IJN Fleet Mis-Management

[ajkochev]

I've been reading alot of online articles about the Japanese navy. One thing that always strikes me is the japanese are always portrayed as masters at naval engineering and ahead in naval technology before and throughout the war, but that the ships were poorly managed through out the war and this eventually cost them. Some examples are the Leyte Gulf battle in which the japanese could easily outgun the USN and the sinking of CVs Shinnano, Taiho and possibly Unryu. I'm interested to know others opinions about the IJN navy.

[bengtsson]

This should be a big topic of debate. The IJN is not my specialty, but like everyone I do have opinions. The IJN was very progressive in the adoption of Naval Airpower. This was a big step forward amoung all Navies. The large twin engined land based bomber force, the combination of six Carriers into one task force. Most of this progressivness was because they felt they could never match USA in Battleship construction. So, for a backward reason, they got progressive with Naval Airpower.
They were very capable in surface warfare as well, an equal to any other Navy. But they never had a strategic plan that would hold up against a nation like the USA. Many times capable forces were badly handled.
The experts know more than me, but the mental attitude of the top IJN leaders was well short of what was needed.
Fine ships and well trained men. But very lacking in the modern electronic warfare systems that made USN ships so deadly after 1942. Radar being Number 1, and the vision to train masses of Carrier Pilots. The IJN didn't understand Total war, they were looking to fight a limited war against the USN which was loaded for total war. Again a lack of vision and imagination limited the IJN in the short term, the US economic ability burried them in the long term.

Bob B.

[Jean-Paul Binot]

� the mental attitude of the top IJN leaders was well short of what was needed�

That's the point. Technically, Japan was as up to date as any, and well ahead in several important fields. On top f their technological know how, they had retained much of their martial heritage which made them formidable opponents, both globally and in man-to-man combat.

But they also retained the habits and mentalities coming straight from their feudal past, the samurai code of ethics, the taste for very complex plans that demanded more than a bit of cooperation from their enemies for them to do exactly what was expected.

Japan's experience of modern war was limited to battles against Imperial China, Tsarist Russia and a few siege engagements against German colonial troops. They got from all that an impression that their martial abilities were inherently superior to anybody else. Overconfidence is a very dangerous thing in war.

Nonetheless, some Japanese admirals displayed outstanding grand tactical skills and proved that they knew how to make the fullest of the specific strengths of the forces under their command. Admiral Tanaka in the Solomon campaign is a case in point.

[Laurence Batchelor]

I would never attach the words masters of naval engineering with the Japanese in the inter-war or WW2 period.
Many of their warship designs were questionable at the very least.
Most of their knowledge and know how was based from British experience and teaching and only a small amount was self learnt.

Look at the debacle of the early 1930s when the IJN had to modify many of her latest built warships due to 'stabilty issues' as one such example of this.

The IJN lead the world with 24-inch Oxygen torpedos, but still these were a flawed weapon system.
On the one hand they were far-sighted in seeing the tactical advantage this weapon gave them, on the other hand in the 1930s they were almost reluctant to embrace electronic warfare with the same enthusiasm as other powers.

They embraced carrier airpower more so than any other nation, but that was largely not through choice.
In the interwar period according to Commander Hara all the cream of the officer corp still was drafted to the Battleships 1st, cruisers 2nd, destroyers 3rd and carriers and submarines were 4th and 5th (can't remember the order for these).
In a large way the the IJN was still battleship-centric in 1941, though compared to other navies she was less so.

When you say they were poorly managed yes this is true.
Intelliegence capability was not as good as it should have been and crucially inter-service cooperation also between their Army & Navy, hindered just about every operation they undertook.

In the engagement at Leyte that you refer to, in large part this is down to a lack of flexability in the command structure allowing the commander on the spot some initiative. The carriers you mention well that goes back to my points on the engineering abilities and safety.

I think Hara sums up the IJN in WW2 beautifully when he talks about her initial succession of victories.
He states the IJN's unchallenged successes upto Midway were merely down to the IJN blundering less than the Allies!

[Werner]

I would never attach the words masters of naval engineering with the Japanese in the inter-war or WW2 period.
Many of their warship designs were questionable at the very least.

I would second this point of view. Their technology, particularly after the early 1920s was just an extrapolation of British practice of the late teens, not realizing the British themselves had made a huge break with their prior methods.

We have pretty well established that the last generation fire controls on ships like Yamato were no more effective than the instruments Beatty and Jellicoe took into battle in 1916. Furthermore, the chaos of the Japanese manufacturing and procurement sectors meant the Army might have an acceptable warning Radar, but the Navy would be denied access to even the design blueprints.

[chuck]

I would never attach the words masters of naval engineering with the Japanese in the inter-war or WW2 period.
Many of their warship designs were questionable at the very least.
Most of their knowledge and know how was based from British experience and teaching and only a small amount was self learnt.:

I would not think that is a fair characterization. The Japanese warships had many shortcomings, but they were also very innovative in many fundamental ways. Their structural and hydrodynamic concepts from 1920s and 1930s were well ahead of the rest of the world and by fair measure well beyond what would have been the state of the art in the rest of the world even at 1945. The questionable designs emerging from Japanese naval establishment is more the result of the character of one man and an unfavorable balance of power between the naval staff and the engineering staff under that man, then to general standard of naval engineering overall. In so far as much of what they knew were taught by the British that would be inevitable as they only came on the scene when major portion of modern naval sciences has already been developed elsewhere. But between 1920 and 1940 they certainly did not follow British lead and produced more notable and fundamental structural innovations than the British themselves. The notion that their practices during the 1920s and 1930s were extensions of British practice during the teens is utterly without foundation. Rather, many structural concepts pioneered by the Japanese in 1920s and 1930s were not fully absorbed in the rest of the world until the 1950s.

[chuck]

We have pretty well established that the last generation fire controls on ships like Yamato were no more effective than the instruments Beatty and Jellicoe took into battle in 1916.

Please use "I" when there is no more than 1 in the "We".

[Werner]

We have pretty well established that the last generation fire controls on ships like Yamato were no more effective than the instruments Beatty and Jellicoe took into battle in 1916.

Please use "I" when there is no more than 1 in the "We".

OK, smarty, show me Japanese engagements with more than one or two major caliber Japanese hits at Jutland ranges.

[Werner]

Please use "I" when there is no more than 1 in the "We".

By the way, Warner's Grammar and Composition ( http://www.amazon.com/English-Grammar-C ... 9990824169 ) will tell you not to use the numerical "one" in this instance.

You might invest in one.

[Laurence Batchelor]

We have pretty well established that the last generation fire controls on ships like Yamato were no more effective than the instruments Beatty and Jellicoe took into battle in 1916.

Please use "I" when there is no more than 1 in the "We".

So true!
You have only convinced yourself who was already convinced anyway!

...hydrodynamic concepts from 1920s and 1930s were well ahead of the rest of the world and by fair measure well beyond what would have been the state of the art in the rest of the world even at 1945

I only know of Yamato's bulbous bow, can you state a few more examples please from the 1920s to highlight this fact?

Could the point not be made about Transom sterns with the USN & RN?
Yet I haven't see the same tags of 'brillant' 'far-sighted' 'ahead of the rest of the world' being dished out in this instance.

I don't agree with Werner's point on 'notion that their practices during the 1920s and 1930s were extensions of British practice during the teens' however.
The IJN establishment was a progressive Navy in the Interwar years yet I personally don't see this as their choice or some sort of Japanese clever scientific/engineering progress.

It was forced upon them as they wished to expand their navy proportionally more so than others, acquire new territory, make individual ships more powerful on a ship-to-sip basis than any future enemy and above all they had money and freedom to do this.

I ask the question if other powers in the world had been as militarist in the Interwar period would they have not produced better designs?

[Werner]

From Aoba to Suzuya their cruiser designs went through two or three major modifications simply to correct design or construction errors. Most of their modern fleet was grotesquely topheavy and would have suffered incredibly fighting Hood or Bismarck off Iceland.

The cruiser force suffered from defective hydraulics and could not achieve their advertised rate of fire because of the failure of guns to run out properly before salvos.

[NAVMACS_V2]

One problem the IJN had after 1942 was that their allocation for new aircraft was the same as pre-Midway even though the Japanese Army suffered virtually no losses during that timeframe. The Army continued to get the lion's share of aircraft production when units in Manchuria had no need of additional aircraft.

This was due to the fact that the general staff was run by the army and the navy got short shrift when it came to interservice rivalries. The IJN was unable to acquire new aircraft in the quantities necessary to rebuild their naval airwings, and combined with their rigid pilot training programs early in the war meant by 1944 they were using carriers as decoys instead of tactical weapons because they had neither sufficient aircraft nor adequately trained pilots.

By the battle of the Philippine Sea most of the Japanese carrier pilots only had a few hours of actual flight time and many had never made a carrier landing before they were sent to the fleet. This made their carriers sitting ducks in the final naval battles of the war.

[Werner]

I don't agree with Werner's point on 'notion that their practices during the 1920s and 1930s were extensions of British practice during the teens' however.

I am quoting directly Roger Chesneau in the Conway Books (p.168).

After the withdrawal of the Semphill mission, they spent a lot of energy anticipating what the British might do next.

I suggest you re-think your research on this topic.

[Laurence Batchelor]

I am quoting directly Roger Chesneau in the Conway Books (p.168).

I suggest you re-think your research on this topic.

As a technical author on the IJN he don't hold much weight in my kitchen I'm afraid

Do you mean Conways All the World's Fighting ships 1922-1946?

[Werner]

That was the issue at hand, however it is reiterated at several other locations by other authors. Roger has at least passed muster several times. Can you name an author who speaks to the unique, non-British inspired nature of Japanese naval design or practice?

Especially in the area of naval aviation, their closed hangars and practice of servicing aircraft below the flight deck is English in origin. The American practice of keeping airworthy planes on the flight deck is much more amenable to Pacific operations.

The Academy in Hiroshima is constructed of bricks taken from Portsmouth.

[chuck]

I only know of Yamato's bulbous bow, can you state a few more examples please from the 1920s to highlight this fact?

Japanese torpedo body design is credited with give the weapons 1.5 or 2 knots above what would have been possible with other designs up to the start of WW2. Japanese shaft bracketing is said to save several hundred horse powers compared to conventional designs. Japanese wavy sheerline is based on a intelligent analysis of ship's hydrodynamic stability in damaged condition, and achieves the purpose the maximizing the angle of list a ship can assume without putting any part of her deck under water.

Transom stern was indeed a British innovation. I don't know if the British thought of it first, but they attempted to apply it in its classical flat stern form to a major warship first. However, it is not clear to me if they were in fact so far ahead of their time. The thing that makes transom work is not the characteristic flat stern, but a sharp knuckle on the bottom of the stern that is immersed in low speed and effectively lengthen the ship's equivalent hydrodynamic length while the ship's stern squats down at high speed. That particular sharp edge appears on the stern of Japanese destroyers and cruisers at about the same time. They did not quite possess what we would now call transom stern - their sterns being vertical with a sharp 90 degree bend on the bottom like a transom stern, but is elliptical instead of flat - but they clearly understood why transom stern worked, and took advantage of that knowledge, at the same time the British were applying the true transom.

Incidently the Yamato does not have a transom stern, either in the full modern sense or in the hidden sense with a underwater chine, even if it looked like she did and is often credited with one in western press. She had a goofy stern designed to enable float plane recovery via a trailing floating mat while the ship is underway.

[Werner]

I am quoting directly Roger Chesneau in the Conway Books (p.168).

I suggest you re-think your research on this topic.

As a technical author on the IJN he don't hold much weight in my kitchen I'm afraid

Do you mean Conways All the World's Fighting ships 1922-1946?

Google turns up 578 articles by Roger. How many by Laurence?

[Laurence Batchelor]

Can you name an author who speaks to the unique, non-British inspired nature of Japanese naval design or practice?

Nope I cannot.
I asked Ian Sturton another contributor to Conways last year and who is very knowleagable on the IJN in general and it would seem there is a complete lack of english language material on the IJN as a whole.

What is needed is someone in Japan like David K. Brown to come along, retire and go to town on the design and construction of their vessels.

We still await for such a person in the English speaking world.

Some of the things you state Chcuk are as ever new to me.
But I still don't see anything truely making the Japanese stand out technically in the world in the undisputed lead.
Or am I missing the point?
Surely say 5 different examples of pioneering naval engineering could be stated for most major naval powers in the Interwar period?

Off the top of my head the USN for efficient machinery.
The RN for seaworthyness and stability.
The DKM for the best Submarine pressure hulls.
The RM for excellent 15-inch ordnance.
The French for producing some of the best balanced designs and so on.

So why should the IJN still be considered in design terms in the Interwar period as the undisputed master?

[Werner]

So why should Japan be considered in design terms in the Interwar period as the undisputed master?

Because Chuck lives as a survivor or the 1970s-1980s "Saturday Night" cult of Nippon worshipers.

[Laurence Batchelor]

Google turns up 578 articles by Roger. How many by Laurence?

No way has he wrote that many edited journal articles!
Most Professors in their respective fields haven't.

Also considering the age difference between me and him I'm happy with were I am on the start of my 10year research project.