Agreed. Much is made of IJN mistakes at Midway, which cost them 4 of their CVs, but by the end of 1942, the USN had also lost 4 CVs.
Exactly, and in early ’43, the USN wound up needing to borrow a carrier from the British to supplement their only working carrier in the Pacific area.
An interesting thought experiment is the question of how the war would have turned out had America not enjoyed a ten to one advantage in war-making potential.
Japan had the advantage of several years of experience in war, albeit against a country without a navy, and they were taking the enemy seriously where the US simply assumed they could show up and win. By all accounts, the USN was horribly unprepared.
In early ’43, the IJN enjoyed a four-to-one advantage in carriers in the Pacific, but wasn’t able to capitalize on the situation because their lack of ability to replenish aircrew, lack of fuel, rebuild resources, etc. By late ’43, the overwhelming might of the US manufacturing was in full swing and anything the Japanese could do was too little and too late.
As further elaboration, something very ironic about this is that RAMR Kelly “Terrible” Turner was the commander of the Amphibious Force, South Pacific Force.
Turner was known for his complicated personality, furious temper, heavy drinking and caustic personality. In his role of war planning, he fought turf battles prewar to be in charge of intelligence and withheld critical information from Kimmel and other local commanders. This intelligence included his analysis that there was a good possibility that Pearl Harbor could be a target.
Although I haven’t been able to verify this, I think it’s possible that Turner was behind the move to keep the existence of Watchtower from the reconnaissance plane crews and airbases.
Without that knowledge, then the aircrews and intel / debriefing officers were continuing with their primary task of looking for potential threats to Australia itself, rather than to the landings in and around Guadalcanal and the ships, of which they didn’t know was occuring.
These early battles demonstrated the problems with commanders needing to ask for resources from other services or commands rather than being able to issue orders.
Yes, but in 1942 the IJN had five carriers sunk.
And by the end of 43 the USN had 20 in service, and hadnt lost any.
In 1944, the USN had 25 in service, with one sunk. The IJN had 5 in service and 8 sunk.
1945- USN 34 and 5, IJN 18 and 14 sunk.
In 1942 the IJN lost 4 CVs plus 2 CVLs.
Maybe there would have been no surprise attack on Pearl Harbor at all? Either because the US would have viewed its existing fleet as a more scarce resource (and so not hazarded it with the forward deployment to begin with), or because the Japanese military would have seen that it didn’t need to worry so much about rushing to deliver a knock-out blow to the US fleet concurrent with all its other operations surrounding December 7/8, 1941, and instead employed the IJN in maximizing its gains in the western Pacific, then deal with the US fleet if and when it threatened to contest those gains. Something like a Schlieffen Plan for the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
Or, you know, maybe they’d have just done everything they did, only for longer. Alt-history is hard.
How do you get a 4:1 advantage in carriers for the IJN in early ‘43? IIRC, it was 2 Shokaku class vs Enterprise and Saratoga.
At a guess I’m assuming @TokyoBayer is including the Hiyo and Junyo in IJN carrier totals as well as the fact that Saratoga spent 3 months limping back to Pearl Harbor and in drydock being repaired there after being torpedoed.
I’d forgotten about those 2. Now it makes sense.
Obviously I’m not going to win any award for clear writing, but yes, I intended to include something so people could tell I was including the light carriers for the IJN and that Saratoga was out of action.
Earlier in the post, I had said:
so while I had that in my mind, I should have made that clearer.
For the Hiyo escort class carriers, obviously Hiyo and Junyo at 25 knots could not keep up with the faster fleet carriers, but they were performing operations in the Solomon Islands and New Guinea.
I think of them as fleet carriers. Like you say, they were used as fleet carriers.
Hiyō and Junyō were indeed used as fleet carriers after Midway due to the loss of Kidō Butai, but were actually intended as auxiliaries. They were hybrids (that’s the polite word): ocean liners whose construction was subsidized by the Navy Ministry with the understanding that they could be taken over and converted to aircraft carriers on demand. Which actually happened before they were finished, but after most of their propulsion machinery had been installed; this resulted in a maximum speed of a little over 25 knots, at least ten knots slower than Sōryū and Hiryū.
As far as capability was concerned, they could accommodate a larger air group than light carriers like Zuihō, but not as large as an actual fleet carrier. In addition, their lower speed meant that they could only launch the B5N level/torpedo bomber — described in Shattered Sword as “a pig” — when wind conditions were optimal. Since IJN doctrine specified coordinated attacks by dive and level bombers, this reduced their effectiveness.
The USN also preferred coordinated attacks by dive and torpedo bombers because that forced the CAP to respond to enemies at two different altitudes, and well as overwhelming the ships, with wanting to take conflicting types of evasive maneuvers.
The US did better with coordinated attacks at the Battle of Coral Sea but Midway was just piecemeal.
Where the Japanese really excelled was having combined attacks from multiple carriers, something it took the USN years into the war before they were able to copy that.
Because of the differences between tops speeds of the Hiyō class and Sōryū and Hiryū, it was difficult for them to be on a combined mission, which negated this major advantage of the IJN.
Talking about the ship speed required to launch planes, the B5N2 level / torpedo bomber had the following characteristics:
Max takeoff weight: 4,100 kg (9,039 lb)
Powerplant: 1 × Nakajima Sakae 11 14-cylinder air-cooled radial piston engine, 750 kW (1,000 hp) for take-off
while the D3A dive bomber was:
Gross weight: 3,800 kg (8,378 lb)
Powerplant: 1 × Mitsubishi Kinsei 54 14-cylinder air-cooled radial piston engine, 970 kW (1,300 hp) for take-off.
The minimum speed by a carrier for the B5N2 was twenty six knots but 30 knots was better. Even the older fleet carrier Kaga, whose top speed was 28 knots, struggled unless there was sufficient wind.
Because the Hiyō class was only 25 knots, they couldn’t reliably launch the B5N2.