Originally posted by Krusty
Somebody mentioned Pearl in the Downfall forum. I'll post what I posted there here as well.
How can you get a full scenario out of Pearl? It's a 1-time short-span sneak attack. There's just no way the allies will have anything to do, and there's no way the japanese will have anything to do outside of the 1 frame.
For it to be a scenario, it has to be 2-ways, methinks.
Alernative History:
What would have happened if Japanese had decided to launch additional sorties to take out the fuel depots and drydocks? Would have kept America from taking offensive with wide spread sub operations and many of the ships brought up from the bottom of the harbor would have not been back in service any where as soon as they were. Guadacanal would have been lost, possibly Midway before America could get their feet under them again. Might have cut the link to Australia.
Or had they decided to really go for broke and occupy the island, thinking that many of the Japanese Americans would join them? It would have been a bloodbath for both sides, but a sizable relief force from the Atlantic would have taken forever to get there. They might have caught the U.S. Carriers attempting to relieve Pearl. With all airfields capped, fleet sunk, and complete air cover to help advance landing forces, they could have occupied and continued to bomb and strafe the population until they surrendered.
Would have took 2 or 3 move CV's plus a large landing force and fleet resupply train.
In either case, as a senerio, the Allies would be at a very big disadvantage in planes and resources, but all they need to really do is prevent the total destruction of Pearl or a successful landing foothold on the island. This would probably be a large senerio with multiple lives.... 3 per hour maximum maybe? Or a fixed number of lives. To represent the huge numbers.