Matrix Games Forums

chaos45 wrote: Thu Jul 30, 2026 6:04 am I know this game has been around forever buts what's the reasoning behind only the Shokaku and Zuikaku getting Radar upgrades in mid 1942 and all the other carriers which were historically sunk not having them available until 1943.

One would reason that had they not been sunk at midway or engaged in the battle of midway they could have done a full refit with radar included in 1942.

Just asking as it makes no sense other than ohh they got sunk give them a hypothetic upgrade in 1943.

Like the reason they didnt do a full refit before Midway was due to the Midway operation....so one should reason that if in our what-if Pacific War worlds we dont rush an operation in mid 1942 they could also been refitted with radar in yard period at that time.

Just some thoughts on unless someone has evidence that Japan didnt have the radars available or for some reason couldnt figure out how to install them on the old CVs.....

BBfanboy wrote: Sat Aug 08, 2026 11:00 pm I image the IJN's early radars had the same problems.

Japanese inferiority in radar technology was the result of Japan's lack of depth in its technical base and of neglect by the military and naval leadership. One visiting German professor noted in 1938 that "Japanese universities resembled senior high and vocational schools, because what was to be studied in the university was established in advance. Under such circumstances there was little freedom within the university, nor much freedom for academic instruction" (Nakagawa 1993). The same professor observed that Japanese manufacturers were remarkably uniform in their methodology and use of materials, reflecting a mindset which hindered innovation. Recruiting technical personnel was difficult for the armed services, and there was one six-year period when not a single graduate of the engineering department of Tokyo Imperial University volunteered for Navy duty. The Navy began the Pacific War with a corps of technical officers, but the number graduated each year did not reach 100 until 1940. Technical officers were looked down on by line officers, and by November 1942 they were absorbed into the regular officer corps to make up the shortage of combat personnel.

The Japanese Navy was aware of the potential of radar. The Japanese claimed to have built their first cavity magnetron as early as 1937, and by 1939 JRC had produced a 10cm 500W cavity magnetron. The British did not produce a comparable design until February 1940. However, lack of interest and support meant that Japan quickly lost its lead in this crucial technology. The first inklings of the military potential of radar did not come to the Japanese until late 1939, which was very late in the game. Early experiments in the use of Doppler interference detectors to detect aircraft proved to be a technological dead end. Although the chief of the Armaments Section of the Navy General Staff, Yanagimoto Ryusaka, insisted that the Navy could not go to war without radar,and the Navy Ministry instituted a crash program of radar development on 2 August 1941, the Navy's Electrical Research Department, which was responsible for radar, had grown to just 300 staff by August 1943.

By the end of the war, quality control on Japanese electronics was so poor that often only one tube in 100 actually worked, and even those that passed inspection had a mean time to failure of as little as 100 hours. For a system with 40 tubes, this meant a mean time to failure of just two or three hours. The shortage of nickel, used in heater filaments, had to be alleviated by purchasing nickel coins at Hong Kong and melting them down.

Interservice rivalry hurt the Japanese radar effort, just as it hampered so many other aspects of Japan's war effort. The Army ordered its radar group, at the Tama Army Technical Institute, to divulge none of its research results to the Navy group, and the Navy soon reciprocated. The Army even produced a small number of its own shipborne radar (Tase-1) for Army transports and submarines. There were 37 Navy and 27 Army fixed early warning radars in Japan in 1945, but at least 11 radar sites had Navy and Army radars practically side by side, yet there were only two fixed radars in all Shikoku. This duplication of effort was compounded by the tendency to spend resources on long-term projects that could not be ready in time to be used during the war, and on such wild schemes as a microwave "death ray" to fry bomber crews. The latter project was partially a product of desperation, pushed by researchers who knew the war could not be won by conventional means. The "death ray" succeeded in killing rabbits at a range of 5 meters, but was utterly impractical for bringing down bombers. Nor was the Japanese radar effort helped by the social gulf between physicists and engineers. Japanese engineers were poorly trained in antenna theory, crucial to understanding radar performance, but the Japanese physicists who had such knowledge were largely ignorant of electronics.

Inferiority in radar electronics was compounded by the failure of the Japanese to develop the command and control required to make the best use of radar information. By 1944, American ships began to be equipped with combat information centers (CICs) equipped to process radar data and vector fighters accordingly. Japanese development of a comparable capability was hampered by Japanese weakness in aircraft communications systems. Japanese radar procedures were also faulty: Japanese prisoners of war reported that Japanese early warning radars were shut down when Allied aircraft came within ten miles, lest the radar provide a homing point. This prevented vectored interception of Allied raids. The Japanese Navy likewise ordered ships to keep their radars shut down when under radio silence until 1944, which eliminated their value for early warning.

The sinking of radar ship Yamakibo Maru at Truk in November 1943 was a disaster for Japanese radar deployment. Much valuable equipment and personnel were lost.