soc.history.war.world-war-ii

On Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:05:29 -0400, "AW" wrote:

>The real question is would the amount available have replaced the US
>supplies in significant quantity to placate the Imperial Japanese Navy and
>the answer is probably not.

Nope. The *real* real question is, even if the NEI governor had made
the oil available, how would the Japanese have shipped it anywhere?

You seem unaware of the fact that the Japanese relied on US tankers to
move the oil they purchased ... and, because of the embargo, they were
... unavailable (even assuming, as you suggest with the oil, they
weren't being used to ship oil for *US* purposes anyway).

The UK and Western Allies aren't going to ship the oil for the
Japanese (and since what remained of the Dutch merchant marine, such
as it was, was under effective UK control, you can discount the
governor of the NEI having any way of shipping the oil, either) ...
and the Japanese had damn all tankers.

Even during the war, when they shipped POL around in standard
freighters using 44 gallon drums ... extremely inefficient ... they
found they simply couldn't ship enough of it and a large chunk of the
IJN remained based near the oilfields so that they could minimise this
issue.

Worse, the destruction or damage of a lot of the refineries meant that
the Japanese never managed to get them back to more than 70% of
pre-war levels (and that took several years) of production, so a lot
of IJN vessels in the NEI region were fuelled with *unrefined* or
*partially* refined fuel oil, to the *extreme* detriment of their
engines.

The whole situation was a lot more interlocking and interdependent
than many people understand.

Of course, you may already have known some or all of the above, in
which case I apologise for belabouring the bleeding obvious.

Phil

Author, Space Opera (FGU); RBB #1 (FASA); Road to Armageddon;
Farm, Forge and Steam; Orbis Mundi; Displaced (PGD)
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Email: aspqrz@pacific.net.au