I have a slew of documents I obtained from freedom of information about the planning of the invasion and nowhere in 5 lbs. of it is there any discussion by the Joint Cheifs of any assistance to the Russians with landing craft or any other materiale. Where ever that business came from it certainly wasn't considered important enough for them to use in an scenario they conceived, and there were many from mild to wild plus utterly boring dialogue for page after page.

Is that part of the fantasy "what if" or what?

Von Runstedt- The US never had 3-5,000 ships to loan the Russkies. Certainly the US never had any more than 5,000 in the theater slated for invasion use. The Russians would have had to invade Honshu at the same time we were invading Kyushu.

The American had been refining a plan for invasion but the Russians had none. The Americans would have had 35 beaches to assault on Kyushu at 17,135 sq. miles. Compare that with 5 on D-Day Europe. To be at all useful the Sovs would have to invade the 89,194 sq. mile main island, Honshu.

Kyushsu was found to be a gigantic scale repro of the typical fortified Pacific island with booby traps and myriad other explosive trips, mines sink holes and tones more along with interconnecting tunnels and all underground facilities including aircraft launch facilities. Honshu would not have been any easier.

The aircraft strength is as von Runstedt mentions contrary to popular belief that there were less than 2,000. Intel was completely unable to see the construction in caves. The Imperial Navy still had 40 submarines, 23 destroyers and a couple cruisers plus innumerable kaiten suicide mini-subs plus thousands of small, fast explosive-laden kamikaze motor boats.

A cadre of suicide volunteers would have biological or chemical weapons as hung around their neck in breakable crockery containers.

There were nearly 900,000 defenders on Kyushu, far above US estimates of 250,000 with 2,300,000 men at arms in Japan and a fresh 3 million man army in Manchuria. The National Volunteer Combat Force which consisted of 28 million! Boys as young as 15 and men as old as 60, as well as girls of 17 and women of 40 years of age were members. They were armed with outdated firearms, satchel charges, mines, Molotov cocktails, bows and axes right down to sharpened bamboo spears.

And the unknown factor that no one discussing this subject even knows about was Typhoon Louise. This was a once in a 1,000 years storm akin to the divine wind that sank the Mongols in 1281.

It was the worst typhoon in US Naval history swept the proposed armada assembly area off Okinawa on October 9, 1945. 403 ships were either sunk, destroyed beyond repair or scrapped. Countless aircraft were ripped to pieces in the 150 MPH winds along with hangars, other buildings and tents housing 150,000 troops. Harbor facilities were ruined, power was out and supplies blown away.

Had Typhoon Louise set upon the 22 divisions of more than half a million invasion-ready personnel along with some estimated 5,000 ships and 4,000 aircraft, the devastation would certainly been worse and would have no doubt delayed the November 1st date to invade Kyushu probably to the end of typhoon season in the spring of 1946.

The American planners had ridiculously optimisticly low fingures for the number of 16 weeks it was proposed to take Kyushu. We look at an 8 square miles island, Iwo Jima that took 5 weeks and 22,000 dead Japanese. Okinawa took 11 weeks and was just 611 sq. miles and 200,000 dead Japanese. Yeah so how long would it have taken to vanquish 900,000 men from Hyushu's 17,000 sq. miles?

It would have taken YEARS more to completely conquer and dominate Japan even with the Russkies and unbelievably massive casualties on all sides.

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