2020, UK battle fleet Vs 1 US carrier fleet.

Where? Palistine was a UN mandate, the British wanted to and were leaving, then the Jews stated killing them, because we wouldn't let them all in. Once that started we left. But it wasn't our fault, but the UN's.

And the problem is we weren't trying to keep these place as I would have liked, but make them safe for us to leave, stopping the reds from taking power, we did this all over the place from India to Africa. Why do you think there is so few left wing governments in the former British empire.

 

No really, the military glory is, but that isn't really that great in Britain, yes we did the most to win the 7 years war and WW1, and beat India and China, the then superpowers, and played a big part in WW2 and defeating Napoloen, and no other nation can say they made or defeated every world power. But everybody in the empire wanted the British ideals, but the British only gave them some, not all of them, which is why than wanted independence. 99% of British people don't want the empire, they want Britain to be rich and powerful again, then people like Mushroom call us imperialist, because we want to be able to do things without the US and stand upto the US, which Britain doesn't do. I talk about the UK having a naval base in Belize and helping that nation stop the drugs, I get call an imperialist. I say the EU should spent more in the military, and use it's power in a more active way, I get call an imperialist. I say I think the UK and Falklands governments should have a plan to counter attack and invade Argentina if the Falklands are attacked again, I get call an imperialist.

I have to 1 question, if I am a imperialist, then what is someone who proberly fought in take over of Iraq?

 

I'm not an expert on US domestic politics during the 1930's and early 40's...there was a willingness on the part of the US government to help out in the war but the general population it seems was opposed so Pearl Harbor was key to changing popular opinion overnight...

 

defeating a insular and weakened china wasn't a great feat, nor was defeating a poor and divided India, neither were major military powers at that time....

Britain was the world's premier imperialistic super power for several centuries, followed closely by France, Spain and the USA...and further back Portugal, Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Belgium and Italy...Britain is not in the same category today, the US leadis every nation in imperialism now...

the Falklands were definitely acquired during the height of British imperialism but it's future now is in the hands of the residents, so Britain supplying the defense of the islands now isn't the same...this applies to Belize as well, if the government of Belize requested the British troops leave I'm sure they would do so...

 

you can't ignore the Balfour Declaration which was the starting point of Palestinian issue, that was all Britain's doing...

 

If China was so weakened and India so divided why did this happen? The British did it, weakened and divided them.

Yes I would leave if they told the UK to, be we had a base their for 30 years, they didn't ask us to leave. Then we left and didn't even give them training or boats to stop drugs, and the US and Mexico could care less.

 

The problem was their was not outside military power to stop the Jews and Arabs taking the wrong places. The Britain may have said they would give it to France, Israel, and Palestine, but the UN over ruled what ever the British wanted.

 

china and india weren't the unified nations they are today...warlords and numerous kindoms...there was no central authority in control...both regions had past their most powerful state long before the brits arrived...british with more advanced weapon technology had a realitively easy time of it...

 

If we has such an easy time of it, why didn't any other European power take India, or defeat China?

 

and the brits wanted the balfour declaration...that's ultimate in imperialistic arrogance, palestine wasn't britains to give away, it belonged to the residents who were mostly palestinians...your opinion is the direct opposite of what you claim in the case of the falklands and belize...

 

they were there as well...in some instances the brits drove them out...others like netherlands and portugal weren't always imterested in controling an entire region, just having an exclusive trading post eas enough...

 

Well, this is largely irrelevant, since there was no way that Japan was going to do that without attacking the US.

You simply have to look at history. Remember, until 7/8 December 1941, Japan was still at peace with all of the nations that got involved in WWII.

And on December 7/8, they were suddenly at war with all of the nations.

Now everybody tends to think of Pearl Harbor. But there were a lot of other US possessions that were attacked at the same time. Wake and Midway were attacked at the same time, but these were largely sideshows. Because the most important invasion also happened at the same time.

The Invasion of the Philippines. The US had army bases there, air bases there, naval bases there, and over 150,000 military personnel. There was absolutely no way that Japan was going to attack the rest of the nations in the region without attacking the US also. Because there was no way they were going to leave such a large island with so many potential hostile forces sitting right in the middle of what would be their invasion route.

So the scenario you are trying to make now would never have happened. Japan was not stupid, and one of the reasons that the invasions around Australia were put off as long as they were was the need to secure the Philippines first.

 

Yes, a sideshow. That front logistically was largely self-sufficient. China was rich in farmland, and the Japanese soldiers there survived mostly off of the nation itself. It did not need massive imports of food. In fact, they exported food from China to most of the theatre.

And are you aware of the internal strife between the Navy and Army?

They could not have been used elsewhere. In fact, they were not pulled out until it looked like their Home Islands were about to be invaded. It was actually logictically sound to leave them in China. They ate locally produced food, used a lot of locally produced equipment, and lived off of the countryside.

If those soldiers were in Japan, the food would have needed to be shipped to them.

No, that is not 1 in 6 wounded, that is 1 in 6 casualties, that includes dead and wounded. The total breakdown is 24,511 killed and missing, 68,207 wounded.

And add to that another 45,000 killed and 28,000 wounded in the Pacific theatre that served in the Navy. Their numbers are the ones that really get skewed, because the loss of ships on average kills far more then are saved.

And I am not sure if I would go that early for the date of the start of the war, but I have never doubted that it should be considered 13 December 1937, when the Rape of Nanking started.

 

Isn't the point that the Japanese were stupid, for attacking all nations at the same time?

I will ask the question again, would the US have entered the war, if Japan hadn't attacked the US?

 

It would be a one-sided rat-slug.

If they didn’t bug out and hide, the Royal Navy would be sunk in its entirety (including the Astute subs) within a week. Given an underway replenishment for the CVBG, within another week the RAF would no longer exist.

The Brits could barely handle Ghaddafi. They had eight ( airworthy strike aircraft available.

I cannot fathom a casus belli, though.

 

"Manpower" isn't resouces. The Japanese stripped their premier fighting forces in China to fall back to the Pacific and the Homeland. China was definitely a sideshow. Look at the Japanese army that met the Russians. Starting in 1943 the Kwantung Army (more than 1 million men) was stripped of its heavy equipment, aircraft, and veteran troops. All of these assets were shipped off to the Pacific theatre because the Americans were much more of a threat. By 1945 the Kwantung Army was essentially a WWI era army that was utterly slaughtered by Soviet armored forces.

Your comment on the U.S. facing the entire Japanese Army is wrong. The Japanese armor had no real effective armor, heavy equipment, or motor transport. It was a WWI army. That's why it wouldn't have stood a chance against a mechanized Allied army.....this was proved in August 1945 by the Soviets.

Your 39% casualty number is actually around 22%.

Between 1942 and 1945 Japanese forces lost 202,000 KIA in China.

During that same period they lost 485,000 to U.S. forces in the Pacific

The British/Dutch combination killed 208,000, and the Australians 199,000.


http://www.japanww2.com/wt19.htm

The U.S. could have most definitely gotten to China.....because it WAS in China. You're also forgetting that the U.S. contributed a far amount to the war in China from its airbases in India/Burma. They deployed hundreds of heavy bombers and fighters, supplied and trained Chinese forces, and even ran around on the ground a bit.

In summation, the war in China sucked in the Japanese alot from 1931 to 1945. It sucked up Japanese resources and killed their soldiers. However, in the end, the naval component of the Pacific theatre and the overwhelming force of the U.S. meant that Japan would have lost the war regardless of China's involvement. As Mushroom pointed out earlier, 2 million more Japanese soldiers wouldn't have made an ounce of difference....there was nowhere to put them. All the assets that were important to the Japanese in the Pacific theatre (aircraft/ships) were pretty much already stripped from the Chinese theatre and sent to the Pacific anyway. Ironically, had Japan NOT invaded China it probably wouldn't have ever attacked Pearl Harbor.

 

I only listed the larger ships. The U.S. Navy in total was in excess of 5,000 ships. In terms of raw numbers, Britain and Canada did have a lot of ships. However, they DID not have anywhere near the carrier forces that the U.S. had. As WWII clearly showed, 1 fleet sized aircraft carrier was worth 10 times its number in capital ships. The British learned this the hardway early on in the Pacific theatre. Also, the U.S. was building ships at a MUCH greater rate than Canada and Britain (more than both combined).

To add, the U.S. also built hundreds of ships for Commonwealth countries.

 

Probably not.

Remember, in 1941 the US was held tightly in the grips of the Isolationists. After years of attacks on the UK and the conquering of France, the US still did not enter the war. They did not even declare war against Germany.

No, if Japan had not attacked the US, they would have stayed out of the war. However, they might have allowed more "Overseas Volunteers" to serve in more areas, like England and China.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Volunteer_Group

 

Well, this is a half-truth.

Actually, Japan did not "invade" China. They had a legal presence in that nation since 1901, as part of the Multinational Force that lifted the seige of the International Legation during the Boxer Rebellion.

This was then expanded at the end of World War I, when Japan was given control of the area and islands that were part of Germany. They then gained the Russian controlled territory after the Russo-Japanese War. This is what many consider the real beginning of the Japanese desire to gain an empire.

The problem was not really an Invasion, as the attempt to expand their area of control, eventually to include the regions of all the other nations that were there in the attempt to stabilize China.

If they had behaved like all the other nations involved in the Occupation of China, the war would never have been needed.

 

That was all the airpower we needed. And we used a lot more than 8 aircraft, to make sure they didn't fall out of the sky.

 

If we want to nit pick we can go all the way back to the First Sino-Japanese war and the occupation of Weihai, Liaodong (later given to the Russians), Korea, and the Penghu islands following China's defeat. During that time it was pretty much a free for all for European powers and Japan. I said "invasion" because the Second Sino-Japanese war can really trace its roots back to the "invasion" of Manchuria in 1931...and subsequent attacks by the Japanese from Korea. Either way, Japan's aggressive actions in China1937-1941 (Nanking) and their expansionist activites against European colonies led to Pearl Harbor.

 

The problem with people saying the US wasn't in the war is, the UK didn't need more men, it needed more equipment, 1,000,000 India troops with bill Slim as their leader could have defeated the Japanese, if they had enough equipment and could be resupplied. This is why the British only started winning on land when the US came into the war, we had enough tanks and aircraft, plus you made a lot of our ships. Because like in WW1 it took 2 years for the British to have a first rate army trained, once we had that along with American supplies the Japanese and Germans had no chance.

 

No, they could not have won the war.

This is because the only way to end the war would have been to totally beat Japan into submission. And prior to the advent of the Aromic Bomb, that would have meant an invasion.

And even with India, the UK lacked the resources (mostly in naval power) to invade Japan. Sure, they could probably have kicked them off of the main continent of Asia, but they could not have invaded the Home Islands.

Even the most basic invasion of Japan would have required over 4.5 million soldiers (1.5 million being combat soldiers). And the Allies also estimated that they would need over 1,500 transports, 34 carriers, 23 Battleships, and a support fleet of everything from destroyers to fuelers ammounting to over 800 ships.

Short of that, there is no way the UK would have "won" the war. The most they could have hoped for would have been an armistace. And with the Japanese and Bushido code, they would not have quit.

 

Additionally, while there were certainly good Indian soldiers, you couldn't have just turned 1,000,000 raw indian recruits into formidable soldiers. In fact, when you think about it, China could have raised 10,000,000 men if they could have. Raw man power wasn't the issue.

 

Yes I just ment take back the territories the Europeans had lost to Japan, not Japan. But given 3 years, of build up, with help from US ship, plane and weapons builders, I think British could have taken Japan. As by that time Japan would be been bomb day and night for years, it would have no factories left and almost no roads. And we the British having full naval and air control, it could have air dropped and shipped in enough troops.

By 1945 the British had 18 carriers, most of them made if the US, if we'd had that at the start it would have been better.