The Aircraft Carrier War

[rayg]

Thanks for the great posts Art..

[Dan in NH]

Great post Art. I enjoyed reading it

[barretcreek]

Thank You, Art. Great post.

[blackhawknj]

IJN Taiho was sunk by a single torpedo in the Battle of the Phillipine Sea.
There were the USS Sable and USS Wolverine-the only coal fired freshwater aircraft carriers. They were used to train pilots in takeoffs and landings, deck crews.

[Art]

Quick note, the survivability of British carriers wasn't just due to their armored decks. Their aviation gasoline was was stored in cylindrical tanks in cofferdams filled with sea water. American and Japanese carriers had steel tanks attached to the structure of the ship which allowed them to carry more fuel but made them vulnerable to cracking when bombs, or Torpedoes hit the ships. The great killer of American and Japanese carriers was their own aviation fuel leaking from cracked tanks and vaporizing after bomb, or especially torpedo hits.

[Art]

Another quick note.

June 1944 was a really, really bad month for the Axis. In addition to the battle of the Philippine Sea and the loss of the Mariana Islands; The Americans and British opened a second front in Europe with the Normandy invasion. On the Eastern Front the Russians launched "Operation Bagration" which destroyed the German Army Group Center.

[blackhawknj]

In February 1942 2 Navy officers who were came from the NYC Fire department pointed out the dangers to carriers from the aviation fuel lines. Their solution-which was adopted-was to bleed inert gasses from the ship's engines into them when they were not in use.

[Art]

Correct, and purging the fuel lines when not in use was common in all navies. Unfortunately that didn't help if the lines were in use which was often. That practice saved the Japanese carrier Shokaku at the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands when she was hit by at least four and possibly as many as six heavy bombs. Re arming and re fueling with the aircraft on the flight deck was also done at times.

[Major Tom]

There was a torpedo testing site in the mountains above/near Monrovia, CA. Quite visible today is a long concrete 'slide' into a lake. My father-in-law took me up there a few years back.

[Art]

There was a torpedo testing site in the mountains above/near Monrovia, CA. Quite visible today is a long concrete 'slide' into a lake. My father-in-law took me up there a few years back.

It's too bad we weren't testing torpedoes prior to 1941. We might have shortened the war.

[dryheat]

War, what's it good for? Well, some experimental work inspired.

[Art]

Japanese material and logistical problems post 1943.

Once the American submarine campaign cranked up in late 1943 supplies of vital supplies became critically cramped. By mid 1944 Japan was so low on tanker tonnage they could no longer move enough oil from their conquests in Southeast Asia to refineries. They did catch a break though, with Malayan oil. Malayan is the lightest, sweetest crude in the world, and while not the best option it could be used to fuel ships right out of the ground. Japanese warships increasingly, after mid 1943. would fuel straight from the fields. Mainland Japan was not so lucky.

The problems weren't just with oil. Strategic metals were in critically short supply, for example Japanese aircraft started having failures due to improper stop gap alloys being used resulting in failures such as collapsing landing gear in anything like a hard landing.

The Japanese were hurting in aircraft and especially aircrews but attrition was hurting them in a lot of other areas. The surface war had been fought by the Japanese mostly with destroyers and due to attrition by mid 1944 they were desperately short of good escort vessels. At the Battle of the Philippine sea the Japanese Carrier Squadron 1 consisting of their three best ships was escorted by only 7 destroyers. Did that have something to do with two of the ships being sunk by submarines...? Well it sure didn't help. None of the American carrier groups in the Philippine Sea were escorted by fewer than 9 destroyers and TF 58.3 (2CV and 2 CVL) was escorted by 12. The American destroyers also had much superior anti submarine technology.

By the spring of 1944 the Japanese were running on empty in a lot of areas, more than mentioned above.

[jon_norstog]

An American friend of mine who lived in Japan for years told me that the Japanese military lost the war because they couldn't type fast enough. He said there WAS a typewriter with all the necessary katakana and kanji letters and ideographs, but it was a yard wide and there weren't enough of them. And probably not enough soldiers and sailors who could use one.

That is his theory and the more I think about it, a pretty good one. Must have been a contributing factor that started causing delays and SNAFUs early in the war. As long as Japanese forces held the initiative, it probably didn't matter too much. After that things went south for them and they couldn't type fast enough to maintain the flow of documents, and thus of men, ships and materiel.

jn

[blackhawknj]

The Japanese lost the war because, like the Germans and Italians.
1.They greatly overestimated their own abilities and capabilities and
2.They greatly underestimated their enemies.
Yamamoto, who had spent time in the US, learned English and had some understanding of US capabilities and our mentality, warned against underestimating us, and had Hitler not declared war on us with no notice to his high command, the Japanese might have had to face us with a Pacific only war effort.

[Art]

Cape Engano, the Death Ride of the Japanese Fast Carrier Striking Force. October 24-26 1944.

The Americans didn't take long to press home the advantages from the slaughter of the Japanese aircraft at the Philippine Sea. Just four months later they struck at the Philippines. The Japanese planned at this point to defend the islands with surface forces only. Four carriers, the CV Zuikaku, and the light fleet carriers Chioyada, Chitose and Zuiho with 108 aircraft were deployed with the fleet. These were purely a decoy force to lure the American carriers away from the Japanese surface forces. The mission of destroying the American landing ships and beaches was to be assigned to Japans still powerful surface forces. The Japanese had just commissioned two of the three CVs of the Unryu class but what would have been the point of spreading 108 aircraft between 6 carriers instead of four? Also attached were the two hybrid battleship carriers of the Ise class. These ships never launched a strike and their conversion did nothing but deprive the Japanese of two powerful Surface units.

The Americans didn't find the Japanese promptly and after waiting a sufficient period Admiral Ozawa started to withdraw his carriers. He then received an order to stay, "trusting the providence of heaven."

So Trusting in the providence of heaven Ozawa launched a strike of 75 aircraft on the U.S. Third Fleet. These aircraft were ordered not to return to their ships but to land at bases in the Philippines. 38 aircraft, mostly A6MN5 Zeros but also a couple of D3Y Vals were kept back as a CAP.

The aircraft from the Japanese strike were shot down almost to a plane without inflicting any damage. The Americans had over 600 aircraft available in the Third Fleet in the area and the resulting American strikes sank three of the four Japanese carriers (Zuikaku again proved the toughness of her class absorbing at least six torpedo and three 500 pound bomb hits before sinking.) The Chiyoda was badly, damaged, left dead in the water and, fighting to the end sunk by an American cruiser/destroyer group.

After the war Adm. Toyoda, the naval chief of staff, said the plan was for the fleet not to return if not victorious. Why should it? Ships returning to Japan could not be refueled and ships returning to Singapore could not be re repaired or re supplied. The Japanese on the spot didn't follow the plan and did not follow through to attack the American beachheads. Once again the Japanese didn't follow up an advance and in the face of heavy opposition by inferior forces in the battle off Samar, withdrew.

After the battle Toyoda proved right. The heavy cruisers and destroyers that escaped to Singapore couldn't be repaired though some made transport runs until almost the end of the war as mostly British units picked them off one at a time. The units in Japan had insufficient fuel for any serious offensive action. The Battleship Nagato and battlecruiser Haruna didn't join the Yamato in her own suicide mission mostly due to lack of fuel. The remaining half dozen carriers had no aircraft and the ones in decent condition were used as repatriation ships after the war.

The Japanese knew they had to win every encounter with the U.S. carrier forces decisively. They won one of the six and that victory was hardly overwhelming. Although. by the beginning of 1943, we and the Japanese were aware of American superiority in naval aircraft and their carriers neither seemed to have quite realized how overwhelming American supremacy would be. In reality, the Japanese barely had a chance.

Blackhawknj is pretty much right on with his above post.