Interesting article on Japanese pilots being easy marks. This has been the case for some time already, but as usual the military has waited for an period of time to publicly admit it.
The decline in Japanese pilot skill was an inevitable result of how they went to war. When war began with the United States, Japanese pilots were highly trained and more skilled and experienced and had better planes than their American opponents. But the Japanese assumed their pilots were so good they would live forever, and didn’t factor in a prolonged war of attrition. They were short of replacement pilots and replacement aircraft, both on land and on carrier flight decks.
The Japanese attempt to create a replacement pilot program suffered from a number shortcomings. First, it was created too late, while the war was in progress, and the air groups at the front needed pilots NOW, not later. Second, because of the need to keep force levels up, they dipped into the replacement pool before the pilots had completed their training. Third, the numbers of training planes was low because the limited Japanese production had to go to the front (same issue as with pilots). Fourth, the long shipping distances for oil products from the NEI to Japan to Rabaul used up so much limited tanker space that the Japanese weren’t able to keep up stocks of aviation fuel in the home islands to train the pilots.
The result was American pilots came into battle better trained and more experienced, with better aircraft, and lived longer than their Japanese counterparts, who were getting less and less proficient.
The noticeable decline in quality began in the Solomons, where the campaign of continuous air attrition began. As their pilots were killed off, the Japanese had to scramble to replace them. At one point, for Yamamoto’s Operation “I-Go,” they emptied the carriers, and sent the pilots and planes to Rabaul to fight off the airfields there. After the planes were shot down and the pilots lost, they had carriers with no planes. That was still the situation months later when the Americans began operations in the Gilberts, Marshall and Caroline Islands. The invasions of Kwajalein and the destruction of Truk were unopposed by the IJN, because the carriers were impotent without planes and pilots.
The vicious downward cycle of pilot quality was never resolved, and by the invasion of Leyte in October 1944, the Japanese accepted their reality; any pilot going up against the Americans was on a suicide mission. So the Japanese with a rare dose of realism accepted their reality, and the kamikaze was born.
Thanks for that enlightening explanation. You know, you could do WW2 Cliff’s Notes.