Doomed from the Start

Japan’s flawed strategy to secure the Pacific Theater

Michael Gawell

 

 

So what did you do today?  Today, December 7^th, 2003?  Perhaps you went to church, listened to a few Christmas carols on the stereo, picked up the yard, watched the game….usual Sunday stuff.  The war in Iraq, and Afghanistan is but a distant thought, and the issues of the modern day are most likely quite far away as you laze through a pleasant Sunday while it’s getting close to Christmas.  62 years ago, it was remarkably the same.  Then before anyone could possibly contemplate the horror that rained out of the skies on that December 7^th, 1941 in Pearl Harbor, we found ourselves at war.  Most accounts at the time have given these days a very desperate tone, and at the time it was indeed a desperate time.  Over the next 6 months, it seemed that Japan could do nothing wrong in the implementation of it’s grand strategy.  Or could it?

 

History has given much credit to the Japanese for conducting a lightning offensive in the Pacific Ocean that was both breathtaking in scope and speed. However, upon a much closer look, the strategy as employed by the forces of Imperial Japan were doomed from the very start, and in hindsight proved to be very incorrect, if not outright short sighted in a number of key areas. 

 

The raid at Pearl Harbor was expected to wipe out the American fleet, or at least disable it to the extent that it could not launch a counterpunch.  To this war aim, it failed.  Lives were lost, and ships were sunk, but in the end, Japan failed to understand the mechanisms of modern warfare.  They failed to employ and principles of warfare, and utterly in the end failed to close and destroy their enemy.

 

The Japanese understood enough that they wanted to conduct a raid to catch the American aircraft carriers in port, but missed their chance.  Much has been written, and needs little elaboration here about the third strike wave that was never launched.  Had it been, they may well have caught the U.S.S. Enterprise flatfooted.  More importantly, beyond that, none of the supply and support facilities were touched by the Japanese.  This enabled the US to perform repair miracles that would serve them well, and win battles such as at Midway later on.  The Oil tank farm, which supplied the oil to the fleet, was not harmed.  The dry docks were undamaged.   Crucial base infrastructure was not attacked, as it should have been.  The Japanese made this mistake again at Midway, and at that battle, the indecision to go after the fleet or finish the job that should have been done on the first strike cost them the tactical war.

 

The Admiral in charge of this powerful striking force, Nagumo, indeed had some very capable advisors, yet in the final analysis, Nagumo himself was not an aggressive commander, and did not follow his orders at Pearl Harbor.  It was he that chose not to launch the third wave.  His inability to wage an aggressive carrier battle would be his downfall eventually, but that was still in the future.  In three chances to close and destroy the American fleet, each time, Nagumo played it safe, resulting in at best an action that ensured it was not a final action.

 

Strategically, the Japanese could never have won the war as they fought it.  After Pearl Harbor, the most powerful strike force in the world was disbanded, and the IJN carrier Soryu was sent to assist in the capitulation of Wake Island.  Kido Butai itself ranged far and wide over the Pacific, but without the singular goal of destroying the U.S. Carrier Fleet.  Over the next several months, both nations had their carrier task forces conducting raids over the Pacific Ocean.  Had the Japanese made it the singular mission of Kido Butai to seek out the US Naval task forces, and destroy them, the war would had taken much longer to prosecute, perhaps even giving Japan enough time to field enough new weaponry to have negotiated a reasonable truce.  One fleet in particular, the Imperial Japanese Navy, fought the wrong battle in the wrong place, and that alone determined the course of the war to come.  It caused the war to be fought not only not on their terms, but also in a place not of anyone’s choosing in and around some of the most inhospitable terrain, and climatry in the entire world, the South Pacific.

 

Before the war, and in it’s early stages, it became clear to the US, that Australia would play a significant role in any strategy due to it’s location and relative closeness to Indochina.  In the period prior to Pearl Harbor, and immediately after, the United States sought to secure a series of small bases in which to transport goods, men and supplies to Australia.  Places such as Midway, the Samoan Islands, New Caledonia, the New Hebrides Islands, Port Moresby.  These small and insignificant places are now part and parcel to the famous places of the Pacific War.  Concurrently tactically insignificant raids were conducted by the US Navy in which Wake Island, the Marshall’s, and Rabaul were struck.

 

At the same time the US was developing these small but key island hopping bases ad striking from a position of weakness in and around the South Pacific, the Imperial Japanese Navy was striking targets as far west as Burma, Ceylon, and Darwin.    The grand strategy was to secure the back door route to Australia from which help would have had to arrive had the Japanese first occupied the islands farther east and into New Zealand.  It would have been far easier to defend against a long and hyper-extended supply route through Africa, as history and the supply routes there turned out to be than the futile and destructive defense of the supply route through the Solomon Islands as the US attacked.  At the time, the only attack through the west could have come from Britain, which could not, and would not have launched any attack upon the Indochina area.  The grievous losses of the H.M.S. Prince of Wales, and Repulse, as well as the Allied losses at the Battle of the Java Sea ensured they could not attack from that area.  Again, the Strategy failed to close and destroy the primary enemy whose small carrier task forces were conducting raids under the very noses of the Japanese forces.  The much desired strategy for the Japanese of a singular action to destroy the American fleet were lost time and again.  Even had the destruction been piecemeal, it would have caused subsequent battles at the Coral Sea, and Midway to take on an entirely different accounting.

 

Had Imperial Japanese planners taken over those islands in the South East Pacific Ocean, and attacked through Noumea, the Fiji Islands, and Espiritu Santo in the New Hebrides, the United States would have had a difficult time in August of 1942 of launching attacks on Guadalcanal.  It may even be safe to say, the attack could not have happened.

 

Due to the timing, and the late recognition of these strategies by the Japanese, the airstrip at Guadalcanal was nowhere near operational, and in a tactical sense, the Japanese had nothing between Rabaul, and Guadalcanal that could be utilized as a launch point to defend against an American thrust into the South Pacific.  Thus, the Japanese found themselves fighting a two front theater defending from both sides of the Southern Pacific Islands.

 

Another of the issues that lost the war was the battle of the supply lines.  The Japanese never fully implemented a strategy to resupply its soldiers, sailors and airmen with the proper supplies on the far-flung battlefronts.  Partially this was due to the belief structure of the Japanese Military regime, and partly due to a complete lack of planning.  There was little thought given to such minute points as infrastructure enhancement.  The Pioneer units of the Japanese were a far cry from the Seabees of the United States in technical, tactical, and engineering know how.  The battles fought were won by the US in many ways due to the combat support services they received throughout the war.  Even when the US was tactically and technically overwhelmed in the beginning stages of the war, the US was able to better resupply its troops with weapons, fuel and food.

 

By the end of the Guadalcanal fight, the Japanese were losing more men to starvation, and disease than to fighting the US, in fact the US could not have held Henderson field had the Japanese Army been able to resupply adequately.  At that time the Japanese were the undisputed masters of surface warfare, nighttime engagements, and could still field a formidable armada of aircraft in which they could attack.  The largest issues came about due to a lack of bases in which to attack through, and the lack of supplies in which to sustain an attacking force.

 

A final stake into the heart of the Japanese plans was a fundamental lack of ability to capitalize upon modern technologies.  There is little doubt in anyone’s mind today, that the A6M Zero-Sen fighter was one of the best in the world.  However, follow on programs for additional and modern fighters to keep up with the knowledge gained from combat never were able to fully bring about wholesale change to the military forces, and bring to the fight completely up to date weaponry in adequate numbers to make a difference.  The Japanese were never able to develop a heavy armored vehicle.  While tanks were not as prevalent in the island fighting, the Japanese were not able to ever counter the Sherman tanks, which were so much meat on the table for the German heavy  Tiger and Panzer tanks.  The Japanese rifles were not as good as the M-1 or the Springfield.  The Japanese were unable to develop an effective machine gun for their battalions.  The weapons produced were adequate, yet not as effective as those fielded by the United States and her allies, such as the M-2 .50 Caliber MG.  In the air war, the Japanese continually tried to upgrade the aircraft such as the Zero, and the Ki-43 Oscar, yet by the end of 1943, these aircraft were functionally obsolete, with the follow on programs still far from production in sufficient quantities to affect the tactical battle.  There is little doubt that aircraft such as the Ki-84 Frank, the Ki-61 Hein, and the N1K2 George were as good as anything else the Americans were fielding at the end of the war, but the development in each of these lagged sufficiently as to be produced late, and at a poorer quality than it’s American counterpart could produce.  The Japanese failed to ever fully develop a inline liquid cooled engine as employed in the most successful fighter of World War Two, the P-51 Mustang.  The Japanese failed to produce an adequate long- range bomber for the South Pacific war, and the G4M “Betty” while a good aircraft was not a weapon capable of survivability.  Again, by the time survivable aircraft became available, the trained crews to man them were long since killed.  The lag time in development cost Japan the air war along with the failure to provide an adequate training program for it’s new pilots.  In the field of Naval achievement, the Japanese surely built great warships, but did not have the service ships to back them up, and those ships fielded upon the seas for battle did not have the advantages held by the Allies in such key fields such as radar.  Even into 1945, the Japanese did not have adequate early warning either aboard ship, nor in it’s home districts to provide enough early warning to defeat the onslaught that came with the closing of the noose around the home islands.

 

The end result of this lack of strategic foresight, a underdeveloped combat support service, a tepid program of technological development in which to capitalize upon modern technologies, and failure to provide a realistic training program for it’s soldiers combined to bring about one of the bloodiest and most horrific campaigns in the annals of warfare.  The Japanese surely fought with much valor and skill, but they were doomed from the start, handicapped by a complete lack of foresight or understanding in modern warfare and its principles.  They were destined to lose before the first bomb ever dropped upon Pearl Harbor.