“It wasn’t like they were deliberately being deceitful, it was just hard to accurately calculate, due to the optics and sort of conditions they had to operate under.”
Sub warfare, being a shoot and scoot operation, accurate reporting had to be problematic. Even two solid torpedo hits didn’t equal a sinking. Add in the torpedo exploding too soon due to the magnetic exploder malfunctioning, rough seas, night attacks and limited line of sight and it was virtually impossible for an accurate record of ship types and actual sinkings.
As to the Japanese would you want to be a pilot that returned to your carrier and reported failure?
Me neither.
The Japanese were even worse than the Germans about believing in their own superiority and the weakness of their enemies. After all, they claimed not to have lost a war in 2,600 years.
When a sub did sneak into a supposedly protected area and raise a ruckus they couldn’t believe it.
Regarding the Barb and COB Saunders, Paul Saunders enlisted in the navy in 1936 and served aboard destroyers until 1940 when he qualified for submarines. He served in Barb (SS-220), Cusk (SS-348), Carbonero (SS-337), and Theodore Roosevelt (SSBN-600).
Saunders made all 12 of Barbs wartime patrols, something no other submariner of the war can brag of. He was slated to transfer to another sub when Fluckey tapped him to be COB of Barb.
Crews were constantly raided after each patrol to send seasoned sailors as leavening to boats with green crews.
After he retired as a Chief Petty Officer in 1962 he worked on missile launching systems for the navy, including the Polaris missile system.
Fluckey retired as an Admiral and wrote a book titled Thunder Below about his wartime experiences and the men he served with.
https://navy.togetherweserved.com/usn/servlet/tws.webapp.WebApp?cmd=ShadowBoxReflectionProfile&type=Person&ID=568870
Everything you said about the sub warfare at that time is absolutely correct. Getting a totally accurate assessment in a given situation would have been nothing short of miraculous. The fog of war, squared.
As to the Japanese would you want to be a pilot that returned to your carrier and reported failure?
The thing that always struck me as curious is that their commanders would not deeply quiz them. Fliers would return with ridiculous, even conflicting stories and their superiors would go "okey dokey!" and document them. That hurt their war effort because it is important to know the truth of what is going on, what is working or not, and make adjustments accordingly. Their military culture also did not tolerate input from lower ranks. Their chain of command only rolled one way, from the top down. Orders issued were expect to be obeyed - end of story. A number of competent officers got sidelined due to their insistence at sharing alarming concerns that nobody wanted to hear or follow up on.
The Japanese were even worse than the Germans about believing in their own superiority and the weakness of their enemies.
The Japs had a fakenews problem themselves at the time, on steroids - besides officially sanctioned propaganda, you had people like the aforementioned fliers talking to other personnel about their "great victories", writing letters home, visiting friends & relatives if they were fortunate enough to get to home port, and talking to the local news rags, all of which contributed to spreading exaggerations like wildfire. That also had a negative effect on their war effort, making civilian and military personnel alike complacent. There is an account of a POW working in a shipyard who noticed how slow and disinterested the workers appeared. He asked one about that, saying there is a war on, where is the sense of urgency at. The worker told him why bother, it's in the bag, they have it won, why exert themselves unnecessarily. What I can't get my head around is that Imperial Headquarters knew the truth of how bad things really were but near as I can tell never took steps to constructively correct it, so the self destructive psyops continued until events outstripped the ability to hide or lie about them.
Crews were constantly raided after each patrol to send seasoned sailors as leavening to boats with green crews.
That was a point of contention, especially after the sub fleet began to finally find its footing, shaking off the feckless peacetime culture and tactics. There were guys who wanted transfer to be with "winning" boats, others who were snatched up because they were competent standouts, by skippers who were trying to build a tight & aggressive crew. And even a good crew didn't stay together indefinitely. Standout senior officers would be tapped to get their own command so they could build their own crews, spreading new and workable tactics out to other boats in the fleet. We had to build up from scratch and do it fast - though we had been into subs since the first world war we had never developed the sort of culture to use them to their full potential, so it was on-the-job training at a frantic pace. I think that's what got Mush Morton killed, when Dick O'Kane left the Wahoo for his own command. I can see the logic for O'Kane leaving since good skippers were needed and needed badly, there was nothing new for him to do or learn aboard the Wahoo - Morton & O'Kane functioned well and deadly as a team, revolutionizing American submarine warfare as they went. O'Kane was a steady hand and a check on Morton's level of aggression which at times bordered on recklessness - consequently I think the absence of O'Kane had a bearing on the loss of Wahoo.