not even close to a peer conflict other than Japan's ability to prosecute an extended offensive stance in conventional warfare for about one year.

the Japanese empire's strength really was highly artificial and a lot smaller than might meet the eye in, say, 1940. Japan was godawful at all of the determinants which actually decide whether a country wins or loses a world war. for the US, the Pacific war after mid-1943 was akin to clubbing a baby seal with a baseball bat.

At the start it was close, by the end US production combined with lack of iron in Japan had made it pretty one sided.
Still the nukes were dropped for a reason, a mainland invasion would have caused a shitload of casualties.

It was touch and go early, even after Midway. The Battle of Santa Cruz was a very fortunate result for the US, considering it was a strategic draw- if we had lost the Enterprise on top of the Hornet, we'd have zero carrier in the entire Pacific. VS ~10 Jap carriers (of various tonnage/quality/air wing size). Henderson Field and USS Washington don't get enough credit compared to Midway/Enterprise.
Like the conventional understanding of the entire war, it was *militarily* peer to peer until it wasn't, because the home industrial base was never close.

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>>65419451
>if we had lost the Enterprise on top of the Hornet, we'd have zero carrier in the entire Pacific
sometimes I wonder what the war would have looked like if the US had lost all its carriers and land-based airfields in the South Pacific throughout 1942.
Obviously the US would just churn out twenty or so carriers by the end of the following year and come back in force to recapture it all, but the Japanese would also have had another year to gear up and prepare, and those campaigns would have been pretty interesting.
We probably would have seen a slow, grinding, bloody slog to clear out firmly-emplaced Japanese defenses on Guadalcanal after a chaotic beach landing like we saw on Peleliu, which we didn't see in our timeline. We never really saw what a major campaign or three between both the Japanese and the US military at the respective absolute peaks of their strength because 1941-early 1943 constituted the peak of Japanese strength and mid-1943 to the end constituted the peak of US strength.

Then again, if we had seen a proper fight between both sides at the respective peaks of their game, I guess we would be wondering about what it would have been like if the US had managed to improvise and scrape up enough cruisers and CVs from a position of relative weakness to hold the line in the South Pacific and succeed, like they did in our timeline.

Yes. The whole time. Progressively losing one’s capacity to wage that war is not “losing peerage”. The japs had the all the same technologies and tactics the Allies had except radar. It was less non-symmetrical than RUkr shit rn

>>65419451
I wouldn’t say the US and Japan were no longer peers until maybe after the Philippine Sea if not definitely Leyte Gulf

>>65419480
>sometimes I wonder what the war would have looked like if the US had lost all its carriers and drydocks at Pearl Harbor Dec 1941
Battleship kino

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>>65419525
nah that probably never would have happened. Japanese land-based twin engined and carrier-based single engine bombers would have made short work of any major Allied gunships that had no air cover. Unfortunately i don't think kino involving large numbers of battleships was ever really possible; aircraft ruled the day from dec. 7th onwards with only exceptions to that rule.

>>65418894
For the first six months? Arguably yes. Then it quickly became beat up the retarded Asian kid.

>>65418894
Beginning, yes. But it was always going to be a race to the bottom for Japan if the war dragged on, unless the japs magically won every battle and suffered little to no losses in every confrontation.

>>65418894
Nowhere near close aside from the first couple of months, but it was the closest the US has come to a peer naval conflict in recent history so it gets treated as such.

>>65419507
>"Progressively losing one’s capacity to wage that war is not “losing peerage”"
They were never peers in terms of industrial depth or manpower, which is why the attrition gap became insurmountable. But nobody else was one in that regard by 1939, not even the British Empire. On the balance I agree entirely (and they had radar + nascent electronic industry too. Panasonic/Fujitsu/Toshiba, these titans didn't spring from nowhere - all have pre-war roots). They don't lose that title until the end of Imperial Japan, the destruction of which wasn't a foregone conclusion until their answer to the consequences of Indochina was a third simultaneous war of conquest, against both remaining naval powers at once no less.

>>65419545
To be honest, the significance of Force Z gets overstated to a pretty major degree. The amount of AA capabilities on the British ships were weak compared to what the American ships carried, and the first hit to PoW knocked most of that out of action anyways. The air group that attacked Force Z was considered to be the best trained torpedo bombers in the service. Yet despite being the best possible choice against a target with limited anti-air capabilities with no air cover, they still only managed a 16% hit rate and in doing so badly depleted the stock of aircraft torpedoes that Japan had in the region.

None of this of course is to say that battleships could operate anywhere with impunity, it absolutely was still a losing proposition to try and run a gauntlet of aircraft without being able to neutralize them with your own. But I think that it gets seen as far more black and white than it actually was during those phases of the war.

>>65418946
odd how we dropped the nukes on the two majority Christian cities and the places we were getting reliable info out of.

>>65419655
Given how air attacks against lone American radar pickets went later in the war, a properly screened US fast battleship force (in 1944/45) has very good odds.

>>65419708
elaborate on why thats odd

>>65419708
Neither city was majority Christian and both were major defense/industrial hubs.

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>>65418894
only before US industry kicked in. It was, however, the best preserver of WW2 relics since the depths of the ocean can't be reached by salvaging thieves like changs

>>65419708
>majority Christian cities
Neither city was ever majority Christian.

>the places we were getting reliable info out of
[citation needed]

Hint: This is a retarded conspiracy theory. FFS, Nagasaki was a substitute target to start with. Fat Man was slated to hit Kokura, and the mission was only diverted to Nagasaki because cloud cover and smoke made it impossible to find the aimpoint from mission altitude despite Bockscar spending nearly an hour doing runs across the city.

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>>65419708
>odd how we dropped the nukes on the two majority Christian cities
they weren't majority Christian, just much higher than the average, which is not a high bar.
Those cities had a higher amount of Christians because they are southern port cities, where foreign influences like Christianity first entered Japan.
And they were selected as targets because, being among the ports that facilitated Japan's connection to the outside world, contained important industries and supported large urban populations. Both factors being the criteria used to choose the final target list, demonstrate the destructive power of the bombs while also being able to sell them as "pragmatic" or "legitimate".

>>65419655
Would the results of force Z have been different if the ships involved were North Carolina and Washington (as they were in 41 with just the 1.1" AAA guns), escorted by four beson/gleaves?

>>65418894
>Was Pacific War a peer conflict?
in terms of general technological capability yes, in terms of industrial production no

>>65421449
>in terms of general technological capability yes
with massive caveats

>>65421404
How would the war outcome have changed if Kokura got bombed instead of Nagasaki?

>>65421427
Unlikely.

>>65418894
>>65418914
A peer conflict isn't a war where both sides are equal, because that has never happened. A peer conflict is a war where both sides are national governments in possession of contemporary militaries. It's kind of a ridiculous question because not only did Japan have a modern navy, it was the only navy on Earth and in all of human history which has ever possessed a carrier advantage against the US.

No and it's funny that /k/ automatically jumps to the US perspective on this. Japan attacked knowing that the British Empire had depleted its forces in the region while it was busy in Europe and North Africa. The entire Malaya campaign hinged on Japan receiving intelligence of the lack of airpower in the region.

Had Pearl Harbor happened in 1938 it would've been a rape. Guaranteed because of the Washington Naval Conference and the French Navy having not suffered a smoking accident yet.

>>65421504
>No and it's funny that /k/ automatically jumps to the US perspective on this.
why is that funny? should the winner of the pacific war not be included when evaluating the nature of the pacific war?

>>65421351
>>65421391
>>65421404
seethe harder faggots, it was done to the YES Christian majority cities. 400 years of unbroken Christianity till we killed them during mass to make Harry " the S. stands for sucking off the midwest political machine" Truman and the rest of the freemasons running the war happy. .

>>65421480
>A peer conflict is a war where both sides are roughly comparable entities operating at comparable scale.
FTFY. Specifically being national governments isn't a requirement for a peer conflict. Two similar-sized street gangs duking it out is a peer conflict. A street gang trying to throw down with the government is not. (Unless thigns are well and truly fucked up anyway.)

>>65421546
Go whine about baal or whoever the retarded villain of the week is on /pol/ not here

>>65421546
Who posts this shit?

>>65421546
Calling out your retardiation is not seething, schizo. Try to project less. Better yet, fuck off back to /pol/.

>it was done to the YES Christian majority cities
In both of which Christians never made up more than a very small minority of the population. Nagasaki had a chsistian population of ~12,000 in 1945, out of a total population of ~200,000-240,000.

Oh and btw, there was only one christian church allowed in Japan between the late 20's and 1945, and it was a state-organised and -controlled entity rather similar to the "Russian" "Orthodox" "Church".

>>65421546
Do you know what majority means?

Sort of but not really. Before they broke the Treaty it fixed the ratio of US, UK, and JP fleets at 5:5:3 so they were explicitly a second tier power doing an amazing job of punching up, at least at first. Part of that was because the US and UK were multi ocean navies, and had a lot of their strength tied up in the Med and Atlantic, which is one of the things that really bit Japan in the ass by 1944 when that was much less the case. The Italian surrender and defeat of the German surface fleet is about as important as the massive production advantage in explaining why the force disparity became so severe late war. Even Pearl Harbor only managed to knock out four battleships for a useful period of time, at a time when America was operating I believe seventeen. Needing a combat capable Atlantic fleet was a much larger drain on resources

>>65421476
What about two Iowas and four Allen M. Sumners?

>>65419624
>On the balance I agree entirely (and they had radar + nascent electronic industry too. Panasonic/Fujitsu/Toshiba, these titans didn't spring from nowhere - all have pre-war roots).
Wouldn't pointing out that they had radar and groups relying on German/US be disagreeing with what that anon said?

>>65421671
>The crews loaded the shells and powder cartridges into the guns, and in four seconds the first salvo was on its way. The concussion was terrific, but by now we were used to it. Our first bursts were low and short, so we changed our trajectories. We were the ship closest to the attackers, and our tracers were headed straight at the lead plane. On our third salvo we made our first kill. With a tremendous explosion and a huge cloud of smoke our target fell out of the sky, its tail section completely demolished. The plane hit the water with a crash, skidded, tumbled, came to a stop, and burned like all the fires of hell. We shifted our sights to the next plane in line and immediately hit it squarely. It simply disintegrated in the air—big chunks of airplane splashed into the sea across a wide area. Now every ship opened fire at one target or another. Because we were between the main body of the formation and the attackers, hundreds of shells streaked over our heads and hit the water ahead of the planes. The sky was filled with antiaircraft bursts… The Japanese formation broke up and start[ed] dropping torpedoes all over the place. Some fell at such a high speed that they somersaulted, while others ran true but wide. Two passed close astern of us. Two planes that we had hit fell into the water after they had flown directly over us. Our 40- and 20-mm shells made contact with engine nacelles and fuselages. Our automatic weapons gunners were terrific: Kelly, James, Keenum, and Grimm had nursed those guns, firing short bursts every day, and had sometimes slept by them, just waiting for a chance like this. The steady stream of tracers pouring out of those gun barrels was a beautiful sight…. twenty of the twenty-one bombers were in the water, most of them on fire and all of them destroyed. Not a single torpedo had reached its target. The wreckage of downed aircraft covered the water in every direction.

>>65419655
Bruh. None of the world's battleships during early war had enough AA guns to fight off aerial attacks. Most ships were refitted mid war as planners belatedly realized the threat of planes. If it was early war unescorted Yank ships, they would be sunk as well.

>>65419545
>>65419655
What I would point out is that gunships were already a difficult hardware to take advantage of- you could drive an enemy off but you couldn't necessarily destroy them. It's quite hard to gun down a fleet that doesn't want to fight. The Pacific War saw that over and over, even against aircraft, let alone battleships- when someone wanted to run away, they generally did so without getting wiped out. Even Taffy 3. A majority of the carriers got away, and running them down completely would have exposed Kurita to getting pincered between the tardy TF 34 and TF 77. Kurita, in turn, managed to run away before any carrier air wing could target him, let alone TF 34. Airplanes extended the reach of armaments but it was nothing like today, and pursuit still favored the prey.

>>65422141
Its good thats not what I was saying with that post

>>65421614
>Sort of but not really. Before they broke the Treaty it fixed the ratio of US, UK, and JP fleets at 5:5:3 so they were explicitly a second tier power doing an amazing job of punching up, at least at first. Part of that was because the US and UK were multi ocean navies,
So they were effectively the largest power in the Pacific at the start of the war.

>The Italian surrender and defeat of the German surface fleet is about as important as the massive production advantage in explaining why the force disparity became so severe late war.
In terms of what?

>>65421427
Seeing as the 1.1 inchers were hot garbage, I doubt it. Orliekons and the 5” 38s did most of the killing of Japanese aircraft through 1942 until the Bofors came into play.

>>65418894
kind of, the japanese wrecked the royal navy after all

>>65423500
They were the largest in the Pacific because the other powers had obligations in the Atlantic. The Italian surrender and German defeat allowed America’s naval power to truly concentrate in the Pacific. For example a large part of the reason the situation around Guadalcanal became so dire was because Operation Torch was running concurrently. While it didn’t really impact the carrier situation, Torch used a large number of the most modern cruisers and USS Massachusetts, which seems to have had a more capable crew than South Dakota at that point in the war.

>>65419451
>~10 Jap carriers
Japs had 2 carriers left after Midway: Shoukaku and Zuikaku. They had "carriers" but you are talking about escort-carrier level vessels that the US could easily outproduce in months if not weeks.

>>65424665
> (of various tonnage/quality/air wing size)

>>65424576
>They were the largest in the Pacific because the other powers had obligations in the Atlantic
And?

>While it didn’t really impact the carrier situation, Torch used a large number of the most modern cruisers and USS Massachusetts, which seems to have had a more capable crew than South Dakota at that point in the war.
I doubt that outweighs ships under production at that time.

If Norway and Sweden went to war would that be a Piers conflict?

>>65419518
The IJN was walking dead after the Guadalcanal fights.

>>65421614
The USN in the '30s wasn't even built up to allowed Treaty levels.

>>65418894
If it wasn't, then it wouldn't have gone on for so long.

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>>65418894
Nimitz believed it was a peer-conflict, but eventually Japan fell behind hard on industrial output.

>>65419507
The Japs had radar, advanced radar too, but a low level radar integration.

need to go back in time and convince the japanese to go all in on operation MO

>>65419708
>majority Christian
What the fuck are you smoking lmao
"Prominent minority" does not translate into a majority

>>65425865
>and
If they were a peer force they would not have lost the naval war in 1942 while the Navy had to focus equally on attention on the Atlantic. They were a near peer that had technological advantages in some areas and made good use of their circumstances. But the IJN could not have hoped to take on the full US fleet in ‘42, as they lost to half of it.
>vs ships under production
That eventually made a very large difference, but not needing to commit to the Atlantic would’ve completely changed the picture in 1942, and allowed much larger operations to be undertaken through 1943. Just looking at Torch alone, that would’ve freed up a modern battleship, five admittedly not very capable light carriers, seven cruisers, over three dozen destroyers, and most importantly the logistical train that supported them all. That is a large enough fleet to completely change the dynamic of the Guadalcanal campaign, which was the closest the Japanese came to breaking the Navy in the Pacific. The production advantage changed the dynamic of the war in 1944, but not needing to devote ships to the Atlantic and Med would’ve allowed the US to take a much more dominant position in 1942, and act much more freely in 1943, which would’ve changed the entire dynamic of the war.

>>65418894
Tech level? At the start yes. Japanese even had arguably an advantage in night fighting, and unlike the USA, their torpedos worked properly.

By the end the tech had shifted in the USA's favor heavily.

Production levels? It never was close. America had already started to shift to a war-time economy before pearl.

>>65426580
This. It was game over after the end of 1942. There is literally nothing the IJN could have done to stop the inevitable.

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>>65429320
its flying so fucking slow how can they not hit it
don't tell me aiming an Oerlikon is THAT hard

>>65421578
>>65421583
Tucker Carlson fans strangely enough, he invited some “historian” who likes both Nazi Germany and the Islamic Republic of Iran ranting about how Hiroshima and Nagasaki were Christian cities and how Satanists in the US government wanted to target them.

>>65431256
>tucker carlson out of nowhere
shalom

>>65431256
>Tucker Carlson
Where on the spectrum is he currently? Still shilling of trad bread in russia?

>>65431329
Weird synthesis of right and left. anti-capitalism, and anti-liberalism is the only consistent position he and his ilk have

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>>65421546

I'm genuinely surprised by the kind of brainrot that makes you a passionate defender of Japanese Christians without knowing anything about them. For example until 1873 Christianity was heavily persecuted and was a completely underground faith with a handful of believers. Christians had to either renounce their faith by stepping on an image of jesus or face torture and death (plus generally all kinds of atrocities against christians). You don't have to be a weeb to know this there was literally a famous Scorsese film about this in the last 10 years

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKmSmp3tjsw

That's why Nagasaki the spiritual centre of Roman Catholicism in Japan had only a small % of christians living there (although I guess it was a large diocese considering it had only been legal for 70 years)

>>65421702
No, because I agree with anon's core premise of peerage. They only got a minor detail wrong plus the correct understanding strengthens the primary conclusion rather than detracting from it.

>>65421362
That's pretty cool. Have any more pics like that?

>>65431643
>pic
I know what you are

>>65430445
>They were a near peer that had technological advantages in some areas and made good use of their circumstances. But the IJN could not have hoped to take on the full US fleet in ‘42, as they lost to half of it.
Japanese did well against the US and ABDA in 1942. A lot of the year hinged around Midway which wasn't an inevitable victory.

>That eventually made a very large difference, but not needing to commit to the Atlantic would’ve completely changed the picture in 1942
Difference in production capacity was making a difference since the naval treaties. If you're looking at influence on the conflict it had been doing that for decades, if you're looking at disparity in forces later in the conflict, the number of ships of most classes had doubled from the beginning to end of the war.

>>65418894
>Japan conquered Malaya and Singapore with 30k men against 100k+ British and Indian soldiers
>Japan conquered the Philippines with 30k men vs 100k+ US and Filipino soldiers

Japan was godlike at the start of WW2, winning fast and shocking victories across Asia

>>65435170
It's easy to seal club when you have the only thing that remotely resembles a functional army and navy in the entire region.

>>65423855
5/38s did most of the killing *after* the 40mms came into play as well. In fact, by the end of the war, the 40s were just starting to be replaced by 3/50s.

>>65436115
and when the enemy has their hands full with another power in their own backyard

>>65419655
>only managed a 16% hit rate
>only
The fuck is 'only' doing there? That's insanely good and a statistical hit per squadron of Jap torped bombers. What other weapon system has such a good a hit rate?

>>65418894
Yes. It took the US years to go from a shoestring logistics base to ice cream barge tier.

But by the time the Soviets invaded Manchuria and US subs put all of Japans bauxite imports on the bottom of the pacific the industrial base was gone to the point that the US bombed factories that were idle due to lack of materials.

>>65421453
Start of the war the Japanese had generally better technology than their opponents and really all but matched the US even. It’s just by the time it’s a year end American material and industrial output has irrevocably shifted the technological balance in its favor while a lot of the high tech peer stuff the japs had was now sitting on a seabed with no ability to be replaced. Japanese radar systems were very good they just literally couldn’t replace them by 1944.

>>65418894
Yeah, because US military logistics weren't actually primed to utilize all the resources they theoretically had access to at that time. It can't be understated how small the armed forces were prior to the shift to a wartime economy, the entire army was about the size of a modern National Guard regiment.

>>65418914
>its not a peer conflict because Japan lost badly
Lol wut?

>>65431340
im honestly surprised you can distill any sense of consistency from him, he just looks like he flip flops with the wind, although to be fair, i dont really watch much news media so i dont get much exposure to him

>>65440342
No they are not. Zero was maybe their only decent piece of equipment, and it came at the cost of survivability of the whole airframe.
Japanese lack of any effective Radar directed FC even earlier in the war. For comparison, early war FUMO 23 radar onboard german capital ships was superior to anything Japs managed to field on Yamato during her service

>>65421480
>A peer conflict isn't a war where both sides are equal,
die

>>65421466. still ded
The double tap was to let them know we could and would do it again

>>65421544
It's in the winners nature to hype up their conquered opponent

>>65435170
>Japan conquered Malaya and Singapore with 30k men against 100k+ British and Indian soldiers
sounds good if you only count Japanese infantrymen but count all the colonial bottle-washers, and you leave out the hundreds of fighters and bombers that ensured total air supremacy, and you leave out the dozens of warships that ensured total naval supremacy allowing multiple amphibious hooks to encircle the enemy's land-bound infantry

>>65440714
>>65431329
he's the far-right mirror of Noam Chomsky; their one and only consistent stance is "America bad"

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>>65418894
It started off arguably as a near-peer conflict, but the massive US industrial capacity and resource base means that it arguably actually wasn't

this is from a personal side project
the left table is ships in commission as of 1 Sept 1939; the right table is ships commissioned by 15 August 1945
hence, a significant number of ships on the right table were actually begun pre-war, and the table excludes a large number of ships (mainly US of course) which were being built or fitted out on V-J Day

as you can see, I have not filled in the destroyers and I don't know if I ever will, considering the vast numbers of escorts the US Navy built in WW2

then there are also qualitative considerations. a Gearing-class destroyer is quite different in capability than a Kagero-class

>>65444385
Why do you have light carriers 3, and 6 names listed for UK?

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>>65444677
motherfucker
because I only just reclassed the Courageous-class conversions to CVLs on account of them not carrying more than 50 aircraft

>>65444300
you know, if you keep reading to the right, there are more words. you shouldn't stop reading at the very first thing that confuses you

>>65421480
>A peer conflict isn't a war where both sides are equal
>it is a war where both sides are in possession of equal militaries
Long have I pondered and sought after the truth of this kenning, and asked also of myself, lo, what meant he by this?

>>65444717
it says "contemporary", not "equal"

>>65444756
yeah? and which definition of "contemporary" are you going for?
"existing at the same time"? the fucking Barbados Defence Force is a contemporary near-peer military with the US then
"has weapons of the same time period" perhaps? then fucking Belgium is a contemporary near-peer military with the US, they have F-35s, about two dozen of them

>>65445030
Belgium isn't contemporary with the US. They have enormous capability gaps. A better example would be the UK, and yes, a war between the US and the UK would temporarily be a peer conflict.
>but I don't agree with that!
okay. calm your tits retard

>>65445106
>They have enormous capability gaps
so in other words, Belgium is not a peer because they are not
>in possession of equal militaries

>A better example would be the UK
as if they don't have capability gaps?

fucking idiot

>>65445110
Belgium completely lacks tanks, MLRS, and other items. They possess virtually no ground-based air defense and AFAIK have 0 drone presence. They are not contemporary with the US because they do not possess the technology that defines the current era of warfare. The UK does. It's that simple, and the longer you pretend not to know what I'm talking about, the stupider you look

>>65445116
if Nation X had precisely one (1) unit of each type of, as you put it,
>technology that defines the current era of warfare
would that nation be a near-peer in capability with the US?
no, it would not. they would merely be an utter farce, like you

>>65445134
>Nation A: 8,000 tanks
>Nation B: 7,999 tanks
>"THEY AREN'T PEERS, ONE IS STRONGER"

ok dunce, let's do it your way
>number of peer wars in all of human history: 0

>>65445142
that's not what I said, but even if I did, it would still make more sense than your ludicrous
>Nation A: 8,000 modern tanks
>Nation B: 1 modern tank
>"THEY'RE PEERS MMKAY!"

>>65421794
Jesus, God damn he paints a picture.

>>65445182
>WW2 wasn't a peer conflict because the allies were stronger
yep, solid logic
>that's not what I said,
oh, now you're gonna start moaning and bitching about putting words in people's mouths? insect

>>65445204
>oh, now you're gonna start
ignoring idiots, actually

>>65445215
>start a stupid argument
>lose
>cry about it
wow. nicely done anon, this was a great use of your day

>>65444682
They were mostly used to ferry aircraft right?

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>>65445772
what, the Courageous class?
HMS Furious did a lot of the Malta Runs, each time with 50+ and at times 60+ aircraft, and these were different from the typical aircraft ferry mission, where you could pack more aircraft on deck if you didn't need to fly them off, just crane them off pierside.
Not only did the Club Runs actually involve long-range flying ops, Furious also kept a small CAP on hand in case any Italian bombers showed up.
Furious also supported Torch, attacked Tirpitz, and gave general fleet cover to British fleets around the ETO, flying essential recon, ASW patrol, and CAP missions.

For this reason I initially classed them as fleet carriers.
That being said, the reality is that in order to pack that many aircraft on them, their flight and maintenance ops would have been very badly affected.
I'm still kinda 50/50