I have been reading a lot on battles of Pacific War lately. It is a fact that Japanese was doing fine at the beginning of the war. They slowly went down hill even they seemed to be winning most of the engagements aside Battle of Midway. If I am not mistaken, American Pacific Fleet had 4 fleet carriers before the war. Japan had 6 fleet carriers and 1 light carrier. Attack on Pearl Harbor resulted in no carrier loss. Battle of Coral Sea resulted in U.S. - 1 fleet carrier sunk, 1 fleet carrier damaged. Japan - 1 light carrier sank, 2 fleet carriers damaged. However the damaged American carrier (Yorktown) was quickly repaired and participated in the Battle of Midway, thus the Americans were able to use the full force of the remaining 3 fleet carriers. While the two Japanese carriers weren't able to participate in the Battle of Midway. It resulted in Japan wasn't able to have the number advantage they could have had. At the Battle of Midway, 4 Japanese fleet carriers were sunk, at the expense of 1 American carrier (Yorktown) being lost. Even after the loss of 4 fleet carriers at Battle of Midway, Japan still had two fleet carriers vs. also two fleet carriers of the United States. Japan was still not at any disadvantage at this point although they had lost their superior number of carriers. However, during Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands (a part of Guadalcanal campaign), when the two remaining Japanese carriers engaged the two remaining American carriers... both Japanese carriers were once again damaged but not out of action, one American carrier was sunk, the other was heavily damaged. For that moment, it left the U.S. with only one heavily damaged carrier in entire Pacific, while Japan had two carriers. Once again, the damaged carrier was quickly patched up and sent right back into Guadalcanal campaign, at the same time the two Japanese carriers were not able to participate in the campaign ever again... It was said from that point on, Japan could never hoped to win because they never had the ability to strike again in Pacific. Why were the Japanese so slow at repairing? How is the U.S. so fast at patching up and rearm the ships?
A lot of manpower was available for the US, but the same can't be said about Japan (especially towards the end of WW2). Also, the US Armed Forces were technologically more advanced as compared to the Japanese Forces in servicing the naval vessels.
Well it wasn't exactly near the end of the war. It's like in 1941~1942. The failed to put their carriers back into action as soon as possible, sometimes it looked like they weren't even trying. For example, after the Battle of Coral Sea, two of the Japanese carriers were back to Japan for repairing. One of them weren't that badly damaged, the problem was neither carrier had fully air group any more. However, they didn't even attempted to combine the air groups from the two carriers, so they could at least use one more carrier at the Battle of Midway. It would be 5 carriers vs. 3 + Midway. The Japanese never had any advantage in Midway since both sides had pretty much the same amount of aircraft. I didn't even understand why they didn't use more carriers in Battle of Coral Sea. They only sent just enough carriers to match American counterparts... instead of sending overwhelming forces. Their repeatedly failure to put damaged carriers back into action caused them never could fight at full strength and thus gave the Americans a chance to repeatedly do damage to the Japanese and to take out Japanese carriers out of action.
I think the Japanese gave too much importance to their army, at the cost of their aerial and naval forces. The army is the "traditional" fighting unit.... that may be the reason.
Actually I have to disagree. Japan put most of their resources into their navy. Their steel production was only 4 million tons per year... and most of the steel were used to build their warships. On the other hand, their army had very few tanks. Most of the tanks were lightly armored...although they were enough to deal with the Chinese who almost had no armor. If you looked it as whole, Japan had strong navy and good air force, but a fairly weak army by western standards. That's why they were doing extremely well in the area near the coast in China where their army could get directly fire support from their warships, but they were unable to capture the newly established Chinese capital in the mountain area in central China where their army were on their own.
The US had the the dockyard capacity to be able to repair ships quickly. But just as importantly they also had the organisation and logistics skills needed to to fully utilise the dockyard capacity they had.. They were also repairing and refitting British ships at the same time. The USA knew how to get things done, and done quickly.
If I'm not mistaken, it was the US denying supply of steel to Japan during the earlier parts of World War II that really ticked them off. If they were short on steel, it would make sense they would have fewer resources to repair their ships with, and since the US was the one exporting it in the first place, probably had the chain of supply to keep their ships in fighting shape. I would chalk it to supply issues and shortages.
The U.S. was indeed Japan's top oil and steel supplier for years until a few months before Pearl Harbor. By then, Japan already gained quite some large iron mines in China and started their productions there. Oil was the thing they couldn't get from China.
I don't doubt they set up foundries, but could they really have set up enough and get enough production up to really hold their own, supply-wise? I'm not entirely sure on that, unless there were existing foundries they captured and just took over. I'll do some looking and report back with anything interesting. I think they would have still struggled, though, even with a supply as they probably weren't making enough to cover what they were using.
I was going to edit this into my previous post, but as it's lengthy and somewhat different than my previous opinions, I feel it warrants a separate one. I apologize for the double post. After doing some reading, I discovered Japan had already had some struggling roots in Manchuria, where iron and other resources (including land) were far more abundant, but that their economical and cultural struggles with China were making it hard for Japan to prosper and generate the income it needed. One of Japan's reasons for attempting to take over more of China, was that they firmly believed a nation had to be self-sufficient to win in modern warfare, which I fairly agree with to be honest. But when the United States cut off oil and steel exports to Japan, it put them in an economical pinch and they were certainly forced to either take them by force or lay down and let the nation choke to death. They surely had foundries in Manchuria, but I still don't think it was enough for them to establish the effective chain of supply they would have needed to win a drawn out war at sea. They were suffering from all kinds of shortages, since war with the US surely hurt their economy a good bit, as cheap Japanese goods were a big earner for them in the Depression, in North America as well as South. I'm comfortable saying, it's likely they couldn't keep their ships battle worthy because they were facing massive materiel shortages in general, as well as common resources. Probably why the kamikaze became a popular method of attack, as it was pretty lethal.
I think the repairing of the Yorktown for Midway ranks as one of the finiest achievements of WW2, completely threw the Japs. Once carrier parity was achieved, there was no way the Japanese were ever going to overtake the US again and it also gave the US confidence to release more chips to the Atlantic front too.
Actually Japan took over entire Manchuria (3 northern Chinese provinces) in early 1930s. They had years to establish themselves there. As the matter of fact, they did try to send many Japanese immigrant to Manchuria to set up farms, factories, etc. By the time the Soviets rolled over the Japanese in Manchuria, most of those Japanese factories were intact. It was well known that the Russians took all the equipments and useful parts of the machinery from Japanese factories in Manchuria with them when they went back home to Russia. It caused local Chinese communist party's official protest. Yes, I know the Japanese factories in China were using Chinese labors, and most of those labors were forced. But still, Manchuria was a large place ... the size of western Europe if I am not mistaken. Tons of resources were available there. Iron, coal, and even oil could be found in large quantity there.(although the oil was never found until after WWII).
Don't misunderstand, most of what I find online as a reference to it seems to agree with you, but if this was entirely true, why couldn't Japan keep up? There's some uncounted variables here, since it seems pretty obvious that had they the capability of getting their ships repaired and ready, they would have done so. Unless you want to go the "Arrogance route" which would mean that Japanese military command either underestimated the American command, or that they just thought we weren't ready for a war that close to their home.
It was just quite hard to understand sometimes the Japanese didn't even look like they were trying. As I mentioned in earlier posts, they never attempted to combine the two air groups on the two damaged carriers and send at least one of them to help the other 4 carriers at Battle of Midway. One of the carriers was only lightly damaged. The reason they didn't send it off was due to the air group on that carrier was not at full strength.
What might be blindingly obvious to the dilettante sitting at a key board from 70 years away was equally blindingly in opposition to Japanese operating doctrine. The Japanese never considered combining the remains of the CarDiv5 air groups into one and sending them out on Zuikaku because such reorganization was not, at least then before the losses got too bad, their way of conducting business. Military organizations feel comfortable wrapped in their doctrine, right or wrong. Tossing doctrine aside, especially for what was perceived to be one-off operation bearing more than enough capability to defeat the enemy, was probably never even considered; the operating doctrine was to keep air groups and their squadrons together, with their assigned carriers. The USN had no compunctions with mixing and matching squadrons to create air groups, but that was part of their doctrine, squadrons were interchangeable between air groups and air groups were interchangeable amongst carriers. The Japanese were the exact opposite . . . might make the beginnings of an interesting cultural anthropology/history thesis. Also, Shokaku was more than lightly damaged, the carrier was out of service for several months. And one might consider that both the Shokaku and Zuikaku air groups were seriously mauled at Coral Sea. Even if combined, they would have needed considerable aircraft and pilot replacements to make one full air group.
The US Navy was not outnumbered after the battle of Santa Cruz as the British Fleet Carrier HMS Victorious (aka USS Robin) was sent to reinforce the US Pacific Fleet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Victorious_(R38)#USS_Robin Although carrying only 50% of the aircraft of the US carriers the British carriers were armoured and able to survive hits that would destroy a US carrier. They were design of choice for fighting in inland waters against shore based aircraft During the Okinawa battle Kamikaze's literally 'bounced' of the British carriers causing little or no damage.
