what if? Britain allies with Germany and fights the USA

[Graf Zeppelin]

Shipyards have been expanded of course.Here again, building a yard for destroyers or merchant vessels is much much easier to do then a yard for a battleship However there the US hit the next bottleneck. Shortages of resources(steel, rubber etc) and manpower. Manpower was especially tricky since the original yard workers usually have been in the best draft age and slowly been drafted away during the war.With several industries competing for labor US shipyard always had hunger for workers and have been often understaffed. This problem was even more severe in cities which had large yards and other critical industries like avitation.

 

[keynes2.0]

Well if we are talking a great clash of naval powers there is less manpower needed for the army and more manpower available for shipbuilding.

 

[Eusebio]

Why would the US need to build many more times capital ships? Just flood the Atlantic with submarines and Britain would collapse.

 

[BBBD316]

Wouldn't the UK then just move everything through the Med instead of the atlantic?

The Atlantic was only used to make sure the Italians and Germans couldn't bomb the convoys via the air, I am not sure trying to use subs in the channel would work that well with the amount of aircraft in the air. Though maybe it would have helped the Germans develop a decent naval bomber.

 

[Graf Zeppelin]

Why would the US need to build many more times capital ships? Just flood the Atlantic with submarines and Britain would collapse.

US subs been rather impotent in 1941/42 so no, at least not fast. Historically Japanese ASW was also rather impotent at this point.Unlike the British........

 

[Ming]

Wasn't the issue with US torpedoes the fact that they worked fine at the mid atlantic latitudes where the test ranges were but went wrong in the magnetic field of the south pacific where the action was?

 

[nuarbnellaffej]

i opened a thread in the HOI IV Forum but about a fight between the USN and the Royal Navy and who would win, but it was closed. Maybe this time we can ceep chemical attacks out of the thread and stick to the topic. I would like to expand that question to the scenario of a fight between UK, Germany, Italy and Japan on the one side and US on the other side. I know its maybe unlikely of this to happen, but its interesting to think about. The scenario sets in 1940, brits are destroyed at dunkirk and a right wing government comes to power in UK, they ally with Germany and Hitler convinces them that the US it the biggest danger for the empire and has to be destroyed. An Invasion of the US is planned. Do you think this 4 powers could make it into the US and win this fight?

Any attempted invasion of the continental US would be a fools errand, and would fail epically. The most likely outcome of such a turn of events would be a Cold War. Neither side would be strong enough to strike decisively at the other.

An important question is, what would the Soviets do in such a situation? Germany allied with Britain would certainly worry Stalin(he preferred them to destroy each other rather than work together). So perhaps Stalin would entertain talks/relations with the US, as a way of containing a fascist Europe.

 

[BBBD316]

Well if Germany has rolled France and then signed an alliance with Mosley in late 1940, as per the OP's original idea. Then Germany and Italy no longer have to worry about the Med or Africa, the UK would probably not get involved against China. You also have Yugoslavia stay Axis aligned as it has no one to defect to, greece probably gets divided between the various states including Turkey. Spain and Portugal can now join cause they don't have to worry about the Brits. Does Sweden join cause everyone else has?

Germany can roll everything East and there would be no need to worry about the Atlantic, I assume the UK would be required to hold off the US as the Germans rolled East.

 

[Graf Zeppelin]

Wasn't the issue with US torpedoes the fact that they worked fine at the mid atlantic latitudes where the test ranges were but went wrong in the magnetic field of the south pacific where the action was?

No. The MK14 had several problems.
The main problems been.
It tended to run lower then set
The magnetic exploding device was extremly unreliable,
The contact exploding device was unreliable.
On top of that the torpedo had troubles to run straight due to a bad gyro system.


This all happened to the fact that this torpedo was never proberly tested before the war.There were no test ranges at all. Infact not a single live shot was fired during "testing"

It had a funny side effect tho. Due to the faulty torpedo the Japanese considered their loses to submarines very acceptable during the first year of the war. They didnt bother much with improving their ASW untill it was to late and they had not many ships left to escort.


Sorry for all the nitpicking here but I am a pacific war nerd. You can blame Star Wars for that.

 

[BBBD316]

@Graf Zeppelin I think you are confusing your Empires.

Pretty sure the Galactic Imperial Navy would have wiped the floor with the US.

 

[Graf Zeppelin]

@Graf Zeppelin I think you are confusing your Empires.

Pretty sure the Galactic Imperial Navy would have wiped the floor with the US.

There was a girl who loved Star Wars
Said girl didnt like war movies.
Tha girl had a daddy who wanted to watch a war film with her.
She didnt want to but daddy wanted so much so she agreed.
She didnt knew something about ww2 or what this is all about.
She however realized that these people are planing something and that there are two sides.
She found all that planing and anticipating interesting.
When the battle started to unfold she thought.
Hey this is like Star Wars with all these fighters buzzing around and trying to hit ships and such.
The film was Midway and after that the watched it several dozen times.


Thats basicall the story how my interest of WW2 and espcecially the pacific theater began.

 

[Zebedee]

Why would the US need to build many more times capital ships? Just flood the Atlantic with submarines and Britain would collapse.

The vital trans-Atlantic routes were with the US. So the only things to be found in the Atlantic would be warships, depending on Canada. US subs would need to be in the channel (terrible place to be in a submarine), the Med (getting past Gibraltar and then both the Italians and the British hunting any strays who get through) and then over into the Indian Ocean which is possibly the best place although an absence of war with Japan means slim pickings for any real strategic impact not coupled with attempts to provoke an armed revolt in India. It needs an occupied continental coast to try and enforce a blockade of the UK. It cuts the other way too - what purpose does a submarine blockade of the US serve when its main trading partners are at war with it? Japan effectively isolates the Soviet pacific ports, the Baltic is close to impassible, and the Arctic ports mean passing Finland, Norway and then Britain so even if the Soviets were open for business (they weren't - their main export item to the US was a tiny amount of furs) it's not happening.

It's a scenario for a three-way Cold War and wars by proxy in the colonies. Neither side can project more than a handful of divisions across those oceans, and lone bombers at the edge of their range carrying A-bombs into drilled air defences isn't really landing the knock out blow. Japan was heaps of rubble from conventional bombing before nuclear weapons were used.

 

[Henry IX]

There was a girl who loved Star Wars
Said girl didnt like war movies.
Tha girl had a daddy who wanted to watch a war film with her.
She didnt want to but daddy wanted so much so she agreed.
She didnt knew something about ww2 or what this is all about.
She however realized that these people are planing something and that there are two sides.
She found all that planing and anticipating interesting.
When the battle started to unfold she thought.
Hey this is like Star Wars with all these fighters buzzing around and trying to hit ships and such.
The film was Midway and after that the watched it several dozen times.


Thats basicall the story how my interest of WW2 and espcecially the pacific theater began.

There have been a number of posters who have commented on the submarine war. The key point here is that the critical resources Britain needed could mostly be routed through the Mediterranean, which would be very, very hard for American subs to operate against (oil from Kuwait and rare metals from Turkey). Hence the American subs would have struggled to find targets away from air cover and would likely have limited impact.

However, the US navy was ultimately stronger than the British and it would have continued to grow at a faster rate. Eventually, they would likely have gained domination over the British and been able to break apart the British Empire. It is very likely that the British would not tolerate the loss of empire just to support the Nazis. The end result is the British end the war with a treaty with the Americans, most likely losing a few colonies in the process.

The only wild card is Ireland. De Valera loathed the British and the Americans were very close to the Irish, so it is possible that some sort of arrangement could have been reached to bring Ireland into the conflict against Britain. If so the Americans gain a base very close to Britain giving them the ability to invade or blockade far more efficiently.

Edit emu'd with the point about subs

 

[dragoon9105]

Why would the US need subs when they can just fortify america? Those naval resources are better spent on Carrier groups which can respond and basically decapitate any invasion in US naval range.

The US WW2 naval doctrine resulted from Pearl Harbor leaving them with only their carrier fleet, If pearl Harbor happens Submarines will always be a secondary priority. The only major change would be the shipping industry no longer producing liberty ships but Warships instead, probably Destroyers and Cruisers.

 

[The_Meme_Man]

Here is one scenario, to quote a very prominent alternate historian.

"America comes in, sucker punches Hitler in the face, and then nukes Europe while jumping into the ocean".

That is basically what would happen. If Britain keels over to right-winged politics "due to weakness" (quotations for emphasis), then America would become increasingly LEFT-wing, more so if this German-British alliance attacked the US. Left-wing politics would fuse with American jingoism, as people start to compare the left's movement with the American revolution, and the war just becomes perceptively no different from the war of 1812 in terms of propaganda. America would probably (like 90% chance) side with the Soviet Union for the duration of the war, and the two would absolutely clean house with Fascist Europe. Left-winged politics would completely dominate global politics in the modern world. Cold war would probably happen, fear of nuclear annihilation, Communism would be realized as very destructive and violent, but the world would be divided between Far-Left and Centre-Left, rather than Far-Left and Centre-Right.

Worst case scenario, communism takes over the world. Best case scenario, we really nail down egalitarianism and democracy. Likely scenario, the modern world just becomes the living embodiment of Tumblr, take it how you will.

 

[Graf Zeppelin]

"America comes in, sucker punches Hitler in the face, and then nukes Europe while jumping into the ocean".

 

[Graf Zeppelin]

Why would the US need subs when they can just fortify america?.

Just fortify America ? Just ? I mean we are talking about several 1000 km of coastline vs a submarine programm. Are we a little out of touch with reality ?

 

[The_Meme_Man]

How did you manage to get actual footage of America vs. German-British Axis? That's not even in our reality!

 

[Graf Zeppelin]

Interesting enough there can be much doubt about Japan in this scenario. Everything Japan wanted was in Asia and in British hands, especially Singapore.The US had nothing bar Guam Japan desired.
Japan might still jump on the bandwagon and wage war against the US. There is however a possibility in that scenario that the US gives Japan a free hand in SE Asia and then its gets rather tricky for that Anglo-German Alliance.
If that happenes the US has a lend lease connection to the Soviets via Wladivostock.
It can concentrate on the Atlantik while Japan rolls up the British colonial Empire whith support from the US.
The US and Japan can threaten anything bordering the Indian Ocean.
Australia and NZ would quickly throw the towel.
Germany cant do much to help the British in SE Asia bar an expedition force.

 

[Graf Zeppelin]

How did you manage to get actual footage of America vs. German-British Axis? That's not even in our reality!

I have connections to someone who lives in another reality where Germany lost the war because of Italy.