan in 1945? Assuming Japan wins a string of naval victories that includes repelling the invasion of the Marianas and beyond... HOW DO YOU DELIVER A 4+t EARLY NUKE TO JAPAN?
Given that a B-29 or a heavily modified Lancaster were the only WW2 planes that could deliver such a massive bomb, you would have to do one of the following:
1) Fly them from unoccupied parts of China (assuming the Japanese failed to crush KMT in this alternate history in which they are far more successful than they historically were) - spies, much better early warning... In this alternate history Japan has not been firebombed for almost a year before nuking and its interceptor force is not bled dry... The bomb carrying plane would have been shot to pieces long before it reached Japan.
2) Fly a one-way B-29 mission (crew parachutes near a submarine) or wait until 1946 for B-36 Peacemaker and fly a strike from Anchorage - similar to above.
3) Get the USSR (which has a non-aggression pact with Japan from 1939 until it broke it in Aug 1945) to allow a nuclear bombing mission... Allowing a communist country to possibly snatch a nuclear weapon at the time USA has nuclear monopoly and falsely believes the USSR is decades from making its own bomb... unlikely. And the problems stated in point 2) still apply.
4) Battlefield use - nuke front line island bases or Japanese troop concentrations in China?... Assuming the plane does not get shot down by land or carrier based interceptors, the IJN still prevents seaborne taking of the nuked island as nukes are not that effective against fleets. On land, the troops are relatively widely dispersed. It would hurt but 10,000 troops lost is not something Japan quits a war for. Also, only one nuke in 2 weeks could be produced (granted Japan didn't know this, but in this scenario it is not Japan proper that is hit and its production capacities are not affected), and Japan (and Germany) had their own nuclear programs that would be switched into overdrive and produced some bombs of their own in a few years USSR style... If USN could not break IJN, nukes still stay far away from Japan... and in China - how far would the poorly supplied (by air bridge across Himalayas only) Chinese advance after a few nukes? Also after the first nuke the Japanese troops would start digging deep dugouts as bomb shelters (as they historically did on Iwo Jima or theGermans did on Western front in WW1 to shelter from heavy artillery) which would minimize the effects of nuclear strikes.
PS Getting the USSR to join the war - again, depends how it fares against Germany in this alternate history, but assuming war in Europe ended as it did, would have done the trick, but only on Asian mainland - thus - peace, not capitulation.
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