Politics

[mdiehl]

M-T, *many* would agree with you about the superiority of the IJN in night actions in 1942. I'm the sort who looks at the data, though, and decides that Morrison's 40 year old perspective on the thing is inaccurate.

Most of the IJN superiority at night is based, as far as I can tell, on differences in doctrine (younger USN skippers and some CA admirals seem to have had a very different battle doctrine than older USN admirals, concerning the position of DDs with respect to the gun-line, whereas most IJN DD and CA admirals were of similar mind as the US DD skippers, probably because many IJN CAs had torpedoes), and on the selective reading of battles around Guadalcanal.

When you look at the battles around the 'canal you find that the Japanese achieved complete tactical surprise during the Savo Island battle, and did extremely well in the Cape Esperence battle by virtue of their torpedoes (which were notably ineffective at the 2nd Guadalcanal). In the other battles, the IJN piled on the errors. In three or four of the 'canal battles, as far as ship logs go it seems the US spotted the Japanese first.. twice by radar and once visually.

So count Savo as an IJN victory by virtue of tactical surprise. Count Esperence as an IJN victory by virtue of first-shots with torpedoes, but add a big asterisk: the US DDs at Esperence were in perfect range to use their torpedoes, had the IJN CAs in sight, and had not been spotted. Had *they* shot (been allowed to shoot, they requested permission to fire and were refused) first then the prevailing wisdom would probably dictate that the US were superior in execution despite their recent conversion to better doctrine.

Count 1st Guadalcanal as a US tactical and strategic victory (Henderson was *not* shelled). Count 2nd Guadalcanal as a clear cut 1-sided US victory, and while you are at it, make a note about the incompetence of IJN scout pilots for counting two US South-Dakota class BBs as 2 heavy cruisers. Make a note that in either of the two Naval Battles of 'canal, had the IJN concentrated their forces and thrown more into the effort (in light of the obvious presence of US capital ships in the area) they might have won either. Make a note that the US sank more tonnage of ships around the canal, and make a note that the IJN achieved none of their strategic goals in that campaign except their final one (evacuation of ground troops).

As to Balikpapan: I'm not inclined to give the IJN the benefit of the doubt. They thought that several US DDs at 800-1300 yards were a Dutch submarine out-to-sea. That fact does not say much about the consistency of IJN night optics, their ability to react to unforeseen circumstances, or the universal competence of their TF commanders. By the way, the DDs and a CL were in harbor with steam up, they sortied *looking for a submarine* after the US attack, after mistaking the results of the US attack for a submarine attack. They'd had reports of Dutch submarines in the area, and in typical IJN fashion assumed they had the complete tactical intelligence picture and did not bother with even the most elementary recon. Had the USN made such an error all would decry it as something like "typical early war US tactical bungling."

Bottom line for me: in the air and on the sea the Japanese were masters at the execution of set-piece engagements, and their strategic and operational planning through March 1942 was outstanding. The Japanese were great when everything went according to plan and by the book. Faced, however, with unusually stiff resistence, or unforeseen circumstances, they could almost always be counted on to screw up and badly.

I don't know how you'd factor that into a game. The US seemed on the whole to be somewhat better at achieving surprise than the Empire, at concentrating sufficient forces for the job at hand, at recon, at coordinating combat air patrols on CVs and at airbases, at fighter direction (both stunk at the latter two at Coral Sea... the US had made substantial improvements by Midway and continued to improve, the IJN did not.

It is really interesting as Begerud has pointed out that a culture that eschews individualism in favor of subordination to the group and higher authority produced fighter pilots and junior army commanders who viewed themselves as individual swordsmen, whereas a culture that elevates individualism had a combat doctrine that emphasized group coordination and ultimately produced some of the most effective fighting teams (in a/c, in naval squadrons, and to a mixed degree in land combat) in the world.

[This message has been edited by mdiehl (edited February 12, 2001).]

[Major Tom]

Unfortunately, your Guadalcanal argument does not prove your argument. Stating that the US were more incompetent than the Japanese is similar to stating that the Japanese were superior to the US. The US positioned and used their ships badly, whereas the Japanese didn't. Sure, the Japanese strategically lost these battles, but, they tactically won them. It wasn't a fluke that just about every action resulted in more USN ships sunk than IJN. Sure, there was always innacuracies, since as I said earlier, there are no 100% guarantees. The Japanese trained their main cruiser fleet in night combat much more intensely than the Allies did. Could you not say that they won these battles because of both US blundering and Japanese initiative, no matter what the long term result?

Restating Balikpapan, AGAIN. There WAS a Dutch submarine which fired on the IJN transports (and missed) which the IJN escorts were OUT LOOKING FOR before the US DD's attacked. Only a few light patrol boats were left guarding the transports, and they were all on fairly laxed alert, for the Japanese. The quality of sailoring in any navy varies on the arm. Fleet Warships will be invariably better quality than escort warships. The US ships were fleet warships, while the remaining IJN escorts were, non-fleet warships. Tactically, what the Japanese did was sound. Balikpapan is far from any Allied surface naval base and weren't, expecting a surface sortee. This was an isolated incident where the US were in the right place at the right time. In regards to other operations, such as the demise of the USS Houston and HMAS Perth, their loss occured at very little loss to the IJN. If the IJN were so incompetent shouldn't have the Allied force have wrecked another Balikpapan victory? Also, the numbers of ships sunk at Balikpapan was pretty minor, maybe 4-5 maximum.

If you read many actual battle accounts, you will notice that the Japanese positioned and used their ships much better than the Allies did until they learned through trial and error what to do. If this is not due to experience or quality of crews, then what is the reason for Japanese success? Many of these engagements resulted in no hits on any Japanese vessel, just like what happened when the USN learned how to use advantages that the Japanese didn't have (ie. Radar). Radar to the US managed to defeat the Japanese ability of traditional night spotting, since radar can spot something at a longer distance than any well trained visual spotter can. In war, there are advancements and counter advancements. The Japanese started off with a tactic/weapon better than the Allies, then the Allies developed a superior tactic/weapon to counter this. This is the progress of war, whoever creates the better counter faster and in greater numbers usually wins.

[mdiehl]

I did not say the US was more incompetant than the IJN at the 'canal. That'd be convenient for your argument, maybe, but the suggestion is yours, not mine.

I'd argue that they showed roughly equal levels of competence. There are multiple ways to measure success -- by battle victories, ships sunk, or tonnage. By two of these three (victories and tonnage) I measure the US to be the tactical victor.

Again, if the US disposition of forces at Savo was thoughtless, one must reach the same conclusion about the Japanese disposition at Balikpapan. I'm pretty sure that the IJN DDs did sortie *after* the US DD attack and not before, since the US DDs spotted the Japanese ships making way as the flush-decks made their post action exit.

I don't agree that Houston and Perth's demise was fruitless, since they got into the Surabaya invasion TF and sank several IJN transport vessels. I *will* agree, should someone care to suggest it, that it was a waste of resources for the Allied navies to fail to concentrate their vessels in a secure area and to let politics stand in the way of a workable command structure. Asiatic Fleet and the ABDA naval resources could have been better used much more profitably.

Your suggestion that many of the battles in 1942 occurred without the Allies scoring hits is strange. I don't know why you make the claim. Every account of naval surface actions except for Savo Island records modest to significant damage to some of the IJN vessels.

As to Japanese use of superior formations, if your claim is correct then they must have had an extremely small body of well trained flag officers and skippers to draw upon, and most of these must have died in submarine actions or air-attacks, because their battle line at Surigao Strait could not have been less skillfully deployed.

It is stating the obvious to say many a wierd thing can and did happen during WWII naval engagements and things were wierder still at night. If I were to write the game I'd put much as much emphasis on idiosyncratic factors like weather, local squalls, and on systemic factors like whether or not your ships have sts, whether they use it, radar, use of it and the like.

Let me put it another way so that maybe you can at least understand the point I'm trying to make. Let us suppose that the Japanese command structure at Balikpapan had imagined that US DDs might show up in the area, had launched scout planes and detected the TF. In that event the IJN could have engaged the US TF on numerically superior terms, perhaps even establishing an ambush position.

Now, suppose likewiase that on August 7-8 1942 someone had imagined an IJN TF might be steaming toward Guadalcanal, launched search aircraft, and located said TF. Leaving aside the probable CV-based airstrike, at least the Allied navies would have been disposed in a battle formation. The problem at Savo was not that the US and Australian navies were so generically incompetent that they did not know how to form a good posture, or that their gunners were blind, their admirals idiots, or their shells refuse. Their problem was that they were taken completely by surprise, just like the IJN at Balikpapan.

The only remaining victory to be explained is Esperence. One American cruiser admiral on this one occasion made a stupid mistake in refusing his DDs permission to fire. (They were actually in the van where sound doctrine suggested that they should be.) This is awfully thin grounds for concluding that the IJN were systemically superior... especially in the face of their many and manifest technological and training deficiencies in radar, radio communications, aerial search (and other forms of tactical recon), and their tendency to fall apart quickly when encountering unexpected circumstances.