History WorldWarII / WarInAsiaAndThePacific

* Acting ostensibly upon his commitments at the Yalta Conference (that the USSR would help liberate the occupied territories of mainland East Asia within three months of the end of the war in Europe), Stalin orders the Red Army to perform the "Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation", which it does on August 8th, one day from the deadline set on the nineth by Germany's surrender on May 9th[[note]]May 8th in Europe, May 9th in Moscow[[/note]]. The Red Army had been building up the invasion force even before the end of the western front, and quickly overran the exhausted and lightly equipped IJA. In response, High Command once again calls a meeting on August 9th, this one focused entirely on the invasion of Manchuria, which would later be used by revisionist historians to claim it was entirely the Soviet invasion and not the bombs, that convinced Japan to surrender. Despite this, the meeting on August 9th marks no shift in the position of either the Peace or War factions as the meeting concludes at around 6 PM. The Soviet invasion accomplishes nothing... except to enable Soviet land grabs in the far east, including the still-disputed Southern Chishima islands, and to allow the Soviet Union to set the Communist Chinese on the road to victory, which were Stalin's true goals all along.

Planned for October, there is no attempt to disguise the planned invasion's timing or purpose—not that the Imperial Cabinet has a great track record in accurately anticipating ''anyone'' else's actions thus far. Christened Operation '''Downfall''', it consists of a two-stage attack. The first stage (Operation '''Olympic''') aims at capturing about a third of the southern island of Kyushu to use as a staging area for the second stage (Operation '''Coronet'''), a strike at Tokyo with the ultimate goal of capturing the capital and the Emperor. Operation '''Downfall''' will also be a true Allied operation, including a significant contingent of British and Australian forces. It is expected to more than ''double'' the total number of Allied military casualties[[note]]By double, they mean for the ''entire course of the war in all theaters'' incurred by the U.S. Some estimates put the potential number of American casualties as high as 1.25 million, with over 350,000 fatalities. The Americans made enough Purple Heart medals for such an enormous number of casualties, but Japan's surrender before Operation '''Downfall''' was implemented meant that the surplus was unnecessary; even nowadays, there are more than 100,000 Purple Hearts from this time in stock. And if the relative casualty rates seen on Okinawa held true, this would have meant more than ''seven million'' Japanese fatalities[[/note]]. After the war these estimates become considered optimistic as the Japanese plan of defense (Operation '''''Ketsugō''''') is pretty much a worst case scenario for the Allies. It banks on an all-out defense of Kyushu—pretty much predicting exactly where and when the Allies would attempt their landing—and aims to create a defensive system that would make the cost of victory too great and force an armistice instead of an unconditional surrender.\\\

The IJN's Mobile Force, now reduced to two large fleet carriers and whatever light/escort carriers and other conversions it could muster after the disastrous Battle of Midway, nonetheless made a good showing at the Battle of the Eastern Solomons in August 1942, and the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands in October 1942, managing to severely damage the ''USS Enterpise'' in the first battle despite being forced to withdraw and then forcing the American Navy to retreat in the second. By the end of the year, Japan had even succeeded in its objective of neutralizing the U.S. carriers—air and submarine attacks had sunk 4 of the [=U.S.'s=] 6 large fleet carriers, leaving only the badly damaged ''Saratoga'' and ''Enterprise''. However, the Japanese were in no condition to exploit this turn of events, as the loss of aircraft (worsened by the low survivability of their fighters and lack of effort in rescuing their own downed pilots) meant a full half of their Pearl Harbor aircrew had already perished. By the end of 1942, with both U.S. and Japanese carrier forces having worn each other down to nubs, both sides retired to repair and rebuild their carriers and air wings. It would be another 18 months before the U.S. and Japanese carrier fleets engaged each other[[note]]Which gave full advantage to the U.S. with its industrial capacity and GDP 10 times that of Japan; while the USN was able to build a dozen full-sized fleet carriers over that time, Japan could build only one[[/note]].\\\

The IJN's Mobile Force, now reduced to two large fleet carriers and whatever light/escort carriers and other conversions it could muster after the disastrous Battle of Midway, nonetheless made a good showing at the Battle of the Eastern Solomons in August 1942, and the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands in October 1942, forcing U.S. carriers to flee in the first case and fighting to a draw in the second. By the end of the year, Japan had even succeeded in its objective of neutralizing the U.S. carriers—air and submarine attacks had sunk 4 of the [=U.S.'s=] 6 large fleet carriers, leaving only the badly damaged ''Saratoga'' and ''Enterprise''. However, the Japanese were in no condition to exploit this turn of events, as the loss of aircraft (worsened by the low survivability of their fighters and lack of effort in rescuing their own downed pilots) meant a full half of their Pearl Harbor aircrew had already perished. By the end of 1942, with both U.S. and Japanese carrier forces having worn each other down to nubs, both sides retired to repair and rebuild their carriers and air wings. It would be another 18 months before the U.S. and Japanese carrier fleets engaged each other[[note]]Which gave full advantage to the U.S. with its industrial capacity and GDP 10 times that of Japan; while the USN was able to build a dozen full-sized fleet carriers over that time, Japan could build only one[[/note]].\\\

The IJN's superiority in carrier, cruiser and destroyer tactics give them a near-unbroken string of naval victories until mid-1942, as Admiral Yamamoto [[CassandraTruth had warned would happen]]. Then, at the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942, the USN engages two IJN carriers. Although suffering serious losses, the USN forces the IJN to turn back from Port Moresby and removes the threat to Australian–U.S. shipping lanes. This turns out to be more significant than anyone could imagine, as damage to two IJN carriers prevents their inclusion in the coming Battle of Midway while the famed American superiority in damage control enables the stricken carrier USS ''Yorktown'' to be back in action far sooner than anyone, especially the Japanese, expected[[note]]Ironically, of the two Japanese carriers present, ''Zuikaku'' and ''Shōkaku'', only the latter sustained heavy damage, while the former would've been able to participate in the battle if the remaining air group of the ''Shōkaku'' had been absorbed into that of her sister to form a composite air group. Unfortunately, Japanese carrier doctrine didn't allow this, so command didn't even consider the possibility[[/note]].\\\

The "decisive battle" Yamamoto hoped for involved a complex operation to invade the island of Midway (plus some Alaskan islands the IJN thought to be more strategically significant than they really were) in June 1942, to force the USN to send its carriers to a fight to the death. But unfortunately for the IJN, American codebreakers have managed to crack Japan's primary naval encryption and have a very good idea of what to expect, especially when they trick the Japanese into confirming their target. Midway thus becomes a trap for the IJN, turning what could have been Yamamoto's crowning achievement into a [[DisasterDominoes series of setbacks and failed objectives]] that costs the IJN dearly; the Japanese carriers arrive at a forewarned and heavily defended island and aren't even aware of the opposing U.S. carriers until long after the U.S. attack forces have launched. Again, the USN suffers tremendous losses, but they manage to organize a counterattack, consisting of a two-pronged strike of dive bombers and torpedo bombers. The torpedo bomber strikes are disasters; the outdated, slow TBD Devastators are fodder for Japanese fighters and AA guns, especially when they are forced to fly even ''slower'' and in straight, predictable lines while lining up for their torpedo runs against the carriers. Compounding this was the abysmal reliability of American torpedoes for the time meaning that the few Devastators that got through and managed to release could only watch as the torpedoes either missed or simply bounced harmlessly off the hulls of the carriers without doing damage. All in all, few if any critical hits were scored by American torpedoes against the Japanese carriers. Conversely, the dive bombers had much better luck: The Japanese fighters and gunners had been concentrating on the low-altitude torpedo planes, and had failed to take into account the SBD Dauntless dive bombers coming in from on high[[note]]One Japanese survivor recounted that they had assumed, incorrectly, that they had just wiped out the American counterattack. No one even knew about the dive bombers until they heard the [[StukaScream banshee wail of the Dauntless' dive brakes deploying]] as they rolled into their attack runs, at which point it was too late. Contrary to popular belief, however, the timing of the dive bombers arriving after the torpedo bombers was by complete ''chance''[[/note]]. The American Dauntlesses could not have arrived at a worse time for the IJN, as its next strike force was being refueled and rearmed, meaning the hangars of each ship are covered with [[MadeOfExplodium fuel, munitions and aircraft]]. [[CurbStompBattle The U.S. Navy fatally damages three Japanese carriers in the span of five minutes, and a fourth a few hours later (all would be scuttled within 24 hours), for the loss of one of their own]], in an action termed "the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare" by historian John Keegan. Another blow that was dealt was not to a specific nation, but to a method of naval warfare itself: The Battle of Midway had been fought, and won, almost completely by naval and land-based aircraft, with no American or Japanese warship trading cannon fire. It served as visual proof that battleships were quickly becoming obsolete in the face of constantly-improving aviation and ordinance technology, and a clear sign that the time of the great iron monoliths lining up to exchange broadsides [[EndOfAnEra was quickly coming to an end]].\\\

The Japanese make one final push for New Guinea in 1943, setting their sites on the village of Wau. An inland town within reasonable striking distance from the shoreline, Japanese commanders learn that Wau has a functional and lightly staffed airfield- it had been built during a gold rush in the 1920s that hadn't quite [[JustForPun panned out]]. The Japanese gamble on taking this base and using it for an airborne resupply operation, and then as a stepping stone for a strike at Port Moresby. The survivors of the Kokoda Track Campaign regroup to make a push on the airfield. By all accounts, the numerically superior Japanese should have overrun the Australian defenders- but the Aussies hold and repel the assault. \\\

* In 1937 an undeclared war breaks out in China, against the wishes of UsefulNotes/ChiangKaiShek and most elements of the Empire's Army and government. The Soviet Union immediately begins supplying the Guomindang with credit, machine tools, arms, ammunition, equipment, military and technical advisors, and volunteers through Chinese Mongolia. But to the immense frustration of Chiang Kai-Shek, Yan Xishan (warlord of Shanxi province, where Soviet aid enters the Guomindang's rail-network) gives up his home-turf without a fight - forcing Soviet aid to take the long way around through the warlord-fiefdoms of Xinjiang & Qinghai, drastically reducing the tonnage delivered. The battles for the southern North China Plain and Lower Yangzi go ''badly'' for the Guomindang, who lose the entirety of both regions despite a much-touted tactical victory by Guomindang forces at Taierzhuang. In the course of this Chiang has the dikes of the Yellow River blown to prevent the retreat from northern China from becoming an encirclement or a rout, halting Japanese operations on the North China Plain for 3 months but causing some 2 million civilians to die from water-borne and starvation-related diseases. The Guomindang finally halts the string of Japanese offenses with an ingenious combination of regular and asymmetric warfare [[note]]sneaking raiding parties through and using partisans already behind the enemy lines to wreak havoc with the IJA's supply lines, while the Guomindang's regular forces practiced defence-in-depth and encircled enemy formations. In practice, however, the forces of the Guomindang's allies (the Guangxi Clique, Yan Xishan, etc etc) weren't capable of this kind of tactical sophistication and often screwed these plans up whenever they were relied upon to actually do anything. Sadly, after the first six months of the war these allied troops were fully ''half'' of what was nominally the National Revolutionary Army of The Republic Of China.[[/note]], the ultimate result being strategic stalemate. Neither Chiang nor Tokyo can agree on peace conditions. Soviet aid continues as Japan being bogged down in a ForeverWar suits them just fine and the Soviets ''badly'' need the experience for their pilots, who saw relatively little action in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI[[note]] Stalin makes several spheres of administration (which overlapped with his fields of greatest competence) his exclusive preserve - heavy industry, the Air Force and aircraft-production, and (later) nuclear science. Consequently all three received lavish funding, resources, and scrutiny [[/note]].

* By late 1941 Soviet aid dries up completely as all Soviet pilots, aeroplanes, and advisors are recalled to defend The Motherland from Germany's ''Operation Barbarossa''. The IJA contemplates aiding Germany in her invasion of the USSR, but a July conference rules it out as their pre-war assessments (that the USSR would win) seem to be confirmed during that month's battle at ''Smolensk''. Japan's Grand Strategy of State-Building for the Wang Jingwei régime and Containment of Chiang's Guomindang is on the verge of success, but the seizure of French Indochina [[note]] Done to secure strategic resources for Japan, put pressure on the Guomindang's allies The Guangxi Clique, and cut the Hanoi-Kunming railroad the Guomindang had been using to import resources critical to itself through the Warlord Long Yun's fiefdom of Yunnan [[/note]] gives the United States under President Roosevelt a reason to impose sanctions on Japan in the name of bringing her back to the negotiating table with the Guomindang. The embargo is on iron and oil, the latter of which Japan's dysfunctional junta has had neither the time, foresight, nor money to stockpile in large amounts[[note]]The Imperial Navy's depots would be dry within just a few months[[/note]]. In a ''spectacular'' illustration of the SunkCostFallacy, in December 1941 the junta implements the IJN's Attack Plan South to seize British Malaya and The Dutch East Indies. In a pique of extreme paranoia, they assume that the USA would respond to this by declaring war on them in defence of The Allies, [[ItMakesSenseInContext and so attack the USA (without formally declaring war) at the same time so that they can maximise their initial strategic advantage and hopefully negotiate some sort of peace with everyone that involves them keeping China]]. [[ItMakesJustAsMuchSenseInContext Or something.]] The USA's forces in The Pacific are largely unprepared for the conflict, though not 'surprised' per se; US forces were already in the Phillipines and considered that area more likely for an eventual attack, and while the USA recognised an Allied-Japanese conflict as a real possibility they had never considered that the Japanese would attack them as well[[note]] The USA held no Pacific territories that produced iron or oil, whereas the Dutch East Indies and British Malaya were incredibly rich in both. Bringing the USA into such a war was stupid and pointless in every sense of both words; although the USA did impose a trade embargo, declaring a war on Japan to protect other countries' overseas colonies would be extremely unpopular and politically impossible. After December 7th, [[ItsPersonal opinions changed.]] As we said, however, Japan's various military Juntas were all invariably on the far side of paranoid and irrational--or if they weren't, they were in terror of the kind of imperialistic right-wing junior officers who were so fond of "government by assassination" when they weren't heeded. UrExample would be waging a massive war on China to generate profits that 'might' make good on the expenses of and loss to productivity incurred by waging said war in, oh, fifty or more years - taking no account whatsoever, of course, of damages inflicted by partisans and terrorists in the meantime (the unspoken assumption being that there wouldn't be any, or at least none of consequence) [[/note]].
* 1941-2 Attack Plan South succeeds beyond the Navy's wildest dreams, but the IJA's strangehold on the Guomindang is inadvertently lost due to life-saving US loans and the diversion of IJA resources away from actions against the Guomindang. By early 1942 the front has stabilised in northern Burma, where the British asked the Guomindang for troops to help British and Indian forces defend the colony. The Guomindang sends all it can spare, including their only motorised division, but the Anglo-Chinese force is forced to retreat to northern Burma. Joseph Stilwell is given command of said Guomindang forces as a publicity stunt to capitalize on pro-Chinese sentiment within the USA[[note]] These forces are loaned to the US Army with promises from the US that they will be fed, equipped, and trained just as well as if they were regular/'white' US soldiers [[/note]]. The loss of Burma means a loss of 10% of the Indian Subcontinent's total grain supply, though the loss hits Bengal hardest - some two million die of starvation-related diseases before Britain overrules the regional governments and imposes a comprehensive program of famine-relief. Likewise, the 'Henan Salient' of Free China suffers its worst famine in a hundred years. The Guomindang has no money or food to spare for relief efforts, and two million or so die of starvation-related diseases. By mid-1942 the other fronts stabilise in Australian New Guinea and the mid-Pacific. The 'back' of the IJN is broken at the Battle of Midway wherein its biggest aircraft carriers (and best airmen) are destroyed with minimal USN losses. The losses are devastating - Japan could not hope to replace the highly specialised ships and planes she has lost in ''five years'', but the USA produces the same number of both in just ''one''. The loss of experienced airmen is also critical; the Japanese suffer from a lack of knowledgable instructors (anyone who is any good tends to be sent to the front lines to try and help), and thus is forced to send pilots who are little more than trainees into battle. The USA, on the other hand, routinely rotates it's experienced pilots back home to serve as instructors, giving freshly graduated rookie pilots a massive advantage when they first go into combat.
* The USN uses small numbers[[note]]each engagement having only a few tens of thousands of men, the biggest landing (Okinawa) featuring less than 200,000 men on both sides - contrast the Red Army's Far Eastern (Manchurian) Offensive Operation in August 1945, with nearly 3 million. That said, although the numbers are small the ''intensity'' of some of the island battles matches that seen anywhere else in the war.[[/note]] of amphibious troops to 'island hop' westwards from Midway Island and cut Japan off from her oil supplies in south-east Asia. Starting on the 20th of October 1944, General [=MacArthur's=] plan to re-take the Philippines is implemented, and in the ensuing Battle of the Leyte Gulf virtually the entire IJN is annihilated with minimal USN losses. The loss of the entire fleet does not escape The IJA and Japan's civilian population, moreover, who both realise that news of another great victory is a whopping great lie and that their defeat is at hand. With the Philippines secured and the IJN gone, Japan's supply of south-east asian raw materials (including food) is cut off and the USA's strategic bombing campaign begins. More specifically, almost none of the Jute[[note]] which can be processed into rope and sack-cloth [[/note]] and grain that the IJA had hoped to export from Vietnam makes it to Japan - a cold comfort for the two million or so Viets who die in the ensuing Gulf Of Tonkin Famine[[note]] North Vietnam had imported food from south Vietnam before the war. But the IJA forced the entirety of north Vietnam to grow nothing but Jute, which was then confiscated, and south Vietnam's entire grain harvest was also confiscated. They let the rice rot in harbour-side warehouses rather than distribute a single grain of it as food-aid. [[/note]]. The planned Burma Offensive to restore the land-link to the Guomindang[[note]]the air-link over the Himalayas is expensive and inefficient, and the replacement land-link built to supply the Guomindang through India isn't as good as the original one that goes from Kunming down through Burma to Rangoon[[/note]] is disrupted by the IJA's U-Go offensive against the Sino-British forces in northern Burma and the Guomindang-Warlord forces in General Long Yun's Yunnan.

* Acting ostensibly upon his commitments at the Yalta Conference (that the USSR would help liberate the occupied territories of mainland East Asia within three months of the end of the war in Europe), Stalin orders the Red Army to perform the "Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation", which it does on August 8th, one day from the deadline set on the nineth by Germany's surrender on May 9th.[[labelnote:*]]May 8th in Europe, May 9th in Moscow.[[/labelnote]] The Red Army had been building up the invasion force even before the end of the western front, and quickly overran the exhausted and lightly equipped IJA. In response, High Command once again calls a meeting on August 9th, this one focused entirely on the invasion of Manchuria, which would later be used by revisionist historians to claim it was really the Soviet invasion and not the bombs, that convinced Japan to surrender. Despite this, the meeting on August 9th marks no shift in the position of either the Peace or War factions as the meeting concludes at around 6 PM. The Soviet invasion accomplishes nothing... except to enable Soviet land grabs in the far east, including the still-disputed Southern Chishima islands, and to allow the Soviet Union to set the Communist Chinese on the road to victory, which were Stalin's true goals all along.
* Later the same day, on August 9th the USA drops a second atomic bomb upon Nagasaki, shocking the war faction and even Emperor Hirohito himself, who breaks the deadlock, and declares his intention to announce his surrender to the United States, in light of the "new and most cruel bomb" of "incalcuable" destructive power, which had now been proven ''not'' to be an one-off. The pro-war members of High Command are cowed, but not all of Japan. The still-defiant IJA continues to fight on in mainland China while several junior officers instigate the "Kyujo Incident", an attempted coup just before the announcement of unconditional surrender. Nontheless, Hirohito begins his speech as planned on the 15th, a mere half week before the planned third atomic bomb would have struck Tokyo itself. American forces back off from Operation Downfall. The Second World War, is at last over.[[labelnote:*]]Excluding the Japanese holdouts on various pacific islands, who would continue to fight for nearly thirty years[[/labelnote]]

[[UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan The Empire of Japan]] is going nowhere fast. On paper, the Empire and its puppets control a fifth of China, half her population and almost all her industry. In reality, occupied China teems with bandits and guerrillas, and one only has to travel twenty miles from a railroad or river to find territory beyond Imperial control. On paper, the Republic's troops outnumber those of the Empire and her allies by three to one; in reality, only half of these troops answer to the central government led by the Guomindang ([[UsefulNotes/WhyMaoChangedHisName aka the "Kuomintang"]]), the Chinese Nationalists led by [[UsefulNotes/ChiangKaiShek Jiang Jieshi]] ([[UsefulNotes/WhyMaoChangedHisName aka Chiang Kai-shek]]). Only a fifth of ''those'' forces, moreover, can be relied upon to obey him or fight properly.[[note]]For those with math troubles, that's about 1 in 10 Chinese who can properly be called "soldiers" of a caliber to match the Japanese invaders.[[/note]]\\\

Although the Guomindang has held on so far, its forces' combat efficiency deteriorates daily. Only a handful of grunts in Jiang's core armies from 1937 are still around, and the Guomindang has exhausted the supply of willing recruits and non-critical people who can be conscripted. The Japanese blockade, too, is almost complete; the "Burma Road" between warlord Long Yun's Yunnan province[[note]] He gave himself that name. Its meaning is "The Dragon of Yun(nan)"—his name sharing the "Yun" with that of the province, whose name (Yunnan) is just "South(ern) Yun." Jiang lured him away from his power base in the province in late 1945 by promising him a position within the government (in the same way that Li Zongren had been persuaded to leave Guangxi in order to claim the Presidency). But in Long Yun's absence, Jiang orchestrated a coup and took over the country—marking the first time that Yunnan had answered directly to a central government authority [[UsefulNotes/NoMoreEmperors since 1911]]! [[/note]] and British Burma is the Guomindang's only link with the outside world after the Japanese take the ports of south China in ’38-’40 and bully the Vichy régime into giving them French Indochina.\\\

After six months of planning and training under the supervision of Naval Marshal General Isoroku Yamamoto, a task force based around six aircraft carriers moves out under complete secrecy. On Sunday, 7 December 1941, they catch the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet completely off guard and at anchor at the Pearl Harbor Naval Base in Hawai‘i. Johnny-foreigner is left reeling from his first taste of cold steel in decades as the Imperial Navy's Most Valiant Air Forces strike a devastating blow against the naval forces of the Most Glorious Empire's New Enemy. [[note]]It's not as successful as it could have been, because none of the three Pacific Fleet carriers are in port and the commander of the task force and Yamamoto's subordinate—Admiral Nagumo—is correspondingly cautious. He chooses to withdraw rather than launch a third wave of bombers against the base facilities themselves (which would leave the task force vulnerable to a carrier-based counterattack). Thus Pearl Harbor's drydocks, machine shops, naval headquarters (which had station '''HYPO''' in the basement where the strategically-invaluable signals intelligence personnel were located), storehouses and fuel reserves—without which the remnants of the fleet could have been left stranded—are left intact. Destroying the fleet itself took priority, as the aim of the attack was "Shock and Awe"; sinking the fleet itself was rightly considered more impressive than wrecking its repair and resupply facilities. The task force was not trained for the latter objective, which hadn't even been contemplated in the battle plan. The focus of the attack had been the critically-important battleships, such that the U.S. Navy's Pacific Cruiser Force barely received any consideration. Even the American carriers were officially secondary targets, though the aviators of the attack force understandably (if unofficially) promoted them to priority one as they posed the greatest threat of counterattack. In any event, nearly a third of the task force's aircraft were destroyed in the first two waves, and the remainder would have been insufficient to do significant damage to the huge port facilities in any case. Later events would prove that destroying a major industrial facility required a lot more air power than any navy had available in 1941.[[/note]].\\\

That said, there isn't much permanent damage. Many of the ships can be—and are—repaired and returned to service within a year or so; only three ships are completely out of commission [[note]] Those were the ''Utah'' (which was decommissioned anyway and just being used by the Pacific Fleet for training), the ''Oklahoma'' (which took on so much water it capsized), and most infamously, the ''Arizona'' (which had the misfortune of having the bomb land in its forward magazine). [[/note]], and a lot of ''matériel'' is salvaged from them, the blessing in disguise of being attacked at anchor in a shallow, friendly harbor; especially critical, none of the American carriers (some of the primary Japanese targets) were in harbor during the attack [[note]] This was due to a very fortuitous set of circumstances, as of the three Pacific Fleet carriers, ''Saratoga'' was in San Diego embarking her flight crew, ''Lexington'' had left two days earlier to ferry a contingent of Marines to Midway, and ''Enterprise'' was only 200 miles away from Pearl Harbor (she would've actually have been present for the attack, if not for weather delaying her progress) [[/note]]. Ironically, with their battleships out of action, the U.S. Navy is forced to adopt the very same carrier task force concept that the Japanese had just demonstrated so effectively. Though it is not immediately evident to most observers, this move changes naval warfare forever. This incident and the later sinkings of HMS ''Prince of Wales'' and HMS ''Repulse'' by purely air attack without the protection of aircraft carriers' fighters means that the era of the battleship is over—although they will nonetheless see further service in the current conflict.\\\

Though not quite as spectacular at first glance, the Japanese air raid on Pearl Harbor is not nearly as costly to the Americans as their invasion of the Philippine Islands, which had been a U.S. territory since the UsefulNotes/SpanishAmericanWar. The Americans were in the process of reinforcing the island as part of the massive rearmament and expansion of the U.S. military after FDR's reelection in 1940. FDR promised to keep the U.S. out of the wars overseas, but that didn't mean he wouldn't prepare [[ProperlyParanoid just in case]]. However, the American forces defending the Philippines are still woefully underequipped for the task. Upon hearing of the attack in Hawaii, the Philippine and American forces go on alert, with the Far East Air Force scrambling to meet any Japanese attack that might be aimed at them. But when the Japanese do come, they end up overwhelmed, and many of the [=FEAF's=] planes are caught [[SittingDuck while refueling on the ground.]] [[note]]A bit of spectacularly bad timing the Japanese would later suffer in turn at Midway.[[/note]] While the [=FEAF=] has received some new planes in the form of B-17 Flying Fortresses and P-40 Warhawks, many of the Philippine and American pilots still fly obsolete planes such as the P-26 Peashooters, with their open cockpits and braced wings. Even so, several Japanese planes [[LethalJokeCharacter meet their end at the hands of these outdated planes]], including two Japanese Zeroes, [[NotSoInvincibleAfterAll hinting at]] their [[GlassCannon critical defensive flaws]].\\\

The Japanese launch the invasion of north Malaya at midnight on the 8th and essentially pull off a D-Day invasion ''in the dark'' against British bunkers, barbed wire strewn beaches, and artillery emplacements. The British sink several Japanese transports but the Japanese land most of their troops and force the Commonwealth to retreat. The Naval squadron departs Singapore harbor to try and prevent further Japanese landings, but is soon left without air cover. The Japanese realize their good fortune and launch numerous air attacks from land bases, sinking the ''Repulse'' and the ''Prince of Wales'', one of Britain's newest and most advanced battleships [[note]]although the King George V-class battleship possessed one of the most advanced naval anti-aircraft systems of the time, the High Angle Control System (HACS), which demonstrated accurate long-range radar-directed anti-aircraft fire during Operation Halberd on August and September 1941 against Italian air attack, the Commander of the Home Fleet, Admiral Sir John Tovey was opposed to sending any King George V battleships due to that they were designed to operate in Atlantic conditions and not suited for operating in tropical climates, and indeed, the extreme heat and humid climate in Malaya would negatively affect the ''Prince of Wales'', rendering her anti-aircraft fire control radars unserviceable, causing her surface search radars to break down, deteriorating her 2-pounder ammunition, and even worse, increasing crew fatigue due to the lack of air conditioning.[[/note]], [[CurbStompBattle for the cost of just 4 Japanese bombers]]. Now the Japanese begin landing masses of troops unopposed. From there, the fighting continues on down the Malay peninsula following a pattern. The British establish a defensive line. The Japanese pull up tanks to engage the British.[[note]]Japanese tanks were notoriously inferior to almost all other vehicles used by the major powers. But when one side has the worst tank ever made and the other has none, it might as well be a Death Star.[[/note]] The Japanese infantry scatter into the jungle behind the British, surround them, and force them to withdraw further down the peninsula. Civilians hear the fighting and flee toward Singapore. Rinse and repeat for two months until the Japanese are at the gates of Singapore in February. The Commonwealth troops destroy the causeway bridge into the city and breathe a sigh of relief while they quickly reorganize into an ad-hoc defense of Singapore island. They are surrounded, have no incoming resupply, and the city is filled to the brim with hungry troops and starving civilian refugees.\\\

Churchill can't understand why the battle is going so poorly and issues orders for Singapore to be defended to the death by every man, just like the Russians are currently doing at Moscow. The troops that receive this order have not been eating regularly. They have no tanks, no artillery, no aircraft, and are almost out of ammunition. The entire army has been involved in the two month fighting retreat and none of the men are rested- in fact, they're now being tasked with throwing up rapid defenses along the shores of the city. Their one defensive trump card, the naval guns in Singapore harbor, have armor piercing shells in their magazines. Those shells will sink any Japanese battleship. [[NoSell They will only bury themselves in the dirt if fired at ground troops.]] On February 8th, the Japanese cross into Singapore via armored landing craft and fighting ensues in the outer suburbs. Within a few days, they repair the causeway and bring in their light tanks to seize the city's fresh water reservoir. British General Arthur Percival realizes that the battle is over. There is no way to evacuate his troops and they haven't the strength to fight a prolonged, Moscow-style defense. If Japanese bullets don't kill them, thirst will do the job in 7 days. He surrenders to General Tomoyuki Yamashita on February 15th, 1942. Japanese troops overrun several hospitals during and after the battle, massacring the wounded and raping nurses before executing them as well.[[note]]General Yamashita will be executed in post-war trials for the atrocities carried out by his troops during the attack and occupation of Singapore, but before you think his troops got off scot-free, consider that, among those that managed to survive the war, your superior officer taking responsibility for your actions is an ''incredibly'' shameful experience in a strict honor-based society such as Japan, on par with being captured alive by your enemy; to the point that it would be preferable to simply [[DrivenToSuicide commit seppuku]] than to be seen as someone who cannot be held accountable for their own actions.[[/note]] 130,000 British Commonwealth and allied troops become prisoners of the Japanese Empire overnight. They will be transported aboard [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_ship "Hell Ships"]] to the Japanese home territories where many will be worked to death until the war's end. Churchill's doctor reported that he received the news of Singapore's fall with stunned silence. Months later, he would stare blankly at times and when asked what was troubling him, reply [[MyGreatestFailure "I cannot get over Singapore."]] With Rommel still racing around Africa and Britain having just survived the blitz, the battle for the Pacific will have to be fought by the American, Australian, New Zealand, Indian, and Chinese forces. And now Australia and New Zealand appear to be defenseless.\\\

Tactical success aside, [[NiceJobFixingItVillain the Navy and the Cabinet soon realize they have made a mistake]]. This was partly a failure of the Japanese intelligence services, which were weak, but more fundamentally [[EvilCannotComprehendGood a failure to understand the motivations of their now-enemies]]. [[{{Irony}} The U.S. wasn't at all interested in helping Britain maintain her Empire]], or even using the conflict as a pretext for a war with Japan.[[note]]Yes, the Japanese logic here was a bit fuzzy. Also, while the American business community might have been a bit upset by Japan nationalising some of their assets in China, the U.S. wouldn't care to fight a huge war just for their sake. ([[BananaRepublic At least, not at that point]].)[[/note]]In fact, their "preemptive" offensive has [[SelfFulfillingProphecy generated huge outrage and calls for revenge among the American public,]] the attack on the fleet in particular being reviled as [[ThisIsUnforgivable "A date which will live in infamy".]] This makes it possible for President Roosevelt, who personally supported U.S. involvement in the the wider war but previously had to contend with a staunchly antiwar public, to [[ThisMeansWar declare war on Japan]] and bring the U.S. into the Western Allied camp. He also mandates [[ItsPersonal massively increased investment to make the ridiculously large "Two Ocean Navy" (as laid out in 1940) a reality in just three years, stating his intention to take the war to Japan]]. [[OnlySaneMan Rational officers]] like Admiral Yamamato had understood the nature of the U.S.'s strong isolationist lobby, not to mention its ''overwhelming'' material advantage.[[note]]ca.30% of World GDP to Japan's ca.3% and nearly 51% of the entire world's industrial capacity, albeit much of it still idled by the Great Depression. The imbalance was even greater than the simple 10:1 GDP and industrial-production statistics indicate, however, given the principle of 'economies of scale'. While Japan's ''junta'' did have ''some'' idea of their massive commercial–industrial inferiority, they convinced each other that it didn't matter because the U.S. would (quickly, if not ''immediately'') back down rather than actually fight a war against them.[[/note]] But these officers were [[MyCountryRightOrWrong duty-bound]] to follow the government's orders anyway.[[note]]Yamamoto had planned for the Japanese embassy to formally notify the U.S. that they were breaking off negotiations 30 minutes before the attack commenced, to avoid angering the American public too much. However, the Japanese embassy did not decipher the code in time. The United States were notified 55 minutes ''after'' the attack began, making the operation (look like) a sneak attack and effectively turning what was supposed to be a polite, yet prompt cutting of ties into a proverbial spitting in the face of someone you just sucker-punched. Contrary to popular belief, neither the embassy's "declaration of the cessation of diplomatic negotiations" nor the navy's operation was a declaration of war, as an official War (with a capital W) was not something Japan's ''junta'' wanted.[[/note]]\\\

To compound the looming disaster for the Axis, Hitler [[NiceJobFixingItVillain promptly commits one of the greatest strategic blunders of all time]] by declaring war on the United States in support of his ally, despite the fact that he was under no formal obligation to do so, since the Tripartite Pact with Japan stated that Germany would have had to step in only if Japan were attacked first. This clears the way for Roosevelt to have the U.S. join the fight in Europe with complete domestic political support.[[note]]However, it is worth noting that the U.S. Navy's Atlantic Fleet had been waging an undeclared war against the ''Kriegsmarine'' since September of 1941 via their "Neutrality Patrols", ordering that any German ships in the neutral zone be attacked on sight, so in the short term, Hitler was simply giving his crews permission to shoot first.[[/note]] Thus, as 1941 comes to a close, the Germans, who six months before only faced the British Empire and its Commonwealth, are now at war with the three most powerful non-Axis nations on Earth.\\\

At this point, [[YouAreAlreadyDead the defeat of the Axis is inevitable, their poor decision-making having doomed them]].[[note]]The Axis's share of world GDP and population standing at less 20% on both counts and decreasing, relative to Allied shares of over 60% and 80% respectively. This manifested itself in total armored vehicle, airplane, and warship production figures of at least four-to-one, three-to-one, and four-to-one respectively. These are only the ''final'' figures, note; in ’44–’45 Axis production was severely disrupted by strategic bombing and the loss of strategic resources, whereas contemporary Allied production dropped off due to a simple lack of need. Regardless of whether the Axis' goals were to force the Allies to the negotiating table or literally just TakeOverTheWorld, all the Allies had to do from 1942 onward was simply ''wait'' and outlast the Axis through pure attrition alone.[[/note]]\\\

But that would not become clear immediately. The combination of the attacks on Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Malaya resulted in the Empire of Japan [[CurbStompBattle promptly sweeping the Western Allies nearly out of the Pacific]].[[note]]All these attacks were noted by President Roosevelt the afternoon after Pearl Harbor, when he addressed a joint session of the United States Congress to formally request a declaration of war against Japan--a declaration that was approved almost unanimously less than an hour later, with a single member of the House of Representatives voting no as a conscientious objector.[[/note]] Within just a couple of months these are all secured for Japan, and the Japanese sweep outward to take the entire Dutch East Indies and most of Burma. Six months of uninterrupted victories leave Japan the master of East Asia and the Western Pacific.\\\

To raise morale and curb spying, the U.S. promptly herds all its ethnic-Japanese citizens on the west coast into internment camps and expropriates all their assets.[[note]]Except Hawai‘i, of course, where ethnic Japanese make up a majority of the non-native population. While there was no official policy of confiscating Japanese–American property, local officials tended to look the other way as their neighbors helped themselves. It is a move even the notorious bullying head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, had reservations about.[[/note]] The U.S. does, however, allow Japanese–Americans to serve with its armed forces—but only in the European Theater, except for some who serve in noncombat roles as translators. Roosevelt is keen to capitalize on the strength of the American people's anti-Japanese hatred, so he gets Army Chief of Staff George Marshall to assign the U.S. Army to help the Guomindang in their fight against the Imperial Japanese Army. Somewhat cynically, Marshall appoints the newly-promoted General Joseph Stilwell to head up the U.S. Army's Expeditionary Force to China, but doesn't actually give him any men. From the [=U.S.'s=] standpoint, it makes no sense to give the Guomindang any more support than necessary for their ally to survive in its role as a meatshield. Besides, the nearly insuperable logistics of even getting supplies overland to China when Japan holds nearly their entire coastline makes it difficult even to do that.\\\

To add onto this, the U.S. is still reeling from the attack on Pearl Harbor, and morale is at an all-time low both in the military and on the home front. In April 1942, Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle comes up with a daring plan to rebuild morale and bring the fight back to the Japanese Empire: Take 24 B-25 Mitchell land-based medium bombers, load them on the carrier USS ''Hornet'', and launch a symbolic strike of their own on the Japanese homeland. The raid, called the "Doolittle Raid" after Doolittle himself, involves hastily jury-rigging the nearly 10-ton aircraft for carrier takeoffs, alighting from the ''Hornet,'' striking various targets in Japan, and landing in Chinese-held air bases for recovery. In practice, the plan goes much more roughly: To start, the sighting of a Japanese picket boat causes the planes to have to launch early, greatly reducing the range of the bombers. While the flight over the mainland goes mostly smoothly, another problem arises when it turns out many of the pre-planned Chinese airfields had been taken by the Japanese, and few of the planes had the fuel to divert to secondary airfields, resulting in a majority of the Mitchells having to crash land or their crews bail out. In the end, 3 American airmen were killed and 8 were captured by the Japanese. The damage itself had no strategic value; the planes were too few and too spread out to have a notifiable effect on the infrastructure, and Japanese propaganda mocked it, calling it the "Do-nothing Raid." However, in reality, both the Japanese public and the government had been shaken to the core, and the illusion of the Japanese home islands being impenetrable to foreign attack had been shattered completely, for the first time in ''centuries''. Due to the Americans concealing the fact that the planes had been launched from a carrier (not that the idea of medium bombers taking off from an aircraft carrier was believable enough anyways)[[note]]Several military documents and communiques at the time referred to the takeoff point of the B-25 raiders (a.k.a. the U.S.S. ''Hornet'') as [[TheShangriLa "Shangri-La"]] in order to keep the fact that the planes were ship-launched secret, and further confound Japanese spies and codebreakers. In a humorously ironic twist, an American escort carrier built later in the war named the U.S.S. "''Shangri-La''" was used as a test platform for a navalized variant of the B-25 capable of launching from and landing on aircraft carriers, though the program was eventually cancelled since the B-25 was still too big to fit on the aircraft elevators and thus took up valuable deck space.[[/note]], the Japanese military believed the planes had come from either an American island base in the Pacific, or a Chinese airfield. This prompts the China Expeditionary Force to go on a new offensive in the hills of the Hunan and Jiangxi provinces, with the aim of capturing or destroying all airbases within strategic-bombing range of Japan. The operation is a success insofar as the airbases are all cut off or destroyed. But, as usual, the Japanese overstretch their supply lines and are again forced to withdraw. The IJN, on the other hand, began making moves in the Pacific to take any American-held island base that held even a ''remote'' chance of housing strategic bombers within range of the homeland, moves that would eventually culminate in the Battle of Midway.\\\

Buna sits at the far north-east coast of New Guinea and at the head of what is called the Kokoda Track, the only path through the Owen Stanley Mountain Range. At the far south end of that track is Port Moresby. The Japanese begin fighting down the mountain trail with 13,000 troops, pushing further and further into the jungle hills while the Australians pull back. [=MacArthur=] sends 30,000 Australians into the hills to stop them. The fighting seems to be mirroring the campaign for Singapore, with a numerically superior Commonwealth force being overrun and forced back by a smaller Japanese force. Both sides are again plagued by supply problems- lack of heavy weapons and artillery[[note]]The Australians have two heavy howitzer guns to help their troops but the terrain is so difficult that moving the guns requires breaking them down to their individual components, moving every piece with pack animals, and rebuilding them by hand at the firing location. It will take 50 men 5 days to move one of them just 2 miles. The guns are hardly used because of the sheer amount of time this process takes.[[/note]], insufficient air cover[[note]]The allies have air supremacy, but the jungle is so thick that supply drops get stuck in the high branches of trees, the winds in the Owen Stanley Range are notoriously dangerous even for skilled pilots, and the fighting is so close that bombs are just as likely to hit friendly troops as Japanese[[/note]], and poor logistics mean this is literal man-to-man fighting. Supplying so many men via a handful of jungle tracks and a single "road" (really just a well walked trail) was simply an impossible task for the Australians. The Japanese have similar problems and the added difficulty that their supplies must travel even farther- the home islands are significantly farther away than Australia. Each soldier is ordered to carry 16 days worth of rations in their pack for a campaign that will last 45 days- [[JapaneseSpirit but despite empty stomachs and steadily dwindling ammunition, they keep going on the offensive.]] More Japanese soldiers will die of disease and malnutrition than combat at this stage of the fighting.[[note]] After the war, some Japanese report that they resorted to cannibalism.[[/note]]\\\

As the battle continues down the track and the Australians retreat again and again up the slopes and then down them, [=MacArthur=] listens to the reports of exhaustion and supply problems and refuses to allow further retreats. Multiple Australian generals are sacked and replaced. Some Aussie troops come close to [[ShootTheMessenger murdering their commander]] when he announces at the brigade parade ground that high command believes they aren't putting their all into the fight. The allied lines finally stabilize at Imita Ridge on September 17th and the Australians are finally able to breathe, rest, and reorganize. A special battalion of 500 militia is raised to infiltrate the jungle and hunt Japanese supply columns coming up the track.[[note]]A good idea, but the force of 18-19 year old kids never receives its aerial resupply and has to return to the Allied line without ever firing a shot.[[/note]] The Japanese are energized as they take up battle positions near the ridge. They break into the last of their rations to celebrate. The officers share sake toasts to their success. They're now about 60 kilometers from their target. At night they can see the lights of Port Moresby. But these celebrations can't stop the painful stabbing sensations in their empty stomachs or reload their rifles. While they are still waiting for resupply, the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels are bringing more bullets, bandages, and bombs to their Australian foes every day. The Japanese commanders have to make an impossible decision.\\\

Simultaneously with the Kokoda Track campaign, [=MacArthur=] receives word from Allied cryptographers that the Japanese will try to seize his airfields at Milne Bay on the far eastern hook of New Guinea as part of their long eastern march. The airfield is a front line facility that can launch air attacks against Japanese ships in the Coral, Solomon, and Bismarck Seas. If it's shut down, the IJN can conceivably hit the Australian coast without aerial interference. But the Japanese Army is starting to feel overstretched at this point and insists they can't provide any troops to help in another naval landing, so the IJN agrees to send 1,500 men from the ''Kaigen Rigusentai''[[note]]Special Naval Landing Forces; the Japanese Marine Corps[[/note]] to capture Milne Bay. The Japanese think they are going to attack an airbase with at most 600 men- most of them staff and air base personnel. [[OhCrap MacArthur is waiting on the beach with a force of 9,000 men- local militia, Australian regulars, and American engineers and artillerists.]] The Japanese still put up a heavy fight and with help from a bad weather front that keeps Allied planes grounded, and an IJN cruiser squadron's heavy guns, they are able to break through the beach defenses with 1,000 marines and both of their tanks.[[note]]Yes, both. The whole Milne Bay invasion force had two tanks.[[/note]] The fighting continues for two weeks but the battle becomes a wash and a retreat is called by the Japanese- they actually have to leave several companies stranded on a nearby island until they can be picked up in October by a submarine and a light cruiser. [=MacArthur=] orders the base to be significantly expanded and used to pound the Japanese all across New Guinea, stopping the slow-and-steady offensive before it can reach the airfield.\\\

With Guadalcanal collapsing, Japanese High Command decides they absolutely ''need'' to take Wau to regain the strategic initiative in the Pacific. They gather the 51st Imperial Division in Rabaul and have them board eight transport ships as a reinforcement flotilla. The plan is to move the vulnerable convoy behind a bad weather front as a shield against allied aircraft. And even if the flotilla is discovered by the Allies, [[SuicideMission High Command is fully prepared to lose ''half'' of their troops just getting to New Guinea.]] About 7,000 Japanese troops escorted by a convoy of destroyers and submarines leave safe waters on February 27th. What follows is nothing short of a massacre. Allied intelligence had again broken the codes of the Japanese and detected the buildup of troops. [=MacArthur=] has his air teams outfit their bombing craft[[labelnote:*]]Which were mainly the Martin B-26 [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Marauder]] and North American B-25 Mitchell, the same plane used in the Doolittle Raid.[[/labelnote]] with no less than [[MoreDakka 8 nose mounted .50 caliber machine guns]][[labelnote:*]]And sometimes even ''more''. While the B-25 was a fairly adequate-performing medium strategic bomber, it found a niche role as a ground attack craft and convoy hunter; crews often painted over its glazed nose and removed the bombsight equipment, and proceeded to stuff every gun they could find into them along with a rudimentary gunsight in the cockpit to aim the things. The "G" and "H" models took this even further by replacing the entire glazed section with a solid nose designed to hold 6-8 .50 caliber machine guns, and strapping a ''[[{{BFG}} 75mm]]'' cannon into the former bombardier access tunnel, along with as much extra gun packs and ordinance as they could carry. In some cases, a fully-laden Mitchell could see itself loaded with 8 fixed .50 calibers, plus up to 4 more on external "gun packs" and then adding an extra two by having the ventral gunner rotate and lock his turret forward, for a total of ''fourteen'' .50 caliber guns '''plus''' the 75mm cannon. To call these planes gunships would be an apt statement indeed.[[/labelnote]] in preparation. The bad weather shield works for the Japanese at first, but it dissipates by March 1st and then everything gets FUBAR. The convoy is spotted by an allied scout plane and a force of bombers and PT boats descends on the ships. Even with Japanese air cover, the Allies sink every one of the transport ships and 4 of the destroyers. Almost 3,000 Japanese troops sink to the bottom of the ocean. The rest are fished aboard the surviving destroyers and submarines in the night. About 1,000 men make it to New Guinea but were in no condition to begin a march to Wau. The rest return to Japanese ports aboard the destroyers.\\\

The Pacific War is an island war, something the world had never seen before and has never seen since. It is a long-distance war, waged largely by air and sea power, but mostly it is a struggle for island bases that have no strategic value other than as stepping stones that can be used to carry the war to the enemy. Most have no useful resources and their tiny native populations are either neutral or indifferent to the titanic clash surrounding them. Only the largest archipelagos like the Philippines and Indonesia have resources worth fighting over and populations with vested interests in the outcome. Unlike a land war, island bases can easily be cut off from their supply lines, effectively making their entire garrisons prisoners of war without an actual fight[[note]]For example, in 1944 more Japanese troops were trapped on New Guinea than were stationed in the entire central Pacific, the men cut off at Rabaul outnumbered the defenders on Okinawa, and nearly half of the Japanese submarine force was engaged in running supplies to surrounded island garrisons.[[/note]]. In this environment, relatively small battles and conquests can carry huge strategic implications, and the tactical character of the fighting is unrelentingly heavy.\\\

Because the battlefields and numbers of troops are so small and the troop concentrations so uncomfortably high, there just isn't the room or the numbers for there to be "exploitation" or even "breakthrough" phases to the fighting—it's all ''assault''-type combat until the enemy's resistance shatters completely. Since no reinforcements can be shuttled in for a counterattack or to reinforce the threatened sector—and the defenders can't retreat to regroup and avoid fighting while they're still disorganized (as in a "breakthrough" phase)—the defenders are then massacred in some ''very'' one-sided fighting and the whole battle is over in short order. It's also a form of warfare practically tailor-made for the Americans; with their massive glut of resources (and ''[[KlingonScientistsGetNoRespect more efficient management]]'' of said greater resources), they can practically create or capture island bases and airfields faster than the Japanese can destroy them[[note]]For instance, there is a tale about one of the few Japanese prisoners of war who was being held at a newly captured area was being really stubborn about Japan's "inevitable" victory, finally broke down in despair seeing the Seabees building an air base. When asked what he was so upset about, he moaned at the Americans using their "big scoops," which happened to be full sized bulldozers which helped make bases rapidly while Japanese had to make do with slave labor that simply could not compete therewith in speed; regardless of whether the tale is true, one concrete fact is that the Seabees were ''very'' good at what they did.[[/note]].\\\

The IJN's superiority in carrier, cruiser and destroyer tactics give them a near-unbroken string of naval victories until mid-1942, as Admiral Yamamoto [[CassandraTruth had warned would happen]]. Then, at the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942, the USN engages two IJN carriers. Although suffering serious losses, the USN forces the IJN to turn back from Port Moresby and removes the threat to Australian–U.S. shipping lanes. This turns out to be more significant than anyone could imagine, as damage to two IJN carriers prevents their inclusion in the coming Battle of Midway while the famed American superiority in damage control enables the stricken carrier USS ''Yorktown'' to be back in action far sooner than anyone, especially the Japanese, expected. [[note]] Ironically, of the two Japanese carriers present, ''Zuikaku'' and ''Shōkaku'', only the latter sustained heavy damage, while the former would've been able to participate in the battle if the remaining air group of the ''Shōkaku'' had been absorbed into that of her sister to form a composite air group. Unfortunately, Japanese carrier doctrine didn't allow this, so command didn't even consider the possibility. [[/note]]\\\

The "decisive battle" Yamamoto hoped for involved a complex operation to invade the island of Midway (plus some Alaskan islands the IJN thought to be more strategically significant than they really were) in June 1942, to force the USN to send its carriers to a fight to the death. But unfortunately for the IJN, American codebreakers have managed to crack Japan's primary naval encryption and have a very good idea of what to expect, especially when they trick the Japanese into confirming their target. Midway thus becomes a trap for the IJN, turning what could have been Yamamoto's crowning achievement into a [[DisasterDominoes series of setbacks and failed objectives]] that costs the IJN dearly; the Japanese carriers arrive at a forewarned and heavily defended island and aren't even aware of the opposing U.S. carriers until long after the U.S. attack forces have launched. Again, the USN suffers tremendous losses, but they manage to organize a counterattack, consisting of a two-pronged strike of dive bombers and torpedo bombers. The torpedo bomber strikes are disasters; the outdated, slow TBD Devastators are fodder for Japanese fighters and AA guns, especially when they are forced to fly even ''slower'' and in straight, predictable lines while lining up for their torpedo runs against the carriers. Compounding this was the abysmal reliability of American torpedoes for the time meaning that the few Devastators that got through and managed to release could only watch as the torpedoes either missed or simply bounced harmlessly off the hulls of the carriers without doing damage. All in all, few if any critical hits were scored by American torpedoes against the Japanese carriers. Conversely, the dive bombers had much better luck: The Japanese fighters and gunners had been concentrating on the low-altitude torpedo planes, and had failed to take into account the SBD Dauntless dive bombers coming in from on high.[[note]]One Japanese survivor recounted that they had assumed, incorrectly, that they had just wiped out the American counterattack. No one even knew about the dive bombers until they heard the [[StukaScream banshee wail of the Dauntless' dive brakes deploying]] as they rolled into their attack runs, at which point it was too late. Contrary to popular belief, however, the timing of the dive bombers arriving after the torpedo bombers was by complete ''chance.''[[/note]] The American Dauntlesses could not have arrived at a worse time for the IJN, as its next strike force was being refueled and rearmed, meaning the hangars of each ship are covered with [[MadeOfExplodium fuel, munitions and aircraft]]. [[CurbStompBattle The U.S. Navy fatally damages three Japanese carriers in the span of five minutes, and a fourth a few hours later (all would be scuttled within 24 hours), for the loss of one of their own]], in an action termed "the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare" by historian John Keegan. Another blow that was dealt was not to a specific nation, but to a method of naval warfare itself: The Battle of Midway had been fought, and won, almost completely by naval and land-based aircraft, with no American or Japanese warship trading cannon fire. It served as visual proof that battleships were quickly becoming obsolete in the face of constantly-improving aviation and ordinance technology, and a clear sign that the time of the great iron monoliths lining up to exchange broadsides [[EndOfAnEra was quickly coming to an end]].\\\

The IJN isn't destroyed ''per se'', but the blow is a GameChanger. Now fielding two fleet carriers and five light carriers (only two of which were particularly suitable for fleet operations against enemy carriers), the IJN suddenly finds its substantial superiority in naval airpower over the USN's carrier force (three in the Pacific and one in the Atlantic) reduced to mere parity. American industrial production made this inevitable, but the IJN hoped to delay this parity for a good 6-12 months more. Nor will this parity last much longer, because the Americans already have seven new carriers under construction, the Japanese just one, and the Americans are not going to settle for a mere seven to one advantage. [[note]]It's worth noting that modern scholarship has shown that the Japanese invasion force had virtually no chance of capturing Midway regardless of how the naval battle turned out. They lacked the amphibious vehicles necessary to traverse Midway's surrounding lagoon and were thoroughly outgunned by the fully alerted American defenders—a reality underscored when the same unit was later slaughtered virtually to the last man in a futile charge against a much smaller Marine detachment on Guadalcanal. Even at this relatively early stage of the war, the Japanese simply lacked sufficient resources to project a landing force that far across the Pacific, or sustain it once it got there. Ultimately, they were defeated by distance[[/note]].\\\

For the next six months, the IJN and the allies fight a brutal land, sea and air battle for the uncompleted Japanese airbase on the island of Guadalcanal. This would expand into the fight for control of the entire Solomon Islands chain, lasting until November 1943. Much of the momentum of the southern offensive is lost due to the unanticipated effect of [[LaResistance partisan and guerrilla resistance]], particularly in the Philippines, while the Guadalcanal campaign turns into a six-month meat grinder of horrific foot-slogging battles and fierce nighttime naval engagements that consumes ships, airplanes and men Japan can ill afford to lose and lacks the resources to replace. Another issue the Japanese faced was that their armies were woefully outclassed in terms of equipment: Most Japanese soldiers sported the Arisaka rifle, a tried-and-true but slow firing bolt-action infantry rifle with a capacity of just five rounds, fed by stripper clip. Conversely, American infantrymen had the M1 Garand, a newer and more mechanically complicated design, but capable of a much higher rate of fire and fed by an eight round en-bloc clip. Additionally, in an interesting inversion of its weaknesses on the European Front, where it struggled against the heavier-armed and armored German Tiger and Panther tanks, the Sherman tank actually enjoyed a comfortable advantage over Japanese armor, which were both too lightly armed to penetrate the Sherman from the front, and too lightly armored to deflect the Sherman's 75mm cannons.[[note]]American tank crews in the Pacific actually started requesting more High Explosive ammunition over armor-piercing ammunition, because the 75mm AP rounds would actually go ''straight through'' the Japanese tanks without disabling them[[/note]]. Even then, however, the Japanese forces on Guadalcanal continue to be a serious threat to the airfield--now named "Henderson Field" by its new owners--and surrounding forces; artillery concealed in the jungle and caves on the nearby mountainside take every opportunity to rain shells upon Henderson Field, disrupting airfield operations and generally making life hard for the occupants, and it wouldn't be until February 1943 that the Guadalcanal Campaign would be officially concluded.\\\

The IJN's Mobile Force, now reduced to two large fleet carriers and whatever light/escort carriers and other conversions it could muster after the disastrous Battle of Midway, nonetheless made a good showing at the Battle of the Eastern Solomons in August 1942, and the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands in October 1942, forcing U.S. carriers to flee in the first case and fighting to a draw in the second. By the end of the year, Japan had even succeeded in its objective of neutralizing the U.S. carriers—air and submarine attacks had sunk 4 of the [=U.S.'s=] 6 large fleet carriers, leaving only the badly damaged ''Saratoga'' and ''Enterprise''. However, the Japanese were in no condition to exploit this turn of events, as the loss of aircraft (worsened by the low survivability of their fighters and lack of effort in rescuing their own downed pilots) meant a full half of their Pearl Harbor aircrew had already perished. By the end of 1942, with both U.S. and Japanese carrier forces having worn each other down to nubs, both sides retired to repair and rebuild their carriers and air wings. It would be another 18 months before the U.S. and Japanese carrier fleets engaged each other.[[note]]Which gave full advantage to the U.S. with its industrial capacity and GDP 10 times that of Japan; while the USN was able to build a dozen full-sized fleet carriers over that time, Japan could build only one[[/note]].\\\

With the Solomons secured in late 1943, U.S. and Australian forces will go on to liberate the rest of New Guinea together and then part company, the Australians driving west into Indonesia while the U.S. turned north towards the Philippines. [[note]]Though this Australian "demotion" is somewhat controversial nowadays, it's hard to imagine the Australian government of the time willingly sacrificing their men in the Philippines out of pride when their national interest favored the liberation of the Indonesia oil fields and the islands in their own backyard.[[/note]] The vital Japanese naval bases at Rabaul and Truk are attacked by the USN in late 1943 and early 1944, respectively; the Japanese Navy is forced to abandon its southernmost defensive lines and retreat to the Marianas.\\\

The Imperial Army's advances into Burma showcase some serious issues with the tentative Sino–British–American alliance. For one thing, Stilwell immediately overrides his commanders' objections[[note]]Which he sees as stemming from cowardice. He also believes said cowardice is the product of China's backwards culture of effeminacy and fatalism that it is his destiny to counter by a progressive, manly commitment to the offensive.[[/note]]. He orders his on-loan Guomindang divisions to drive back the Japanese offensive by way of a counterattack—even though his forces are outnumbered three to one, lack communication equipment, have no air cover, air support, or artillery, and are not supported by their British allies (who think it's a spectacularly stupid idea). It fails, and Jiang goes over Stilwell's head to order his encircled forces to make a breakout and retreat. The Japanese advance soon cuts off the Burma road, China's sole remaining transport link to the rest of the Allies-aligned world. Its loss forces the Americans to fly everything from Bazookas to bandages over "the Hump" of the Himalayas in order to meet their Lend-Lease commitments.\\\

[[caption-width-right:350: A Japanese officer [[note]] Note his shin-gunto sword; officers were required to carry them at all times, both as a symbol of rank and a weapon [[/note]] and his men advance during Operation ''Ichigo'', 1944]]

At least, this is the plan presented to the Emperor; the real plan is far more realistic, which speaks volumes. The Army is confident only in its ability to take the mid-Yangtze, linking up the railways from Beijing down to Guangzhou and capturing or rendering unsafe the forward airbases Chennault's air forces are operating from in the process. Mindful of his forces' deterioration and the inevitability of Allied victory, Jiang had been highly critical of Marshall's decision to give Chennault forces enough to antagonize the Japanese into making a grand offensive—at least, not without giving his troops the weapons, training and equipment needed for them to hold off such an offensive. Chennault actually has half as many planes as the Imperial Army does in China now. This is a serious problem for the Empire given the huge amounts of territory and the number of strategic fire-bombing missions they have to defend. [[note]] Japanese logistics being what they were, twice as many airplanes on the ground typically meant roughly equal numbers in the air, as U.S. aircraft squadrons generally had much better maintenance and much higher aircraft availability rates. [[/note]] The result has been chaos in the occupied territories as Japan has neither sufficient radar installations, antiaircraft artillery, or planes to defend their lines of communication and supply properly. Thus, Operation ''Ichigo'' is the solution.\\\

In the Pacific, the year 1944 is turning out very poorly for the IJN. Powerful USN amphibious forces, backed by massed carrier-borne airpower, have already wrested control of most of the Solomon Islands from them, and Japanese bases throughout the Gilbert and Marshall Islands are rapidly collapsing as the USN drives north faster than the IJN can effectively reposition its defensive lines. The major Japanese base of Rabaul has been surrounded and rendered impotent by relentless air attack from Henderson Field and constant submarine presence- [=MacArthur=] is content to starve the Japanese out in a siege rather than give their soldiers a death in battle.[[note]]In an odd twist, the men of Rabaul actually fared better than most other Japanese Garrisons. Many of the Japanese conscripts that had been brought in to build the base had been farmers or fishermen. When the base was cut off, they simply resumed their old professions. Seeing this, the base commander began to re-organize the men under his command. Some troops were used as unskilled labor to clear farmland, others were organized into a fishing brigade to keep the men supplied with protein. Eventually, they'd managed to build up enough surplus that they began trading with the locals, exchanging vegetables and the like for chickens and pigs. By late 1944, Allied intelligence was bemused to discover that the base had been converted into a self-sufficient Agricultural and fishing community, complete with education centers to teach new trade skills, though without ammunition or war resources the base's combat-effectiveness remained fortunately low. By the time the war ended, the garrison on Rabaul was eating ''better'' than most other Japanese units.[[/note]] Anticipating an imminent attack on its major fleet base at Truk, the IJN pulls the Combined Fleet closer to the Home Islands. This is wise, as in February 1944, a massive USN force of eight (!) aircraft carriers launches thousands of sorties on Truk over the course of several days, stopping only when nothing was left afloat, few aircraft still flyable, and no significant structures left standing. IJN leadership expected an attack but is stunned by how effortlessly their main Pacific base was reduced to ash.\\\

Unfortunately, by the time Japan decides to recall its top carrier pilots from their stations in South Pacific bases, most are already dead and the rest have been worked to the point of physical and mental breakdown in 24 months of nonstop heavy combat. Further, the USN fully appreciates the trap and wipe out all Japanese airpower in the vicinity days before Ozawa arrives. The USN sets up a deep defense of warships sporting the new proximity fuse shells and radar-directed fighters, which not a single Japanese aircraft penetrates. Attacks by U.S. aircraft and submarines claim three precious Japanese aircraft carriers, while the worst the Americans get is frustration over the other six getting away (half of which were damaged and all severely deprived of usable planes, but still). IJN leadership suffers yet another shock: it had taken extraordinary resources, spread out over two full years, to get that many ships and aircraft and trained aviators together into the refurbished Mobile Force, and the Americans had sent all of these things to the bottom of the sea in the space of an afternoon. The IJN knew now their carrier forces were finished; their front-line carrier wings were annihilated and simply could not be replenished. The battle comes to be known in the U.S. as the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot." [[note]]It was called this because, instead of sending their planes as one, the Japanese sent them in waves, meaning squadrons that arrived at the American carriers were often outnumbered. Not helping matters was how at this point, most of the veteran Japanese pilots had been killed, meaning it was predominantly new, inexperienced pilots going up against veteran American ones. Combined with how the Americans had managed to since close the tech gap, the battle proved almost embarrassingly one-sided, with an American to Japanese loss ratio of more than 1 to 5. One pilot was quoted as saying "Hell, this is like an old-time turkey shoot!", which earned the battle its name.[[/note]]\\\

Elsewhere in the Pacific, the U.S. submarine offensive is finally in full swing. The torpedo problems have been all ironed out and the cautious prewar commanders have all been replaced by younger, more aggressive men. Their crews have plenty of combat experience and U.S. shipyards are turning out literally hundreds of new "fleet boats" equipped with the latest technologies to take these better officers and weapons to the enemy. By late 1944 U.S. submarines will regularly achieve monthly sinking rates more than double the best rates the German U-boat fleet ever managed to achieve in the Atlantic… at least until they run out of targets. Japanese seamen soon learn that there is no place safe from American submarines outside of the Inland Sea. Even the Sea of Japan is not safe from their depredations; Tokyo Bay becomes a shooting gallery, and Japan's last superbattleship-turned-aircraft carrier ''Shinano'' barely lasts six hours on her first and only voyage, having put out to sea before all the watertight doors and gaps in the bulkheads for pipes had been fully sealed.[[note]]To make matters worse, ''Shinano'' was sunk by ''a single submarine'', the ''USS Archerfish'', which holds the record for the most successful U.S. submarine patrol in the entire war thanks to this one kill. When the IJN assessed the loss, they ultimately gave up on assigning blame to anyone because [[DisasterDominoes so many parties had done so many things so very wrong]] that it was pointless, underscoring just how degraded and dysfunctional Japan's military had become.[[/note]]\\\

As the American navy approaches the Philippines and the invasion force unloads, what's left of the Imperial Navy sallies forth for one last, titanic battle against the American fleet in October 1944—the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Knowing the loss of the Philippines would cut the Home Islands off from its captured South Pacific oilfields, the plan is as much a desperate attempt to give the Americans a black eye as it is to ensure the Emperor's ships don't face the indignity of being sunk in port. With almost no veteran pilots left, the carriers are used as a decoy—the U.S. forces not knowing that the 4 carriers had very few planes on board. Meanwhile, the still-potent surface fleet, without a single plane available to provide cover, splits in two to approach the Gulf from both the South and the North. The hope being that the division of forces along with the decoy carrier force would lead the Americans to miss one of the surface fleets, which could then shell the beacheads and stop the invasion. Despite the decoy force luring away a large number of ships—most notably, Admiral Halsey's Third Fleet—and the North half of the surface fleet coming very near to its objective, in the end the majority of Japanese ships were sunk or damaged with minimal USN losses [[note]]One of the most notable confrontations being the Battle off Samar, where Task Unit 77.4.3 or "Taffy 3", a bunch of escort carriers, destroyers and destroyer escorts lead by Rear Admiral Clifton "Ziggy" Sprague, successfully fought off a fleet led by the battleship ''Yamato'' (a ship that weighed more than all Taffy 3 put together), enough to make the Japanese think they were fighting the American Third Fleet, or that the Third Fleet was on its way to reinforce Taffy 3. The fight was nicknamed "The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors"[[/note]]. Far more effective is the new Japanese tactic of attacking ships by deliberately crashing airplanes into them. American soldiers return to the Philippines in late 1944, landing amidst much rejoicing and partisan warfare, and after several brutal months of combat they wrest control of most of their former colony from the hundred-thousand strong Japanese force redeployed at the last minute from China to defend it. The fighting on Luzon in particular (the largest island) is incredibly one-sided in favor of the Americans, though their MoreDakka approach causes an awful lot of collateral damage to the (not great, but still) local infrastructure.\\\

In May 1945, Germany surrenders and the war in Europe ends. But to everyone's increasing exasperation, Japan fights on. The Americans continue to island-hop closer to their Home Islands, capturing the islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa to aid the strategic bombing campaign and planned invasion. The civilian population of the former island had been evacuated, primarily because survival on Iwo Jima was so tenuous (there is no source of fresh water other than rain) that there weren't many civilians to evacuate. [[note]]Iwo Jima was never resettled. Just as well, as a few years later it was discovered that the "island" is actually just the top portion of a large and ''very'' active volcano. [[/note]] General Kuribayashi, recognizing what the fall of Iwo Jima will mean, organizes a battle of attrition to delay it as long as possible and make the Americans rethink their invasion of Japan. For the only time in the war, American casualties (wounded and KIA) outnumber the Japanese, and it begins to dawn on American commanders just how difficult invading Japan will be.\\\

Okinawa, however, is fairly well populated and part of the Home Islands proper [[note]]The Ryukyu Islands were annexed less than a century previously, arguably being Japan's first overseas colony (after Ezo/Hokkaido, which was then and is now generally accepted as part of the Home Islands).[[/note]] and the fighting there is marked by more [[BetterToDieThanBeKilled government-]][[FateWorseThanDeath sponsored]] [[DrivenToSuicide suicides]]—supposedly to avoid the kind of treatment that Chinese civilians might expect from Japanese troops. The actual reason is because High Command doesn't want the U.S. to score a propaganda victory by using well-treated civilians to prove their decency to noncombatants (which could erode their soldiers' will to fight). Okinawa marks the British return to the Pacific, as the end of the war in Europe allows the Royal Navy to send a task force to join the U.S. Pacific Fleet. It also marks the effective end of the Imperial Japanese Navy when the doomed and ultimately futile final sortie of the superbattleship ''Yamato'' is obliterated by overwhelming U.S. airpower.[[labelnote:*]]The exact details of "Operation Ten-Go" (Ten-gō Sakusen, or ''Operation Heaven One'') aren't known. In fact we don't know a whole lot about the ''Yamato'' herself, as most of the records about the ship were destroyed in the war (most were torched by Japanese officers trying to avoid war crimes). It is believed that the plan was for ''Yamato'' to approach Okinawa waters (hopefully) undetected and then charge in, doing as much damage possible and then intentionally beach itself on the shore. It was hoped that she could then be used as, essentially, an improvised beach fortress or an "unsinkable gun emplacement" as it was termed, which could then use its firepower to be a thorn in the Americans' side until she ran out of ammo or was blasted apart. Then any remaining crew would then take to land and fight on as infantrymen. It was a spectacular plan, but one that required good timing, and a lot of luck to pull off. As it turned out, the Yamato had neither; she and her escorts were spotted by an American submarine almost an hour after leaving port.[[/labelnote]] Since the word "Yamato" is a poetic name for the land of Japan and also its people, the ''Yamato'' had come to represent the navy and the nation. As a result, its loss symbolically became the day the Imperial Japanese Navy came to an end, even though it had already ceased to be a useful military force after Leyte Gulf.\\\

The fighting is savage and horrific, bloody and slow, and sees the first full-scale use of the terrifying ''Tokko'' [[note]]Short for "''Tokubetsu Kogeki''", literally "special attack". The use of such an innocuous, euphemistic term for a SuicideAttack was done to avoid alarming the Emperor or the general populace[[/note]] or ''Kamikaze'' [[note]] Literally, "divine wind"; a reference to the typhoons that destroyed the Mongol invasion force that had attacked Japan in the 13th Century A.D.[[/note]] attacks first seen in the Phillippines, which amaze and horrify the Allies at just how far the Japanese are willing to go in their country's defense. However, once the shock had passed, the Allies develop effective defenses against these SuicideAttack pilots. These included establishing radar picket ships at the outskirts of fleets to warn of incoming planes, artillery gunners, armed with antiaircraft ammo with proximity fuses, learning how to target these fanatics at both low and high altitudes and Allied fighter pilots taking maximum advantage of the fact that these expendable pilots are easy target amateurs in old planes. These defensive efforts include learning how to counter the later Ohka suicide rocket planes, considering they have to be carried into range by old conventional planes before separating and launching, and that made those weighed down planes slow and obvious easy targets to detect and intercept. Even trying to knock out these defenses sometimes proved humiliatingly useless such as the concentrated suicide and conventional attack on a mere destroyer, the USS ''Laffey'', which won the battle with the help of two air waves of TheCavalry to become "The Ship That Would Not Die." \\\

The sinking of almost all of Japan's food-importing merchant fleet and the impact of air raids on agriculture—it's hard to plow a rice paddy when it's full of shrapnel—is [[FromBadToWorse compounded by domestic crop failures]]. His Imperial Majesty's subjects are now trying to survive on 1200 calories a day. [[SarcasmMode It's not all bad, though]], as the government publishes a helpful series of articles on how to stave off hunger by padding out one's diet with sawdust, insects and mice[[note]]Not everyone is this desperate, however; the general figure conceals some very stark regional contrasts. Many areas, particularly in the countryside, see people eating only a few hundred calories under their daily 2000. But others, especially in the now-devastated urban centers, see dearth; ''i.e.'', not just "not much food" or "some, but it's mice and sawdust bread again", but nothing. Zero edible material.[[/note]]. Urban depopulation results as people move to the countryside in the hundreds of thousands. By early 1945, Allied air and naval forces roam Japanese shores and skies virtually at will, shooting up or sinking just about everything that dares to move in daylight. Things get even worse in the cities (whose industries are largely spread out with home contractors in predominately wooden constructed homes) when the Americans resort to firebombing with incendiaries as the inhabitants learn to dread smelling napalm in the morning. Even [[RammingAlwaysWorks aerial ramming]] by Japanese pilots is [[SubvertedTrope usually futile]] as a defense, as you have to be good at flying to hit a high- and fast-flying, well-armed bomber plane, which works against the very point of using quickly trained and expendable ''Kamikaze''. But the Japanese still refuse to give up.\\\

Even as the Empire crumbles, the government pulls every available boat, plane and tank in the Empire back to the Home Islands, and conscripts as much of the able-bodied population as can be spared into work details and [[HomeGuard citizen militias]] in anticipation of the Allied invasion. Any remaining petrol is issued to the newly-formed ''Kamikaze'' speedboat and human-piloted torpedo flotillas; the air force has long since claimed the last of the aviation fuel for its ''Kamikaze'' squadrons. The Army and Navy continue to squabble over who should get first priority on "lunge-mine" [[note]]An antitank grenade [[XOnAStick on a stick]][[/note]] production—the Navy wants them for its ''Kamikaze'' scuba divers, the Army for their antitank ''Kamikaze'' troops. On paper, the [[HomeGuard Volunteer Fighting Corps]] is more than capable of fending off the invasion on its own; but in reality, there are few weapons and even less ammunition to go around. The teenaged and elderly recruits are taught how to fight with knives, spears and petrol-free {{Molotov Cocktail}}s. Others are simply handed a grenade and told to [[YouKnowWhatToDo make their deaths meaningful]].[[note]]And those for whom no grenades could be spared, they were given a sharpened bamboo stick with orders to kill at least one American trooper with it before they would get gunned down.[[/note]]\\\

Planned for October, there is no attempt to disguise the planned invasion's timing or purpose—not that the Imperial Cabinet has a great track record in accurately anticipating ''anyone'' else's actions thus far. Christened Operation '''Downfall''', it consists of a two-stage attack. The first stage (Operation '''Olympic''') aims at capturing about a third of the southern island of Kyushu to use as a staging area for the second stage (Operation '''Coronet'''), a strike at Tokyo with the ultimate goal of capturing the capital and the Emperor. Operation '''Downfall''' will also be a true Allied operation, including a significant contingent of British and Australian forces. It is expected to more than ''double'' the total number of Allied military casualties.[[note]]By double, they mean for the ''entire course of the war in all theaters'' incurred by the U.S. Some estimates put the potential number of American casualties as high as 1.25 million, with over 350,000 fatalities. The Americans made enough Purple Heart medals for such an enormous number of casualties, but Japan's surrender before Operation '''Downfall''' was implemented meant that the surplus was unnecessary; even nowadays, there are more than 100,000 Purple Hearts from this time in stock. And if the relative casualty rates seen on Okinawa held true, this would have meant more than ''seven million'' Japanese fatalities.[[/note]] After the war these estimates become considered optimistic as the Japanese plan of defense (Operation '''''Ketsugō''''') is pretty much a worst case scenario for the Allies. It banks on an all-out defense of Kyushu—pretty much predicting exactly where and when the Allies would attempt their landing—and aims to create a defensive system that would make the cost of victory too great and force an armistice instead of an unconditional surrender.\\\

Japanese civilian casualties are expected to surpass Chinese levels, quite a feat considering Japan has only one tenth of China's total population. The Guomindang is on the verge of launching its own offensive downriver to seize Jiang's old power base in the the lower Yangtze, and hopefully up to the Yellow River from there—they fear that the Soviets will turn all the land, weapons and equipment they liberate from the Japanese straight to the Chinese Communists. [[note]]Stalin doesn't for the most part, as he wouldn't mind Jiang winning the civil war. He does, however, turn all the captured Japanese equipment, weapons and ammo over to the north Chinese Communist parties—just to hedge his bets.[[/note]] However, given the [[WeAreStrugglingTogether terrible interunit coordination]] that Jiang's forces have displayed so far— and with the Japanese intelligence services knowing virtually their every move—the Japanese doubt that the Nationalist Party forces will get very far despite their own total lack of air cover and chronic supply problems. Nevertheless, during the spring and summer, Chinese forces are able to hold back a Japanese offensive in central China, while launching counteroffensives in the south. \\\

In the meantime, a new weapon -- a bomb of immense explosive force—has been developed to support the landings. In the American state of New Mexico, a multinational team of scientists headed by UsefulNotes/RobertOppenheimer have test-detonated the world's first nuclear bomb at Alamogordo. After witnessing the destructive power of the prototype, some dare to hope that the mere threat of its use will be enough to force Japanese surrender. The Allies broadcast the Potsdam Declaration, asking Japan to surrender unconditionally or face complete and utter destruction[[note]]"We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces, and to provide proper and adequate assurances of their good faith in such action. The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction."[[/note]]; but, unsurprisingly, they refuse. In response, [[UsefulNotes/AtomicBombingsOfHiroshimaAndNagasaki a nuclear bomb is detonated over the city of Hiroshima on the 6th of August 1945]]. The combat debut of a nuclear weapon immediately results in 70,000 to 80,000 civilian dead and wounded. At least as many again will succumb to radiation poisoning over the months and years to follow. And yet the Japanese government refused to surrender, with Prime Minister Kantarō Suzuki informing the Japanese media that the Potsdam Declaration would be ignored, using a phrase that means "killed off by silent contempt"[[labelnote:In fairness to Suzuki]]Suzuki was actually in favour of the surrender(he had actually opposed war with the US even before it started), but the military faction was against it and held too much sway at that point. He was one of the people targeted during the failed coup, by the way.[[/labelnote]] [[labelnote:linguistic nuance]]The exact term used, ''mokusatsu'', means literally "killing with silence". In this context, the most common interpretation would be to "refuse/deny with contempt" the article in question. However, ''mokusatsu'' can also be less literally interpreted to mean in this context "to silently ignore" or, even more benignly, "no comment". There was a good deal of post-war linguistic debate over which interpretation was intended, whether the Japanese intended to refuse the surrender demand or to simply ignore it. The most common conclusion is that the U.S. did interpret the message as "refusal" correctly, as if Japan intended to prevaricate, there are many other word choices that could have been used with much less ambiguity. Likewise, the surrender demand stated that "we shall brook no delay" in any response, so even if the Japanese intended to convey an ignoring of the demand, the delay would be taken the same way as a direct refusal, [[MortonsFork most likely with identical results]].[[/labelnote]]. [[UsefulNotes/AtomicBombingsOfHiroshimaAndNagasaki Another bomb is dropped on the city of Nagasaki on the 9th of August, to much the same effect]]— together, those two bombs account for as much as ''a fifth'' of the number of people killed in the whole strategic bombing campaign against Japan.\\\

The Emperor himself calls it quits. After the Supreme War Council failed to come to a decision on what to do, he breaks the tie and gives his support for unconditional surrender on 14 August, effectively commanding his subjects to accept his decision in his first-ever radio broadcast to the whole Empire. [[note]] While this was declared to the civilian populous at home, many of the officers and soldiers abroad, especially in mainland China, didn't really halt their fighting at first, with many of the upper staff admitting that there would likely be many officers and soldiers who simply wouldn't surrender. What resulted from this was continued hostilities in China against the Soviets that had to be addressed immediately before the allies began think that the call to surrender was a trick and not genuine. A second broadcast was given on 17 August by the Emperor that specifically called upon the army to surrender in the wake of the Soviet advances into Manchuria, notably citing these developments and not mentioning the atomic bombings in a direct opposite to the address made to the civilians on the home islands. This is what truly convinced many of the armed forces to surrender since it became increasingly clear that trying to bleed the Americans dry with Ketsugō wasn't possible anymore since the Soviets would have to be fought as well, turning an extremely unfavorable scenario into something downright impossible.[[/note]]. Following a failed last-minute coup by some junior officers who wish to continue the war—and a [[DrivenToSuicide wave of suicides amongst his civil and military servants]]—the formal surrender is signed aboard the battleship USS ''Missouri'' in Tokyo Bay on 2 September.\\\

Unfortunately, by the time Japan decides to recall its top carrier pilots from their stations in South Pacific bases, most are already dead and the rest have been worked to the point of physical and mental breakdown in 24 months of nonstop heavy combat. Further, the USN fully appreciates the trap and wipe out all Japanese airpower in the vicinity days before Ozawa arrives. The USN sets up a deep defense of warships sporting the new proximity fuse shells and radar-directed fighters, which not a single Japanese aircraft penetrates. Attacks by U.S. aircraft and submarines claim three precious Japanese aircraft carriers, while the worst the Americans get is frustration over the other six getting away. IJN leadership suffers yet another shock: it had taken extraordinary resources, spread out over two full years, to get that many ships and aircraft and trained aviators together into the refurbished Mobile Force, and the Americans had sent all of these things to the bottom of the sea in the space of an afternoon. The IJN knew now their carrier forces were finished; their front-line carrier wings were annihilated and simply could not be replenished. The battle comes to be known in the U.S. as the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot." [[note]]It was called this because, instead of sending their planes as one, the Japanese sent them in waves, meaning squadrons that arrived at the American carriers were often outnumbered. Not helping matters was how at this point, most of the veteran Japanese pilots had been killed, meaning it was predominantly new, inexperienced pilots going up against veteran American ones. Combined with how the Americans had managed to since close the tech gap, the battle proved almost embarrassingly one-sided, with an American to Japanese loss ratio of more than 1 to 5. One pilot was quoted as saying "Hell, this is like an old-time turkey shoot!", which earned the battle its name.[[/note]]\\\

To compound the looming disaster for the Axis, Hitler promptly commits one of the greatest strategic blunders of all time by declaring war on the United States in support of his ally, despite the fact that he was under no formal obligation to do so, since the Tripartite Pact with Japan stated that Germany would have had to step in only if Japan were attacked first. This clears the way for Roosevelt to have the U.S. join the fight in Europe with complete domestic political support.[[note]]However, it is worth noting that the U.S. Navy's Atlantic Fleet had been waging an undeclared war against the ''Kriegsmarine'' since September of 1941 via their "Neutrality Patrols", ordering that any German ships in the neutral zone be attacked on sight, so in the short term, Hitler was simply giving his crews permission to shoot first.[[/note]] Thus, as 1941 comes to a close, the Germans, who six months before only faced the British Empire and its Commonwealth, are now at war with the three most powerful non-Axis nations on Earth.\\\

[[caption-width-right:350:The final territorial control of the Empire of Japan (red) and the United Nations (blue) upon Japan's surrender, 15 August 1945.]]

%%[[caption-width-right:350:The final territorial control of the Empire of Japan (red) and the United Nations (blue) upon Japan's surrender, 15 August 1945.]]

[[quoteright:350:[[http://www.westpoint.edu/history/SitePages/WWII%20Asian%20Pacific%20Theater.aspx https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/wwii_1941_pacific_war_map.jpg]] ]]
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Unfortunately, by the time Japan decided to recall its top carrier pilots from their stations in South Pacific bases, most were already dead and the rest had been worked to the point of physical and mental breakdown in 24 months of nonstop heavy combat. Further, the USN fully appreciates the trap and wipe out all Japanese airpower in the vicinity days before Ozawa arrives. The USN sets up a deep defense of warships sporting the new proximity fuse shells and radar-directed fighters, which not a single Japanese aircraft penetrates. Attacks by U.S. aircraft and submarines claim three precious Japanese aircraft carriers, while the worst the Americans got was frustration over the other six getting away. IJN leadership suffers yet another shock: it had taken extraordinary resources, spread out over two full years, to get that many ships and aircraft and trained aviators together into the refurbished Mobile Force, and the Americans had sent all of these things to the bottom of the sea in the space of an afternoon. The IJN knew now their carrier forces were finished; their front-line carrier wings were annihilated and simply could not be replenished. The battle comes to be known in the U.S. as the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot." [[note]]It was called this because, instead of sending their planes as one, the Japanese sent them in waves, meaning squadrons that arrived at the American carriers were often outnumbered. Not helping matters was how at this point, most of the veteran Japanese pilots had been killed, meaning it was predominantly new, inexperienced pilots going up against veteran American ones. Combined with how the Americans had managed to since close the tech gap, the battle proved almost embarrassingly one-sided, with an American to Japanese loss ratio of more than 1 to 5. One pilot was quoted as saying "Hell, this is like an old-time turkey shoot!", which earned the battle its name.[[/note]]\\\

Unfortunately, by the time Japan decided to recall its top carrier pilots from their stations in South Pacific bases, most were already dead and the rest had been worked to the point of physical and mental breakdown in 24 months of nonstop heavy combat. Further, the USN fully appreciates the trap and wipe out all Japanese airpower in the vicinity days before Ozawa arrives. The USN sets up a deep defense of warships sporting the new proximity fuse shells and radar-directed fighters, which not a single Japanese aircraft penetrates. Attacks by U.S. aircraft and submarines claim three precious Japanese aircraft carriers. IJN leadership suffers yet another shock: it had taken extraordinary resources, spread out over two full years, to get that many ships and aircraft and trained aviators together into the refurbished Mobile Force, and the Americans had sent all of these things to the bottom of the sea in the space of an afternoon. The IJN knew now their carrier forces were finished; their front-line carrier wings were annihilated and simply could not be replenished. The battle comes to be known in the U.S. as the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot." [[note]]It was called this because, instead of sending their planes as one, the Japanese sent them in waves, meaning squadrons that arrived at the American carriers were often outnumbered. Not helping matters was how at this point, most of the veteran Japanese pilots had been killed, meaning it was predominantly new, inexperienced pilots going up against veteran American ones. Combined with how the Americans had managed to since close the tech gap, the battle proved almost embarrassingly one-sided, with an American to Japanese loss ratio of more than 1 to 5. One pilot was quoted as saying "Hell, this is like an old-time turkey shoot!", which earned the battle its name.[[/note]]\\\

The Emperor himself calls it quits. He gives his support for unconditional surrender on 14 August, effectively commanding his subjects to accept his decision in his first-ever radio broadcast to the whole Empire. Following a failed last-minute coup by some junior officers who wish to continue the war—and a [[DrivenToSuicide wave of suicides amongst his civil and military servants]]—the formal surrender is signed aboard the battleship USS ''Missouri'' in Tokyo Bay on 2 September.\\\

To add onto this, the U.S. is still reeling from the attack on Pearl Harbor, and morale is at an all-time low both in the military and on the home front. In April 1942, Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle comes up with a daring plan to rebuild morale and bring the fight back to the Japanese Empire: Take 24 B-25 Mitchell land-based medium bombers, load them on the carrier USS ''Hornet'', and launch a symbolic strike of their own on the Japanese homeland. The raid, called the "Doolittle Raid" after Doolittle himself, involves stripping the bombers of everything not bolted down and not essential for flight, taking off from the ''Hornet,'' striking various targets in Japan, and landing in Chinese-held air bases for recovery. In practice, the plan goes much more roughly: To start, the sighting of a Japanese picket boat causes the planes to have to launch early, greatly reducing the range of the bombers. While the flight over the mainland goes mostly smoothly, another problem arises when it turns out many of the pre-planned Chinese airfields had been taken by the Japanese, and few of the planes had the fuel to divert to secondary airfields, resulting in a majority of the Mitchells having to crash land or their crews bail out. In the end, 3 American airmen were killed and 8 were captured by the Japanese. The damage itself had no strategic value; the planes were too few and too spread out to have a notifiable effect on the infrastructure, and Japanese propaganda mocked it, calling it the "Do-nothing Raid." However, in reality, both the Japanese public and the government had been shaken to the core, and the illusion of the Japanese home islands being impenetrable to foreign attack had been shattered completely, for the first time in ''centuries''. Due to the Americans concealing the fact that the planes had been launched from a carrier (not that the idea of medium bombers taking off from an aircraft carrier was believable enough anyways)[[note]]Several military documents and communiques at the time referred to the takeoff point of the B-25 raiders (a.k.a. the U.S.S. ''Hornet'') as [[TheShangriLa "Shangri-La"]] in order to keep the fact that the planes were ship-launched secret, and further confound Japanese spies and codebreakers. In a humorously ironic twist, an American escort carrier built later in the war named the U.S.S. "''Shangri-La''" was used as a test platform for a navalized variant of the B-25 capable of launching from and landing on aircraft carriers, though the program was eventually cancelled since the B-25 was still too big to fit on the aircraft elevators and thus took up valuable deck space.[[/note]], the Japanese military believed the planes had come from either an American island base in the Pacific, or a Chinese airfield. This prompts the China Expeditionary Force to go on a new offensive in the hills of the Hunan and Jiangxi provinces, with the aim of capturing or destroying all airbases within strategic-bombing range of Japan. The operation is a success insofar as the airbases are all cut off or destroyed. But, as usual, the Japanese overstretch their supply lines and are again forced to withdraw. The IJN, on the other hand, began making moves in the Pacific to take any American-held island base that held even a ''remote'' chance of housing strategic bombers within range of the homeland, moves that would eventually culminate in the Battle of Midway.\\\

At this point, [[YouAreAlreadyDead the defeat of the Axis is inevitable, their poor decision-making having doomed them]].[[note]]The Axis's share of world GDP and population standing at less 20% on both counts and decreasing, relative to Allied shares of over 60% and 80% respectively. This manifested itself in total armored vehicle, airplane, and warship production figures of at least four-to-one, three-to-one, and four-to-one respectively. These are only the ''final'' figures, note; in ’44–’45 Axis production was severely disrupted by strategic bombing and the loss of strategic resources, whereas contemporary Allied production dropped off due to a simple lack of need.[[/note]]\\\

In the Pacific, the year 1944 is turning out very poorly for the IJN. Powerful USN amphibious forces, backed by massed carrier-borne airpower, have already wrested control of most of the Solomon Islands from them, and Japanese bases throughout the Gilbert and Marshall Islands are rapidly collapsing as the USN drives north faster than the IJN can effectively reposition its defensive lines. The major Japanese base of Rabaul has been surrounded and rendered impotent by relentless air attack from Henderson Field and constant submarine presence- [=MacArthur=] is content to starve the Japanese out in a siege rather than give their soldiers a death in battle.[[note]] In an odd twist, the men of Rabaul actually faired better than most other Japanese Garrisons. Many of the Japanese conscripts that had been brought in to build the base had been farmers or fishermen. When the base was cut off, they simply resumed their old professions. Seeing this, the base commander began to re-organize the men under his command. Some troops were used as unskilled labor to clear farmland, others were organized into a fishing brigade to keep the men supplied with protein. Eventually, they'd managed to build up enough surplus that they began trading with the locals, exchanging vegetables and the like for chickens and pigs. By late 1944, Allied intelligence was bemused to discover that the base had been converted into a self-sufficient Agricultural and fishing community, complete with education centers to teach new trade skills, though without ammunition or war resources the base's combat-effectiveness remained fortunately low. By the time the war ended, the garrison on Rabaul was eating ''better'' than most other Japanese units.[[/note]] Anticipating an imminent attack on its major fleet base at Truk, the IJN pulls the Combined Fleet closer to the Home Islands. This is wise, as in February 1944, a massive USN force of eight (!) aircraft carriers launches thousands of sorties on Truk over the course of several days, stopping only when nothing was left afloat, few aircraft still flyable, and no significant structures left standing. IJN leadership expected an attack but is stunned by how effortlessly their main Pacific base was reduced to ash.\\\

Unfortunately, by the time Japan decided to recall its top carrier pilots from their stations in South Pacific bases, most were already dead and the rest had been worked to the point of physical and mental breakdown in 24 months of nonstop heavy combat. Further, the USN fully appreciates the trap and wipe out all Japanese airpower in the vicinity days before Ozawa arrives. The USN sets up a deep defense of warships sporting the new proximity fuse shells and radar-directed fighters, which not a single Japanese aircraft penetrates. Attacks by U.S. aircraft and submarines claim three precious Japanese aircraft carriers. IJN leadership suffers yet another shock: it had taken extraordinary resources, spread out over two full years, to get that many ships and aircraft and trained aviators together into the refurbished Mobile Force, and the Americans had sent all of these things to the bottom of the sea in the space of an afternoon. The IJN knew now their carrier forces were finished; their front-line carrier wings were annihilated and simply could not be replenished. The battle comes to be known in the U.S. as the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot." [[note]] It was so called this because instead of sending their planes as one, the Japanese sent them waves, meaning squadrons that arrived at the American carriers were often outnumbered. Not helping matters was how at this point, most of the veteran Japanese pilots had been killed, meaning it was predominantly new, inexperienced pilots going up against veteran American ones. Combined with how the Americans had managed to since close the tech gap, the battle proved almost embarrassingly one-sided, with an American to Japanese loss ratio of more than 1 to 5. One pilot was quoted as saying "Hell, this is like an old-time turkey shoot!", which earned the battle its name. [[/note]]\\\

Elsewhere in the Pacific, the U.S. submarine offensive is finally in full swing. The torpedo problems have been all ironed out and the cautious prewar commanders have all been replaced by younger, more aggressive men. Their crews have plenty of combat experience and U.S. shipyards are turning out literally hundreds of new "fleet boats" equipped with the latest technologies to take these better officers and weapons to the enemy. By late 1944 U.S. submarines will regularly achieve monthly sinking rates more than double the best rates the German U-boat fleet ever managed to achieve in the Atlantic… at least until they run out of targets. Japanese seamen soon learn that there is no place safe from American submarines outside of the Inland Sea. Even the Sea of Japan is not safe from their depredations; Tokyo Bay becomes a shooting gallery, and Japan's last superbattleship-turned-aircraft carrier ''Shinano'' barely lasts six hours on her first and only voyage, having put out to see before all the watertight doors and gaps in the bulkheads for pipes had been fully sealed.\\\

In the meantime, a new weapon—a bomb of immense explosive force—has been developed to support the landings. In the American state of New Mexico, a multinational team of scientists headed by Robert Oppenheimer have test-detonated the [[AtomicHate world's first nuclear bomb]] at Alamogordo. After witnessing the destructive power of the prototype, some dare to hope that the mere threat of its use will be enough to force Japanese surrender. The Allies broadcast the Potsdam Declaration, asking Japan to surrender unconditionally or face complete and utter destruction[[note]]"We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces, and to provide proper and adequate assurances of their good faith in such action. The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction."[[/note]]; but, unsurprisingly, they refuse. In response, [[UsefulNotes/AtomicBombingsOfHiroshimaAndNagasaki a nuclear bomb is detonated over the city of Hiroshima on the 6th of August 1945]]. The combat debut of a nuclear weapon immediately results in 70,000 to 80,000 civilian dead and wounded. At least as many again will succumb to radiation poisoning over the months and years to follow. And yet the Japanese government refused to surrender, with Prime Minister Kantarō Suzuki informing the Japanese media that the Potsdam Declaration would be ignored, using a phrase that means "killed off by silent contempt"[[labelnote:In fairness to Suzuki]]Suzuki was actually in favour of the surrender(he had actually opposed war with the US even before it started), but the military faction was against it and held too much sway at that point. He was one of the people targeted during the failed coup, by the way.[[/labelnote]] [[labelnote:linguistic nuance]]The exact term used, ''mokusatsu'', means literally "killing with silence". In this context, the most common interpretation would be to "refuse/deny with contempt" the article in question. However, ''mokusatsu'' can also be less literally interpreted to mean in this context "to silently ignore" or, even more benignly, "no comment". There was a good deal of post-war linguistic debate over which interpretation was intended, whether the Japanese intended to refuse the surrender demand or to simply ignore it. The most common conclusion is that the U.S. did interpret the message as "refusal" correctly, as if Japan intended to prevaricate, there are many other word choices that could have been used with much less ambiguity. Likewise, the surrender demand stated that "we shall brook no delay" in any response, so even if the Japanese intended to convey an ignoring of the demand, the delay would be taken the same way as a direct refusal, [[MortonsFork most likely with identical results]].[[/labelnote]]. [[UsefulNotes/AtomicBombingsOfHiroshimaAndNagasaki Another bomb is dropped on the city of Nagasaki on the 9th of August, to much the same effect]]— together, those two bombs account for as much as ''a fifth'' of the number of people killed in the whole strategic bombing campaign against Japan.\\\

The most devastating and costly conflict in human history is finally over. But now comes WorldWarII/TheAftermath, and with it a world that has to pick up its shattered pieces and figure out how to glue them back together, come what may. Overshadowing all of this is a [[AtomicHate terrifying new weapon]], that, for the first time in history, truly holds the potential for widespread global destruction, and which every new and rising superpower wants to have in their arsenal lest their enemies get any ideas. Fasten your seatbelts, kids, and wear something warm, because now, after decades of "hot" wars, we're about to have a [[UsefulNotes/ColdWar very, very cold one.]]\\\

The "decisive battle" Yamamoto hoped for involved a complex operation to invade the island of Midway (plus some Alaskan islands the IJN thought to be more strategically significant than they really were) in June 1942, to force the USN to send its carriers to a fight to the death. But unfortunately for the IJN, American codebreakers have managed to crack Japan's primary naval encryption and have a very good idea of what to expect, especially when they trick the Japanese into confirming their target. Midway thus becomes a trap for the IJN, turning what could have been Yamamoto's crowning achievement into a [[DisasterDominoes series of setbacks and failed objectives]] that costs the IJN dearly; the Japanese carriers arrive at a forewarned and heavily defended island and aren't even aware of the opposing U.S. carriers until long after the U.S. attack forces have launched. Again, the USN suffers tremendous losses, but they manage to organize a counterattack, consisting of a two-pronged strike of dive bombers and torpedo bombers. The torpedo bomber strikes are disasters; the outdated, slow TBD Devastators are fodder for Japanese fighters and AA guns, especially when they are forced to fly even ''slower'' and in straight, predictable lines while lining up for their torpedo runs against the carriers. Compounding this was the abysmal reliability of American torpedoes for the time meaning that the few Devastators that got through and managed to release could only watch as the torpedoes either missed or simply bounced harmlessly off the hulls of the carriers without doing damage. All in all, few if any critical hits were scored by American torpedoes against the Japanese carriers. Conversely, the dive bombers had much better luck: The Japanese fighters and gunners had been concentrating on the low-altitude torpedo planes, and had failed to take into account the SBD Dauntless dive bombers coming in from on high.[[note]]One Japanese survivor recounted that they had assumed, incorrectly, that they had just wiped out the American counterattack. No one even knew about the dive bombers until they heard the [[StukaScream banshee wail]] [[HellIsThatNoise of the Dauntless' dive brakes deploying]] as they rolled into their attack runs, at which point it was too late. Contrary to popular belief, however, the timing of the dive bombers arriving after the torpedo bombers was by complete ''chance.''[[/note]] The American Dauntlesses could not have arrived at a worse time for the IJN, as its next strike force was being refueled and rearmed, meaning the hangars of each ship are covered with [[MadeOfExplodium fuel, munitions and aircraft]]. [[CurbStompBattle The U.S. Navy fatally damages three Japanese carriers in the span of five minutes, and a fourth a few hours later (all would be scuttled within 24 hours), for the loss of one of their own]], in an action termed "the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare" by historian John Keegan. Another blow that was dealt was not to a specific nation, but to a method of naval warfare itself: The Battle of Midway had been fought, and won, almost completely by naval and land-based aircraft, with no American or Japanese warship trading cannon fire. It served as visual proof that battleships were quickly becoming obsolete in the face of constantly-improving aviation and ordinance technology, and a clear sign that the time of the great iron monoliths lining up to exchange broadsides [[EndOfAnEra was quickly coming to an end]].\\\

In May 1945, Germany surrenders and the war in Europe ends. But to everyone's increasing exasperation, Japan fights on. The Americans continue to island-hop closer to their Home Islands, capturing the islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa to aid the strategic bombing campaign and planned invasion. The civilian population of the former island had been evacuated, primarily because survival on Iwo Jima was so tenuous (there is no source of fresh water other than rain) that there weren't many civilians to evacuate. [[note]]Iwo Jima was never resettled. Just as well, as a few years later, it was discovered that the island is actually just the top portion of a large and ''very'' active volcano. [[/note]] General Kuribayashi, recognizing what the fall of Iwo Jima will mean, organizes a battle of attrition to delay it as long as possible and make the Americans rethink their invasion of Japan. For the only time in the war, American casualties (wounded and KIA) outnumber the Japanese, and it begins to dawn on American commanders just how difficult invading Japan will be.\\\

Japanese civilian casualties are expected to surpass Chinese levels, quite a feat considering Japan has only one tenth of China's total population. The Guomindang is on the verge of launching its own offensive downriver to seize Jiang's old power base in the the lower Yangtze, and hopefully up to the Yellow River from there—they fear that the Soviets will turn all the land, weapons and equipment they liberate from the Japanese straight to the Chinese Communists. [[note]]Stalin doesn't for the most part, as he wouldn't mind Jiang winning the civil war. He does, however, turn all the captured Japanese equipment, weapons and ammo over to the north Chinese Communist parties—just to hedge his bets.[[/note]] During the spring and summer, Chinese forces are able to hold back a Japanese offensive in central China, while launching counteroffensives in the south. However, given the [[WeAreStrugglingTogether terrible interunit coordination]] that Jiang's forces have displayed so far— and with the Japanese intelligence services knowing virtually their every move—the Japanese doubt that the Nationalist Party forces will get very far despite their own total lack of air cover and chronic supply problems.\\\

Unfortunately, by the time Japan decided to recall its top carrier pilots from their stations in South Pacific bases, most were already dead and the rest had been worked to the point of physical and mental breakdown in 24 months of nonstop heavy combat. Further, the USN fully appreciates the trap and wipe out all Japanese airpower in the vicinity days before Ozawa arrives. The USN sets up a deep defense of warships sporting the new proximity fuse shells and radar-directed fighters, which not a single Japanese aircraft penetrates. Attacks by U.S. aircraft and submarines claim three precious Japanese aircraft carriers. IJN leadership suffers yet another shock: it had taken extraordinary resources, spread out over two full years, to get that many ships and aircraft and trained aviators together into the refurbished Mobile Force, and the Americans had sent all of these things to the bottom of the sea in the space of an afternoon. The IJN knew now their carrier forces were finished; their front-line carrier wings were annihilated and simply could not be replenished. The battle comes to be known in the U.S. as the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot." [[note]] It was so called this because instead of sending their planes as one, they were sent in waves, meaning squadrons that arrived at the American carriers were often outnumbered. Combined with how the Americans had managed to since close the tech gap, the battle proved almost embarrassingly one-sided, with an American to Japanese loss ratio of more than 1 to 5. One pilot was quoted as saying "Hell, this is like an old-time turkey shoot!", which earned the battle its name. [[/note]]\\\

Unfortunately, by the time Japan decided to recall its top carrier pilots from their stations in South Pacific bases, most were already dead and the rest had been worked to the point of physical and mental breakdown in 24 months of nonstop heavy combat. Further, the USN fully appreciates the trap and wipe out all Japanese airpower in the vicinity days before Ozawa arrives. The USN sets up a deep defense of warships sporting the new proximity fuse shells and radar-directed fighters, which not a single Japanese aircraft penetrates. Attacks by U.S. aircraft and submarines claim three precious Japanese aircraft carriers. IJN leadership suffers yet another shock: it had taken extraordinary resources, spread out over two full years, to get that many ships and aircraft and trained aviators together into the refurbished Mobile Force, and the Americans had sent all of these things to the bottom of the sea in the space of an afternoon. The IJN knew now their carrier forces were finished; their front-line carrier wings were annihilated and simply could not be replenished. The battle comes to be known in the U.S. as the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot."\\\

-->-- '''Isoroku Yamamoto''', in a statement to the Japanese cabinet regarding their military's prospects of victory were they to declare war on the Allies.

With Guadalcanal collapsing, Japanese High Command decides they absolutely ''need'' to take Wau to regain the strategic initiative in the Pacific. They gather the 51st Imperial Division in Indochina and have them board eight transport ships as a reinforcement flotilla. The plan is to move the vulnerable convoy behind a bad weather front as a shield against allied aircraft. And even if the flotilla is discovered by the Allies, [[SuicideMission High Command is fully prepared to lose ''half'' of their troops just getting to New Guinea.]] About 7,000 Japanese troops escorted by a convoy of destroyers and submarines leave safe waters on February 27th. What follows is nothing short of a massacre. Allied intelligence had again broken the codes of the Japanese and detected the buildup of troops. [=MacArthur=] has his air teams outfit their bombing craft[[labelnote:*]]Which were mainly the Martin B-26 [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Marauder]] and North American B-25 Mitchell, the same plane used in the Doolittle Raid.[[/labelnote]] with no less than [[MoreDakka 8 nose mounted .50 caliber machine guns]][[labelnote:*]]And sometimes even ''more''. While the B-25 was a fairly adequate-performing medium strategic bomber, it found a niche role as a ground attack craft and convoy hunter; crews often painted over its glazed nose and removed the bombsight equipment, and proceeded to stuff every gun they could find into them along with a rudimentary gunsight in the cockpit to aim the things. The "G" and "H" models took this even further by replacing the entire glazed section with a solid nose designed to hold 6-8 .50 caliber machine guns, and strapping a ''[[{{BFG}} 75mm]]'' cannon into the former bombardier access tunnel, along with as much extra gun packs and ordinance as they could carry. In some cases, a fully-laden Mitchell could see itself loaded with 8 fixed .50 calibers, plus up to 4 more on external "gun packs" and then adding an extra two by having the ventral gunner rotate and lock his turret forward, for a total of ''fourteen'' .50 caliber guns '''plus''' the 75mm cannon. To call these planes gunships would be an apt statement indeed.[[/labelnote]] in preparation. The bad weather shield works for the Japanese at first, but it dissipates by March 1st and then everything gets FUBAR. The convoy is spotted by an allied scout plane and a force of bombers and PT boats descends on the ships. Even with Japanese air cover, the Allies sink every one of the transport ships and 4 of the destroyers. Almost 3,000 Japanese troops sink to the bottom of the ocean. The rest are fished aboard the surviving destroyers and submarines in the night. About 1,000 men make it to New Guinea but were in no condition to begin a march to Wau. The rest return to Japanese ports aboard the destroyers.\\\

In May 1945, Germany surrenders and the war in Europe ends. But to everyone's increasing exasperation, Japan fights on. The Americans continue to island-hop closer to their Home Islands, capturing the islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa to aid the strategic bombing campaign and planned invasion. The civilian population of the former island had been evacuated, primarily because survival on Iwo Jima was so tenuous (there is no source of fresh water other than rain) that there weren't many civilians to evacuate. [[note]]Iwo Jima was never resettled. Despite popular belief, it was '''not''' due to this battle. The Island is actually just the top portion of a very large and very active volcano. [[/note]] General Kuribayashi, recognizing what the fall of Iwo Jima will mean, organizes a battle of attrition to delay it as long as possible and make the Americans rethink their invasion of Japan. For the only time in the war, American casualties (wounded and KIA) outnumber the Japanese, and it begins to dawn on American commanders just how difficult invading Japan will be.\\\

* 1941-2 Attack Plan South succeeds beyond the Navy's wildest dreams, but the IJA's strangehold on the Guomindang is inadvertently lost due to life-saving US loans and the diversion of IJA resources away from actions against the Guomindang. By early 1942 the front has stabilised in northern Burma, where the British asked the Guomindang for troops to help British and Indian forces defend the colony. The Guomindang sends all it can spare, including their only motorised division, but the Anglo-Chinese force is forced to retreat to northern Burma. Joseph Stilwell is given command of said Guomindang forces as a publicity stunt to capitalize on pro-Chinese sentiment within the USA[[note]] These forces are loaned to the US Army with promises from the US that they will be fed, equipped, and trained just as well as if they were regular/'white' US soldiers [[/note]]. The loss of Burma means a loss of 10% of the Indian Subcontinent's total grain supply, though the loss hits Bengal hardest - some two million die of starvation-related diseases before Britain overrules the regional governments and imposes a comprehensive program of famine-relief. Likewise, the 'Henan Salient' of Free China suffers its worst famine in a hundred years. The Guomindang has no money or food to spare for relief efforts, and two million or so die of starvation-related diseases. By mid-1942 the other fronts stabilise in Australian New Guinea and the mid-Pacific. The 'back' of the IJN is broken at the Battle of Midway wherein its biggest aircraft carriers (and best airmen) are destroyed with minimal USN losses. The losses are devastating - Japan could not hope to replace the highly specialised ships and planes she has lost in ''five years'', but the USA produces the same number of both in just ''one''. The loss of experienced airmen is also critical; the Japanese suffer from a lack of knowledgable instructors (anyone who is any good tends to be sent to the front lines to try and help), and thus is forced to send pilots who are little more than trainees into battle. The USA, on the other hand, routinely rotates it's experienced pilots back home to serve as instructors, giving allied trainees a massive advantage when they first go into combat.

* 1941-2 Attack Plan South succeeds beyond the Navy's wildest dreams, but the IJA's strangehold on the Guomindang is inadvertently lost due to life-saving US loans and the diversion of IJA resources away from actions against the Guomindang. By early 1942 the front has stabilised in northern Burma, where the British asked the Guomindang for troops to help British and Indian forces defend the colony. The Guomindang sends all it can spare, including their only motorised division, but the Anglo-Chinese force is forced to retreat to northern Burma. Joseph Stilwell is given command of said Guomindang forces as a publicity stunt to capitalize on pro-Chinese sentiment within the USA[[note]] These forces are loaned to the US Army with promises from the US that they will be fed, equipped, and trained just as well as if they were regular/'white' US soldiers [[/note]]. The loss of Burma means a loss of 10% of the Indian Subcontinent's total grain supply, though the loss hits Bengal hardest - some two million die of starvation-related diseases before Britain overrules the regional governments and imposes a comprehensive program of famine-relief. Likewise, the 'Henan Salient' of Free China suffers its worst famine in a hundred years. The Guomindang has no money or food to spare for relief efforts, and two million or so die of starvation-related diseases. By mid-1942 the other fronts stabilise in Australian New Guinea and the mid-Pacific. The 'back' of the IJN is broken at the Battle of Midway wherein its biggest aircraft carriers (and best airmen) are destroyed with minimal USN losses. The losses are devastating - Japan could not hope to replace the highly specialised ships and planes she has lost in ''five years'', but the USA produces the same number of both in just ''one''.

Okinawa, however, is fairly well populated and part of the Home Islands proper [[note]]The Ryukyu Islands were annexed less than a century previously, arguably being Japan's first overseas colony (after Ezo/Hokkaido, which was then and is now generally accepted as part of the Home Islands).[[/note]] and the fighting there is marked by more [[BetterToDieThanBeKilled government-]][[FateWorseThanDeath sponsored]] [[DrivenToSuicide suicides]]—supposedly to avoid the kind of treatment that Chinese civilians might expect from Japanese troops. The actual reason is because High Command doesn't want the U.S. to score a propaganda victory by using well-treated civilians to prove their decency to noncombatants (which could erode their soldiers' will to fight). Okinawa marks the British return to the Pacific, as the end of the war in Europe allows the Royal Navy to send a task force to join the U.S. Pacific Fleet. It also marks the effective end of the Imperial Japanese Navy when the doomed and ultimately futile final sortie of the superbattleship ''Yamato'' is obliterated by overwhelming U.S. airpower.[[labelnote:*]]The exact details of "Operation Ten-Go" (Ten-gō Sakusen, or ''Operation Heaven One'') aren't known. In fact we don't know a whole lot about the ''Yamato'' herself, as most of the records about the ship were destroyed in the war (most were torched by Japanese officers trying to avoid war crimes). It is believed that the plan was for ''Yamato'' to charge into Okinawa waters and then intentionally beach itself on the shore, essentially turning into what was termed an "unsinkable gun emplacement" which would use its firepower to be a thorn in the Americans' side until destroyed, and it's crew would fight on as infantrymen.[[/labelnote]] Since the word "Yamato" is a poetic name for the land of Japan and also its people, the ''Yamato'' had come to represent the navy and the nation. As a result, its loss symbolically became the day the Imperial Japanese Navy came to an end, even though it had already ceased to be a useful military force after Leyte Gulf.\\\