Pearl Harbor

[Warplayer12]

If Japan did not attack pearl, how would the US had reacted to an invasion of the phillipines or an attack on britain?

[ABWorsham4]

Without a Pearl Harbor Raid the US and Japanese Fleet may have met in the pre war widely discussed Plan Orange fleet battle.

I do wonder how FDR would have reacted to a Japanese war with the Dutch and British

[Witt]

Interesting what if Axistiger.
I wonder if the Japanese would have won a greater victory and sunk(properly this time}more Battleships.
Their pilots, torpedoes and Carrier Ops were better early war. Being closer to home may have helped them too.
Who knows? Would America have been slower to react or gone all gung ho?

[Warplayer12]

I myself think they would go to war if the phillipines were attacked, but SE asia was a different thing.

The US themselves were not attacked, so I don´t think a DOW would pass through congress if  SE asia only was attacked.

[CWO Marc]

Britain and the Philippines would have been two different cases.  If Japan had just attacked Britain’s (or Holland’s) colonial possessions in the Far East, the US might not have done anything other than ramp up its economic pressure against Japan (which is what it did when Japan occupied French Indochina).  In view of the isolationist mood in America, the US probably wouldn’t have gone to war over Japan invading some other country’s territories in that part of the world.  Having Japan invade one of America’s territories in that part of the world would have been another story – and the Philippines in 1941 was still a territory under US control, not an independent country.  So a Japanese attack on the Philippines without a Japanese attack against Pearl Harbor would have been an undisputed armed aggression against a US territory (thus a casus belli), but with the advantage that it would not have involved the trauma and destruction of the Pearl Harbor attack.  In fact, it would have handed the US pretty much the scenario they were expecting and for which they were mentally prepared (as ABWorsham points out in his reference to War Plan Orange) rather than the historical scenario of a surprise attack against Pearl Harbor (which shocked the US so badly because of its unexpected character).

[Witt]

Thanks Marc.
Do you think, as I have suggested, Japan may have had the upper hand in this mammoth Pacific confrontation?
And would the US have sailed straight away or waited to build up, therefore giving Japan the time to capture the DEI?
I do not think the US would have waited. Was their Pacific fleet much stronger, except in Carriers? I suppose if they went solely to recapture the Phillippines, the Japanese would have been outnumbered as elements of their fleet would has been too far west.
This is the reasoning behind the attack on Pearl, was it not?
It makes sense to ignore the Phillippines and solely take British and Dutch possessions.

I have not read much on the Pacific, so am happy to listen to others’ ideas.

[CWO Marc]

@wittmann:

Do you think, as I have suggested, Japan may have had the upper hand in this mammoth Pacific confrontation? And would the US have sailed straight away or waited to build up, therefore giving Japan the time to capture the DEI? I do not think the US would have waited.

Prior to the outbreak of WWII in the Pacific, the various colour-coded US plans (e.g. War Plan Orange) had been replaced by the numbered RAINBOW war plans.  These plans were (I think) based on the assumption that a war in the Pacific would be part of a wider conflict, and they recognized that the Philippines were basically undefendable with the resources the US had at that time.  Hence, a re-taking of the Philippines from the Japanese was seen as taking place only within the context of a gradual (and lengthy) US advance across the Pacific.  I don’t think the RAINBOW plans envisioned the US battle fleet charging westward across the Pacific to slug it out with the IJN in a single decisive engagement – a concept which the IJN itself rather liked (owing to its victory at Tsushima) , and which its plans referred to as the “Great All-Out Battle.”

[Witt]

Thank you Marc.
I thought the Americans would have been all gung ho.
Shows what I know!