Pacific War Primer

[thetwo]

Hello Guys,

I thought it might be useful to offer a primer on the US Navy in the Pacific in World War II. I'm working from memory (as usual) so any errors or gaps are my own.

[thetwo]

Part I

If you want to read a good introduction to the US Navy in the Pacific get the book War Plan Orange, by Edward S. Miller (I'd forgotten the author, but one of son's friends had borrowed the book from me.). Pre-WWII the US Navy had rigorous war game and exercise program and the “problems” set for each mission were crafted around a set of anticipated “real world” possibilities. If I remember correctly, every major engagement up to Leyte Gulf, but not including it, had been war gamed during the 1930's. Fascinating stuff. (Post-war US Navy, the integrity of the games suffered, there is another book that talks about that, I'm sure I have it in a box somewhere. The Navy didn't want to contemplate what would happen if a super-carrier was sunk.)

The original U.S. Marine landing on Guadalcanal was essential unopposed. It was after the landing that things got ugly. The movie Guadalcanal Diary doesn't do it justice. Back in 1992, I saw part of a movie on TV, and wish I could recall the name. It was actually a biography for one of the admirals and it was the best single depiction I've ever seen of what the Marines really faced there. They didn't pull any punches about the disease and starvation. Both sides were starving. The Japanese might land 11,000 troops in a night, but they wouldn't land any food. That leads, eventually to lots of suicide charges. If anyone can identify the movie, I'd be grateful.

There was a great deal of resentment in the Marine Corps about Guadalcanal, towards the Navy. If you don't know the story, we had few aircraft carriers and there was a risk aversion in the admirals. That's why there were so many cruiser and battleship engagements around the island. When the carriers showed up, they didn't linger. The resentment lasted a long time.

A traditional history of the Pacific war misses just how many islands had to be taken. For every one island invasion mentioned, there were at least 3-4 more unmentioned. And the fighting was unbelievably savage. I mentioned Chesty Puller once, the most decorated Marine of the war. He was on some of the early landings when we didn't know what we were facing. The pictures of the faces on those Marines from the early landings, after a few days, grim is the only word that seems to fit.

Some reporters from Europe have said that they were prevented from showing American casualties on film. It was part of the wartime censorship. I find that hard to believe. I've gotten my hands on newsreels that were shown in movie theaters from the Pacific campaign that showed Americans being killed, Americans killing Japanese, Japanese killing themselves. Nothing held back. Stuff that wouldn't make it on TV today. All of it with original narration so the moviegoers knew what they were seeing.

I was once invited to do a guest lecture on America in WWII. I wasn't given much time, so I went for punch. Things that might get the audience's attention, that they hadn't heard before. Here are some that you might not know.

What Germany almost succeeded in doing to Great Britain, a decisive submarine campaign against an island nation without natural resources, we did succeed in doing to Japan. Submarines were able to take the war to Japan immediately after Pearl Harbor and every day thereafter. Far more tonnage was sunk by American submarines than by aircraft and surface vessels combined. The decisive factor in beating Japan was not the aircraft carrier, but the submarine. The aircraft carrier was a combat multiplier that served a useful purpose, but not decisive. (Naval aviators absolutely hate this one. There is a book with a complete list of every Japanese ship sunk in WWII, and how it was sunk. You know, I think I used to own a copy too. So many years, so much research.) The Japanese economy was starved for resources. If you want to know why they didn't build more carriers, thank the American submariners.

At the time of the Pearl Harbor attack the Japanese did not have a single aircraft carrier laid down for construction. I think they starting laying down new carriers after Midway. A case of too little, too late. At two points in 1942, the United States had only one operational carrier in the Pacific. By the end of the war, the U.S. Had more than 100 carriers in commission.

[thetwo]

Part II

Start with the Battle of Midway and ask the question. Did Admiral Yamamoto's plan to invade Midway make any sense. If you don't remember, there was no plan for a follow up operation to Pearl Harbor, before the fact. Midway is in a fairly nice location, but it is thousands of miles from its nearest supply point, the farthest point in an extended (overextended?) arc of outposts, which were nearer the enemy's homeland than his own. Potential upside was that air and possibly submarine forces operating from there might have been able to harass Pearl Harbor and convoys from the west coast of the US to Hawaii and, at a stretch, Australia. Would it have been suitable as a staging area for an invasion of the American mainland? Problematic. If supply could be guaranteed, maybe. It was pretty barren.

I would like to ask you to think of the Pacific Ocean not as an ocean or as a merely a large body of water. Think of it as the largest desert on the planet. (Someone used this reference earlier. I was pleased to see it. This is how I have taught about the Pacific.)

To the north and some ares in the southeast are marginal areas where food production is highly specialized and only those highly trained can survive. Populations are limited.

Australia, a continental desert, with habitable areas on the coasts is still only a peripheral consideration.

Far to the southeast are resources of military value that can be considered to be at continental distances, part of Austral-Asia.

There are no resources, no appreciable material resources, food beyond the subsistence level, even potable water, between the four continents. At best the scattered islands are oases of stability in the vast desert. For supplies, if you don't bring it with you, you don't have it.

A potential invasion of Hawaii would gain a source of slave labor, an amount of arable land, protected harbors. No resources. Most food, all fuel, all petroleum products, all repair parts must be imported. As a staging area, it is preferable to Midway, but large numbers of undisciplined troops would destroy what benefits the island would immediately offer an invader, in short order. The history of Japanese treatment of slaves and prisoners and their destruction of captured facilities not required for direct military use are too well documented.

My contention is that, if the Japanese had invaded Hawaii, it would have doomed their fleet. They would have been tied down to defending the necessary supply convoys over such distances, that even a weakened U.S. Navy could have been effective in waging attrition warfare. This doesn't take into account the probably size of the garrison the Japanese would have thrown into the islands and stranded there. Talk about an albatross.

The central Pacific campaigns were fought right through the heart of the desert. MacArthur's campaign was fought along the edge of the barely habitable zone.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor they made three critical mistakes. Reflect on the desert analogy. The attack did not target the any of the following, 1) tank farms, 2) dry docks, 3) submarine base.

Perhaps the most precious commodity at Pearl Harbor, petroleum, oil, and lubricants. The tank farms escaped unscathed. If these had been destroyed, it is hard to picture how the US Navy would have managed to project any naval forces to confront the Japanese. This was before the SeaBees were created. Those facilities were immeasurably valuable.

The dry docks were the only repair facility, west of the west coast. Leaving those undamaged allowed the US Navy to begin recovery efforts immediately. Their destruction had the potential to slow the process not just of recovery, but of long-term support of combat operations of the carriers against the Japanese.

With the submarines and their base untouched, American submarines began operations right away against Japan. The Japanese didn't devote the kind of resources to prewar antisubmarine research like the British did and thus were even less prepared.

The Washington Naval Treaty prohibited fortification of the islands of the Pacific. This is why the initial Japanese attacks went so smoothly. Japan was economically incapable of carrying out the kind of campaign the U.S. launched, because they lacked the supply capability to support its military forces in prolonged offensives across the Pacific Desert. Such is my theory, at least.

After Japan's initial seizures across the Pacific, their ability to supply those possessions was with consumables was shoe-string thin. In China, Japanese Army units had a rich land from which to forage or compel support. In the Pacific, just about everything had to be shipped in and any interdiction could and did have catastrophic consequences. Japanese capabilities to endure hardships without supply are overstated. They starved just like anyone else. Or, in some cases, descended to cannibalism, of prisoners. (The Australian Army documented this quite well.)

Okinawa is an exception to the rule about Japanese supply problems being tied, at least somewhat, to suicide charges. First there was a large civilian population living on agriculturally productive land. Second, the Japanese had a forceful commander who forbid the banzai charges on principle. He wanted to inflict the maximum casualties on his opponent.

[thetwo]

Part III

The Courts-Martial that weren't.

My 2cents: I've worked with flag officers, seen how UCMJ is used, know how that system works, and how it doesn't. The conviction rate in courts-marital is higher than 90%. It's good to be a military prosecutor. The two flag officers who were held accountable, Lt. Gen. Short (U.S.A.) and Vice Admiral Kimmel (U.S.N.) were not given trials. That speaks volumes.

Both men's careers were destroyed. Mr. Prange (Gordon Prange, At Dawn We Slept and Miracle at Midway) dissects specific responsibilities by officer, for those who are interested. I would say they had very few resources and what resources they had were used on the obvious threats. What more was there to do? They never received any intelligence feed. Something that is a mantra for commanders today. Interestingly, Adm. Kimmel was not the naval officer responsible for the security of the fleet while it was in port. His responsibility ended when the ships entered harbor. The commander of the local Naval district was directly responsible for fleet security in port, two star I think, named Block. He was mentioned by name in the movie. Block was let off the hook entirely.

One thought, I've heard put forward was that Adm. Kimmel might have taken the fleet to sea to better protect it by hiding in the Pacific. If you've seen the movie, the carriers were not in port, they had been sent to ferry aircraft to other bases. The battleships would have been at sea with no air-cover, except in range of land-based aircraft. There were Japanese submarines in the area, they launched the 2-man subs.

Possibility: The Japanese find the battleships in deep water or Admiral Kimmel pursues the Japanese fleet and it turns on him. Both would likely have happened beyond the range of any land-based air cover. The USS Enterprise might have been able to lend some help, but that would have been all. Can anyone imagine the survival of any of those old, slow battleships in the face of the massed Japanese naval air arm? The fight happening in deep water?

Possibility: A Japanese submarine spots the battleships and the Japanese carriers move east and south, away from the American carriers. There were few American destroyers. One sub-launched torpedo attack would have forced zig-zagging, those battleships were terrible fuel hogs, and the Japanese carriers would have been on the hunt. The Japanese might have attacked Pearl Harbor anyway, while passing Hawaii, and finding no big ships, have attacked the infrastructure, tank farms and dry docks.

When President Roosevelt moved the American Pacific fleet homeport from San Diego to Hawaii, there was resistance from within the Navy Department. They considered provocative. The president wanted to send a message. But then the president forgot the message he was sending and began stripping the fleet to reinforce the Atlantic. He sent one message in the move to Hawaii, then every withdrawal sent the opposite message. (Almost Hitler-like reasoning.) This is where many of the destroyers went.

Last thoughts on Pearl Harbor: This is one of those areas of history about which someone, desperate for a Ph.D. topic, comes along periodically and tries to find something “new” to justify as a dissertation. If you want to learn about it, in my opinion, you can't beat, At Dawn We Slept. Prange was a Japanese linguist, he interviewed the men who conceived the operation (including Commander Genda), after the war. He read the Japanese documents. And he understood the American military well. While Tora, Tora, Tora, had some historical errors in it, (like that horrible closing line attributed to Admiral Yamamoto), it is based on this book. Prange is a tough act to follow and no other author, in my opinion, has risen to the challenge. (There was a book by one of Kimmel's staff officers that was really good, came out in the mid 1980s, after much of the intel that had not been given to them had been declassified. Title might have been, I Was There. This book was credible. There was an absolutely awful, disreputable book that came out in the '90s.)

Ok, Pearl Harbor is burning, then about eight hours later, General MacArthur's air power gets flattened on the ground. The Philippines, unlike Hawaii, had always been a location that Washington expected the Japanese to attack. In fact, they expected the Japanese to attack there before Hawaii. (It can be said that his air power was under strength and some of it technically outdated, but couldn't the same argument be made about Pearl?)

General MacArthur and his biographers have blamed his air commander for that disaster. Hard to know. Strange that in Hawaii the commanders took the rap, but not in the Philippines. Then, the stockpile of food that was supposed to be in place in Corregidor wasn't. The biographers have had a hard time with this one. A fortress can't be filled with food in a day, which is something they seem to try to imply was attempted. Then, I just have a really hard time ever forgiving MacArthur for holding a grudge against General Wainright. That's just petty. I met a man who survived those awful camps. I couldn't but respect him.

[thetwo]

Part IV

Campaigns.

Island Hopping – Central and South Western Pacific.

Island hopping was the American strategy for approaching the Japanese home islands. The term is something of a misnomer. It implies that strongholds were bypassed and left to rot and only truly essential bases, for moving the campaign forward were assaulted. Some bases were bypassed, but there were nearly eighty Allied landings in the push west. A long debate continues over all of those were truly necessary. (One that hits close to home for me, is Iwo Jima. My uncle fought as a member of the 5th Marine Division there. Iwo Jima still generates hot discussion.)

The basic purpose for assaulting the islands, was to establish the final bases from which to launch the invasion of the Japanese home islands. For historical discussions, this would be Okinawa. Other than this purpose, securing Australia from invasion was also a legitimate determinant for early landings.

Beyond those, it gets murkier when you try to decide exactly why one place absolutely had to be invaded over another. Sheltered harbors and sufficient land area for airstrips in range of subsequent objective islands become factors. An argument can be made, that if you are willing wait, and build up a larger naval force, longer “hops” can be made and fewer casualties incurred.

A common feature in island hopping was sea and air bombardment. Tens of thousands of tons of munitions could be expended in just a few hours. Effectiveness was nearly zero. The only time air support or naval fires were considered effective were when there were soldiers or marines in direct contact with the Japanese AND calling in directed fires. Tarawa and Iwo Jima were good examples of small ship (DD and DE) skippers risking their careers to bring their ships in close to shore so they could engage targets in direct fire mode. Ground-pounders loved those guys.

India-Burma-China.

This theater tied down the bulk of the Japanese Army for the duration of the war. The terrain was staggeringly difficult and nearly impossible for Westerners to comprehend. For U.S. military veterans, southern Panama might be a close parallel for the deadly potential of the terrain.

That any fighting was possible for the west was a testament to the global supply capacity organized through the U.S. True, some food sources were local, from India, but not all. The supply efforts by air and ground through this area and into China should be considered a military wonder.

The resources the Allies put into this fight, paid disproportionate dividends in the number of Japanese soldiers tied down and general frustration factor for their leaders.

Submarine Campaign.

The most effective of all the campaigns. If memory serves, more than half all Japanese merchant shipping tonnage was sunk by Allied submariners and about a quarter of their warships. A staggering blow. Like their German counterparts, U.S. submarines had problems with torpedo fuses for the first part of the war. Unlike the Germans, the Allied submarines were never very numerous and were sometimes, especially early in the war, skippered by less than aggressive commanders. Carrier pilots got the newsreel face time, but the sub crews broke the Japanese navy's ability to fight.

Air Campaign.

Strategic bombing runs into the same arguments as in Europe. Lousy accuracy for “precision bombing.” Only about 30% of bombs anywhere near the targets. Terror bombing was normal. Effectiveness debatable. Casualties high so cost/benefit turns emotional fast. Again, some islands were taken solely to support the bombing campaign, so the question of unneeded casualties comes up.

There is one factor concerning fire-bombing of Japanese cities that does bear some mention. Japanese production was different than any other industrialized nation's, because elements of it were decentralized into individual Japanese homes. This was peculiar and had built in inefficiencies. The effect of area fire-bombing on this decentralized production apparatus might have been more effective than the traditional “precision” bombing. I've not seen any reports that stated that this was intentional, so it was likely an accidental side effect.

US-USSR shipments.

The campaign that wasn't. The primary conduit for US lend-lease supplies to the Soviet Union went across the Pacific through the Soviet port of Vladivostok. For the most part, the Japanese did nothing to interfere with this traffic. At best, they threw a little harassment at the ships, nothing more.

The trade was carried out in Soviet flagged ships “gifted” by the U.S. to the USSR. This trade was in addition to the trade through the South Pacific to Iran and US-UK-Murmansk. Any simulation of the war, would have to take this into account. The Japanese had the capability to cut ming-boggling quantities of supplies of every category. All they had to do was reach out and squeeze.

I've studied the US-USSR and earlier UK-USSR shipments, both types of materials and quantities, for years. The USSR does not survive, without those materials.

That the Allies received a free ride in that trade was a gift of untold magnitude.

[thetwo]

I hope these help prepare the ground for the new game.

[arado234]

WOW thetwo thats amazing.How long did it take you to type all of that?

[thetwo]

Type, about eight hours. I spent about twenty, thinking it through. Crafting good thoughts takes effort. I was playing hooky to do it, over the last few weeks. A bit here, a bit there. You, Arado, and Big Al, got me going enough to polish it up enough to post.

Still some parts, I'm not entirely satisfied with, but that's the way it goes.

[SeaMonkey]

Wow 2, this discussion could go on for awhile...to well after the game is out, but I like your comparison of vast oceans to the desert. Can you imagine that some people here don't like maneuvering the task forces around the SC seas like they were land units.

I find it appropriate and my new mod PZAA exemplifies it perfectly. I kind of get mixed up moving the land and sea units around playing except for the blue color.

To summarize the conflict I like Sir Archibald Wavell's clearsighted philosophy.

"Oil, shipping, air and seapower are the keys to this war and they are all interdependent.

Air and sea power can't operate without oil.

Oil, except for limited quantities, needs shipping to arrive at its destination.

Shipping requires air and sea power for protection.

We have access to most of the world's oil, most of the shipping, naval power and potentially the greatest air power once it's fully developed.

Therefore we are bound to win the war."

[arado234]

thetwo your comment about Russia not surviving without lendlease/murmansk is very interesting.It got me researching and from what I found it would have been very close for the Russians in 1941/1942 without our help.In 1943 its amazing how much "stuff"they started to make.

SeaMonkey makes a great point in that right from the start of the war Germany was either just barley able to keep up with fuel demands and by 1941 they started to run a deficit from which they couldnt recover.

I read one other interesting thing which was one of the reasons Germany tried to build higher quality motorised weapons was because they knew they could only supply limited fuel to their armed forces and they felt it would be better to have much better equipment and less of it to have to keep fueled up.Still when you look at overall production figures it was so pitifully hopless for the Axis.

See what you have done to me thetwo.Now you have got me back rereading all my books(ive got hundreds of them)on WW2.My wife just laughs at me and says:there goes mister world war two again.When we first got married one of her friends made the comment when she visited our house was that it was like being in a world war 2 library.

[thetwo]

It's often overlooked how much the British were supplying in 1941. Even when the British were fighting for their lives, in North Africa, they were turning over hundreds of tanks a month to the Soviets (through Iran). It is impossible to understand the Soviet campaigns without looking at the full extent of lend lease. Spam was a delicacy for Soviet Army veterans after the war. The US shipped it over by the thousands of tons.

The German economy was short from the start, not just on fuel. In 1939, I remember reading that German industry had the capacity to process 600,000 tons of iron ore a month more than it was getting. Also, in early 1940, German food supplies were starting to show the strain and potato flour was used to leaven wheat flour.

Transport.

Well, the German Army, started the war as a horse-drawn service and didn't completely transition. Only American industrial might allowed the Allies to truly motorize their armies.

To the extent the Germans did motorize, it was forced by casualties to draft animals. The following is from Franz Halder's war diary.

21 April, 1942:

1.Effect of Winter Battles:

a. Personnel: 1.11.1941-1.4.1942, including sick: 900,000 losses, 450,000 replacements. These numbers include the almost total use of the 1922 year and strong encroachments on the economy.

b. Material: 1.10.1941-15.3.1942: loss of 74,183 vehicles and 2,340 tracked vehicles; addition of 7,441 vehicles (10 percent) and 1,847 tracked vehicles (80 percent).

Weapons: shortages include 28,000 rifles, 14,000 machine guns, 7,000 AT guns, 1,900 guns.

Horses: 15.10.1941-15.3.1942: losses of 179,609, additions of 20,000.

pp. 613-4

That last line is the pertinent one. You can't just manufacture draft animals. The losses came from temperature, lack of feed, or they were slaughtered for food by soldiers.

As for your enjoyment of the subject (or obsession). There is a shared pleasure from discussion with talented people. *(And, at least your wife does not seem to resent it. That's a point in her favor.)

[thetwo]

A book that looks good, I don't have it yet. Hopefully soon. The Ghost Mountain Boys: Their Epic March and the Terrifying Battle for New Guinea, by James Campbell. Crown Publishers

[CSS]

Absolutely a great job very well done!