One of the Japanese problems throughout the war was their reconnaissance - this was deemed to be of less importance than attack, so the carrier air groups did not normally carry out this mission, and did not include any scout aircraft. It was left up to the floatplanes from the accompanying cruisers to try and find the enemy ships.
USN and IJN carriers (except Taiho) were similar in that the entire hangar (s) were unprotected. The USN ships had better firefighting equipment by 1944, but in 1942, if you hit an American or Japanese carrier while it had fueled aircraft aboard (Wasp, Akagi, etc.), it was f**ked. If you hit it while the gas was secured (Yorktown, Shokaku, Hornet), it could take a lot of damage and stay afloat (although Lexington didn’t).
The modern IJN fleet carriers had another form of ‘protection’ that the American carriers lacked: they could, and did, outrun torpedoes. The American torpedoes were slow, around 30 knots IIRC. A Japanese torpedo moving at 42 knots was harder to dodge.
I was reading an interesting article on the interwar period which compared and contrasted the US Army, USN, IJA and IJN developments over a wide range of topics. That reminded me of this thread so here we go.
TLDR version, it was not the US loss of battleships which inspired better damage control measure, but rather that this fit into the greater USN combat doctrines.
(Much) longer version:
One of things that really needs to be remembered about the Pacific War was the impossibility of it. Before the war, Japan’s economy was only about 15% of that of the US, so a rough approximation would be looking at the UK and America now. With all due respects to our friends on that side of the pond, there simply wouldn’t be any way for the Brits to win a war of attrition.
I know that war between us “special friends” is highly unlikely, but suppose that the Brits finally got fed up with hearing “erb” one too many times and decided it was time to do something about it.
The only hope for the Brits would be a quick war that the US gets tired of fighting and allows the Brits to walk free.
OK, clearly not a great analogy, but the point is that if America got serious, Japan couldn’t have won the war. The only reason they were in contention was the the US wasn’t prepared and the Japanese overbuild their military, given the size of the economy.
I believe that unwilling to look at the situation honestly, the Japanese decided to create a new reality in which they could find a way to win. The IJA and IJN took different paths. The IJA believed that the Yamato -damashii (大和魂, " Japanese spirit ") would be sufficient to overcome the overwhelming material superiority.
The IJN believed they could inflict a quick decisive victory over the Americans and then the US would roll over and allow Japan to dominate in Asia. Sadly for them, they misread American intentions.
In the interwar era, both sides made assumptions, some better than others. The IJN playbook was written assuming that the US would send its fleet rushing over the Pacific, shades of the Russian response in 1905.
The IJN subs and land and carrier-based planes would attack, as well as carrying out night attacks by cruisers destroyers, so that the US fleet would be whittled down. Finally, they would meet in the dramatic decisive battle. The Japanese would win the battle, the US would sue for peace and all would be well.
Based on that, the IJN was designed around offensive firepower and they were willing to sacrifice ships, planes and men. Consequently, as others have pointed out, they avoided using carrier planes for scouting, for example. Their planes were notorious for lacking protection such as self-sealing gas tanks and light armor in order to gain speed and distance.
The IJN did a minimal amount of damage control, but the idea that ships could be sacrificed to gain just a little edge on offence really drove their doctrine. The war was going to be short and intense so losing a ship or two wouldn’t really matter if the US were defeated.
Besides completely getting the nature of the upcoming war wrong, their mistake was to assume these tradeoffs were more stark than they really were. They could have added defensive measures without completely sacrificing offensive areas. However, a damaged ship would not have added to the decisive battle so it didn’t really matter if the ship were sunk or simply damaged.
OTOH, the US consistently emphasized survivability, which falls in line with their doctrine of a longer war of attrition. This can be seen in everything from the rugged nature of US fighters, better AA on ships and damage control.
I’m not ready to buy into the IJN being less focused on defensive aspects in ship design. Consider this:
Armor— Hiryu, smaller than the US Yorktown class, carried more armor.
Speed—as I mentioned in an earlier post, higher speed was a defensive asset.
Torpedo defense—the IJN carriers had torpedo defense systems. It wasn’t deep enough to contain a torpedo hit, but it might absorb enough to limit the damage. The Yorktowns, IIRC, had no TDS.
AA—for all the criticisms of IJN carriers AA, the Yorktowns had fewer 5”, fewer 1.1 (vs 25mm), and a few useless .50 cal.
I couldn’t find another appropriate thread so I’ll drop this here. I’m not sure what unanswered questions remain about the battle but surveying the wreckage could provide important information.
I’m only a couple of years late, but I have to hard disagree with this assessment. If anything, on the whole Japanese aerial reconnaissance throughout the war was superior to that of the Americans. Midway was an exception to the norm where the Japanese spotted the Americans either before or at roughly the same time that Americans spotted the Japanese. That the US didn’t make particularly effective use of their own cruiser floatplanes early in the war is a failing on the Americans part, not just in carrier battle but in general. See for example the Battle of Savo Island where not only did Mikawa’s cruiser’s floatplanes locate and identify the Allied fleet in the afternoon before the night battle, but they also dropped flares to illuminate the Allied ships during the night battle. The only practical effect the floatplanes of Allied cruisers had on the battle was to cause fires when hit, further illuminating the Allied cruisers.
Japan’s reliance for cruisers to provide reconnaissance with their floatplanes makes much more sense when one considers that the Kido Butai never went anywhere without both Tone class cruisers, which replaced aft gun turrets with a floatplane deck. The two of them combined provided a dozen dedicated scout floatplanes without taking up any hanger space on the carriers.
Hiryu had 12 5" dp, and 31 25mm (The IJN 25mm turned out to be poor AA guns). The USS Yorktown had 12X5"dp, 32 excellent 40Mm aa, and 46X 20 mm. The flak value of the Yorktown was massively superior./
The two CV had about the same speed.
Yorktown belt was 4" max, deck 1.5"- 2.5", and 4" bulkheads. Hiryu= belt 5.9" max, deck 2.2" max or about the same.
That was the Essex-class Yorktown. CV-5 had 8 5"/38, 4 quad 1.1", 24x 20mm and 24 .50 MGs, so like most prewar ships, rather deficient in AA compared to later-war armament.
But the real key was doctrine. At least early in the war, the IJN model was to let the carriers maneuver freely in the event of an air attack, though evasion would make AA gun aiming more difficult. The USN brought cruisers close in to add to the flak protection of the carriers; though at Midway, Portland and Astoria only had 5" DP and .50 cal in their AA suites. The different approaches makes a simple one-to-one comparison difficult.
Agreed on all points. Most of the naval literature available in the US is written by Americans. Even the best authors sometimes show bias when comparing foreign vs domestic designs and doctrine.
Re: floatplane scouts vs dive bomber scouts, the SBDs typically covered their search sector while carrying a 500 pound bomb and would attack after reporting a contact.
Because Yorktown was damaged at Coral Sea, her max speed at Midway was 29 knots. But as I mentioned in my earlier post, the critical delta was between either carrier and the speed of the torpedoes aimed at them. Hiryu was 4 knots faster than an American torpedo. Yorktown had to dodge 42-knot torpedoes.
As for your armor comparison, those numbers don’t tell the whole story. The Japanese armor belt was attached to the hull, where it could prevent flooding from hits and splinters. It also created a continuous longitudinal strength girder that helped the hull resist damage from twisting and whipping. Additionally, the belt was inclined, which increased its resistance vs vertical belt armor.
American cruisers and carriers also had an exterior belt, but it was only long enough to cover the machinery spaces. The magazines and avgas tanks, forward and aft of the machinery spaces, had an internal armored longitudinal bulkhead instead of belt armor. This saved weight, but left much more of the waterline unprotected by armor. The British also used these armored internal boxes on most of their cruisers. Unknown at the time was that all those right angles in the armor layout created stress points.
Overall, I rate the Yorktowns better than Hiryu, but the Japanese ship is considerably better armored.
Just to add, the 1.1" proved to be about as effective as AAA as the Japanese 25mm, that is to say not very. They were phased out of service along with the .50 HMGs as naval AAA pretty much as fast as they could be replaced by production of 20mm and 40mm guns.
But Yamamoto himself wrote that the Midway four carriers had the best air crew that the IJN had, and therefore not having the other two fleet carriers wasn’t so bad…
Oh well, Whats the use of one Goliath or one Hercules or one Bismarck ? or one Kido Butai ? . They just get taken down. Strength comes from a long network of forces, and better that they are flexible to repair a gap… Well by 1945, USA had 70 escort carriers. And a heap more …
Its possible they knew that dividing was wrong given the odds of not attritioning too quick being so bad, but they figured that having a single Kido Butai was a sign of weakness, that the better force would be able to divide up… they wanted to show strength to force the USA to the east Pacific. Hawaii as the hostage… Peace treaty, or we attack Hawaii … then the West coast of USA… Alaska is a walk in the park for us! they thought.
Yamamato did want six carriers at Midway.
He didnt want six carriers at Coral Sea, he didn’t want to send any. Perhaps Coral Sea should have been all six or zero hey.
Zero kido butai at Port Morseby ? then the invasion force could be massacred.
All six ? Then perhaps the six would bait in the USN as too big a target… a Bismarck, a sink at any cost target… close to Australia… impossible for him to know what would happen then ? He didnt know if they could be trapped in the Coral Sea… attritioned to death. His bosses, top brass and the Emperor, demanded it… they had group think…sounds easy, but it was quite an overreach … Maybe the USN played it wrong and should have let the forces get in further than they could retreat from ? They weren’t to know. I suspect the US top brass also felt "We have to get them to start a big battle somewhere, they have to learn to attack aggressively. To be our Kido Butai ! This is ww2, they aren’t our defense force, they are our attack force… got to get them switched on to that… "
Port Moresby and Midway were just hairbrained . …Many whatif’s don’t play out well for the IJN… at best they turn into settled in wars of attrition even if they achieve the goals of their initial invasion. Either could have been the site of the battle of attrition of fleet carriers and their pilots instead of at Guadalcanal. Well in some ways New Guinea/Solomons was a parallel attrition war to Guadacanal.
Why didn’t USN come to assist with New Guinea and Solomon Islands, ? The Australian army went in on the ground, to attack coastal bases. Aren’t coastal bases best bombarded by battleships not airforce planes like the medium bombers, day fighters, handgrenades ??? Why was it left to Macarthur??? He was seen to demand the USN stay away ,except when it was absolutely necessary to demand the USN do the job. (USN had to do a lot of “You can’t do it ? well neither can we !”).
I think it goes along the same lines… They have to be left to win this battle alone, they have to have a victory, to gain confidence in attack ,because we are on the back foot, we have to start regaining land to edge closer toward Japan and so now is the time to let the US/ allied Army battle alone , and not just be a shadow of the USN… So the result is the Australian and some american army is sent to battle the Japanese in the New Guinea area, and alone in the north Solomons , without naval support, even though naval support is so obviously beneficial… if there was a chance the army could do it alone, they did it.
I think a key factor in Yamamoto’s personality is that he loved the thrill of gambling. He constantly bet on all kinds of games.
I feel that he had been able to keep his gambling in his personal life separate from his professional career. But those two aspects were present in the same mind. I feel that at some point in the early weeks of the war, Japan’s military success triggered Yamamoto’s gambling instincts. He started acting like he was on a hot streak in a casino; he wasn’t looking at the odds anymore, he just kept betting higher and higher amounts.
And then when he got word that the Akagi, the Kaga, and the Soryu were lost, he woke up. He realized he had bet everything and lost it all. And everything in this case wasn’t just his personal fortune. He had bet the Japanese navy.
One good reason for using cruiser-based planes rather than using carrier planes is the inconvenience of having to recover the search planes, something which caused delay to the launch of the strike from TF 17 (Yorktown). However, if you don’t have enough cruiser scout planes, you don’t have a choice, and you do what’s necessary. Unfortunately for the Japanese, they didn’t have a doctrine of using carrier planes for scouting at this point in the war.
Tone and Chikuma each normally carried five aircraft each, but unfortunately, only three Type O floatplanes (Aichi E13A) and two of the older, shorter range Type 95. Apparently, only five Type Zero float planes were available for Midway. The shorter range Type 95 planes were utilized for antisub patrols.
The basic reconnaissance plan at Midway was to use seven planes:
(A) two Type 97 Carrier Attack Bomber “Kate” torpedo bombers, one each from Akagi and Kaga;
(B) a total of four Type O float planes, two each from Tone and Chikuma;
(C) one Type 95 from Haruna. The last one had a shortened pattern because it didn’t have the range for a full search pattern.
The problem with the Japanese search plan was simply that they had too much area to cover, with 176,000 square miles, an area larger than Sweden, something they were trying to cover with seven planes.
Given the limitations of the weather and such, the Japanese efforts obviously weren’t sufficient, something that the Yamamoto’s chief of staff Ugaki noted himself in his diary on May 7th.
Later in the war, two phase search patterns were introduced, but it wasn’t standard for either side yet.
It’s been argued that the IJN search pattern was perfunctory without a real attempt at searching for any possible US carriers. The search plan was created with the presumption that the Japanese fleet would enjoy the element of surprise, as well as the expectation that there would already be two picket lines of submarines in place across the anticipated line of advance of the Americans.
Unfortunately, the launch of the subs themselves was delayed, and this information was not relayed to the strike force. The sub search doctrine itself was flawed, with subs in static positions, non-overlapping potions rather than patrol boxes.
(Also note the dismal results of American subs at the battle as well.)
From here:
The overly complex Japanese plans anticipated that the US carriers would not possibly sortie until after the attack, and could not possibly be in the area. As such, there wasn’t an urgent need for more detailed reconnaissance.
Another major blunder by the Japanese was the failure to analysis the various intelligence indicating that the US was aware of the Japanese plans and was actively taking countermeasures, a possibility summarily dismissed at the war game phase of the planning.
Except note that launching and recovering floatplanes takes a much longer time than carrier based.
No, it doesn’t, and much more importantly launching and recovering floatplanes from cruisers takes exactly zero of the carrier’s time and doesn’t require the entire task force to turn into the wind to launch and recover scouts. As @TokyoBayer noted in the first sentence of his excellent post just above,
Another factor that influenced the IJN’s dependence on crusier-based floatplanes for scouting was its obsession with offensive capability (sometimes at the expense of other considerations such as survivability). For carrier operations, this meant that any attack should be carried out by coordinated dive bombers and level bombers (the latter carrying bombs or torpedoes, depending on the target) supported by fighters; and as frequently happens, “should” calcified into “must.” So while carrier-based planes could be used for searches and antisub patrols enroute to the battle zone, once there they were to be kept available for attacks. Indeed, it was somewhat of a departure that at Midway two B5Ns — one each from Akagi and Kaga — joined the morning search.
In addition, carriers flight decks would be doing only one action at a time:
Summary
The 14-page, linked Naval War College Review article is written by the two authors of Shattered Sword (along with another author) but was published while they were still researching and writing the book.
It’s an interesting article for anyone interested in carrier operations and was written while the authors were still making a case against the previously widely believed myth (based on a lie) that the Japanese carriers were chock-full of planes ready for their strike on the US carriers, just minutes or seconds away from launching when the fateful US diving bombing occurred.
I posted earlier about Yorktown’s need to break away to recover the scout planes, but all aspects of the search could potentially disrupt operations, although they should be minimalized. Still, it’s not a bad doctrine, provided one had enough cruiser-based search planes.
Coming back to this:
Yes, aerial reconnaissance was really hit or miss, with the emphasis on miss.
Summary
At Coral Sea, and many other encounters, the combatants both missed each other repeatedly, as well as misidentified enemy ships. Worse, a group of B-17s mistook TF 44, cruisers HMAS Australia, Hobart, and USS Chicago, along with three destroyers, for enemy ships and bombed them, but fortunately without hitting any.
A Japanese carrier scout from Shōkaku reported that they had sighted “one carrier, one cruiser and three destroyers, when in fact, they had actually sighted and misidentified the oiler Neosho and destroyer Sims.
In the excellent post by @dissonance above concerning the Battle of Savo Island, one of the worst defeats in USN history, a RAAF Hudson reconnaissance aircraft spotted Mikawa’s forces at 10:25 in the morning. Because in experience, poor training in plane recognition and the lack of any ship recognition aids onboard, the report by Hudson 218 erroneously identified two of the cruisers as seaplane tenders in the force. This had profound consequences for later command decisions.
Because of the complexities of the command structures and other issues, the report didn’t make it to RADM Turner, the US commander of the amphibious fleet and over the screening force until over eight hours later.
The reconnaissance aircraft were operating under the command of the Army in the South West Pacific Area while the naval forces defending Guadalcanal were in the South Pacific Area. The Army and Navy had agreements to share information between them, but it was overly complex.
The report was sent at 1025, but not acknowledged by the base at Fall River, New Guinea. When the plane returned at 1242, the pilot reported it in person. However, the reconnaissance plane crews and airbase were not informed of the Operation Watchtower and thus this information was not seen as urgent.
It was sent to Port Moresby, New Guinea then to Townsville Australia, where it sat for 3 ½ hours before being sent to Brisbane at 1820 where it was dispatched to Canberra at 1825 before getting transmitted to the USN at Pearl Harbor at 1837 and then finally to Turner at 1845. A second report was similarly sent the long way and didn’t arrive until close to 2200.
Turner also requested a search of the Slot be made by Catalina float planes under the command of ADM John S. McCain Sr. (also outside of Turner’s direct command) but that search was not done, and worse, the fact that it was not conducted was not reported back to Turner until 0200ish.
Fletcher’s carriers could have been utilized for searching had they known that McCain’s planes were not flying.
And of course, as @ dissonance notes the 15 cruiser floatplanes were never used that day, and their only contribution was to create fires bright enough to allow the Japanese to turn off their search lights and add to the damage which sank four heavy cruisers and a destroyer and damaged one more heavy cruiser.
The mistakes made by the Allies in all aspects of the Battle of Savo Island were horrific.
As @Capn_Carl notes, most of the WWII naval literature is written by Americans. It’s interesting to read the changing narrative of the Pacific War. Many earlier books still conveyed the sense of dispair which the Allied navies had in early encounters with the Japanese.
ISTM that most casual readers have a sense that the blunders by the IJN at Midway changed everything and that it was all smooth sailing for the USN after June, 1942, when in fact, the fall of that year demonstrated how embarrassing bad the Americans were while they were still learning how to fight.
Indeed. There is a startling tonnage of American naval steel in Ironbottom Sound from the Solomons campaign.