I read that, and is one of my sources. Funny enough, KaLeu put a link to Quora asking the same question, and one of the answers just copied and pasted the article you sent me.
Japan vs Australia
-
Had the Japanese attempted to attack allied shipping to Australia would this proven a worthy move?
-
I dont know if this would have worked……we need Capt. Kiwi for this one
-
Imo there’s a factor above all else in many of the WW2 questions, if the US are not involved, or has not been involved or attacked, then many things could been different from the history books on WW2.
-
As the springboard for the allied advance up the Solomon Chain, Australia is the most important base for the Allies. Had the Japanese used submarines to attack supply ships, mined shipping lanes and used a few heavy cruisers or light battleships for merchant raiders could Australia been seriously weakened?
This tactic would forced the Allies to use the convoy system with heavy ecort support. Slow supply vessels would have made a great target for IJN carriers.
-
Overtime, I think the US would have simply beat the IJN no matter what they did, and espeacily if the IJN engaged in a longer term offenisve stratagy where they spread their forces out to attack allied shipping. I beleive in this situation the Allies would have been able to gather far supeior intel and would decimate any attempts by the japs to do this. The japanese also did not produce nearly as many subs as Germany produce and Germany failed in using this strat against enagland. So i just dont know why it might have worked?
-
No. Japan could take Austrailia, but HOLDING it is another story. The US would have treated it as any other island and simply started from hawaii and then taken austrailia instead.