Japan takes Port Moresby

Long story guys, But I really like your discussion here. THanks.

 

hehe... sorry. of course. i just keep thinking of south pac com and the 'kanskis is all.

 

You don't need to tell me matey, I have fished on the reef out at Townsville, I lived there as well as Brisbane and currently Rocky.

I have seen the old defensive positions at Paleranda, overlooking Magnetic Island at Townsville and you can clearly see the coral and the paths they present, but from a ship travelling at speed it would certainly be a struggle.

I was just merely pointing out the the Reef itself is not completely unpassable by sea, just by the larger vessels. There are no real need for the Large supporting vessesls to be so close inland anyway, how far does teh reef actually go out before it is considered safe for large vessels such as Battleships, or large Freighters?



http://home.st.net.au/~dunn/bunkers/pallarendabattery.htm

not much but a start.

 

Which raises an interesting question.

The Battle of Coral Sea was supposedly fought to turn back a seaborne Japanese invasion force headed for Port Moresby. What was their intended course, and how did they expect to deal with the navigational problems you have cited?

Just curious, since, AFIK, no one has ever explored this question.

 

Devil,

"The Battle of Coral Sea was supposedly fought to turn back a seaborne Japanese invasion force headed for Port Moresby. What was their intended course, and how did they expect to deal with the navigational problems you have cited?"




As far as I can see, the jap course was a loop around Milne Bay, and a thrust west to Port Moresby. All interrupted by the USN with some Cruiser help fron the RAN.

I cannot fathom the jap thinking on Port Moresby. If I had any say in the matter I would have based any major facility on Timor so that I could more directly threaten Australia around the Darwin area. Port Moresby could never be a threat via the sea, only the air.

I suppose that holding Port Moresby is simply a way of removing a threat from the south by Australian forces, but nevertheless would have been subject to constant air attack from bases on the Cape York Peninsular.

Again, 20/20 hindsight is a wonderful thing.


John.

 

PS,

As far as the importance of both Port Moresby and Guadalcanal are concerned, NEITHER could for long cut 'Lines of Communication' between the US west coast and Australia.

A shipping route is as flexible as a piece of string across a map and can be adjusted south as far as needed to take them away from a jap threat from anywhere, even Fiji or New Caledonia, if needed.

A convoy can be routed from San Francisco to PH, directly south to a point east of New Zealand, and across to Melbourne from there. It would be longer of course but safer.

John.

 

Tomcat,

Again, AFAIK, the GBR extends from about 20 to 200kms from the coast, all the way south from the Torres Strait to Bundaberg.

Any invasion would have to be supported by supply and troops ships waiting east of the reef and ferried to the coast from there.

LSTs or Higgins boats would have an exciting time navigating through the reef without knowing when the coral may be only a foot below the surface.

John.

 

John,

I agree that's it's difficult to understand why the Japanese thought Port Moresby was such a prize. Perhaps it was, like their thinking on the Kokoda Trail, based on an erroneous assessment of just how easy it would be to supply any forces in Port Moresby. I have never agreed wit the assertions of some historians that Japanese capture of Port Moresby would have been catastrophic to Allied fortunes in the SWPA. It seems far more likely that Port Moresby would have proven a terrible logistical liability to the Japanese and would have, at best, represented a marginally useful advance base which they could only maintain with extreme difficulty.

From the Allies perspective Port Moresby represented an airfield from which it was possible to stage long range bombing missions against some of the Japanese bases on New Britain, but it waas certainly never a crucial base.

 

Devilsadvocate is right, Its very hard to understand a japanese language. But Lucky I learn a little bit.

 

Many years ago i spoke to some veterans that fought in PNG in at around the time of the Kokoda Track and i asked them what would the loss of Port Moresby on Australia and they had many different answers but one thing they all agreed upon was it would set in panic to those civillians that lived within the top end and after what happened in Darwin it would set off a level of desertions within the Australian Army, allbeit small but could have set in the rot, the problem is that capturung Port Moresby would have made the way open to an invasion of Darwin more likely.

With Japanes airfields being built in rugged terrain, it makes it that more hazzarous for any allied taskforce to capture them and it could have given the Japanes a secure eastern flank wherebye both bombers and fighters can effectively be used to attack Allied supply lines and not only that Milne Bay could be the next target for the Imperial Japanese Army to take and with sufficient aerial support the Japanese groundtroops could have taken Milne Bay (highly improbable but not impossible) and as someone had indicated that sealanes are flexible and that Japanese supply routes could come down the Dutch East Indies Archepelago (sic) sea routes without ever trying to overcome the GBR.

Darwin could be next, an actual land invasion of Australia via the top end, i know this is a logistical nighmare but this would have a massive panic attack on Australia and what we know of the level of desertions of armed personel that occured when Darwin was bombed by the IJN and IJA i can imagine the level of desertions that would ensue if Darwin was captured.

But Australia is such a large place it would be logistical suicide for any army to actually invade Australia.

v.R

 

This reminds me of the new game Battlestations Pacific I got recently. In the Japanese campaign they take Port Moresby and this action cuts off Australia from it's British and American allies. After this American transports attempt to bomb Japanese-controlled Guadalcanal but fail, and Japan sends in a mini-sub to torpedo Australian supply ships in Sydney, which cripples them.

But nevermind that. If Port Moresby fell, Australia would partly be cut off from American naval forces. If this happened, I believe Japan would press more and more forces into the Battle of Guadalcanal. Once they won, Australia would be completely cut off. Then Santa Cruz would fall, and then Japan would move north, probably to Wake and then Midway and eventually a massive assault on Hawaii. Even then, Japan would have a powerful defensive and offensive navy, and America would not be able to support their stranded Australian allies. Plus, America would not be able to strike at Japanese-controlled targets like Iwo Jima and the Phillippines because it was so far from American-controlled sea. However, if dedicated enough, a Sub pack COULD be able to infiltrate Japanese waters and hit a small convoy or task force.

 

This is patently untrue. The fall of Port Moresby does nothing to the US - Australia supply route as shipping is still moving up to nearly 1000 miles south of that location. The US would still hold Johnson, Baker, Howland, and Palmyria Islands along the route. If the Japanese do hold Guadalcanal they are vulnerable to attack from the USAAF / USN bases at Esprito Santo.
Guadalcanal itself is sparsely held historically. The Japanese had just over 1000 actual soldiers with another 1500 or so construction laborers on the island initially. Their ability to maintain supplies in quantites necessary to that island to sustain anything more than a handful of aircraft is questionable at best.
Aside from that, the British and US can also send convoys via the South Atlantic and across the IO to Perth etc., a route the Japanese have zero control of and the Germans are largely not patrolling with U-boats.
As for midget subs, the one time the Japanese tried this against an Australian port resulted in very poor results. Why should this change suddenly? The Australians would also quickly move (likely with US help) to install anti-submarine nets, remote controlled mines, and submarine sensors in threatened ports reducing this problem further. Adding small ASW patrol craft to the mix is also possible.

Port Moresby falling to the Japanese does nothing to change the strategic picture in the Pacific or SWPA in 1942. It buys the Japanese exactly nothing. They cannot cut Australia off from that location.

As for pushing more forces into places like Guadalcanal the questions are:
1. What would they send? Another battalion or two?
2. How would they keep those forces supplied?

The answer to both given historical evidence is that they wouldn't reinforce the island immediately and would instead have the troops there dig in using local materials as they did elsewhere.
The supply issue is more tricky. Being within range of bombers from Esprito Santo the Japanese could not risk having transports anchor out of Guadalcanal in daylight without severe risk of being sunk.

The Japanese taking Esprito Santo and other islands in that group is unlikely. First, the US has a full division on the island making it far better defended than anywhere the Japanese have tried to take up to that point in the war. Any assault would be contested at sea as well as by aircraft. Without carriers (this would have to be post Midway) the Japanese would be very vulnerable in trying an assault.
On top of that, landing even a regimental sized force would cut deeply into available shipping resources. To actually take the island the Japanese would have to land 2 reinforced divisions requiring about 40 transport ships. This, for them, is a massive force and not readily available.

 

Actually the Australian stand on the Kokoda Trail (or Track) took place in late July, 1942, and was pretty much concurrent with the invasion of Guadalcanal, so it's most likely that the Guadalcanal invasion would have predated the loss of Port Moresby in this scenario.

Simply put, had the Japanese taken Port Moresby, they would have become embroiled in a a double logistical nightmare; trying to supply their embattled forces on Guadalcanal as well as at Port Moresby. Port Moresby itself, because of it's unique geographic location, would have been even more difficult to supply and defend than Guadalcanal proved. The short answer is, if the Japanese had managed to take Port Moresby, they would have quickly found themselves with a very costly, and nearly worthless, liability on their hands.

 

Thanks for the help and input DA.

Yes, and the forces that the Japanese put there would more than likely be left to wither on the vine when (or if) by-passed. It would have been more expedient to do this than take large Japanese forces head-on, in my opinion that is.

 

DA,


'if the Japanese had managed to take Port Moresby, they would have quickly found themselves with a very costly, and nearly worthless, liability on their hands."



Yep! just imagine a dozen fighter and bomber fields on Cape York Peninsular. Our peace-loving japanese brothers would not be able to peek over the top if the dug-out, let alone unload a ship if it happened to make it to Port Moresby intact.


John

 

And just what would the Japanese have done with PM?

Any meaningfull air operations from this port would be few and infrequent. As others have said, it was logistically tough to supply.

Not to mention the 5th AF B17's and B26's that would keep it battered down.