World War II In The Pacific: Logistics 1, Spirit 0
The Pacific campaign of World War II is often presented as uniquely tough for the Americans that fought there. But it was absolutely deadly for Imperial Japanese Navy seaman and aviators. Here are a couple of videos that say why.
First up: 91% casualty rates.
“91%. That’s how many Japanese carrier crew members were dead by August 1945. Not casualties, dead. For every 100 men who served on Japanese carriers, nine survived the war.”
“The Imperial Navy started with 10 fleet carriers. They ended with zero.”
“The Japanese started war with the best carrier pilots in the world. Each one had over 800 hours of flight training. By 1944, new pilots got less than 50 hours. Why? Because Japan made a fatal decision. They never rotated experienced pilots home to train replacements. Every veteran stayed in combat until they died. And they all died.”
“Here’s the brutal arithmetic. At Midway, Japan lost four carriers and 322 aircraft. But here’s what destroyed them. They lost 110 veteran pilots. Each one had over two years of training. Japan produced 200 new pilots per month. America produced 2,500.”
“The carriers themselves were death traps by design. Japanese damage control doctrine was offensive spirit overcomes material weakness. They literally didn’t train damage control.”
“American carriers had firefighting schools. Japanese carriers had buckets.”
“When the Taiho was hit by one torpedo, the crew didn’t know to turn off ventilation. Aviation fuel vapors spread through the ship. Six hours later, one spark turned the entire carrier into a 27,000 ton bomb.”
“A survivor from the Shokaku described it. ‘The American dive bombers came from the sun. Three bombs. That’s all. Three bombs and 20 minutes later, our carrier was gone. 1,360 men. The water was on fire. Those who escaped the ship burned in the ocean.'”
“Japanese carriers packed aircraft everywhere. In the hangers, on deck, in the passages. The Akagi carried 91 planes in space designed for 60. When one bomb penetrated to the hanger, it didn’t destroy one plane. It destroyed 20. The chain reaction of exploding aircraft turned carriers into crematoriums.”
“The real killer was Japanese carrier doctrine. They armed and fueled aircraft in enclosed hangers. Americans did it on deck. One bomb in a Japanese hanger meant every plane exploded in a confined space. At Midway, the Kaga took four bombs. 711 dead in 9 minutes. The survivors said the hangar deck turned into a blast furnace fed by aviation fuel.”
“Japanese carriers had no radar-directed anti-aircraft guns until 1944. They aimed manually at 400 mph aircraft. Hit probability: 2%. American carriers with radar directed guns 18%. That’s not combat, that’s mathematical suicide.”
“After losing four carriers at Midway, Japan had six fleet carriers left. In the next two years, they built seven more. America built 90.”
“Japan launched one new carrier in 1944. America launched 19.”
“The Japanese were fighting industrial capacity with human spirit. Spirit lost.”
“The pilot training collapse was even worse. By 1944, American pilots got 300 hours of training, including 100 hours in operational aircraft. Japanese pilots got 30 hours total, mostly in gliders to save fuel. They couldn’t land on carriers in calm seas, much less combat.”
“At the Philippine Sea, the Great Mariana’s Turkey shoot, Japan lost three carriers and 400 aircraft. But here’s the devastating part. They lost 450 pilots. Only 43 were rescued. America lost 29 aircraft. The kill ratio was 13 to 1. That’s not a battle. It’s an execution.”
“A captured Japanese naval officer admitted, ‘We knew after Midway. We knew we couldn’t replace the pilots. Every carrier operation after that was a suicide mission. We just didn’t call them that yet.'”
“The Shinano tells the whole story. The largest carrier ever built, 72,000 tons, sunk on her maiden voyage by four torpedoes from one submarine. 1,435 dead. The crew didn’t know how to use damage control equipment. They had watertight doors that they didn’t close. The pride of the Japanese Navy sank because nobody taught the crew basic damage control.”
“By 1945, Japan was using converted battleships and cruise ships as carriers. The pilots couldn’t actually land on them. They were one-way launch platforms for kamikaze attacks. The crew’s job was to sail to launching range and die. Survival wasn’t part of the mission profile.”
“The last operational Japanese carrier, the Amagi, was destroyed at anchor by American aircraft. The crew was still aboard, waiting for aircraft that would never come. Pilots who didn’t exist for a war already lost.”
“Japan started with 3,500 trained carrier pilots. By war’s end, 112 were alive. The carriers that revolutionized naval warfare became steel coffins for 25,000 sailors who believed offensive spirit could overcome mathematical reality.”
“The Japanese carrier fleet didn’t lose the war. It committed industrial sepukuku, taking 91% of its men with it.”
Second: The power of ice cream. Japanese POWs saw what Japan was up against. Instead of being tortured to death as their commanders had led them to believe, their captors provided them with more food than Japanese officers ate.
“He held a tray loaded with more food than his entire squadron had shared in three days. Fried chicken, mashed potatoes swimming in butter, green beans, white bread, apple pie, and a glass of cold milk.”
“The American sailor behind the serving line, irritated by the delay, gestured impatiently at the ice cream station. You want chocolate or vanilla? The question made no sense. Ice cream didn’t exist on warships. Ice cream required refrigeration that combat vessels couldn’t spare. Yet here, on America’s most battle hardened carrier, enemy prisoners were being offered a choice of frozen desserts.”
“That moment his understanding of the war, of America, of everything began to crumble. Across the Pacific War, approximately 35,000 Japanese military personnel would experience American naval captivity and witness abundance that shattered everything they believed about their enemy’s weakness.”
“They discovered carriers where enlisted sailors ate better than Japanese admirals, where machinery produced fresh water from seawater in unlimited quantities.”
“These encounters with American naval logistics would demolish the spiritual foundations of Japanese military ideology more thoroughly than any defeat in battle.”
“While Japanese sailors subsisted on rice balls and pickled vegetables, American crews consumed 4,100 calories daily of varied fresh foods.
“While Japanese carriers hand-pumped aviation fuel, American ships automated everything.”
“Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, mastermind of Pearl Harbor, who later became a Christian minister in America, documented his 1945 rescue experience aboard the USS Missouri.” They gave him coffee with cream and sugar and apologized for being out of donuts “while Japanese forces were eating leather belts.”
“The Imperial Japanese Navy’s own reports captured after the war showed that by 1944, enlisted sailors received approximately 1,400 calories daily.”
“Vitamin deficiency was endemic. Beri beri, scurvy, and night blindness plagued crews.”
“Japanese prisoners watched American damage control parties, exhausted from fighting fires and flooding, receive ice cream sundaes as battle rations. The cognitive dissonance was overwhelming. Their nation, fighting for its existence, couldn’t provide basic nutrition to forces. The enemy, supposedly decadent and weak, gave ice cream to sailors during combat.”
“The laundry facilities stunned Japanese prisoners accustomed to washing clothes in seawater. American carriers had industrial washing machines, dryers, and pressing equipment. Enlisted sailors received clean uniforms twice weekly.”
“The evaporators on USS Enterprise could produce 140,000 gallons of fresh water daily. More than the entire Japanese carrier force could produce combined.”
“Japanese naval medicine focused on returning wounded to duty regardless of condition. American sick bays treated enemies with the same advanced care as their own sailors. Operating theaters on carriers had X-ray machines, blood banks, surgical equipment matching shore hospitals. Antibiotics, particularly penicillin seemed like magic to Japanese medical personnel who watched infected wounds heal in days instead of killing in weeks.”
“Japanese ships limped back to homeland ports for any significant repair. American vessels fixed themselves while underway. Floating dry docks, repair ships, and carrier machine shops could manufacture replacement parts, rebuild engines, and fabricate entirely new equipment. USS Enterprises machine shop could produce any part smaller than an airplane engine.
“The welding shop operated continuously.The electrical shop rewired systems while the ship fought.”
“When kamikaze attacks intensified in 1945, Japanese pilots who survived crashes witnessed American damage control superiority firsthand. Ryuji Nagatsuka, rescued after his damaged Zero ditched near USS Randolph, watched the carrier’s crew repair kamikaze damage while conducting flight operations. They had foam that stopped fires instantly. Pumps that removed water faster than it entered. Metal plates that sealed holes while we watched. Teams worked with choreographed precision. No shouting, no confusion.They fixed in hours what would have sunk Japanese carriers.”
But always they get back to the food: “Bakeries produced 15,000 loaves of bread daily. Butcher shops processed whole beef carcasses stored in freezers larger than Japanese submarines. Ice machines produced tons of ice daily for food preservation and drinks. The galley on USS Enterprise used more electricity than entire Japanese destroyers.”
“Seaman First Class Hiroshi Nakamura, imprisoned aboard USS Saratoga, wrote in a hidden diary, ‘The Americans celebrated their Christmas while we attacked them. Every sailor received presents from organizations at home. Cigarettes, candy, books, razors. The mess hall was decorated with paper and lights. They sang songs and played music. They were happy. We were starving and dying for the emperor while our enemies celebrated with abundance. This was when I knew Japan had already lost.”
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16 Responses to “World War II In The Pacific: Logistics 1, Spirit 0”
This is ironic. My sister just gave me a pile of letters written by my Uncle during WW II, he was a medic on board the USS Oconto, an attack transport.
It’s funny, because one of the things he complained about was having to drink powdered milk.
As a massively book-reading soul I’m sure that this recommendation is coals to Newcastle. But if you haven’t read it yet, I STRONGLY recommend the autobiography of Saburo Sakai, ghost-written with Martin Caidin, “Samurai”. Sakai was the highest-ace Japanese pilot living at the end of the war.
He started his training in the late 1930’s and his descriptions of the regimen are amazing, along with the physical and vision requirements for the pilots. He started combat in China, and then really got into his prime flying out of Lae in New Guinea. The conditions that he describes for the pilots and ground personnel are startling since they were living in the most primitive of conditions with almost nothing for supplies, yet shot the Americans out of the air with regularity.
Almost shot down he lost most of the use of one eye, and went back into combat anyway.
Most of the book comes from his diaries and translations, while the over-wrought scenes are clearly Caidin’s and somewhat intrude into the book. But it’s well worth reading for his descriptions of aerial combat in the Pacific.
When the Taiho was hit by one torpedo, the crew didn’t know to turn off ventilation. Aviation fuel vapors spread through the ship. Six hours later, one spark turned the entire carrier into a 27,000 ton bomb.
Well, that’s wrong. Taiho‘s crew did indeed close off the ventilation. The problem is that they opened it back up as soon as the flames were put out. AvGas fumes, still-hot metal, and fresh air then did their thing and immediately turned the hangar into an inferno.
Your call whether that’s better or worse. Either way it was incompetent damage control, and it’s no wonder that Enterprise earned her reputation as the ‘Grey Ghost,” considering the amount of times she sustained damage that would have sunk any Japanese carrier (and until the Midways showed up just after the war, US carriers were no better armored than their Japanese counterparts.)
Logistics is one of the things that worries me the most about a potential Pacific war. Not only is the Navy poorly supplied with logistics vessels in general, the US doesn’t have the building capability even in peacetime to keep its carrier force up to spec. The USN is supposed to have twelve carrier battle groups, yet we have no plans to actually have more than eleven fleet carriers at any point in the next two decades as the Fords replace the Nimitzes.
Nor has Congress and the Department of War fixed the problems with munitions production brought into such stark relief by the Ukraine conflict; ate away at the edges some, but not fixed.
Kaiser Shipyards were amazing. They were producing a full CVE aircraft carrier each week at the end of the war. Henry Kaiser put all his energy into the war effort and accomplished what was previously impossible. I just realised Musk is somewhat similar.
“The real killer was Japanese carrier doctrine. They armed and fueled aircraft in enclosed hangers. Americans did it on deck. One bomb in a Japanese hanger meant every plane exploded in a confined space
USS Franklin (CV-13) says “if only we’d not fueled aircraft in our hangers”
The Imperial Navy didn’t start with 10 fleet carriers. It had 10 carriers total — six fleet carriers (Akagi, Kaga, Hiryu, Soryu, Shokaku, and Zuikaku), all of whom took part in the Pearl Harbor attack as part of Kido Butai, and four light carriers (Hosho, Ryujo, Zuiho, and Shoho). Hosho was Japan’s first carrier and was useless in combat, but was used in anti-submarine and training operations. She did survive the war. Shoho was commissioned literally the week before Pearl Harbor. Shokaku and Zuikaku were commissioned not that much earlier. Ryujo was disrespected a lot but was also used a lot.
In the first year of the Pacific War, the Imperial Navy commissioned two more carriers, the Junyo and Hiyo. Both were large enough to be fleet carriers, if somewhat smaller than those of Kido Butai, but they were converted ocean liners whose engines were not powerful enough to produce the speed required to launch “carrier attack planes” (read “torpedo bombers”) without a strong headwind.
What actually sank the Taiho is unclear. Yes, a torpedo hit on the starboard side near the forward elevator jammed said elevator between the upper hangar annd flight decks and ruptured the aviation gasoline and fuel bunkers, the latter filled with unrefined Tarakan crude oil. Because the bottom of the elevator well was below the waterline, the elevator well filled with salt water, aviation gasoline, and bunker fuel.
After a while, the noxious concoction in the forward elevator well started giving off strong fumes. The hangar decks were completely enclosed, so they could not clear the fumes. Pumping the toxic fluid in the elevator well off the ship was “bungled”; it’s not clear how, but there is a report it was spilled. No one thought to cover the odiferous mixture with firefighting foam or even just plank it over. Damage control turned on the ventilation, which spread the fumes throughout the ship, which turned the entire ship into a bomb. And one spark set it off. Because of the Taiho’s armored flight deck, the force of the explosion was deflected downward and outward, blowing out the sides and bottom of the ship.
The issue is that no one knows what exactly caused the explosion. A spark from somewhere, obviously, but the traditional view that turning on the ventilation was the fatal error might be wrong. Witnesses said the explosion was centered on the forward elevator, which suggests that’s where the detonating spark was. If that’s true, spreading the fumes around the ship may have been irrelevant because the spark was close to the source of the fumes. My guess would be a spark from a portable pump used to try to empty the elevator well (a spark from a generator caused a similar fuel-vapor explosion on the original carrier USS Lexington) or the jammed lift fell and caused sparks along its tracks.
I second the recommendation of Saburo Sakai’s book. He flew his damaged Zero with a shattered windshield and a bullet in his skull just above his eye from Guadalcanal some five hours back to Rabaul’s Lakunai airbase. He landed safely, got out of his plane, saluted his superior, and collapsed. Incredible toughness and determination on his part. And while Sakai had the cockiness any pilot needs and that regularly turned into arrogance in the Imperial Japanese military (especially the army), he seems to have had no hatred for the Americans, just an understandable love for his own country. Maybe that’s just the effect of Martin Caidin’s writing, but Sakai’s story of shooting up the F4F Wildcat but leaving its pilot alive because “I wanted the plane, not the pilot” stuck with me.
“A survivor from the Shokaku described it. ‘The American dive bombers came from the sun. Three bombs. That’s all. Three bombs and 20 minutes later, our carrier was gone. 1,360 men. The water was on fire. Those who escaped the ship burned in the ocean.’”
They must mean the Soryu, sunk by three bombs at Midway. The Shokaku took a few bombs at Coral Sea and survived, and took six or more bombs at Santa Cruz and survived, only to be sunk at Philippine Sea by torpedoes from the submarine USS Cavalla and a healthy dose of fumes from Tarakan crude oil.
If anyone is interested in learning how and why Taiho sank, I recommend reading the “1945-46 US Naval Technical Mission to Japan” report on its sinking:
S-06-2 Reports of Damage to Japanese Warships-Article 2, YAMATO(BB), MUSASHI(BB), TAIHO(CV), SHINANO(CV)
Bottom line: cracks in aviation gasoline storage tanks caused avgas fumes to accumulate in the elevator well. Improper ventilation of the fumes spread it over the ship until a spark ignited them.
Or read my book: USN Submarine vs IJN Aircraft Carrier: The Pacific 1942–44
A few years back, my Dad wrote a paper on the Japanese decision to go to war with us. Of course, we look back now and ask, “What were they thinking?”, but that’s in hindsight: given what they knew then, did it make sense? His answer was that they did drastically underestimate our will to fight: if you looked at our history up to that point, we had already shown on many occasions that we didn’t give up until victory, or at the very least a restoration of the status quo. However, he said that looking at it from a strategic and logistical point of view, it did make sense, because we did things in that theater that were unimaginable before the war. The climatic example he gave was the improvement in anti-aircraft armament brought about by the Navy. By the end of the war, our typical ship was leaps and bounds ahead of 1941 in:
a.) the number of AA guns available;
b.) the rate of fire;
c.) the power of the shells;
d.) accuracy (guided by radar);
e.) by the end of the war, the shells *themselves* had radar, so even if you didn’t actually hit the plane, the shell would still go off right next to it and knock it out of the air anyway.
He came to the conclusion that the Kamikazes weren’t just about the Japanese drive toward self-sacrifice, but were also simply the only realistic way that Japanese planes could hope to cause major damage to American ships (particularly considering the deficiencies in pilot training that the article mentions.) They had to throw the entire plane at the ship to have any chance of sinking it.
The problem with kamikazes is they only did superficial damage to a ship, except, perhaps the smallest.
What I mean by superficial is they did not penetrate deep into a ship. The damage was confined to the weather deck or (in the case of wood-flight deck aircraft carriers the gallery deck or the hanger deck. The damage was all well above the waterline.
The only chance to sink the ship hinged on uncontrollable fires leading to the ship’s being completely gutted and sinking due to that damage or the US being forced to scuttle the ship. But by 1944 the US Navy was really good at damage control, especially fire-fighting. The result was the upper decks might be badly damaged, but the machinery spaces were untouched. After the fires were put out the ship could steam (or motor) to an advanced US port for repairs.
Another benefit was since the damage did not affect hull integrity, repairs could be made at fitting docks, not drydocks. Or really any dock with a large enough crane to lift in the parts required for the repair – and there were a lot of those, a lot more than there were drydocks.
As far as I know the only US major warship (cruiser or larger) sunk by Japanese air attack in 1944-45 was the light carrier Princeton. That loss was caused by a bomb dropped by a non-kamikaze aircraft. The bomb penetrated to the machinery spaces before exploding. This degraded the ability to fight fires and coordinate repairs. Ultimately Princeton was torpedoed by a US cruiser because it could not be towed to safely.
Those interested might check out my book “The Kamikaze Campaign 1944–45: Imperial Japan’s last throw of the dice (Air Campaign, 29)” It is available at Osprey or Amazon.
The Japanese decision to go to war with us (and Great Britain, and the Netherlands, and Australia, and …) was rational only from the Japanese point of view. And even then it’s very shaky.
The entire reason for the Pacific War was 1. Japan’s unsuccessful effort to conquer China; and B. oil. Probably due to Chinese Communists sparking an incident at the Marco Polo Bridge near Peking between Japan and Chinese Nationalists, Japan had started a massive invasion of China. The Japanese thought the Nationalists could be forced to surrender within a matter of months. It didn’t happen. The ChiNats were repeatedly defeated but Japan could not make them surrender because the Japanese could not take the Nationakist capital at Chunking in the far upper Yangtze. Japan’s frustration with the war turned to brutality, with the full support of the Imperial family, as exemplified by the Rape of Nanking. Japanese brutality inspired other countries to send a trickle of supplies to the Chinese Nationalists. The war with China was bleeding Japan dry but it could not pull out without a loss of “face”.
Japan started looking for a way to force a peace deal with the Nationalists. The Japanese captured or isolated all the Chinese ports where aid was coming in to the Chinese. Didn’t work. Then the Japanese seized northern French Indochina, through which aid was reaching China. Still didn’t work. Then Japan seized southern French Indochina, which had the port of Cam Ranh Bay and an airbase complex around Saigon.
There was no reason related to the war in China for Japan to invade southern Indochina, but Saigon was in range of American, British, and Dutch interests, especially the oil of Indonesia and the rubber of Malaysia. This was the tip off that the Japanese planned to attack all these locations, which it had. And this was why the US, Britain, and the Netherlands prohibited sales of oil, among other things to Japan.
Japan had not expected this reaction, but it could not pull out of Saigon without losing “face”. It needed the resources of Indonesia and Malaysia to continue the war in China. So Japan decided to actually seize Indonesia and Malaysia. In so doing, it would start a war that probably would end in a catastrophic defeat for Japan. The Japanese government, including Tojo, knew this. But it felt a catastrophic defeat in a war was preferable to losing “face”. Something to think about because China thinks in similar terms.
As it turned out, Japan tried to thread the needle, and quickly conquer so much of Asia and the Pacific that the American public would shy away from fighting to liberate it. But the attack on Pearl Harbor, which was horribly mistimed due to Japanese diplomatic bungling, angered the American people so much that such a peace deal was impossible. The rest is history.
This is ironic. My sister just gave me a pile of letters written by my Uncle during WW II, he was a medic on board the USS Oconto, an attack transport.
It’s funny, because one of the things he complained about was having to drink powdered milk.
Oh, and he REALLY wanted a home cooked meal.
T
Mr. Person:
As a massively book-reading soul I’m sure that this recommendation is coals to Newcastle. But if you haven’t read it yet, I STRONGLY recommend the autobiography of Saburo Sakai, ghost-written with Martin Caidin, “Samurai”. Sakai was the highest-ace Japanese pilot living at the end of the war.
He started his training in the late 1930’s and his descriptions of the regimen are amazing, along with the physical and vision requirements for the pilots. He started combat in China, and then really got into his prime flying out of Lae in New Guinea. The conditions that he describes for the pilots and ground personnel are startling since they were living in the most primitive of conditions with almost nothing for supplies, yet shot the Americans out of the air with regularity.
Almost shot down he lost most of the use of one eye, and went back into combat anyway.
Most of the book comes from his diaries and translations, while the over-wrought scenes are clearly Caidin’s and somewhat intrude into the book. But it’s well worth reading for his descriptions of aerial combat in the Pacific.
Now after reading this think about our current industrial capacity compared to certain other countries…
Well, that’s wrong. Taiho‘s crew did indeed close off the ventilation. The problem is that they opened it back up as soon as the flames were put out. AvGas fumes, still-hot metal, and fresh air then did their thing and immediately turned the hangar into an inferno.
Your call whether that’s better or worse. Either way it was incompetent damage control, and it’s no wonder that Enterprise earned her reputation as the ‘Grey Ghost,” considering the amount of times she sustained damage that would have sunk any Japanese carrier (and until the Midways showed up just after the war, US carriers were no better armored than their Japanese counterparts.)
Additional note:
Logistics is one of the things that worries me the most about a potential Pacific war. Not only is the Navy poorly supplied with logistics vessels in general, the US doesn’t have the building capability even in peacetime to keep its carrier force up to spec. The USN is supposed to have twelve carrier battle groups, yet we have no plans to actually have more than eleven fleet carriers at any point in the next two decades as the Fords replace the Nimitzes.
Nor has Congress and the Department of War fixed the problems with munitions production brought into such stark relief by the Ukraine conflict; ate away at the edges some, but not fixed.
Kaiser Shipyards were amazing. They were producing a full CVE aircraft carrier each week at the end of the war. Henry Kaiser put all his energy into the war effort and accomplished what was previously impossible. I just realised Musk is somewhat similar.
“The real killer was Japanese carrier doctrine. They armed and fueled aircraft in enclosed hangers. Americans did it on deck. One bomb in a Japanese hanger meant every plane exploded in a confined space
USS Franklin (CV-13) says “if only we’d not fueled aircraft in our hangers”
The Imperial Navy didn’t start with 10 fleet carriers. It had 10 carriers total — six fleet carriers (Akagi, Kaga, Hiryu, Soryu, Shokaku, and Zuikaku), all of whom took part in the Pearl Harbor attack as part of Kido Butai, and four light carriers (Hosho, Ryujo, Zuiho, and Shoho). Hosho was Japan’s first carrier and was useless in combat, but was used in anti-submarine and training operations. She did survive the war. Shoho was commissioned literally the week before Pearl Harbor. Shokaku and Zuikaku were commissioned not that much earlier. Ryujo was disrespected a lot but was also used a lot.
In the first year of the Pacific War, the Imperial Navy commissioned two more carriers, the Junyo and Hiyo. Both were large enough to be fleet carriers, if somewhat smaller than those of Kido Butai, but they were converted ocean liners whose engines were not powerful enough to produce the speed required to launch “carrier attack planes” (read “torpedo bombers”) without a strong headwind.
Boobah,
What actually sank the Taiho is unclear. Yes, a torpedo hit on the starboard side near the forward elevator jammed said elevator between the upper hangar annd flight decks and ruptured the aviation gasoline and fuel bunkers, the latter filled with unrefined Tarakan crude oil. Because the bottom of the elevator well was below the waterline, the elevator well filled with salt water, aviation gasoline, and bunker fuel.
After a while, the noxious concoction in the forward elevator well started giving off strong fumes. The hangar decks were completely enclosed, so they could not clear the fumes. Pumping the toxic fluid in the elevator well off the ship was “bungled”; it’s not clear how, but there is a report it was spilled. No one thought to cover the odiferous mixture with firefighting foam or even just plank it over. Damage control turned on the ventilation, which spread the fumes throughout the ship, which turned the entire ship into a bomb. And one spark set it off. Because of the Taiho’s armored flight deck, the force of the explosion was deflected downward and outward, blowing out the sides and bottom of the ship.
The issue is that no one knows what exactly caused the explosion. A spark from somewhere, obviously, but the traditional view that turning on the ventilation was the fatal error might be wrong. Witnesses said the explosion was centered on the forward elevator, which suggests that’s where the detonating spark was. If that’s true, spreading the fumes around the ship may have been irrelevant because the spark was close to the source of the fumes. My guess would be a spark from a portable pump used to try to empty the elevator well (a spark from a generator caused a similar fuel-vapor explosion on the original carrier USS Lexington) or the jammed lift fell and caused sparks along its tracks.
Blackwing1,
I second the recommendation of Saburo Sakai’s book. He flew his damaged Zero with a shattered windshield and a bullet in his skull just above his eye from Guadalcanal some five hours back to Rabaul’s Lakunai airbase. He landed safely, got out of his plane, saluted his superior, and collapsed. Incredible toughness and determination on his part. And while Sakai had the cockiness any pilot needs and that regularly turned into arrogance in the Imperial Japanese military (especially the army), he seems to have had no hatred for the Americans, just an understandable love for his own country. Maybe that’s just the effect of Martin Caidin’s writing, but Sakai’s story of shooting up the F4F Wildcat but leaving its pilot alive because “I wanted the plane, not the pilot” stuck with me.
“A survivor from the Shokaku described it. ‘The American dive bombers came from the sun. Three bombs. That’s all. Three bombs and 20 minutes later, our carrier was gone. 1,360 men. The water was on fire. Those who escaped the ship burned in the ocean.’”
They must mean the Soryu, sunk by three bombs at Midway. The Shokaku took a few bombs at Coral Sea and survived, and took six or more bombs at Santa Cruz and survived, only to be sunk at Philippine Sea by torpedoes from the submarine USS Cavalla and a healthy dose of fumes from Tarakan crude oil.
[…] World War II In The Pacific: Logistics 1, Spirit 0 […]
Late to the party, but I was busy earlier.
If anyone is interested in learning how and why Taiho sank, I recommend reading the “1945-46 US Naval Technical Mission to Japan” report on its sinking:
S-06-2 Reports of Damage to Japanese Warships-Article 2, YAMATO(BB), MUSASHI(BB), TAIHO(CV), SHINANO(CV)
It is available online You can find it here:
https://www.fischer-tropsch.org/primary_documents/gvt_reports/USNAVY/USNTMJ%20Reports/USNTMJ_toc.htm
Bottom line: cracks in aviation gasoline storage tanks caused avgas fumes to accumulate in the elevator well. Improper ventilation of the fumes spread it over the ship until a spark ignited them.
Or read my book: USN Submarine vs IJN Aircraft Carrier: The Pacific 1942–44
Amazon url: https://www.amazon.com/USN-Submarine-IJN-Aircraft-Carrier/dp/1472862201/
Bad Japanese damage control did for both Taiho and Shinano. The book explains why.
A few years back, my Dad wrote a paper on the Japanese decision to go to war with us. Of course, we look back now and ask, “What were they thinking?”, but that’s in hindsight: given what they knew then, did it make sense? His answer was that they did drastically underestimate our will to fight: if you looked at our history up to that point, we had already shown on many occasions that we didn’t give up until victory, or at the very least a restoration of the status quo. However, he said that looking at it from a strategic and logistical point of view, it did make sense, because we did things in that theater that were unimaginable before the war. The climatic example he gave was the improvement in anti-aircraft armament brought about by the Navy. By the end of the war, our typical ship was leaps and bounds ahead of 1941 in:
a.) the number of AA guns available;
b.) the rate of fire;
c.) the power of the shells;
d.) accuracy (guided by radar);
e.) by the end of the war, the shells *themselves* had radar, so even if you didn’t actually hit the plane, the shell would still go off right next to it and knock it out of the air anyway.
He came to the conclusion that the Kamikazes weren’t just about the Japanese drive toward self-sacrifice, but were also simply the only realistic way that Japanese planes could hope to cause major damage to American ships (particularly considering the deficiencies in pilot training that the article mentions.) They had to throw the entire plane at the ship to have any chance of sinking it.
The problem with kamikazes is they only did superficial damage to a ship, except, perhaps the smallest.
What I mean by superficial is they did not penetrate deep into a ship. The damage was confined to the weather deck or (in the case of wood-flight deck aircraft carriers the gallery deck or the hanger deck. The damage was all well above the waterline.
The only chance to sink the ship hinged on uncontrollable fires leading to the ship’s being completely gutted and sinking due to that damage or the US being forced to scuttle the ship. But by 1944 the US Navy was really good at damage control, especially fire-fighting. The result was the upper decks might be badly damaged, but the machinery spaces were untouched. After the fires were put out the ship could steam (or motor) to an advanced US port for repairs.
Another benefit was since the damage did not affect hull integrity, repairs could be made at fitting docks, not drydocks. Or really any dock with a large enough crane to lift in the parts required for the repair – and there were a lot of those, a lot more than there were drydocks.
As far as I know the only US major warship (cruiser or larger) sunk by Japanese air attack in 1944-45 was the light carrier Princeton. That loss was caused by a bomb dropped by a non-kamikaze aircraft. The bomb penetrated to the machinery spaces before exploding. This degraded the ability to fight fires and coordinate repairs. Ultimately Princeton was torpedoed by a US cruiser because it could not be towed to safely.
Those interested might check out my book “The Kamikaze Campaign 1944–45: Imperial Japan’s last throw of the dice (Air Campaign, 29)” It is available at Osprey or Amazon.
Joe Smith,
The Japanese decision to go to war with us (and Great Britain, and the Netherlands, and Australia, and …) was rational only from the Japanese point of view. And even then it’s very shaky.
The entire reason for the Pacific War was 1. Japan’s unsuccessful effort to conquer China; and B. oil. Probably due to Chinese Communists sparking an incident at the Marco Polo Bridge near Peking between Japan and Chinese Nationalists, Japan had started a massive invasion of China. The Japanese thought the Nationalists could be forced to surrender within a matter of months. It didn’t happen. The ChiNats were repeatedly defeated but Japan could not make them surrender because the Japanese could not take the Nationakist capital at Chunking in the far upper Yangtze. Japan’s frustration with the war turned to brutality, with the full support of the Imperial family, as exemplified by the Rape of Nanking. Japanese brutality inspired other countries to send a trickle of supplies to the Chinese Nationalists. The war with China was bleeding Japan dry but it could not pull out without a loss of “face”.
Japan started looking for a way to force a peace deal with the Nationalists. The Japanese captured or isolated all the Chinese ports where aid was coming in to the Chinese. Didn’t work. Then the Japanese seized northern French Indochina, through which aid was reaching China. Still didn’t work. Then Japan seized southern French Indochina, which had the port of Cam Ranh Bay and an airbase complex around Saigon.
There was no reason related to the war in China for Japan to invade southern Indochina, but Saigon was in range of American, British, and Dutch interests, especially the oil of Indonesia and the rubber of Malaysia. This was the tip off that the Japanese planned to attack all these locations, which it had. And this was why the US, Britain, and the Netherlands prohibited sales of oil, among other things to Japan.
Japan had not expected this reaction, but it could not pull out of Saigon without losing “face”. It needed the resources of Indonesia and Malaysia to continue the war in China. So Japan decided to actually seize Indonesia and Malaysia. In so doing, it would start a war that probably would end in a catastrophic defeat for Japan. The Japanese government, including Tojo, knew this. But it felt a catastrophic defeat in a war was preferable to losing “face”. Something to think about because China thinks in similar terms.
As it turned out, Japan tried to thread the needle, and quickly conquer so much of Asia and the Pacific that the American public would shy away from fighting to liberate it. But the attack on Pearl Harbor, which was horribly mistimed due to Japanese diplomatic bungling, angered the American people so much that such a peace deal was impossible. The rest is history.