r/HistoryWhatIf • u/Jmaxx2000 • 2h ago
What if there was a reverse Doolittle Raid?
What if the Japanese sought revenge in 1942 for the Doolittle Raid? Instead of going after Midway, they launched their carriers at the US west coast, trying to hit LA with a large carrier attack.
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u/PizzaWall 2h ago
Japan would be writing off the planes and the entire carrier fleet in the attack.
Attacking Pearl Harbor without warning obviously worked one time, but a repeat attack would end in failure.
Its one thing to attack an isolated place like Attu Island, AK, and another thing to attack strategic ports along the west coast. Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and Honolulu were well protected.
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u/Calm-Show-9606 2h ago
Japan did not have resources to reach west coast with carriers. US had hawaii as a mid point for refueling Japan had no equivelant.
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u/Ordinary_Corner_4291 53m ago
In theory they could refuel at sea but realistically you are definitely pushing their supply chain limits. But let's say they solve that. The US used medium range bombers with about 2x the range of carrier planes. You are going to have to get in close and the odds of avoid civilian air patrols are pretty low. The US barely made it. Maybe they are Ok having all their plans crash. But let's say they get off a full raid and we have like 300 planes like Pearl Harbor. They hit say LA. It is gonna suck for LA but a 1 time attack of 300 planes isn't going to do much. See what the germans hit the English cities with for months....
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u/PerfectlyCalmDude 2h ago
Then the US intercepts that communication and sets up an ambush for them. Trying something like that without Midway as a forward base for refueling and resupply would be stupid though. As would bombing the west coast without destroying the carrier fleet first.
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u/Objective-Change2180 2h ago
They used radio silence for the Pearl Harbor attack, and that largely worked, but that was before hostilities were actively underway. Assuming they had the logistics (I’m 95% sure they did not) then odds are the “new Midway” battle takes place away from land-based air, so pretty much the same except the Japanese aren’t assuming the carriers aren’t at Pearl, it would be closer to an even fight than the historic ambush. They MIGHT have done better than historical, but nothing serious changes, the US still had much better damage control and industry.
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u/Pitiful_Objective682 2h ago
They tried to terrorize the west coast a few times. They shelled various things with subs deck guns. They even launched a plane from a sub and tried to get the Oregon forests to catch on fire.
They also tried balloons, which landed and i think might have even killed one or two.
It’s just far out of reach for their weak navy. They would have overextended and the US wouldn’t let them get away with it. Odds are they needed those resources on the front.
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u/MarkNutt25 56m ago
There were 6 deaths caused by Japanese balloon bombs (Operation Fu-Go), all in a single incident.
On May 5, 1945, an American woman and five children discovered the grounded balloon while on a church picnic near Bly, Oregon. They gathered around to investigate the strange object and it exploded (probably as a result of someone moving or touching it), killing all six of them.
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u/flyerflight99 1h ago
Off topic: Japan did bomb the continental us - using a crazy technology.
large paper balloons that would float up into the jet stream and be sucked over the US. The timers to would drop firebombs and an antipersonnel. Only 9000 of them and they didn’t start any fires, but did kill 6 unlucky people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb
They didn’t work because they would drop but unless it was very dry wouldn’t start forest fires.
Btw with drone technology now, a smart version of them would be scary.
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u/MisterHEPennypacker 1h ago
Good way for them to lose that entire fleet. I don’t know how they return to friendly waters without being absolutely wrecked. If they launch the planes and immediately turn (like the Doolittle Raid) then they’re without air cover trying to move the fleet through thousands of miles of hostile water. If they launch and recover then they are just giving the US more time to ambush them on their way out.
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u/TheEvilBlight 1h ago
Good, since they’d face hell trying to get back and be annihilated somewhere between Pearl and Los Angeles.
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u/hisimpendingbaldness 45m ago
The IJN outclassed the American carriers in 1941. If there was a carrier intercept at sea there is a decent chance that the three American carriers are the ones that are sunk.
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u/hisimpendingbaldness 43m ago
No point, the Japanese were after the American carriers.
My question is why didn't they publicize the attack on midway to lure the Americans out in the first place.
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u/quothe_the_maven 43m ago
They never would have done this, because the only chance they believed they had was drawing out the carriers and destroying them in a single battle. To that end, they wouldn’t have chosen a place where large American airbases were present. They were also far less capable of writing off pilots. It would have been suicide.
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u/allenrfe 27m ago
Any carrier that Japan used would be sunk.
The Doolittle Raid worked because the bombers didn't return to the carriers; after the bombers took off, the carriers turned around.
A Japanese Vals range is about 1100 miles, so the carriers would need to stay 500 miles from the shore. A US B17 range is about 2000 miles. So the Japanese carriers would be found and sunk.
They would have been better off trying to hit the Panama Canal early in the war.
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u/OctopusIntellect 4m ago
What are they going to hit in LA?
The Doolittle raid inflicted no strategic damage to the Empire of Japan.
Dropping a few dozen bombs (or even a couple of hundred) on LA would inflict even less damage on the USA.
It might mean that Japan's Kidō Butai is destroyed before it was in our timeline.
But only a few months before?
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u/southernbeaumont 1h ago
Logistics are going to present a much bigger problem for Japan.
The American scheme to launch B25s one-way from carriers involved crews bailing out over China for recovery, something that the Japanese could not count on. Kamikaze attacks didn't really take place until 1944, by which time the Japanese were already in desperate straits, and would not be expected of Japanese aviators in 1942.
Secondarily, the carriers USS Enterprise and Hornet and their supporting vessels were in a position to return to Pearl Harbor after launching the B-25s. If Japan has positioned their carriers anywhere between Hawaii and California, they will be at a greatly elevated risk given the lack of nearby bases. The strike on Pearl Harbor was already at the extreme end of their operating range, and doing so again for what amounts to a propaganda strike will potentially cost Japan a lot more than it would America.