WI: Burma Road opens a year early
- Thread starter Some Bloke
- Start date
How? It wasnt built until it was needed. To have it completed a year early, you need it started a year early, which likely means Japan has to invade China a year early.
The other main problems are that it wasn't an all-weather road so during the monsoons the traffic levels dropped massively and the major corruption associated with it, I've seen figures as high as fifty percent of the goods that crossed the Chinese border disappearing before they reached Kunming.
It would be an interesting WI if the Rangoon to Myitkyina railroad was extended to Kuming before the Japanese invasion of Burma. Transport traffic would be an order of magnitude larger, and the Chinese would be able to deploy a much bigger army to defend Burma in the first place. Perhaps they can't hold Rangoon, but surely Myitkyina, which leads to earlier opening of Ledo Road.
If the Nationalists still lose the civil war there would be more Chinese refugees in Burma as a result of such a railroad.
If the Nationalists still lose the civil war there would be more Chinese refugees in Burma as a result of such a railroad.
Interesting ideas all round. This is a question to help my timeline The Mers-el-Kebir resolution. Long story short, the Japanese get stopped at the Sittang river, the extension to the Burma Road is never built and the Road itself is retaken at the beginning of 1944.
Further thoughts?
Further thoughts?
BlondieBC
Banned
The road was not the main project. It was to enable the building of a railroad which was partially completed. This will be the key milestone. Once a RR is finished, it can support at least a full army on a sustained attack or many armies on the defensive. We would see a massive improvement in the quality of Chinese units, assuming the materials are shipped to Burma and not some other location like Russia or for D-Day preparations.
BlondieBC
Banned
Since you probably wont see heavy mechanized Chinese formations, you can use the logistic tables of the Imperial German Army or any WW1 battle to get a feel for how much one railroad can support. The Germans loved to attack on dual or quad RR, but there are plenty of examples of battles fought with single RR. Look at the eastern front, where the RR density is lower and look at things like the Brusilov offensive, Gorlic-Tarnow of 1915.
And remember, if no RR or trucks, you can't supply an army more than 100 miles past the railhead, and even this is a stretch.
The Burma Road was closed by the British for three months only starting July 1940 because of Japanese pressure. It reopened in October 1940.
Then in the Burma Campaign, the Japanese invasion of March-May 1942 closed it again. In late 1944 after two years of construction, the Ledo Road opened up a land route from India to China. Several months later in 1945, the British retook Rangoon which would open up the original Burma Road.
It seems like people are confused whether the original poster is asking if the Burma Road originally was built a year earlier (not possible), or if the Burma/Ledo Road was reopened a year earlier (late 1943 instead of late 1944).
The first (building of the original road) is not possible. But we can imagine various altenrative histories of the Burma Campaign where a land route to China was reopened earlier.
I think this will have several effects.
1) The tonnage going to the Chinese armies will skyrocket. This is mainly because most supplies flown over the hump did not go to the Chinese Army, but the US air force. Almost all additional tonnage can go to to the Chinese armies.
2) If the road reopens in 1943, Burma is presumably liberated to the extent that the Chinese armies in Burma (Force X and Force Y) are no longer needed. That means they can be deployed back to China.
3) All of this happens before the 1944 Ichigo Offensive which was Japan's last great victory. The Chinese defeat really did a lot to damage the credibility of the Nationalist government. With supplies coming into China, and the Forces X and Y in China, Ichigo probably fails. Japan may have some success, but China likely protects the Hunan rice bowl, saves the US airbases, and keeps control of the railway.
4) This places China in an ideal position in 1945. At the very least Canton is likely liberated, perhaps even Wuhan. This gives China some important victories before the war's end. This will do a lot to boost Nationalist prestige at home and abroad.
5) The Nationalists will be much better placed to move quickly in China to occupy Japanese held China before the Communists, making it easier for them to hold that territory.
I don't know if it's enough to cause the Nationalists to win the civil war. But they will enter it with more prestige and credibility, have an extra year worth of supplies to train and equip their soldiers (perhaps worth another 40 divisions), and be better placed.
Important questions are whether this causes the US to support the Nationalists more after the war instead of instituting an arms embargo and forcing Chiang into repeated ceasefires that benefit the Communists.
On the other hand, these changes are not likely to prevent the Red Army from marching into Manchuria and dumping tons of their supplies and captured Japanese arms to Mao's forces. To overcome this, Chiang and the Nationalists really need massive US support during the civil war period.
If these changes cause Chiang to not lose his best armies in Manchuria as happened IOTL, then Chiang may either win the civil war outright, or at least keep China south of the Great Wall or Yellow River.
of note: the first such war was the US Civil War: Not a single battle took place farther than 30 miles from a railroad or railhead.
katchen
Banned
Yunnan and Burma's Shan and Kachin States were and still are some of the most challenging places on earth to build a railroad. A railroad has to go up onto the Shan Plateau (doable) then down into the Shan Canyon then up the other side of the Shan Canyon (which is too far across to bridge) then across another mountain range to the Mekong River, down into the Mekong Valley before ascending again to 6000 feet to Dali, Kumning and on to Kueiyang, jongjing and Chengdu or to Changsha and Wuhan. And on the other side, across the Arakan range at Manipur, the other side of Mandalay or across tha Pangasau or Chaukan Passes directly into the Brahmaputra Valley and Assam, in a rainforest. All of this must be kept free of landslides.
Which is probalby why railroads from Burma to India and Burma to China have yet to be built OTL (which is not to say China won't build them in the near future). It would certainly have been a daunting task under pressure of war.
It might have been easier to build a railroad across Kashmir up the Indus River to Leh, Gartok then north to Khotan and east to China that way (open in the winter, believe it or not). The Central Pacific's experience was that it was possible to build 10 miles a day of railroad with a well run crew in desert country on flat land. No real obstacles in Sinkiang until the sand dunes of the Alashan near Lanzhou. Certainly it would have been finished by 1944. And as a spinoff, a branch line to Urumchi and Aktogay would be a supply line to the USSR as well. Much better logistics.
Which is probalby why railroads from Burma to India and Burma to China have yet to be built OTL (which is not to say China won't build them in the near future). It would certainly have been a daunting task under pressure of war.
It might have been easier to build a railroad across Kashmir up the Indus River to Leh, Gartok then north to Khotan and east to China that way (open in the winter, believe it or not). The Central Pacific's experience was that it was possible to build 10 miles a day of railroad with a well run crew in desert country on flat land. No real obstacles in Sinkiang until the sand dunes of the Alashan near Lanzhou. Certainly it would have been finished by 1944. And as a spinoff, a branch line to Urumchi and Aktogay would be a supply line to the USSR as well. Much better logistics.
If we go with this as the medium term result, how does a Southern Nationalist China affect Vietnam and Korea?
Vietnam likely never goes Communist because it was Mao who sent Ho Chi Minh tons of aid once he conquered all of China. No Chinese Communists controlling the border to Vietnam, and the French likely succeed in creating a pro-France client state who gradually become independent in fact as well as name.
As for Korea, this is harder. Mao would control a state bordering North Korea, and both he and Stalin would like to see a united Korea that is Communist. However, without control of the entire mainland, it is a big risk for yet another war to start that might prompt US intervention.
Stalin was very clear that while he would provide supplies, some airpower, and advisors, he would not send any troops nor risk getting involved in a war with the US. Mao certainly was IOTL, but that was when he controlled the entire mainland.
It's possible both Stalin and Mao tell Kim Il Sung that he is not to start any war. If so, there is no Korean War.
If Mao does gamble and tell Kim Il Sung to go ahead, Kim gets knocked down after the US intervenes. With US troops going to the Yalu, Mao will feel threatened, but may not intervene because it means that Chiang might use the opportunity to wipe him out because Mao cannot fight both the US and the Nationalists in this scenario. So he likely does nothing, and Korea is united under a pro-American regime.
Most likely, there is no Korean War at least in the short term. Who knows what might happen after 10 years.
Very interesting, and a good look at some possibilities to improve KMT performance. Saving this post in an offline document.
Cheers. Obviously this is beyond the scope of the first draft but I'll definitely be using this in the 2.0 version once I've finished with the war.