Chapter 10

The relevance of this Clausewitzian observation lies in the simple fact that Japan's failing, in terms of understanding the nature of the war that she initiated, was multi-layered. The obvious and fundamental misunderstanding related directly to two matters: the failure to understand that this war's terms of reference were not Japan's to determine, and the failure to understand the American foe. The two were of course linked; Japan saw the war that she initiated in the western Pacific and Southeast Asia in December 1941 as a limited war. To the extent that Japan ever considered defeat as an alternative to victory, she considered it in the context of a limited war. In reality, the alternative to Japan's victory in a limited war was her defeat in a total war.There was in this thought process the failure to understand that both sides would determine the nature of the war, as well as Japan's fundamental error in underestimating the enemy.

The basis of the national plan for the conduct of the Pacific War was a naval concept of operations that had been two decades in the making, though certain of its ideas could be traced to Tsushima (1905) and the Russo-Japanese War. In essence, Japan sought to conduct a defensive war by overrunning Southeast Asia and then casting around her conquests a perimeter defense on which the Americans would fight to exhaustion. They would then accept a negotiated peace that would confirm Japan's possession of Southeast Asia. This concept had taken shape in the interwar period. Its success was predicated on the concept of a "decisive battle" that was to be fought in the general area of the Carolines and Marianas, against an American fleet moving into the western Pacific from its base at Pearl Harbor in the Central Pacific. This battle would commence off the Hawaiian Islands, using submarines that would initiate the battle of attrition. To this end, the Imperial Japanese Navy, the Nippon Teikoku Kaigun, developed three separate types of ocean-going units: the scout submarine, that came complete with seaplanes that would find the enemy; and command-submarines, designed to direct cruiser-submarines to the battle. Cruiser-submarines could reach a surface speed of 24 knots; the IJN calculated that such speed would enable these units to outpace American formations obliged to advance into the western Pacific at economical cruising speed. From there, they could mount successive attacks, up to the limit of their torpedo capacity, during this initial "approach-to-contact" phase.

Shore-based aircraft, operating from bases in the Marshalls, Carolines, and Marianas, would complement these operations as American formations came into the western Pacific. It was as part of this effort that the Japanese developed the Betty medium bomber that, in its day, was superior in range and speed to any other medium bomber in service anywhere in the world. According to IJN calculations, each of these forms of attack, by submarines and land-based aircraft, were anticipated to inflict one-tenth losses upon the enemy.They would also prepare the way for battle to be joined, initially by fast battleship and heavy cruiser squadrons, which would sweep aside enemy screening formations, allowing light cruiser and destroyer formations to conduct successive, massed night attacks on enemy lines.With midget submarines also laid across the American path, the IJN anticipated an additional 10 percent losses. With Japanese carriers operating ahead of the battle line, intending to neutralize their opposite numbers by dive-bombing attacks, the IJN expected that, with an American fleet blinded, weakened by losses, and its cohesion compromised, battle could then be joined by the battle force.

Any understanding of Japan, the IJN, and the defeat in the Pacific War necessarily has to start with a naval doctrine that can certainly trace its origins to Saneyuki Akiyama, "the seven-stage plan of attrition," and Tsushima. Despite this, in its final state Japanese naval doctrine was flawed on any number of counts, few of which related directly to the experience of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05). The most obvious of these weaknesses related to the perimeter defense which, by definition, consisted mostly of gaps held apart by the occasional island, garrison, and air base.To compound the problem, very few of these garrisons and bases had any chance of resisting attack; most were small, and lacked sufficient numbers of aircraft and dispersal facilities to enable them to survive attack. In reality, none of these bases was ever likely to be attacked, except by formations that were overwhelmingly superior. In the event, the Americans, after the start of the drive across the Central Pacific in November 1943, were able to bring massively superior force to bear, ensuring that any objective could be isolated and overwhelmed before any Japanese naval force could intervene.This imbalance pointed up the two major weaknesses of Japanese naval intent. First, the Japanese did not have the means to establish and then maintain forces that, by virtue of their defensive deployment, were neither concentrated nor able to concentrate quickly and effectively. Second, the IJN had no assurance that it could deploy fleet formations in a timely and effective manner to the support of forward bases under attack. In essence, the inferiority of Japanese forces in bases along a perimeter defense, combined with the inferiority of the Japanese fleet relative to its American counterpart, meant that Japan's only possibility of being able to mount a successful defensive campaign rested in land-based air power and the fleet complementing one another and producing a balance of forces or perhaps even a Japanese superiority of numbers. But such intent and hope was no more than illusion, and on several counts.

The basic reality counterbalancing this illusion was that the fleet could not be guaranteed to be "permanently ready." In fact, in December 1941 Japan went to war at a time when, of all her fleet units, just one destroyer was not in service. This situation highlighted one inescapable fact: not too far down the road, the demands of routine overhaul and refits, not to mention repair, were certain to begin to inflict major reductions upon available force. Attempting to maintain forward bases, given Japan's lack of available shipping, only compounded problems. Realistically, with the exception of Truk and Rabaul, none of the bases in the central and Southwest Pacific could be equipped on the scale required to meet an enemy which (and a point easily missed by virtue of the IJN's defensive intent) would be vested with the initiative and full range of choice in terms of when, where, and in what strength it was to mount its own, successive, offensive operations.

The first flaw was the wholly unrealistic expectations of submarine success during the enemy advance to contact. The IJN confronted this reality in a series of exercises in 1939 that showed that the submarines could not mount successive attacks on enemy formations. Their advantage of speed over an enemy operating at economical cruising speed was not sufficient to allow their being able to sweep wide around an enemy force and thence be able to mount a second or third attack. Submarines had but a single chance, but even after the 1940 exercises, when the rules had been rewritten and the submarines still proved unable to overhaul the surface force, the IJN remained committed to this concept. In one sense it had no real option. Having built its submarines on the basis of this tactical plan, it had no choice but to live with its previous decision; but the fact was that the IJN went to war with a defensive doctrine that it knew was at very best dubious, and at worst flawed.

The second significant flaw was that IJN doctrine was concerned with battle, and that (as described elsewhere), by some mysterious process which must have been something like transubstantiation, what began as a service battle plan became an inter-service plan of campaign and, finally, a national war plan. Leaving aside this matter, fundamental though it is to Japanese defeat, it is important to note that the "proper" concern for the IJN was battle; but that the basic requirement of Japan was to wage war. The Japanese were not alone in failing to distinguish between the perspective of nations, which wage war, and services, which fight battles. Even so, the IJN obsession with battle came at the expense of trade defense, though the Japanese weakness in this matter did extend beyond lack of IJN interest, commitment, and resources. Japan's weakness lay in the fact that national shipping needs, given a level of imports that stood at about 48 million tons in 1940, were some 10 million tons. In 1940, foreign bottoms accounted for four million of these tons. From the time that she was subject to embargo, most of this shipping was lost to Japan, and there was no way in which Japanese shipyards could make good the loss of two-fifths of the nation's carrying requirement. This weakness was compounded by the division of the remaining shipping among the two services and the civilian economy. Once the services had taken roughly half of what remained, the state's shipping requirements amounted to just three million tons to meet the demands for food, goods, and raw materials, less those ships which, for one reason or another, were not in service. In December 1941, Japan had available only about one-quarter of the shipping that she needed to meet the demands of society, the economy, and war production.There was no way that her shipyards could simultaneously build warships, build service shipping and merchantmen, repair and overhaul warships, and repair and overhaul shipping. At the very best, Japanese yards had the capacity to build warships and also to modestly increase the size of the shipping pool, but they could not build and service simultaneously. And even these logistical considerations were only the beginning of the problem. Japan went to war with just four purpose-built escorts in service, and none of these had sonar. None of the 14 members of the Type A class were within two months of being laid down, and the 32 escorts and 26 chasers of all descriptions and origins that were in service in December 1941 were totally inadequate to meet Japan's needs, even with another 30 escorts and 16 chasers under construction or planned.

Third, the basic IJN plan was wholly unrealistic. Not just the submarine component, but the whole concept, constructed around the decisive battle that was to be fought, belonged to another age. The Japanese plan was perfection at the point of obsolescence, the naval equivalent of a de Dondi timepiece – a majestic clockwork of wheels-within-wheels, representing the medieval European view of the universe: ingenious and imaginative, lovingly and beautifully crafted, hopelessly unrealistic. The concept of the battle line was one that the Japanese themselves had largely discarded, while the latter part of the 1930s saw the carrier really emerge as the warship that would determine the nature and size of tactical formations. This latter process was, of course, far from complete in December 1941 and arguably was not finished until 1943. Nevertheless, for much of the 1930s, naval orthodoxy pointed in the direction of task groups with single carriers, perhaps two carriers but certainly no more, and for the very simple reason that it was generally assumed that a carrier found by the enemy was a carrier sunk. The evidence of the first year of the Pacific War suggests that this calculation had some validity, but the use of radar, and voice radio in high-performance fighters, gave carrier task groups the means to conduct defensive battles with realistic hopes of success – as long as the task group was American.

The IJN was, qualitatively, the best navy in the world in the second half of 1941. The evidence for a seemingly extraordinary statement is readily apparent upon examination: consider the attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto in November 1940, which was conducted by one carrier plus aircraft. Compare this to the Japanese attack on the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in December 1941, which was conducted by six carriers and 355 aircraft in a two-wave attack. Add to this the fact that the opening Japanese moves came at a distance of some 4,500 miles from the home islands, across nine time zones and the International Date Line. However, by 1944, the United States had attained a true global reach that overshadowed the capability of any other nation, Japan and December 1941 notwithstanding. These facts illustrate the impossible situation in which the IJN found itself after the defeat off Midway Islands in June 1942. facing battles that were not those for which it had prepared. In a way that is very elusive, in terms of quality, the IJN was perhaps the best navy in the world in the second half of 1941, but it was a one-shot navy that lacked the strength in depth and the capacity to change and reconstitute itself.

The element of perversity lies in the fact that this period, between June and October 1942, is dominated by one campaign – the battle fought on, over, and off Guadalcanal in the lower Solomon Islands. It was in this campaign that the Japanese suffered all but comprehensive defeat at the hands of an American enemy that actually fought and won the defensive battle that had been the cornerstone of IJN doctrine. Of course, what the Americans had done was the mirror image of Japanese intent: in August 1942 they landed on Guadalcanal, seized the Japanese base and airfield that were under construction, and then moved aircraft into the suitably named Henderson Field.¹ Thereafter the US Pacific Fleet fought four major actions – the battles of the Eastern Solomons (August 22–25), of Santa Cruz (October 26–27), and the first and second naval battles of Guadalcanal (November 12–13 and 14–15) – that resulted in the defeat of a Combined Fleet laboring under the same handicaps that it had assigned the Americans in its prewar plans. Some 50 actions were fought off and over Guadalcanal from August 1942 to February 1943 between naval and air forces of the two sides, but two crucial points decided the outcome. The American ability to get air units into Henderson Field condemned the Japanese to fight the air battle from Rabaul, with very little chance of damaged aircraft ever making it home. Over the next three months, this meant American domination of the waters that washed Guadalcanal, at least during daylight. To compound this disadvantage, the Combined Fleet performed very poorly in the Guadalcanal campaign. It was very slow to recognize the seriousness of the situation that was developing in the lower Solomons, and its reaction was a piecemeal commitment of forces that was insufficient to secure a decisive victory. It was perhaps unfortunate that the first clash off Guadalcanal, the battle off Savo Island on the night of August 8–9, resulted in a Japanese victory, which may have created misperceptions about the realities of the situation. The irony was that in this particular battle, the Japanese comprehensively outfought an Allied formation, sinking four and damaging one of the five Allied heavy cruisers (and one destroyer) committed to the action. Having done so, however, the Japanese force did not dwell upon its victory; fearing American air attack with the dawn, the Japanese broke off the battle and headed for Rabaul, making no effort against the transport and support shipping off Guadalcanal. In reality, only a balanced Japanese force could have dealt with the latter, but another two weeks were to pass before the Japanese committed carrier forces to battle. The result was a draw: the Japanese lost a light carrier, and the Americans suffered one carrier damaged.

In these actions the Japanese reduced American carrier strength in the Southwest Pacific to just the Enterprise, which was quite extensively damaged in the Santa Cruz battle. In fact, such was the weakness of the Americans that a British carrier had to be sent to the Southwest Pacific during the first half of 1943.With the carrier formations of both sides neutralized, the Americans and Japanese each committed battle and cruiser units to the battle. The piecemeal commitment of Japanese forces, without proper close support, left their units exposed to defeat in detail in the naval battles of Guadalcanal in mid-November 1942. The loss of two battleships in two actions was a massive shock to a Japanese Navy convinced of its advantages in night action, but in truth the setbacks and losses in these actions were but one aspect of defeat. The Japanese high command was forced to admit that the formations put ashore on Guadalcanal were not capable of overrunning the American defensive positions on the island and that with losses approaching four figures, their land-based aircraft likewise could not prevail. Perhaps more seriously, the Guadalcanal campaign represented a logistical commitment at the most distant part of the front, and one that by this stage involved something like 700,000 tons of shipping, which neither Japan as a nation nor the two services could afford. Accordingly, in December 1942 the Japanese high command took the decision to abandon the Guadalcanal commitment. The Japanese evacuated the island successfully, and without interference, in the first week of February 1943.

Immediately after this event, however, the Americans moved into the Russells. The defeat in the Bismarck Sea action in the first week of March led, in effect, to the Japanese high command writing off the eastern New Guinea commitment.Thereafter very little happened in the Southwest Pacific, the main American concern being to gather forces in readiness for the offensive effort that began in November. For the Japanese, this period of relative calm seemed to vindicate their strategic intent, though the comfort that they drew from the relative stability of the front was belied by two matters. In the surface actions in 1943 the Americans, by virtue of superior radar, radio, and numbers, worsted the Japanese. In terms of qualitative dimension, the Japanese advantage at the war's start had already disappeared: the Americans had secured the upper hand as a result of their victories and defeats, and the battle experience thus gained, and technological superiority.

The second matter was something that was to worsen as the war lengthened, and this was the Japanese inability to realistically assess losses and the course of battle.Vastly inflated claims of enemy losses proved to be a feature of battle on the part of the IJN. Thus, the loss of the battleship Hiei in the first Guadalcanal battle in November 1942 cost the Americans five heavy and two light cruisers and eight destroyers, with another two cruisers and six destroyers damaged to some degree – which was more than the Americans had in the battle. In April 1943, in the course of a four-day offensive, Japanese naval land-based aircraft conducted an offensive over the Solomons and eastern New Guinea that reversed all the defeats of the previous nine months. In October 1944, in the prelude to the naval battle for the Philippines commonly known as Leyte Gulf, on the basis of the claims presented to him by IJN representatives, claims that included the sinking of 16 carriers and overall more than half a million tons of American warships in six days, the Emperor issued a victory decree and there were celebrations throughout Japan. There were also victory celebrations in Rikugun headquarters throughout the Philippines.All armed forces of all nations overstate their own effectiveness, but with the Japanese services this approached an art form that was increasingly divorced from reality.

For most of 1943, with the Americans registering only minor gains in the northern and Southwest Pacific, the main IJN attention was directed to training replacement air groups for the carrier formations,in readiness for the coming "decisive battle." Attention also focused on the creation, in November 1943, of a convoy system, an undertaking that encountered horrendous problems. Escort numbers were insufficient; radar, radio, and weaponry – in terms of the numbers and the size and rate of depth-charges – were all inadequate for the escorts that were available. Many of these deficiencies were covered with the prefabricated Types C and D escorts – these had two radar systems, three sonar sets, throwers, and as many as 120 depth-charges – these did not enter service until spring 1944 and their commitment thereafter was to a losing cause. Moreover, coordination of effort between escorts and land-based aircraft was woeful and in any event Japanese land-based aircraft were armed only with bombs and lacked the depth-charges, rockets and radars so crucial to Allied victory in the North Atlantic, and in any event these assorted matériel weaknesses went alongside a fundamental lack of proper planning. The shipping of the services and civil economy were separated, with the result that it was not unknown for civil merchantmen and service ships to sail outward together, the former empty and the latter full, and return together, with roles reversed. Perhaps even more serious was the fact that naval shipping was very largely unprotected or very poorly provided, as indeed was much of the IJA's shipping. This fact was crucial in 1944, for a reason that is seldom properly appreciated in most histories of the Pacific War. Japan's worsening shipping situation over the course of 1943–44 is generally acknowledged, but not the fact that the greater part of losses were incurred not by merchant shipping but by service shipping. Nor is sufficient attention given to the fact that the greater part of losses were incurred after November 1943, as carrier aircraft took the tide of war through the Japanese perimeter defenses. With naval shipping obliged to operate in waters increasingly dominated by American carrier aircraft and increasingly infested by American submarines deployed in support of landing operations, Japanese shipping was subjected to well-nigh crippling losses, even before their landings in the Philippines placed the Americans astride Japanese lines of communication between the home islands and the southern resources area. In the period between November 1, 1943 and June 30, 1944, in which time the Americans broke through the Japanese defensive positions in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands and the Marshalls, side-stepped Rabaul and then moved along the coast of northern New Guinea and into the Marianas, Japanese service and merchant shipping losses were the equivalent of Japanese losses prior to October 31, 1943, and this merely heralded a worsening disaster. In this eight-month period, when the equivalent of the losses of a 23-month period were concentrated into one-third of the time, the Japanese suffered such disasters as the American carrier raid on Truk which, with almost 200,000 tons of service and merchant shipping destroyed, must represent the most destructive single day in mercantile history, and this toll was primarily exacted by carrier aircraft that failed to account for a single merchantman and just six service transports prior to February 1944. In this October 1943–June 1944 phase of the war the monthly rate of Japanese losses was the equivalent of 24.63 warships of 42,031 tons and 69.25 service and merchant ships of 287,596 tons, in the next phase of the war between July 1944 and March 1945, in which time the Americans moved into the Philippines, the monthly rate of Japanese losses was the equivalent of 47.33 warships of 100,004 tons and 84.33 service and merchant ships of 308,556 tons, and the latter losses represented a very considerable part of the sizeable and ocean-going ships that were available to Japan in summer 1944. The last ships to make their way to the home islands from the south did so in March 1945, and thereafter the Japanese were finished. The various convoy routes in the south had been largely abandoned in summer 1944, and the shipping that remained in the north, on the routes to Manchuria and Korea, were beset after March 1945 by an American mining of Japanese home waters – Operation Starvation – to which the Japanese simply had no response.

These and other matters came together in the Philippines, with the American landings on Leyte in October 1944.The IJN realized that the loss of the Philippines – which would sever trade with the southern resources area on which Japan depended – would be tantamount to enemy landings on the home islands. By this time, however, Japanese intention had unravelled on two previous occasions. In November 1943, the IJN had attempted to put its reconstituted carrier air groups ashore at Rabaul, in an effort to counter American moves into the upper Solomons and Bismarck archipelago. These formations were simply ripped to pieces by American carriers.The Japanese, as a result, decided to abandon the fight for most of the northern coast of New Guinea and to make a stand on the line of the Marianas, Palaus, and the Vogelkop. Despite losing Aitape and Hollandia to overwhelming attack in April 1944, the American landings on Biak in May provoked an attempt to give battle that was immediately countered by the American landings on Saipan. With the Americans having overwhelmed the various air bases in the Marianas and Bonins before the Japanese carrier groups (reconstituted for a second time) could join the battle, the latter, hopelessly outnumbered, were shattered – and this time beyond recall – in the battle of the Philippine Sea. Defeat in the battle that the IJN had designated "the decisive battle" left two options available: another "decisive battle" to defend the Philippines; and the introduction of a new type of offensive operation, the kamikaze attack.

The Imperial Navy favored another decisive battle, seeking "a fitting place to die," "the chance to bloom as flowers of death." The Imperial Army initially sought to thwart this plan, pointing out that the fleet belonged to the nation, not the Navy, not that so minor a matter had any significance for the IJN.The IJN's position on kamikaze attacks was more complicated.The high command was aware that its basic strategic policy was falling apart, but failed to grasp the significance of events in battle. Between November 24, 1943, when the escort carrier Liscome Bay was torpedoed off the Gilberts by the submarine I-175, and October 24, 1944, when the Princeton was lost off the northern Philippines as a result of attack by a land-based aircraft, Japanese shells, torpedoes, and bombs failed to account for a single US Navy fleet unit, other than the Fletcher class destroyer Brownson, which was lost to air attack on December 26, 1943 off Cape Gloucester, New Britain. In other words, the American effort that encompassed the breaking of the outer perimeter defense in the Central Pacific; the carrier forays into the western Pacific that resulted in the shipping massacres at Truk (February 17–18) and Koror (March 30–31); the landings at Hollandia and Aitape which took the tide of war from one end of New Guinea to the other in two months, and which finally led to overwhelming victory in the Philippine Sea (June 19–20); and the subsequent rampage throughout the Philippines cost the United States just one destroyer, plus the destroyer escort Shelton, which was sunk off Morotai on October 3 by the submarine Ro. 41. The Japanese recourse to kamikaze attack was not a case, as so often stated, of suicide attack representing the most effective means of resistance. It was in fact the only means of resistance available – and it was wholly inadequate to Japan's needs.

There are several reasons for this. First, by October 1944 the Americans had acquired such superiority of numbers – in the air, in warship numbers, and in assault and support shipping – that no amount of Japanese success was ever going to turn the tide. Second, American recasting of tactical formations, both in warships and air groups, combined with massively increased firepower of warships, increased American ability to out-fight the kamikaze. The reconstitution of air groups with very few strike aircraft (and in the case of one fleet carrier, a group with only fighters) was extremely important in this process. There was no overall reduction of offensive capability, because of the unprecedented number of carriers arriving on station.The cost in terms of ships lost, written off, or forced back to the yards was high, but ultimately the United States, and her allies, had the means to make good their losses.Third, and perhaps most intangible but crucial: Allied sailors who fought in order to live were more than a match for Japanese airmen who died in order to fight. Such were the realities of the naval war in the Pacific.