Thinking about the WW2 pacific campaign and that level of technology, if one side was able to gain air superiority but the other was able to gain underwater superiority (or whatever that is called), which would be the greatest advantage?
Some thoughts:
Air has speed advantage but subs have extensive range. Both can be used for carrying supplies, but nowhere as efficiently as cargo ships. Both would be a threat to conventional shipping.
IIRC, more ships were sunk in the Pacific by submarines than by aircraft or surface ships. If this is incorrect, I will stand corrected.
Diesel-electric subs had a major problem: They had to surface to recharge their batteries. On the surface they were vulnerable. They could be seen. Without recharging the batteries, they could not operate underwater for very long. They could easily be attacked by aircraft.
I used to be in the Civil Air Patrol. From the CAP site (emphasis mine):
Remember that these were light aircraft. Think ‘Cessna’ or ‘Piper’. Now, I doubt that U-boat operations were withdrawn ‘because of those damned little airplanes’; but they did have some effect.
The military had long-range bombers that were used in maritime patrol. Modified RAF B-24 Liberators are credited with helping to close the Atlantic Gap during the Battle of the Atlantic. Given that submarines had to surface to recharge, and given that long-range bombers were 15 or 20 times faster than submarines, it seems to me that submarines would lose out to air superiority.
Two Soviet Army Generals meet in Paris. “By the way,” one asked to the other, “who won the air war?”
Clearly, the Allies; the Americans in the Pacific, and the British and Americans in the ETO. (BTW, Soviet air assaults were fairly effective against the Panzers.) But it’s true that the war was not won by air power alone. Still, air superiority was necessary. Göring and Hitler hoped to invade England; but they couldn’t do it without destroying the RAF. And they nearly did it. Thankfully, they turned to bombing cities instead of aerodromes. This allowed the RAF to regain its strength, and Operation Seelöwe could not succeed with the danger of attack from above.
The OP seems to be asking about the logistics of keeping ground troops supplied. The Germans tried to do this by air during the Battle of Stalingrad. I don’t recall the tonnage required to support the German army, but the Luftwaffe could barely carry half of what the army needed. (Source: Adolf Galland, The First And The Last.) It is said that ‘an army travels on its stomach’. It also travels on diesel fuel, gasoline, ammunition, vehicles, and so on. Aircraft were not up to the task of carrying the sheer volume of materiél required. The Japanese built the Kokusai Ki-105 Ohtori to carry aviation fuel to its fighter aircraft. It burned 80 percent of the fuel it was carrying to get that fuel from the oil fields in Sumatra to Japan.
So ships are used to transport the tonnage. Submarines were very effective at stopping shipping, and both sides used them. But as I have said, submarines were vulnerable to air attack. The convoy system, with its armed escorts, also reduced their effectiveness. And surface ships were also vulnerable to attack by aircraft. So while you could not ‘bomb the enemy into submission’, you could interrupt their supply lines from the air and isolate their ground forces.
In the Second World War, air power. Consider what happened in the Atlantic; more German submarines were sunk by airplanes than by Allied ships. In WWII, submarines could not remain submerged; an enemy with air supremacy would present a near-constant threat to every sub in the ocean.
IIRC, American subs sank 52% of al the Japanese shipping sunk in the war, while comprising only 2% of the US Navy.
In the Pacific, whoever controls the shipping lanes wins, especially of you are talking WWII technology. If carriers couldn’t operate because of submarines, the submarine side would win.
That might be different in a different, smaller ocean.
However, long-range bombers could launch from island airfields and attack the submarines. Didn’t I give as an example the Japanese failing to carry enough fuel for their aircraft? Yes. But we’re assuming a scenario in which one side owns the skies and the other owns the sea. Coastal patrols, as shown by the CAP during WWII, have an effect even using GA aircraft. Bolster those forces with military aircraft, and you eliminate the costal threat or at least reduce it to nuissance level. Your ships may not be able to touch the subs, since the enemy has superiority, but your aircraft can gain a radius of sea superiority by bombing the subs. Once that is done, you can start moving things by sea. Reach an island large enough for an airfield, and your radius grows larger. Eventually, as was shown by the RAF in the Atlantic, the submarine threat is effectively removed.
I’d just like to remind readers that the OP (as I read it) assumes one side has maritime superiority and the other has air superiority. In WWII sea power and air power were both used. As it was, maritime bombers alone could not have defeated the German submarine threat because there weren’t that many maritime bombers. While more certainly could have been used, there were also destroyers that attacked U-boats on their own as well as attacking them in concert with bombers or reconaissance aircraft.
But we’re talking about a hypothetical situation. I saw a documentary many, many years ago where a Japanese aircraft mechanic said something along these lines: ‘When we recovered a new American aircraft and saw the advancements that had been made in such a short time, I knew that the war was lost.’ So assuming the hypothetical, I think that the side with air superiority would have developed even more effective weapons for using against the submarine threat and larger transports to move the materiél. The Germans were unable to sufficiently supply their ground forces, and the Japanese failed in their own scheme. But they also did not enjoy air superiority. Hitler wanted bombers. He didn’t come around to Galland’s argument that they needed fighters for defense until it was too late. Given air superiority large, slow, lumbering transports are more likely to get through. Could the U.S. have supplied England solely by air? Of course not. But air power could hypothetically, and did, in concert with surface warfare vessels, extend the radius of relative safety such that the Allies enjoyed air superiority and maritime superiority.
My response is based on the generak supposition that, at least as far as the Pacific is concerned, the greater distances make a surface navy and surface commerce mandatory to prosecuting a war. If Japan had a lock on the seas in mid-1942, the US would not have been able to stage any of the island-hopping invasions that led to Japan’s defeat.
Perhaps kanicbird would care to specify other conditions, but if we look at America and Japan in the Pacific, the result would have been a defacto victory for Japan. It had taken the resources it needed from the lands around it, and would have been reasonably content to have a big defensive perimeter.
In the Atlantic, I am not so sure. But Churchill was more afraid of losing the Ubiat war than anything else, and had the Uboats done a lot better, Churchill’s fear might have been realized.
OTOH, once you can put together a long range bomber with a nuclear bomb, all bets are off.
I think that given the hypothetical air superiority in the OP, island-hopping would still have been viable. The RAF and RAAF had a toehold on New Guinea, and their P-40 Kittyhawks stood up well to the superior Japanese aircraft when their pilots used proper tactics. But in the OP’s scenario, air superiority is established. The Japanese could (and did) resupply their islands as long as they held the seas. But how long would they hold them without air cover?
Imagine long-range bombers flying out of Australia to destroy Japanese shipping. Massive patrols catch the Japanese submarines on the surface and bomb them, as well as surface ships arriving on New Guinea to resupply the troops. And there were fighters already on the island that would (and did) attack Japanese ground targets (barges, shipping, troops, etc.). Eventually the around forces would be wiped out, and the island would be used as a base to attack shipping that is resupplying the next island.
But how to fuel the aircraft? I don’t know how much oil Australia had available in WWII. I assume avgas would have to be shipped. But there are the Japanese submarines preventing that. Resources are finite. If the submarines are used to interdict shipping to Eastern Australia, there are fewer of them to protect their shipping to the northwest. If they did blockade Eastern Australia, could supplies have been brought round to Western Australia? I just don’t think the Japanese Navy had enough ships and submarines to completely blockade Australia, and at the same time prevent shipping from the U.S. mainland to Hawaii, and also prevent U.S. forces from sailing from Hawaii. I think that at least some petroleum would get through. They could build more ships and subs, but more aircraft – designed specifically to combat the maritime threat – could also be built, and in greater numbers and more cheaply than ships.
So I still think that given air superiority, the maritime superiority could be wrested from the enemy.
Ok, Johny, so the point is to retake control of the sea, by air power, and then use your local control to cover your ship movement. This is certainly plausible.
That makes it more of a geographical question – are their enough suitable islands close enough together to serve as air bases and resupply bases. From what I recall reading about war patrols by B-17s that scouted from Midway, and B-24s that did a lot of Atlantic sub hunting, their patrol range was 600-800 miles, allowing for a decent bomb load, loiter time, etc.
I did a little looking around for, and failed to find, an online map with enough tools and details to figure out whether there is a route that would be prqctical by those restrictions.
If I am correct about the aircraft ranges, and I am not certain of them, The US would not even be able to completly patrol the waters between Californoa and Hawaii. There would be a “block hole” in which subs could operate unimpeded.
That’s the only way I can see it being done. While I think that in the given scenario we could develop large transport aircraft, the example of the Germans in Russia indicates that it would be an extremely massive operation. So the only way I can see it work is by using airpower to defeat the sea power so that we could use our own maritime assets.
The B-17 had a range of about 1,800 statute miles. The B-24 had a combat radius of about 2,100 SM and a ferry range of about 3,700 SM. The PBY-5 Catalina could fly about 2,500 SM, and were used to spot the Japanese fleet before the Battle of Midway. Hawaii is 2,400 miles from California.
The way I’d work it is to send out B-24s configured for ferry operations, and Catalinas, to scout for enemy shipping. Then I’d send the bombers in from the nearest base. The enemy would change its course so as to avoid attack, so not every sighting would result in an attack. This would probably be more difficult against submarines because they could recharge for a few hours before having to dive, and be more difficult to acquire. Still, a Catalina could carry 4,000 pounds of bombs or depth charges; so with a shorter search radius it could launch an attack on its own. Liberators were effective in the mid-Atlantic, and in the Pacific I think there were enough islands that could be used once they were taken so that response time would be quicker.
You don’t use ww2-era subs to protect shipping. The subs wouldn’t and largely couldn’t hunt each other. I guess you could be saying defend shipping against allied warships, but over the span of the pacific, submarines were a much bigger threat.
I find the OP’s question too vague to give a good answer. Are we talking about air superiority, or air supremacy? Would the US have local superiority where it needed it on carriers?
Overall, I would say that the Pacific sub fleet did more to hurt the Japanese war effort than air superiority did, although they both worked together synergystically. The Japanese tended to be institutionally stupid when it came to the use of submarines and anti-sub warfare. I could see a scenario in which, if they were smarter, and had air supremacy, the effectiveness of subs could be greatly reduced, but it’d be an unlikely scenario.
You are correct. I misspoke. What I meant was that if submarines were pulled to Eastern Australia to stop petroleum and other shipments, then there would be fewer of them to attack Allied shipping in the northwest. Of course it depends on whether the maritime superiority/supremacy is based mostly on submarines, or if surface warfare vessels would be sufficient to stop the shipping. (I assumed from the OP that it’s submarine-based.)
I’m seeing all sorts of range numbers for the B-17 and B-24. On this site, at one point it says the B-24’s maximim range was extended to 3,700 miles, but the stat list where it notes other performance stats says the range is 2200 miles, which would lead to a combat radius a fair amount less than half that.
Here is a link to a story about the Ploesti raid (WARNING, ANNOYING MUSIC) by b-24s based in Africa. It describes 2600 mile round trip as “far longer than any previous raid”. Since a number of those planes ran out of fuel and crashed, I’d say a 1300 mile radius is too big.
I also recall that the flight of b-17s that stumbled into the Pearl Harbor attack were stripped of all weapons so they could be loaded with extra fuel for the trip from the mainland. I was able to find that the distance from San Diego to Honolulu is about 2,600 miles.
So Johnny, as a flyboy, do you know about any online air route maps for the Pacific?
Different loadings significantly affected range.
In maritime patrol, you can often go between two land bases and not have to circle back the place you took off. In that case, the gaps that can be covered are larger than a combat radius would indicate.
I understand that,but it doesn’t make it difficult to find a workable number for a combat range.
Maybe theoretically true, but not practically so. “Shuttle missions” as they were called, were rare opperations with lots of logistical problems. And very innefficient because the planes requireld LOTS of service personnell wherever they landed. I might be wrong, but I don’t believe this was done even over the Atlantic. Planes flew and retuned to a single base unless pretty drastic circumstances demanded otherwise.
Correction, that would be, “…but it DOES make it difficult to find a workable number for a combat radius.”
Sorry, no maps.
Yes, the B-17s were stripped. (As would be the B-24s in ferry configuration.) Not so good if you have to fight off an attack, but I think acceptable in the ferry configuration.
Note that the bombers wouldn’t be invulnerable. At least one U-boat shot down a Liberator before it was sunk.
At one point the Germans added a few AA guns to their subs and suggested? ordered? them to stay on the surface and fight it out with lone bombers. It didn’t work out very well.
Ultimately I have to agree that you can achieve safe use of your sea lanes over those areas where you have established air supremacy. I’m just don’t know whether geography permits it over the Pacific.
Another thought about aircraft patrol ranges… They wouldn’t be just running out to the edge of their range. They would be performing grid searches, or radar sweeps, or loitering over a convoy, and other stuff like that. So again, it would make sence for a realistic patrol radius to be much less than half the maximum range of the aircraft.