Japan had no interest in invading Africa, they knew that UK had that on lockdown and they didn’t have the resources to do it. I am 100% sure that Japanese High Command would of double down on invading Australia over that. The idea behind controlling Indian ocean was to do two jobs. First: Close Burma Road since the Chinese were getting heavy equipment from the US. People forget the bulk of the IJA was in China and China was always the end goal for Japan. Two: Cutting the Persian trade route was more of a request from Germany. People forget that the Battle of Madagascar was the only battle during WWII that had both Germany and Japan in the same battle.
Operation Catherine
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I just learned of this Chruchill plan. What are your thoughts?
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I think it was rightly shelved. German air power, especially with the vaunted Dive Bombers, would have seen off any such incursion into German waters so early on in the war.
The Norwegian invasion would have been more one sided too, in my opinion.
It is possible this might have delayed Fall Gelb, but cannot imagine the result would have been any different.
Thanks again Worsham; had not heard of this plan either.
Good old Churchill! -
When I read of this planned operation, I imagined Churchill playing an agressive hand of A&A with the British fleet.
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Churchill was not a normal or your average man.
Not many like him come in a lifetime. -
I think that this operation could have prompted an early German invasion of Denmark, because they would surely want to base their planes there. Generally speaking, it seems like a pretty bad idea to me - in addition to the Luftwaffe, the Germans would have lots of U-boats at hand too.
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Jahwoll Herr KaLeun!…
I agree with you on this one here but want to insert that it could have changed German thinking in Naval warfare, too… -
I’d never heard of this operation, but it sounds typically Churchillian. He had great fondness – in both World Wars – for schemes that aimed blows at the outer fringes of enemy territory rather than hitting the enemy head-on (in the Ulysses S. Grant style favoured by the Americans). In WWI, Churchill dreamed up the Gallipoli operation for this reason; it was poorly planned and badly botched, and his reputation took a hit as a result. In WWII, Churchill pushed hard for the invasion of Italy; the fallacy of his argument that Italy was the “soft underbelly of Europe” should have been obvious to anyone able to spot mountain ranges on a topographical map. Churchill’s Baltic operation also has a few echoes of Jacky Fisher’s WWI plan to invade Germany via the Baltic, for which Fisher conceived the misguided Courageous-class battlecruisers – severely unbalanced ships with the armament of a battleship but the armour protection of a light cruiser.
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