Japanese BBs/BCs, Aug-Dec42 … and the Rabaul volcano. :-)
January 2nd, 2009 From
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>Date: Mon, 28 Jul 1997 19:01:11 -0400 (EDT)
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>To: mahan@microwrks.com
>From: rickt@cris.com (Eric Bergerud)
>Subject: Re: Japanese BBs/BCs, Aug-Dec42 … and the Rabaul volcano. 🙂
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>Sender: mahan-owner@microworks.net
>
> >
> >Doing research for my Guadalcanal game, I have discovered that all 12
> > Japanese battleships and battlecruisers were available to be used,
> > if Yamamato had decided to use them.
> >
>
> >One of the criticisms of Yamamoto’s handling of Guadalcanal and the
> > rest of the Solomons was that he didn’t take them seriously until
> > it was too late to do anything in the face of growing Allied
> > inventories, technology, and battle savvy.
> >
> >On the other hand, as my son Robert pointed out to me, some of those
> > capital ships had to be “on call” elsewhere on the perimeter of The
> > Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.” So, I am allowing the
> > IJN player to pick any 4 of the 8 IJN battleships for stationing at
> > Truk or even Rabaul. (Rabaul has certain other limitations,
> > hamstringing Imperial Fleet operations from there, of course. Do
> > you think the Japanese player should have to make a “volcano roll”
> > (of the diCe) every turn? ?? *I* do! 🙂 )
> >
> >While MUSASHI and YAMATO are certainly superior weapons, their victory
> > — prestige, actually — point value is astronomical, so the IJN player
> > has good incentive to keep them out of the point-blank, indiscriminate,
> > night-time battles of decision … to borrow Eric Hammel’s point … in
> > which *any* ship can conceivably go down.
> >
> >Lou Coatney, mslrc@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu
> > www.wiu.edu/users/mslrc/ … to print off a FREE “1st Alamein”
> > boardgame or BUTLER class USN Destroyer Escort cardstock model (plan)
> >
> >Umm … How active *was* the Rabaul volcano? ?? 🙂
> >
>1. Yamamoto at Guadalcanal: why Yamamoto has the reputation of being a
>competent admiral is utterly beyond me. Pearl Harbor was extraordinary
>folly. Midway was one of the stupidiest schemes in naval history. (If the
>”greatest admiral since Nelson” [William Manchester] couldn’t see that a
>massive move into the SOPAC in mid-42 would have forced CinPac into a
>”decisive battle” in waters far more favorable than those off Hawaii,
>someone should have given him glasses.) Yamamoto perhaps would have made a
>good Navy Minister (Captain Hara says that he was a poor tactician but an
>excellent “leader of leaders”) but he was a complete bust as head of
>Combined Fleet. Typical of the Japanese military regime really: the higher
>you got up the command chain, the worse was the leadership. Should he have
>used BBs at Guadalcanal? Obviously: he should have used Combined Fleet at
>Guadalcanal. Waiting for another “decisive battle” in 1944 was insanity
>knowing what all top JPN officers knew about US production plans. Yamamoto’s
>great problem is that he could never fathom the link between politics and
>war. Pearl Harbor shattered American Isolationism, and with it, Japan’s only
>chance for a meaningful victory in the Pacific. In fall of 1942 he couldn’t
>understand that making Guadalcanal into another Bataan would have been a
>devestating defeat for the US. Think about it: Yamamoto violated EVERY basic
>military principle during that campaign. He moved slowly, based assumptions
>on rotten intelligence and failed to concentrate force. He chose a difficult
>battlefield. If Japanese strategy in the Solomons was basically defensive
>they would have been MUCH better off to forget about the Canal and have
>fortified New Georgia. Those islands could have supported by air far easier
>than Guadalcanal. If he wanted to fight on the Canal, he should have fought
>with everything he could get his hands on. Fortunately for us a lot of
>Japanese admirals at the top were rotten, or we might have rued the day we
>killed Yamamoto.
>
>2. I take issue with Lou’s son. In mid-42 where was a threat to the Japanese
>going to come from? Did they think that the RN was going to make a major
>sortie into the East Indies with the situation that existed in the Atlantic
>or Med? (Such a sortie would have been pointless without a goodly troop
>convoy: Churchill opening up the Burma front in 42?? Hardly.) One thing that
>the August invasion told them about the US Fleet was that it had expended
>it’s only amphibious force (Tokyo had a very good idea of the US order of
>battle early in the war). The Central Pacific front was hinged by powerful
>bases long in Japanese possession. Furthermore there is no reason that a
>close blockade out of Guadalcanal could not have been partially based from
>Truk. That leaves the North Pacific where there was a Japanese garrison
>likewise. Add the Marines on Guadalcanal with the appearance of the US Army
>in New Guinea and any decent officer could have told you that the US had
>shot its 1942 bolt in the SW/SOPAC. Perhaps they could have kept a couple of
>BBs and a small flattop in reserve just in case, but it would not have taken
>much.
>
>3. Confined Waters. There is no reason whatsoever that the Japanese would
>have had to have put their BBs in Ironbottom sound at night. The US had only
>three battleships of note (NCarolina, SDakota, Washington: suppose Tokyo
>could have feared that Mass was in the area). Cruisers and destroyers would
>have filled that bill very nicely. Let the US BBs come into the sound and
>play tag with torpedoes and allow the Japanese heavies to come in during the
>day. It is vital to remember that US dive bombers and torpedo bombers could
>only be launched against the Japanese from Henderson or our CVs. As the
>October bombardments showed, you could have wiped Henderson off the face of
>the earth with a sustained bombardment. The risk would have come from US
>CVs. Well, Japan had parity in CVs at the time. If Combined Fleet’s could
>not defeat the USN’s CVs in September 1942, or at least consummate a suicide
>pact, then Japan was going to lose the war – Period. Land based threat to
>ships operating near the Canal would have been confined to B17s flying out
>of Espirtu Santos: not effective weapons against warships in open water. No
>doubt Japan would have taken some losses. However, neutralizing Henderson
>would have allowed the Japanese to bring troops in with proper transports
>bring proper supplies and proper artillery. Strangling the Marines and
>POSSIBLY mutilating the US Pacific Fleet would have been worth the risk.
>There was not alternative as subsequent events showed only too clearly.
>
>4. Rabaul as a base. The Strategic Bombing Survey did a long special study
>on the campaign against Rabaul. There was a perpetual smell of sulfer in the
>area which detracted from its otherwise idyllic setting (if you don’t mind a
>bit of malaria. Idyllic settings were very rare in that neck of the woods:
>Vella Lavella I’m told was beautiful. Most of the islands were malignant
>dumps where nature ran nuts.) Perhaps I err, but I cannot think offhand of
>any warship being sunk by a volcano. The IJA had, by mid-43 a garrison of
>70,000 men in the area: some of those guys might have been up a creek. The
>real problem with Rabaul in the fall of 42 were US B17 raids launched from
>Townsville in Australia. The Japanese already knew that B17s were not very
>good at hitting moving targets, but they were a bit concerned about ships in
>harbor. (The vaunted Zero had feet of clay. With poor performance at high
>altitude, and a fragile airframe, it was poorly suited to down heavy
>bombers.) At this stage of the war, however, US aviators were not top drawer
>and the Japanese found that ships in Simpson were normally quite safe.
>However, Combined Fleet did not really understand that (an understandable
>mistake for once) and were shy about using Rabaul as a base for oilers and
>capital ships. The real problem would have been where to put your fleet
>oilers. Presumably they could have hung out somewhere north of Guadalcanal
>or New Ireland. One advantages in having the BBs in the Guadlacanal area is
>that they could have served as expensive tankers, fueling DDs or CVs if
>necessary. (It is one of the Pacific War’s many ironies that about the time
>the IJN decided it needed to use Rabaul for a large contingent of CAs & CLs,
>the USAAF was closing in and US CVs were reappearing. Japanese fleet units
>which had been almost untouched for nearly two years were bludgeoned in a
>couple of weeks.)
>
>5. Oil & the Army. There were two strategic wildcards during the Guadalcanal
>campaign. One was the oil situation. IJN planners were very concerned about
>their oil supplies. They had more crude than they needed, but refined stocks
>were not ideal. (This situation was one of the factors that brought on the
>Pacific War.) Capital ships at speed eat fuel faster than a 68 Mercury.
>Operating large numbers of them for sustained periods would have really been
>a headache. However, I do not KNOW of a single instance early in the war
>where oil shortages directly limited operational planning. I’ve put this
>question to a number of groups (including this one) and no one has been able
>to point to an example where this happened. And then there was the Army. If
>there was anyone dumber than a Japanese admiral it was a Japanese general.
>And the Army ran Japan. Generals bitched and moaned about lack of shipping,
>lack of men, lack of supplies etc etc in 1942. Yet when the roof caved in in
>the SOPAC they were able to find 300,000 men to send into the Bismarcks and
>NGuinea. (where they ended up in the world’s largest POW camp: the bypassed
>Japanese bases of the S/SW Pacific) Had Japan had a properly functioning JCS
>system, some smart general (if there were any) would have been screaming for
>decisive action in the SOPAC. In the event, the two services despised each
>other. The Army treated the Kakoda adventure as their sandbox and left the
>Solomons to the IJN. The Army started to get concerned about Guadalcanal
>when the Sendai Division was thumped in later October. Sorry guys, a little
>late. Maybe you could work in an “Army IQ” roll of the dice.
>Eric Bergerud, 531 Kains Ave, Albany CA 94706, 510-525-0930