Re: What IF: ... Japan had more Oilers for Dec.7'41 ?

dabrob wrote:
> 
> Why do the Philipines really need to be taken at all ?
> 
> Once American air power there is broken (as it would be in my ATL just
> as it was historically via Japanese land based air flotilla attacks)
> and the limited US naval forces present driven off, what is the rush ?
> A watch and a bombing campaign can be maintained until sufficient IJA
> forces are freed up from other tasks, to invade there.
> 
> IIRC Japan wanted the rice crop, rubber and tin but most of that was
> obtainable from the former French Indo-China areas only just acquired.

If they're not going to take the Philippines, why bother waking the 
sleeping dragon in the first place?  The whole point of taking the 
Philippines, so far as I am aware, is that it was flanking the ****pping 
route from the East Indies.  Leave it in American hands, and you've left 
a forward base in the hands of the enemy you've just made very, very 
angry.  How angry?  Well, after one war****p blew up in Havana harbor, 
they took Guam, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Cuba away from Spain... 
how many war****ps were just damaged or sunk in Pearl Harbor?