IIRC the commander on Iwo Jima broke significantly with established Japanese tactical doctrine and inflicted far more American casualities because of it.
…If it wasn’t for those damn kids! :smack:
The Japanese still had air and naval superiority at Guadalcanal. The Marines had to contend with daily aerial and naval bombardment as well.
Wiki’s narrative of the Battle of Tenaru is instructive. The Japanese “Ichiki” unit in question were not amateurs or newbies, but veteran troops with experience in China. The Marines, on the other hand, were green. As would happen again later, the green but well trained and disciplined 1942 army completely destroyed the equally well trained and experienced 1916 army.
I’ve recently read the book Retribution, by Max Hasings - a history of the latter part of WW2 in the Pacific (and well worthwhile). He devotes a chapter to Iwo Jima and attributes the very strong resistance to the time the Japanese had to prepare, and the use they made of it - principally, digging extensive underground fortifications (including hidden artillery) that were largely unaffectd by bombardment, and which had to be taken one by one from “shockingly dogged defenders.”
The only comment on Japanese tactics concerns the fact that they no longer had any marked tendency to “squander men in futile charges” which had never caused much trouble for US Marines - they stayed dug in.
I agree-the IJA was rather poorly armed. They had no heavy artillery, tanks, or anti-tank weapons. This was a serious weakness, and was not addressed. Their weakness was exposed in 1939-in the Battle of Khalkin Gol-an entire Japanese division was wiped out by a Russian Army-(commanded by Gen. Zhukov). The japanese were reduced to suicide charges-and the Russian soldiers mowed them down by the hundreds. Strange, because the Japanese Navy and Air Force were well equipped with modern equipment. Why the IJA was allowed to go out so poorly equipped is a mystery.
I think the reasonn has to do with its political success. Militaries that seize political power tend to become fossilized in their thinking and unwilling to give up the methods that brought them to power – Keegan (again with the Keegan!) has noted this in the case of the Mamelukes, the Ottomans, the Chinese dynasties, Egypt, the late Feudal Japanese sword cult, and in other times and places as well – I suppose you could say this flaw played a part in the collapse of France in 1940.
The Japanese navy and air units had a lot to prove. The army was resting on its laurels and afraid to experiment with a “working” system.
Pardon the hijack, but this is the SECOND most annoying problem with the game Axis&Allies – that the most commonly successful Japanese strategy is to attack Russia, and the Japanese player has more money and more units, and usually smashes through. Totally unhistorical and almost offensively prejudiced.
What’s the FIRST most annoying problem with the game Axis&Allies, you ask?
That the aforementioned “Japanese push land forces into Russia” strategy is usually best conducted by driving tanks across the Himalayan mountain range. Yeah, the notoriously unreliable Japanese tanks are going over THAT.
Sailboat
I guess how significant a break it was is a matter of some debate