WI: America doesen't nuke Hiroshima

[The Red]

The Soviets lacked the proper equipment for one thing. It could have been done, but with far more difficulty that the Soviets believed. They were looking at it as nothing more than a wider river crossing. Not quite.

Oh I agree that the Soviets underestimated how tough such an invasion would be but that increases the likelihood of it going ahead. And it would have been successful, albeit more of a bloodbath than the easy victories of August Storm.

 

[mcdo]

Didn't know that, however was he a high ranking officer or a footsoldier/lower ranking officer?

He was a captain, commanding an artillerly company.

 

[David S Poepoe]

And what is that supposed to mean?

What part of Total War do you not understand? There are no civilians when you are waging total war against another nation.

 

[Kome]

Why is it not likely exactly? Stalin was planning to do it and would have if the war had gone on for a few more weeks.

The Soviets unify Korea under Kim and drive even further into China. They then invade Hokkaido, which Le May has essentially cut off from Honshu at this point. Both sides suffer from terrible logistics but the Soviets eventually win the bloody struggle though air and naval supremacy and better equipped forces, despite being small.

With fear of Soviet occupation, the Japanese probably surrender to the western Allies before the battle for Hokkaido has been decided.

Would the Japanese really see the Soviets as that bad? I mean their previous encounter with them was 'only' August Storm and a short embarrassing border war.

Their experience with the WAllies is uh, bad. To say the least.

 

[The Red]

Would the Japanese really see the Soviets as that bad? I mean their previous encounter with them was 'only' August Storm and a short embarrassing border war.

Their experience with the WAllies is uh, bad. To say the least.

Oh yes, if anything the Soviets were considered much worse. The Soviet Union was the greatest ideological and historical enemy, they were horrified by the idea that Japan could fall under communism and wouldn't dream of launching their southern strategy if the Soviet Union wasn't occupied on it's western Front. August Storm sped up the peace process largely because it gave the Japanese something much worse to fear than American occupation.

 

[Tallest Skil]

I use Internet Explorer, it doesen't have spell check

Gonna pull out my technology personality now:

That's not a browser. That's a sin against usability and a sin against the Internet.

Get something based on WebKit and be done with it.

 

[Adam]

I'm not sure the Soviets would have much difficulty in establishing beachheads on Hokkaido. They did pull off five separate amphibious assaults in a single day during OTL's August Storm - three in North Korea, one on Sakhalin, and one on the Kurile Islands, and it's not like the US was (or would be) entirely hostile to a Soviet kick in the backdoor should they have to launch Downfall.

A post somewhere else explains this more clearly.

The Russian managed to pull off MANY amphibious operations in WW2. More than 50 of sufficient scale to provide learning experiences for the invasion of Hokkaido.

None were so well planned or provided-for as even the most basic US amphibious operations. But then the Red Army also did not have the kinds of bridging gear the US Army did, and yet crossed 6 or 8 times more rivers, with forces that were two or three times larger than the US Army fielded.

The key to facing the Soviets in the late war period, as the German memoirs often tell, was that you could never underestimate the Red Army's abilities to improvise when it came to crossing terrain obsticals, whether moutains, deserts, snow, or bodies of water. And that you could never ignore a bridgehead, no matter how small.

The Red Army approach does not seem to have relied on the "Hey diddle-diddle, straight up the middle" model that the US Army and Marines used. Directing your efforts only towards the best (and so most obvious) landing sites, making sure your one invasion was irresistable, and your one bridgehead was impregnible ... these were not the Red Army's methods.

I would expect a Soviet invasion would have been multi-pronged, with regimental, or even battalion, sized forces landing in several locations. Some would have been quickly isolated and destroyed. But the Japanese lacked the forces to cover everything, and lacked the strong mobile reaction forces to quickly clear them all away. So some would have managed to establish defensible beachheads, one or two of which would have then filled up wtih multiple divisions over a day or two. And then, seeminly within the blink of an eye, there would have been a break-out, and the Japanese would have suffered the same kind of Soviet blitzkrieg on Hokkaido that they did in Manchukuo and Korea.

It then expands further with a full hypothetical time-table on the second page, using a three-division assault force (which seems to have been the Soviet plan).

I can not speak for what may be present in "Downfall". But about 3 divisions certainly fits what I would expect of the Soviets.

Without any reference to specific Soviet plans, but only with the background of having read of several of their other operations crossing large bodies of water, here is how I would expect a Soviet operation to play out:

First 24hrs: Nights are long at this lattitude during October. During nighttime hours 3 or perhaps 4 re-inforced battalions conduct landings at disparate locations. Probably re-inforced with extra artillery (probably 120mm mortars) and AT assets. Perhaps one of the landings is an air drop. (The Soviets lost their taste for this in combat with the Germans in 1943, but appear to have re-gained it in 1945, as there were several air drops in their campaign against the Japanese.) Each landing force moves to establish a perimeter of about 1 Km radius from the landing point, building a hard but hollow shell with only a very small reserve of 1 or 2 platoons in the center (probably combat engineers, who are engaged in improving their landing site when/if not called on for combat).

The Japanese have no experience with Soviet methods in this kind of operation. The first counter-attack they conduct meets a very stiff defense. As the local Japanese commander, you are likely to interpret these as raids rather than full-scale invasions. They are tough fighters, but in positions offering no mutual support. You will probably seek first to contain them so that they don't grow into a larger threat, and so you work to put screening forces around them as you concentrate a sizeable force to counter-attack the Soviet enclaves one-at-a-time. Divide and destroy them in detail -- sounds like a good plan to most professional military men.

Second 24hrs: The battalions that face stiff opposition are given some fire-support by Frontal Aviation units, but are otherwise on their own. The 2 of the battalions that have succeeded in establishing 1km perimeters are re-inforced during the nighttime hours to re-inforced regimental size, and push their perimeters out to 2 or 3km radius. More artillery and air-defense assets are provided to these expanded beachheads, but they are still primarily a stiff crust, with little filling.

The Japanese have probably finished isolating either the airhead or one of the beachheads, and are busy reducing it. Their attempts to probe at the rest of the beachheads find them to be even tougher than the first, and so they will probably seek to concentrate even more resources as they move on to the next target.

Third and fourth 24hrs: The two largest and most successful beachheads again expand their perimeters out to about a 4km radius. The one beachhead which appears to be facing the least resistance will be re-inforced by two divisions during nighttime hours. As the forces concentrate on shore they are carefully camoflaged and remain still and silent during daytime hours. Each unit that lands carries with it all necessary fuel, ammo and food for 3 days. The second "large" beachhead, the one which does NOT have multi division forces gathering within, will actually become the more active in terms of offensive patrolling, vehicle traffic, and radio transmissions.

The Japanese will likely not appreciate the risk. Given how tough the Soviets are in defense, and how slowly they seem to be building up, they will continue with their one-at-a-time isolation and reduction work. Doubtful they will manage to complete the elimination of even 2 of the Soviet enclaves by the 4th day.

Fifth 24hrs: The floodgates are opened. Two divisions break out of the perimeter, one towards the closest other beachhead in a maneuver which envelopes a sizable portion of the local Japanese counter-force, and eventually clears a significant amount of coastline, the other driving multiple spearheads in an "expanding torrent" deep into the Japanese rear-area, rolling up artillery, logistics and HQ units. At least one airfield will be included as an objective in this maneuver. Also now, for the first time, landings (of the 3rd available division, as well as supplies) will take place during daylight hours.

The Japanese are now past the point of effectively defeating the Soviet invasion. Nothing they have on the ground can stop a Soviet mobile advance. Their Army forces do not have sufficient mobility to get in front of and contain the "expanding torrent", and their top-down decision making is confounded by the high pace of operations of the Soviet advance. Where and when they do manage to assemble a meaningful defense prior to the arrival of a Soviet spearhead, the Red Army simply turned the succeeding waves of the advance in another direction, and the Japanese defense is by-passed. If air resources are concentrated against the daylight landings, there will be no support for slowing the advance of the ground forces. But if the further daylight landings are not slowed/stopped, the torrent just grows and grows.

Could the Japanese have stopped a Soviet advance once it started? I doubt it. In China and Korea the model worked against them nearly perfectly. And the Japanese military, while capable of assessing failures and modifying doctrine to some extent, was certainly not fast at doing so.

The post also does take into account that the resistance after the Soviets gain a foothold would be a different bag a bit later on the same page.

I think the challenge the Soviets would face would not be with their landing. The risk is that after the landings, and after the beachead had been secured, and after a very brief build-up and a surprise break-out, and after their first few successes, that then their version of warfare would not generate the kinds of results they might want.

By the end of WW2 the Soviets could advance a front very quickly, slicing and dicing less mobile opposition, driving wedges, seperating and encircling with very high speed.

Would that be effective against the Japanese on one of their home islands? Was their any value in encircling Japanese infantry?

As much as the Germans ascribed "Asiatic" attitudes to the Soviets, did the Red Army's way of warfare by 1945 have such a heavy European twist to it that it would not have worked as well against a more simple army of tenacious light infantry? I think that was the greater risk to the Soviets than whether they could get ashore successfully.

But in the end, the Soviets still have their foothold and when the Japanese surrender they will have Hokkaido.

What part of Total War do you not understand? There are no civilians when you are waging total war against another nation.

Yes I understand what it means. I was also wondering why the poster only posted a quote, hoping if he would be kind enough to perhaps elaborate his position further.

 

[Sumeragi]

First, I'll admit I've ignored most of the posts in posting this. Now, to what I have to say...


1. The Project was never going to be halted. If there were no results from the Project, the money used on it would be ammo for the Republicans in the next election. This doesn't even take into consideration how the scientists were also addicted to the power of the Project.

2. Another option the US had in mind was a blockage to starve the Japanese to surrender.



@Adam: Amphibious assaults against non-existent defending forces aren't really worth much. You need a better example.

 

[Adam]

@Adam: Amphibious assaults against non-existent defending forces aren't really worth much. You need a better example.

And that is exactly what the Japanese will have defending Hokkaido.

The Japanese willingness to use Honshu-based resources against the Iwo Jima landings in February are a poor benchmark for the likelyhood they would use Honshu-based resources against a Hokkaido landing in October.

I believe available documentation of Japanese plans show that they were hoarding their Kamikaze aircraft (and Kamikaze boats) for the grand "final battles".

I believe in the Japanese view that Honshu was seen as the "final" arena of combat. Even Kyushu did not qualify for the status of "final", and so only a minority of resources were placed there, and only those local forces would have been used against the US in Operation Olympic.

If you were the Japanese High Command, and you knew that the US was eventually coming with a mighty fleet of thousands of ships, and that they were likely to land on Honshu to assemble a mighty army on the Kanto planes, and so to take Tokyo itself, how likely would you have been to release your last reserves against Soviet "raiding forces" on Hokkaido? The problem is that if you didn't, by the time you realized it was more than a series of un-connected raids, it would be too late.

 

[Sumeragi]

Most likely use the Volunteer Fighting Corps in Hokkaido for that.

Besides, almost all strategic reserves were being put in Hiroshima and Kyusho for defending against a Kyushu invasion under Operation Ketsugo, so the basic premise of the GHQ preparing for the Honshu fight was outdated by July 1945.

Before I go further on the Japanese strategies at the time, could you give me the scenario of when the USSR would do the Hokkaido landings?

 

[The Red]

And that is exactly what the Japanese will have defending Hokkaido.

Whilst I agree that the Japanese would only have a skeleton force on Hokkaido, the comments on Kyushu are incorrect, the Japanese knew Downfall would be won or lost there.

 

[Snowstalker]

They never did. It was all the Jews!
/Eleven11