There isn't always a need to say in many, many words when a few suffice.
1.) They were logistical hubs during WW2 due to location. You didn't mention logistics, but rather industry, twice. There isn't a need to shift the goalposts over such a miniscule matter, by the by.
2.) Not really. Taking German New Guinea with the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force took two ships - Berrima and Kanonwa. Going further up won't need a dramatic increase in shipping.
3.) Absolutely. The Japs were on such a shoestring in @ that pushing through an extra layer will delay and attrit them, figuratively and literally. Truk won't be defended by anything significant, but Rabaul is a decent enough hub directly near Oz that it will get a minimum of the @ force and probably more.
4.) That wasn't my point, which was that even Fiji wasn't defended, so it is unlikely that bally Truk will be. No British islands in the Pacific had garrisons
5.) Correct, but irrelevant as above n 4.
6.) Utterly irrelevant and unrelated to the point, just using the opportunity to go on a pointless anti-British rant. Don't. My point, again, is that the British were at war on the other side of the world, so garrisons in the middle of the Pacific were right down the bottom of the list. My point had nothing to do with bloody Singapore.'
7.) It is a legal issue and the terminology used doesn't need quotation marks, as it is the correct one for the period.
From the Defence Act of 1903, we then had subsequent development in the form of compulsory military training from 1910, which boosted the Militia/Citizen's Military Forces. However, the Defence Act precluded sending conscripts overseas, so there was a need for a volunteer force in WW1 - the AIF. Introduction of conscription was attempted, but the referendum narrowly failed on largely sectarian grounds; this made the idea too much of a hot potato to touch afterwards. Come WW2, the same format was adopted, with volunteers being raised for overseas service and the Militia (perjoratively called the Chockos or chocolate soldiers by the AIF blokes) being enabled for home defence/home service, which included New Guinea. The units weren't under the control of the states, which have no such capacity under the Constitution, so there is no scope for federalisation - the world isn't America. There was conscription in WW2, but considerable opposition to absolute carte blanche conscription, especially within the governing Labor Party, so that the compromise of gradual amendments to the DA were carried out allowing the deployment of conscripts further north.'
8.) No. There was no reason to push north through it or to operate there full stop. As said, they aren't pushing to the Philippines or to the Marianas; the British plans for war with Japan were naturally different to the Americans.
9.) Here you are just waffling off on a ranting tangent. Regardless of accuracy, once we strip away the personal bias, it does not change the point nor counter it. It is the epitome of an unnecessary coda to what had largely stuck to the topic at that point.
10.) Brother Jonathan wasn't meant as an insult, and its employment by me here came from an old quote from a book that sprang to mind as I was typing it. I think that it likely that the islands in question would have come up prior to the ABC conferences.
Mod Hat on: A couple of things that can be potentially rethought is adding in maps to many posts where they aren't needed and putting in a plethora of links, many of which are of borderline relevance or, in a number of cases, none at all. In other topics, you've put in links that do not make the point you are trying to argue. It can come across as trying to browbeat a point across, which isn't really necessary
Whilst there is a time and place for both, not every single thread requires a vehement and heated argument to the death with supporting links, pictures and maps unto the tenth generation. It doesn't increase the strength of your argument and case, nor does it gather any groundswell of support or laud from the very small audience here. We are, in many ways, akin to a small bar or cafe, where almost all of the patrons are known to each other. We know the positions and opinions of other posters and that some aren't likely to share a table readily, as they have tended to disagree on a lot of things in the past. That is fine, as there are enough tables for all.
When you come across as charging into even small topics with the same verve, vim and vehemence as if it were for sheep stations, it is a bit like standing up and raising your voice in that figurative cafe. There's a time and place for it, but when it is done all the time, it can be counterproductive. Not everything needs to be a hill to fight on.
1. Nuance.
2. Time element. You need to beat the Japanese. 20 targets = 20 ships.
3. Glad we agree on time / distance factors.
4. If the British understood Mahan, there would have been presence in their plans. You will see that there was none.
5. Operation FS became possible after Rabaul fell. Use denial again.
The Japanese were able to forward stockpile resources for the 4th Fleet to sortie from Rabaul and take Tulagi and Guadalcanal. If they had been able to consolidate before they were interrupted by WATCHTOWER, they would have made a lunge for Fiji and Samoa for the fertilizer they were after. Kokoda Track and Coral Sea, plus some Yamamoto stupidity to go for Midway where the Americans were locally strong, all contributed to that denial. 6. I rephrase that to the British methods and approaches and attitudes to the Pacific War (naval war) were 100% wrong. They did not understand naval geography or air power or the logistics. As for the Singapore issue, the British plans for war with Japan were based on the simple geographic naval fact that the fleet reinforcements they intended to send to fight the Japanese had to come from either Force H, the Home Fleet or from the Mediterranean Fleet. All would pass through the Indian Ocean and forward base at Singapore. From there; the British intended a single axis advance into the South China Sea until they met the Japanese along the way in a Pacific Jutland. After the Japanese were sunk, the British would seize an island base (Presumably Okinawa) and institute a blockade. Called the "Singapore Plan". It was unworkable when formulated in 1927, less credible in 1935 as reworked and sheer fantasy in 1938 when Tom Phillips updated it. There was no way that an unsupported fleet, centered on battleships, was going to move up the East Asia coast and not be slaughtered by land based air power. And since the British had to pass through American controlled adjacent waters, according to their planning,
the Philippine Islands were very much involved. -- WAR PLAN ORANGE was based on a different approach axis and had a different logic after 1935 showed the 10% loss of fleet for every 1000 nautical miles traveled logistical bleed out. It was a slow methodical advance through the quadrangle until a blockade could be mounted (Again Okinawa). It would take three years, and it was estimated that the USN would have to build to 2x its treaty size to gain a 3 to 1 superiority. The army element would be at least a million men for air garrisons and logistics support across the "Pacific Desert" behind the fleet. The Philippine Islands and its initial garrisons were assumed "written off".
7. I use quotations to differentiate systems; being British, Spanish and French. Much of the world operates (outside of the British sphere) according to the French martial system. That part of it includes the United States. Our formal "federal" military traditions, laws and customs are French-originated and rather Napoleonic.
8. Refer to 6.
9. Admiral Tom Phillips was the last supervisor of the last British war-plan staff drafted for use against Japan, the 1938 version. He was put in charge of Force Z. to carry out a rump bluff version of that plan. He should have had the professional judgment to understand that the Japanese cannot be bluffed. He was not alone in that mistake, for Churchill, Pound, Stark, FDR and Turner were also
wrong about that one. It was the collective professional judgment of the competent component of the United States Navy (That would be O'Richardson, Hart, McCain, and Ingersoll among others.) that once the Japanese started, there was not a whole lot that could be done to stop an initial successful offensive as the Japanese had the logistics, numbers and war experience to go wherever their tanker support and air cover allowed them. Hart, realistic, fell back and tried to harass and delay the Japanese with some success dueing rthe ABDA campaign. Hart made that offer to Phillips, to join up once war started and fight a combined delay back towardsa Australia. Or alternately, Phillips could have retreated out of Japanese airpower reach to Sri Lanka or the Andaman Islands. Instead he tried to "break uyp landings upon the Kra Peninsula despite Brook Popham telling him the RAF would not be there to cover him.
10. The history of the perjorative term goes back to the American Revolution, when British officers mocked the Continental Line, and even further back to Cromwell when the Cavaliers mocked the "Roundheads".
I use maps to give visual representation since most readers have no idea what something like the "quadrangle" means or where Rabaul is, or how even on a Mercator distortion a single glance will give an idea of who operates on interior lines, exterior lines or what air coverage looks like, or how shallow seas inhibits capital ship operations.
The links are for historical background. I supply the points that the background fleshes out.
Finally; the incident between Hart and Phillips was a contrast and compare for attitudes about the OP situation made manifest in real history. Only someone who did not understand how things actually worked, (Phillips was not a line officer, nor was he a war college trained officer in the American manner.) would dare presume a foreign (American) admiral would disobey GO100 and start a war without orders, written orders from Washington. Hart told Phillips that much. It was meetings like this one and subsequent similar ABDA interactions that set the tone for the Anglo-American war in the Pacific. If Montgomery rightly thought the American army, he saw, was a clown show, then the American navy, who thought the same exact same about the American army, thought the British navy was the whole circus and an amateur one at that.
One specific point... needs elaboration;
It is not an anti-British rant to point out that the British promised to defend Australia against the Japanese and used Singapore as their proof of their commitment. Never mind that the British asked for and recieved 3/4 of the Australian "Imperial" formations for the EuropeaN war, never mind that post hoc analysis shows this was not the proper plan of defense for Australia, never mind that the British collapsed. never mind what "I" think about the whys and wherefores that caused about that collapse or about imperialists of any stripe. Think strictly like Curtin must have thought after the British surrender.
Would you not want your troops to come home? Would you not scramble to try to repair the mess your
too trusting predecessor left you?
Singapore was not the place to defend Australia. The quadrangle and by extension the Americans in the Philippine Islands were. if the British had figured that one out, they would have made the proper arrangements and adjustments. But the reason
the British fixated on Singapore was because it was the barrier to INDIA, a country they wished to continue to exploit.
Sure they were fighting the Germans, but they had millions of available corvee labor. They used Indian troops in the Middle East and North Africa. Why not for Pacific garrisons?
These were facts well known to the Canberra government, especially after Curtin was disappointed by Churchill's explanation to him for why Singapore fell.
Was Churchill going to officially tell Curtin, "My admiralty lied to me. I believed what they told me." Surely not. So Churchill blamed it on an intelligence failure.
So, that is why Singapore fits into this narrative and is on point. It was the British plan. It was the wrong plan. It was a stupid plan, even from the British point of view.
It was a Corbett type plan.
