USA 1940-41 War Readiness.

[JerseyJohn]

The complaint kept arising in SC about the small United States initial forces and it's popping up again in SC2, so, I thought I'd quote some figures. They're from a fairly new book titled, Target America, by James P. Duffy.

Pgs 38- 39 ... Even after the war in Europe had begun, resistance to American participation was so strong that on April 3, 1940, the House Appropriations Committee slashed the armed forces' budget by nearly 10 percent. This resulted in the cancellation of two-thirds of the planned construction of 166 aircraft

In early May 1940, when the German Army began smashing its way west through Holland, Belgium, and France, the American Army was incapable of fielding more than a third of the divisions that tiny Belgium was using for her failing defense. The U. S. Army Air corps had available for its use 50 heavy bombers and 150 fighters. The floodgate of funds did not open until a German victory in the west appeared obvious.

Pg 40 ... After years of shrinking the size of our armed forces, and reducing weapons research and development budgets, the United States was unprepared for fighting a war of virtually any kind, much less one on two fronts. The condition of the American fighting forces at the time was aptly and frighteningly described by one of the Marine Corps' greatest wartime leaders, Lt. General Hollan M. "Howling Mad" Smith: " ... if the Japanese had continued from Pearl Harbor with an amphibious force and landed on the West coast they would have found that we did not have enough ammunition to fight a day's battle. This is how close the country was to disaster in 1941."

Of course the main reason the Japanese didn't do that was the size of the Pacific. Our main defense was the enemy's logistical problems in reaching us.

And, of course, once we finally did begin arming, those distances provided the necessary time to put an army and air force in the field. We'd already begun building the fleet that was show itself starting shortly after the Battle of Midway.

Anyway, I think Hubert has the US starting historical forces pretty well, historically speaking. If anything, he threw in a little extra!

[Edwin P.]

Excellent history lesson and good reading.

Many thanks JerseyJohn.

[JerseyJohn]

Appreciated Edwin and I have to say the same for your post in another thread summing up the Low Countries. It cut through what can be a very confusing corner of history and did so extremely well.

[Hubert Cater]

I tried to keep it as close to historical and you are right they do actually start with a bit extra... but this is mostly due to game play reasons and mostly just so the US has an initial, albeit weak garrison of a few strength 5 units.

BUT play your cards right and invest in the appropriate research areas and you can bump up the US from an initial 80% industrial modifier to 180%

[JerseyJohn]

Thanks Mr H., I agree with your reasoning and it sounds perfect.

The U. S. did an incredible job of kicking into gear as quickly as it did. After 1942 it was in its own production category -- I like the way your modifier relects that.

[Edwin P.]

I agree with Jersey John, HC. Your enhancement of the US position is more realistic and should make for a more balanced and fun game.

[jon_j_rambo]

Japs landing in California, yeah right. They couldn't even send additional air attacks at Pearl Harbor against a sleeping docked navy, give me a break. If they would have landed in California, we would have stuffed them in the camps which were to be prepared.

[JerseyJohn]

Well said, Edwin. It's like, comparing the U. S. and Italy in 1940, one was a paper lion and the other a sleeping giant. The U. S. also had a lot of hidden resources, for example, tens of thousands of military age civilian pilots who were able to fill the ranks quickly when production finally got started in ernest.

Brother Rambo,

Oddly enough, I agree with you on that West Coast landing scenario.

Sending a fleet across the Pacific with landing forces would have required something like a 15::1 supply to troop ratio. So, in order to support a single infantry division, Japan would have needed to send a force with supplies enough for fifteen! Logistically it would have been all but hopeless. We ourselves proved how difficult the process was by having to take all those staging areas on the way to the Japanese Home Islands.

As for those camps, they were a real blight on American history. Japanese citizens were deprived of their rights and sent to them, ruining their lives. It took generations for those families to recover and I wouldn't bandy the topic about lightly. It was beyond a doubt the single worst thing the United States did during all of WWII.

Some German and Italian Americans were also sent to them, but by comparrison it was those who either demonstrated that they were active fascists, or who were still citizens of either Germany or Italy when the war began for the United States. It would have been physically impossible to treat the German and Italian American populations in the way we treated the West Coast Japanese, and that is the only reason it was done to those people, because the government was able to do so. In truth it was part of the hysteria that came out of Pearl Harbor and the Phillipines and, along the way, it reeked of the worst kind of racism.

-- But a Japanese invasion fleet off California? No, not even the Japanese thought that was possible. The author was only quoting that Marine general, and he was only speaking hypothetically to emphasize America's unpreparedness for war.

However, there's little reason that the Japanese couldn't have landed on the Hawaiian Islands and made that their own base instead of ours. That in itself might have ensured the success of their plans; the next base for us would have been New Zealand!

As for American preparedness on those islands, there are many accounts of American soldiers and marines stationed there at the time who, while setting up ad hoc defenses along the beaches in anticipation of exactly such a follow up, found they were carting around boxes of World War One ammunition that, in many cases, were no longer functional!

I think the Japanese could have done that instead of landing at the Phillipines. MacArthur's troops were stuck there, no transport to speak of, and no fleet to keep their supply lanes open. Hawaii could have been taken by the Japanese with the Phillipines to fall at their leisure.

Other operations in Malaya and the Dutch East Indies could have gone on as they did historically. The thing is, with the United States naval and, more importantly, it's submarine facilities at Pearl Harbor in enemy hands, the Japanese merchant fleet would have delivered it's conquered raw materials to Japan's factories. Intead of going to the bottom of the ocean as it did in the real war.

Even then it's doubtful there would ever have been either a Japanese landing in California, or a German landing on the east coast, but I very much doubt we'd have been doing things like taking Guadalcanal or sinking the Imperial Navy at Midway without Pearl Harbor as our vital base of operations.

-- The only explanation I've ever read regarding Japan's failure to follow up on the air attack had nothing to do with it's military capacities. The Japanese governemt was afraid that, by conquering the Hawaiian Islands, they'd make the American so incensed that it would clamour for a total war. Japan was only looking to conquer the Western Pacific, Southeast Asia, the Phillipines and Indonesia. Somehow, it seemed reasonable to them that if they didn't actually take Hawaii, the U. S. Government would be inclined to agree to a negotiated peace after a few years of war.

Typical of the period. They didn't understand us, and we didn't understand them. But the thing is, we didn't really need to in order to win.

[jon_j_rambo]

Agreed, tough break for Japanese Americans living on the West Coast back in '42. I wonder if any Japs on the East Coast were gathered up & shipped? Or for that matter, Japs in other parts of USA at the time? Do you ship some dude in Michigan to the California fenced picnic?

It's a long supply train to invade our shores & vice versa. Takes 16+ to fly there today! My current business does alot of work with Japan, with many trips by employees. My boss wanted me to go for this project planning stuff, I said,"No thanks, I'm not sitting in a plane for 16-hours & leaving the good old USA for a few more dollar bills". Not to mention, connecting flights & all the trains in Japan to arrive at the destination.

If the Germans or Japs did land, people would have plenty of places to run & form milita...Deer Hunter's in Pennsylvania, well hunter's everywhere...that's just the civilians, not military that would be stacked.

Here's the USA people numbers at 1939:

Population : 131,000,000 (1939)

British - 36,000,000

German - 32,500,000

Irish - 18,000,000

African - 14,500,000

Italian - 10,000,000

Other - 20,000,000

Far as the Camped Japanese getting their lives screwed up, well, at least they lived to have their life to be screwed up.

Here's the dead of the US, I wonder if their life turned out as planned?

Casualties : (1941 - 1945):

Soldiers (Allied) - 408,200 Killed

Civilians - 1,000 Killed

Could you imagine a battlion of Germans invading Baltimore's Hood? Or a Japanese column trying to subdue the White Survivialists of Northern Idaho? Hmm, game idea?

[jon_j_rambo]

January 1942:

Roosevelt’s first War Budget includes $13,250 million of defence expenditure.

President Roosevelt also orders that all aliens are to register with the government. This is the beginning of a plan to move Japanese-Americans into internment camps in the belief that these people might aid the enemy.

Congress appropriates $26.5 billion for the U.S. Navy, bringing total U.S. war costs since June of 1940 to more than $115 billion.

Executive Order 9066 is signed by President Roosevelt, authorizing the transfer of more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans living in coastal Pacific areas to concentration camps in various inland states (and including inland areas of California). The interned Japanese-Americans lose an estimated 400 million dollars in property, as their homes and possessions are taken from them.

Later that year, December 7, 1942:

The US Navy launches the Battleship New Jersey and 11 other ships on the anniversary of Pearl Harbour.

[JerseyJohn]

Great research, enjoyed it and found it not only interesting but very useful.

You answered your own question about the Japanese, it was only the West Coast population that was treated that way. While they were doing that, military aged Japanese-American men were drafted like anybody else and fought in the European Theater where they were particularly distinguished in the Italian Campaign.

It isn't a matter of at least they lived and all that, those were American citizens who had done nothing at all to even arouse suspicion. It was a pathetic thing to have done to them. Not only were they citizens, many had been citizens for several generations! Absurd. To me it ranks as being almost as bad as Andrew Jackson's actions against the Southeastern American Indians, when he ignored the Supreme Court and expelled them from the entire region, including the infamous March of Tears.

Things like that can't be glossed over. What we did, in effect, was to commit ourselves exactly the kind of act that we were fighting against in the Axis nations. It doesn't cut it to say if they'd been running the country it would have been much worse for those Japanese Americans -- they weren't. Roosevelt was supposed to be something higher than Stalin, Hitler or any other dictator. In this instance, he wasn't.

Somewhere along the line, last year I believe, I posted the date of commission, construction and launch of all the United States BBs from preWWI to the end of WWII. I think there were thirty altogether, the last being 70,000 ton behemoths carrying 16x16 inch guns that were advanced and actually more powerful than the 18 inch guns of the Yamato and Musashi. Those ships were laid down but never constructed. The last few of other classes were also scrapped soon after being laid down.

-- American was so thorough, I might say, foolish and stupid, in it's disarming after 1945, that in 1950 it had to do a bums rush to scrounge weapons to send to Korea. Also in short supply were trained troops, many were sent there barely trained, same as the early days of WWII.

Sheer idiocy, and we've don that over and over again after each of our major wars. In the early 1870s, after breaking up or selling all the ironclads constructed during the Civil War, a naval report concluded that, if it chose to, the Brazilian Navy would be capable of sailing north and controling the waters off the east coast of the United States for an indefinite time.

[Liam]

USA focus should be on beefing up her Allies providing some armies, land units with armor-vehicles-supplies-aircraft-boosting their allies tech, HQs... USA doesn't just include USA either, it includes all the Western nations that fall under her influence... always has, even during WW1. Drawing on all sorts of raw material wealth by WW2 for her Allies.

Japan was beaten the minute she bombed Hawaii any victory she would've had would've been her luck only. Killing off everything we in the Pacific would cut our arm off. We'd still never be under fear of invasion. 1 or 2 years by the time they were prepared to fight both in China and America we'd have several times their army and better equiped

Perhaps there is one point here not mentioned in SC1 USA enters the war collectively via Minors boosting her Readiness and timeframe. What about Pearl Harbor? That should be an influencing factor. Axis aggression?