This Day In History | World War II June 19, 1944 Battle of the Philippine Sea

1944 United States scores major victory against Japanese in Battle of the Philippine Sea

On this day in 1944, in what would become known as the "Marianas Turkey Shoot," U.S. carrier-based fighters decimate the Japanese Fleet with only a minimum of losses in the Battle of the Philippine Sea.

The security of the Marianas Islands, in the western Pacific, were vital to Japan, which had air bases on Saipan, Tinian, and Guam. U.S. troops were already battling the Japanese on Saipan, having landed there on the 15th. Any further intrusion would leave the Philippine Islands, and Japan itself, vulnerable to U.S. attack. The U.S. Fifth Fleet, commanded by Admiral Raymond Spruance, was on its way west from the Marshall Islands as backup for the invasion of Saipan and the rest of the Marianas. But Japanese Admiral Ozawa Jisaburo decided to challenge the American fleet, ordering 430 of his planes, launched from aircraft carriers, to attack. In what became the greatest carrier battle of the war, the United States, having already picked up the Japanese craft on radar, proceeded to shoot down more than 300 aircraft and sink two Japanese aircraft carriers, losing only 29 of their own planes in the process. It was a described in the aftermath as a "turkey shoot."

Admiral Ozawa, believing his missing planes had landed at their Guam air base, maintained his position in the Philippine Sea, allowing for a second attack of U.S. carrier-based fighter planes, this time commanded by Admiral Mitscher, to shoot down an additional 65 Japanese planes and sink another carrier. In total, the Japanese lost 480 aircraft, three-quarters of its total, not to mention most of its crews. American domination of the Marianas was now a foregone conclusion.

The Japanese did not "beat" China, China beat them (i.e. China Fatigue) without having to sacrifice it's own military forces.

China lost 1.3 million KIA and 1.8 million WIA. They also lost 9 million civilians. The Chinese claim that there were 35 million casualties.

Their objective was to replace the western imperial system with one of their own. The Greater East-Asia Co-prosperity Sphere was public relations.

That essentially was my point in raising it. The Japanese wanted hegemony over the region and displace the influence of the West. They didn't want to occupy or conquer the US.

Economic reasons played a large role in Japan's announcement of the Co-Prosperity Sphere in 1940. Japan required East Asian raw materials such as oil from the Dutch East Indies and rubber from Indochina in order to keep its manufacturing industry and military in China supplied. The U.S. embargo of oil and steel shipments to Japan and other restrictions on raw materials shipments by Western nations pushed the Japanese leaders to seek sources in Asian countries to ensure Japanese self-sufficiency. The other Asian countries in the Co-Prosperity Sphere also would provide Japan with export markets for its manufactured goods and with land for its surplus population.

No 20-20 hindsight involved. It was obviouos that Japan was doomed to defeat by anyone who cared to take notice. Yammamoto certainly did.

That's revisionist history. We did not know if we could defeat Japan and Germany on December 11, 1941. Victory was far from being obvious with most of Europe under the Nazis and the Japanese overruning China, Manchuria, and Southeast Asia. I don't think it was obvious to the Russians, Filipinos, French, etc. As I mentioned, the Germans were working on an atomic bomb. They surpassed us in rocket technology. America was far from being prepared for war. Your comments diminish what was done and the sacrifice of the people involved. The outcome was uncertain. We were in a war for national survival.

I still have my WWII ration book, which was used during the war when I was a child to get various kinds of foodstuffs. How old are you?

I'm 40, if you must know. I also have degrees in European History and Westerv Civ and am currently working on my PhD. My Grandfather fought at Guadalcanal and Peleliu (where he lost a foot and a quarter of his lower left leg). I also served in the US Navy for 12 years (and was even stationed in Japan and the Philipines for a few years).

Victory, ultimately, must be something that resembles reality. It must be defined in concrete terms and be demonstratable; you have to be able to conceptualize it in one way, shape or form. The conditions under which Japan defined victory were totally out of whack with reality. Victory to Japan was simply a continuation of the status-quo in the Far East with the Japanese taking the place of the Americans, British, Dutch and French. There was no consideration taken as to whether the Chinese would simply exchange one imperialist master for another, it was assumed that once Japan proved it superiority that the Chinese would just knuckle under (they very nearly did). The Pacific War, to Japan, was not a war fought to defeat the Western powers outright in any military sense. It was embarked upon in order to finsih the War in China free of Western interferance.

The defining symbol of Western interferrence was the continuing "Aid" given to Chiang Kai-shek by the West. In real terms, this aid wasn't very much at all in any material sense, but, the very fact that Chiang had supporters and that someone was doing SOMETHING for the Chinese people gave them the backbone to continue resistance.

The Japanese blamed this aid and the feelings it engendered in the Chinese as the reasons why Japanese arms had not succeeded in subjugating China (although the Japanese would refer to it as "saving China from itself"). The war in China had been going on in one form or another since 1894 (what we call the Sino-Japanese War), and continued until 1945 when Japan finally surrendered. In between, the Japanese had conquered Manchuria, the majority of Mongolia, a good portion of northern China, and then overran the entire coastal region from north to south. It absorbed the former Treaty Port concessions of the western powers, as well (especially the German concession at Tsing-Tao). But China did not submit in any realistic way (i.e. recongnition of Japanese superiority with a surrender treaty or a supplication to the Emperor).

It was this involvement with China over so long a period of time that borught Japan into conflict with Russia, and later, the Western powers,in the first place.

In the Japanese mind, since they were a divine race and superior beings, the fact that they could not close the deal in China MUST be the result of outside forces. This is the rationale for the attack on Pearl Harbor and South East Asia. Kick the west out, keep the west out, stop the aid to Chiang, and Japan can finally turn it's attention back to completing the conquest of China.

It was never Japan's intention to invade the United States, and could not do so in any way that would ensure even partial success. There simply were not enough soldiers, ships, planes, etc, to even comtemplate doing so,and there never would be. Japan could not send 2 or 3 million men across the Pacific, invade the US, and then keep them supplied for as long as it took to get it's way. Japan knew it all too well. This is NOT revisionist history; the Japanese government and military knew full well (just read the official documents!) that it had to deliver a knock out blow on the first day of war, and then negotiate, or be doomed to a long war in which they must lose.

The hysteria engendered by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is an indication of how even more unprepared THIS country was, militarily and psychologically, for war. Prescient military commanders planned for the possibility of Japanese invasion, but never considered it likely (in fact, George S. Patton was one of them when he was G-2 of the Hawaiian district in the 1930's). So your "the Japanese never wanted to invade the US argument" is mooted simply because it was never a real possibility to begin with. As such, it has no place in the argument. No one has ever argued that it was possible, especially no Japanese military leader with half a brain.

So, in a realistic sense Japan could never achieve victory by force of arms. It hoped to achieve victory by smacking the west and then extending the olive branch. It ocunted on shock, speed, surprise and it's enemies not having the stomach for a fight. Only a people who are incredibly shortsighted and arrogant could ever assume such a thing could happen. How realistic was that?

However, the Japanese leadership at the time didn't care about such considerations (even if they had debated them instensely). Their primary concern was that once Japan put it's hand to something, it should complete the task...or die trying. It's difficult for us, as westerners, to understand the concept of starting on something you know you will ultimately fail at, barring some event of cosmic signifigence (like when I start a diet). We wouldn't do it; the Japanse certainly would.

Unless you understand Japanese motivations, you cannot even remotely figure what victory means to them, or what shape it takes. It is a Japan that not only rules Asia, but which has proven it superiority against decadent westerners. It does not need to invade the United States to do this.

To get back to the rest of it;

So China lost 35 million people? The Russians lost 20+ million. So, you tell me, in the end, who made a bigger,more meaningful sacrifice in the cause of ultimate victory against the Axis; Thirty five million Chinese who mostly didn't bother to defend themselves, or 20 million Russians who not only fought, but took the fight back to it's enemy's homeland?

And before I get accused of engaging in more 20/20 revisionist history, Hitler lost his war at Dunkirk (ensuring that Britain survived and guarenteeing a multi-front war which was his biggest fear),and Japan lost it's war at Pearl Harbor. And the both of them knew it, but true to form, they were quite willing to brazen it out in the hopes that just ONE MORE VICTORY (there's that cosmic event again!) would cause the Allies to see the light and quit. The problem was that neither Hitler nor the Japanese militarists who always believed the Allies would quit, couldn't apply the same dynamic to their own situations.

In the end, what did the possession of Riga do for the Germans? What did Wake Island do for the overall Japanese war effort? Just because such and such a place was occupied doesn't means it translates into anything that inches you towards victory. Holding all that real estate probably pushed Germany and Japan closer to defeat because it had to be manned, supplied and defended, to the detriment of more vital places or efforts.

Economics certainly did play a large part in the Co-Properity Sphere stuff, but the fact of the matter was that nothing was done about it until 1943, when a specific government ministry was set up to enact the policies (themselves very sketchy). This was called the Ministry of East Asia. By this time, Japan is obviously losing the war, and the Co-Prosperity sphere nonsense devolves from a Pan-Asian-brotherhood-economic-co-operation-thing, to encouraging and setting up Nationalist Governments all over South Asia that will confound the Allies during and after the War. The three greatest examples of this were the Independance for Burma movement(in which Burma was granted limited independance...from Britain, by Japan!), and the creation of the Indian National Army and the Burmese Independance Army forces (both basically useless).

No economic or political arrangements of consequence in which Japan either didn't get what it wanted or couldn't bully it's "brothers" into agreeing to was ever undertaken.

You are correct when you say that the intial stages of the war were undertaken to secure resources for Japan. They were also undertaken to build a series of outposts and defensive positions to keep the allies out of the Western Pacific, assuming that the hadn't already surrendered to superior Japanese arms. The problem is that Japan did the whole thing in reverse order; it did not defeat it's foes in any meaningful way before forgetting about them entirely (after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese Navy operates for several months in the Indian Ocean, leaving the American fleet to recover and reorganize). In this reagrd, possession of the Dutch East Indies meant nothing when Allied planes and submarines could sink the tankers faster than they could sail for Japan.

You have mentioned Mahan, I believe, and here's your proof that he was (mostly) right; the severely damaged American Pacific Fleet and the pitiful Royal Navy Far East Fleet, survived to fight another day, and used the inherant advantage allotted to naval forces of movement and striking at isoloated points on the enemy's perimeter. Because Japan didn't finish either force off when it had the chance, it had to stake all on an all-out battle at Midway. And it lost there because it violated every military principle known to man (and because Nimitz/Spruance/Fletcher got lucky).

Well, I don't know what to say about your ration book. I'm sure it will be a valueable antique some day. perhaps it has great personal meaning to you, but it's very existence doesn't mean a thing about a victory for either Germany or Japan.

So what? So did my Dad (at Khe Sanh - 26th Marines).

Before I spent my year in-country, I served on the USS Iwo Jima (LPH-2). BLT 1/26, among other Marines, was embarked on the ship and made several landings off of us. On the way over we swung by Iwo Jima and had a ceremony anchored off the coast. It was moving moment especially since we had a couple of sargent majors who participated in the battle.

Apparently President Johnson and Secretary MacNamarra didn't, and neither did the Americna public; all they saw as the bullet-riddled Embassy.

Johnson and MacNamara were long gone before we pulled out. Ford was the President when we withdrew from the Embassy. The combat forces were withdrawn under Nixon as part of the Vietnamization policy.

You should know then, as a Vietnam vet,that Tet destroyed the Viet Cong as a fighting force. And what happened? We left Khe Sanh, the American public saw Vietnamese police executing people in the street and Peter Arnett got his panties in a bunch.

I was stationed in Danang during the Tet Offensive. It was a victory by the MSM led by Walter Cronkite deemed it a defeat, which essentially undercut public suppport for the war. If you want to know the true story of Vietnam, check out this link: Boston Manifesto

If you ask me that's exactly what I'm talking about: a military victory thrown away by the politicians. That's exactly what the Russians got out of the Russo-Japanse War.

We will agree to disagree on that one. The Russians were defeated on the battlefield, on land and at sea.

They lost their fleet (the Embassy) but they beat the enemy in the field (Khe Sanh),and their politicians threw it away at he negotiating table.

Our Embassy in Saigon was evacuated and overrun in April 1975, long after our combat involvement in Vietnam. I don't see how that is analogous to the Russian fleet, which was destroyed in combat by the Japanese. We really didn't throw away the war at the negotiating table. The North Vietnamese violated the terms of the agreement and the Dem controlled Congress cut off funding for the war. I blame the Congress and people like Kerry who were complicit in our defeat. They are trying to do the same thing again in Iraq.

The American Embassy in Saigon was attacked by 19 Viet Cong commandos on the first night of the Tet Offensive. I'm surprised you missed it (seeing as how you served in 'Nam); it was in all the papers, you know. The American media set up their cameras and related the (wrong) story of the gun battle within the Embassy (which was already over). The Embassy (eventually) became the symbol of American defeat and frustration. You're correct; it wasn't overrun until 1975, but in 1968, it was the focal point of intense fighting.

Keep that thought in mind: it is a symbol of defeat. This will come in handy when I explain the second half of the quote.

In the field, US forces mopped the streets with the Viet Cong, whether that was in Saigon itself, at Khe Sanh or in Hue. The Viet Cong (as opposed to the NVA) were rendered militarily incapable of undertaking further action. They were severely beaten.

bearing this in mind, when we transfer the analogy to the Russo-Japanese war;

The Russians Had their Embassy (Tsu-shima, the symbol of defeat), but they also had their Khe Sanh (a military victory in the field).

The similarity is this: when Americans back home heard that their Embassy (symbol of America) was under attack (and saw the pictures of the aftermath)while their leaders told them everything was under control, they tended not to believe their leaders, and think that the war was lost. Tet was a victory, but it didn't LOOK like a victory to anyone who was watching (no Iwo Jima moment, you see). The same thing happened to the Russians; they won the battles (or at least the ones they had to), but in the light of the disaters at Port Arthur and Tsu-shima, it was hard to believe that they HAD won.

Just as the Symbolism of Tet (American Embassy attacked, Khe Sanh saved by the skin of it's teeth and then abandoned, the televised street fighting in Hue, the famous picture of the street execution) caused the American public to question what was really happening, so did the defeats of Port Arthur and Tsu-shima do the same for the Russians.

I am aware of the attack on our embassy in Saigon in 1968. I know someone who was in the Embassy at the time. After serving almost 8 years as a naval officer, I served another 28 years as a Foreign Service Officer. I thought you were referring to the evacuation of our Embassy in 1975 that became an enduring picture and symbol of our ignominious defeat.

In the field, US forces mopped the streets with the Viet Cong, whether that was in Saigon itself, at Khe Sanh or in Hue. The Viet Cong (as opposed to the NVA) were rendered militarily incapable of undertaking further action. They were severely beaten. <>p>

LOL. You don't have to explain that to me. I was in Danang at the time.

The Russians Had their Embassy (Tsu-shima, the symbol of defeat), but they also had their Khe Sanh (a military victory in the field).

What military victory in the field. The war began on Feb. 8, 1904, when the main Japanese fleet launched a surprise attack and siege on the Russian naval squadron at Port Arthur. In March the Japanese landed an army in Korea that quickly overran that country. In May another Japanese army landed on the Liaotung Peninsula, and on May 26 it cut off the Port Arthur garrison from the main body of Russian forces in Manchuria. The Japanese then pushed northward, and the Russian army fell back to Mukden (now Shen-yang) after losing battles at Fu-hsien (June 14) and Liao-yang (August 25), south of Mukden. In October the Russians went back on the offensive with the help of reinforcements received via the Trans-Siberian Railroad, but their attacks proved indecisive owing to poor military leadership.

The Japanese had also settled down to a long siege of Port Arthur after several very costly general assaults on it had failed. The garrison's military leadership proved divided, however, and on Jan. 2, 1905, in a gross act of incompetence and corruption, Port Arthur's Russian commander surrendered the port to the Japanese without consulting his officers and with three months' provisions and adequate supplies of ammunition still in the fortress.

The final battle of the land war was fought at Mukden in late February and early March 1905, between Russian forces totaling 330,000 men and Japanese totaling 270,000. After long and stubborn fighting and heavy casualties on both sides, the Russian commander, General A.N. Kuropatkin, broke off the fighting and withdrew his forces northward from Mukden, which fell into the hands of the Japanese. Losses in this battle were exceptionally heavy, with approximately 89,000 Russian and 71,000 Japanese casualties.

The similarity is this: when Americans back home heard that their Embassy (symbol of America) was under attack (and saw the pictures of the aftermath)while their leaders told them everything was under control, they tended not to believe their leaders, and think that the war was lost. Tet was a victory, but it didn't LOOK like a victory to anyone who was watching (no Iwo Jima moment, you see). The same thing happened to the Russians; they won the battles (or at least the ones they had to), but in the light of the disaters at Port Arthur and Tsu-shima, it was hard to believe that they HAD won.

What battles did the Russians win? The Russians were beaten on land and at sea. They signed a treaty ceding territory to Japan. They lost.

Just as the Symbolism of Tet (American Embassy attacked, Khe Sanh saved by the skin of it's teeth and then abandoned, the televised street fighting in Hue, the famous picture of the street execution) caused the American public to question what was really happening, so did the defeats of Port Arthur and Tsu-shima do the same for the Russians.

You are comparing apples to oranges. We were in combat in Vietnam almost five years after the Tet Offensive. We won the military battles for real and the Russians lost them for real. It was not a matter of perception as far as the Russians were concerned. Russia's naval force was wiped out by the Japanese.

You were two years old when the Tet Offensive occurred. I lived it and remember the political turmoil at home and the problems with troop morale in Vietnam. It is laughable for you to lecture me about what happened.

My opinion: The European Theater.

The Japanese were extremely tough fighters, but the bulk of their Army was tied down in China and the Burma-India frontier.

Their Type 97 light-medium tanks and Type 1 medium tanks were no match for the American M-4 Sherman.

The bulk of their aircraft did not have self-sealing fuel tanks and they had an extremely lengthy pilot training program that delayed replacing pilots lost in combat.

Their Navy was extremely good, but could not hope to match America's ship-building program and was eventually hammered to pieces in a war of attrition. Our Navy could afford the losses more than the Japanese Navy could.

The Japanese submarine force generally ignored merchant ships (they did not consider them worthy targets of a warrior), instead concentrating on warships (where they did cause quite a bit of damage before improved American anti-submarine tactics began taking a toll), while American and other Allied submarines sank around half of the Japanese merchant marine, depriving the Japanese war machine of vital raw materials from its conquered territories in Southeast Asia.

Our losses in Europe and North Africa were extremely heavy, especially considering we were only fighting 10-15% of the German Army (the rest was over in the Soviet Union). Hitler had a highly-trained, professional military, equipped with some of the finest weapons of that era and commanded by some of the best tacticians and strategists in modern military history.

Fortunately for us, Hitler kept on interfering with them, thereby forcing disaster upon disaster on the German military (such as not destroying the trapped British Army at Dunkirk, invading the Soviet Union, and refusing to release the Panzer divisions to Rommel after the Normandy landings).

Some arguments counter to your own:

First, the japanese navy was not “finished” in the aftermath of Midway. The Japanese still possessed massive surface forces, and it was these forces that had nearly stalemated the Americans for several months during the campaign for Guadalcanal, utilizing superior weapons, training and doctrine. The downside is that they were unable to bring themselves to the idea that their enemy just might be as good and tenacious as they were, not to mention a lot of inter-service infighting, which ensured Guadalcanal would end in Japanese defeat. Used more efficiently and courageously, the Japanese fleet, post-Midway, could have made a more interesting war out of it.

What truly “finished” the Japanese navy was a combination of factors (no particular order):

A)that Yammamoto had failed to train and advance the careers of a cadre of like-minded officers who could continue his successful doctrines after his death. After he died (was assassinated, really) control of the Japanese navy fell back into the hands of the traditionalists (i.e. battleship admirals). Most of them were frightened to death to risk the Emperor’s ships, suffer the shame of defeat, and more often than not, managed to kill themselves with more alacrity than the Americans did (by going down with th eship, committing suicide, etc).

b) Having demonstrated the ability of carrier-borne airpower, and naval aviation in general, in the first 100 days or so of war, the Japanese made no effort to improve their pilot training, replacement/rotation policies, or to expand the pool of available pilots. While the United States, by 1943, was training thousands of naval aviators a year, the Japanese were still training little more than 100 in the same period. To put this in perspective, the Japanese lost 29 airmen at Pearl Harbor — this represented one-quarter of the graduating class of 1941. Once the loss of experienced pilots and aircrwes piled up the Japanese found they could neither replace those men in either numbers of quality and took no steps to rectify either situation.

C) Having demonstrated the effectiveness of naval airpower operating from carriers (even as far as demonstrating the exact numbers of carriers a balanced task force should have (6)), the Japanese were content to build only 7 new carriers from 1942-45 as against the American 100+ (of all types).

D) That Japanese CULTURE dictated a policy of the offensive. Their ships and their aircraft reflected this view. Primacy was given to the offensive at all times, and mundane but equally-vital issues such as reconnaisance (the(the final blind spot at Midway) and logistics (the real Japanese Achille’s heel) took a back seat. Having produced an intelligence coup that preceeded the attack on Pearl Harbor, effective Japanese intellegence never again played an important part in the fighting. Defensive fighting and tactics were not even subjects to be discussed, let alone practiced during maneuvers. When the Japanese had to go on the defensive, they simply did not know how to do much except be stubborn and die in great numbers.

E) Any nation or military establishment that cannot even tell ITSELF the truth, unvarnished, warts and all, cannot win anything. The Japanese Imperial Japanese Staff knew, with certainty, that war against the Allied powers was futile (Yammamoto was NOT alone in this regard) but proeceeded anyway because it believed it’s own propaganda —that they were supermen and we were weak-kneed pansies who would quit if sufficiently beaten up.

F) Japanese culture did not (and still doesn’t) practice annhiliation warfare. It practices RITUALIZED warfare; i.e. form takes precedence over function. To the Japanese, once they had “proven” their superiority over the Chinese by invading their country, the Chinese logically should have quit. Once Japan had defeated the Allied powers in such shocking fshion in the early days of the war (Pearl Harbor, fall of Singapore, loss of the Phillipines), by their thinking, we too, should have quit. They were not prepared (nor did they know how) to wage a war of relentless destruction which is the hallmark of Western, not Oriental, culture. When it became obvious that the west would not surrender, the Japanese continued along this vein: one MORE show of military superiority and then the West will quit. it was exactly this dynamic that led to the battle of Midway.

Secondly, the battleship was not “obsolete”. That this argument is still being made shows how much the “conventional wisdom” has seeped into the second-tier military histories most people read these days. The battleship was not obsolete (there were nine major, and perhaps a dozen minor, engagements between battleships in the Second World War). The battleship still found great utility as an escort vessel and as a means of delivering accurate firepower against ground targets from the sea (so much so that an entire school of MODERN military thought laments their loss because of the flexibility and power they brought. The fact is, no one stopped building them until the 1950’s, long after the war was over). What had changed in the early days of the Second World War was that the battleship was shown vulnerable to a larger variety of weapons. people knew prior to Pearl harbor that the battleship was vulnerable to it’s counter-parts, to torpedoes and to mines, but the prior experience of all nations before Taranto and Pearl Harbor was that no aircraft could deliver a sufficient punch to damage or even inconvenience a battleship. The design and armaments of the battlewagons that all sides went to war with in those early days universally discounted the airplane as a serious weaponof war(even the Japanese themselves!). The battleship was not useless nor obsolete; technology simply just made it vulnerable to yet one more weapon of war.

Ask any marine in uniform these days and ask him if he’d like to have a battleship or two available if he ever had to “hit the beach”. They most certainly miss the battleship!

Just some points I see:

First, the Japanese navy was not “finished” in the aftermath of Midway. The Japanese still possessed massive surface forces...Used more efficiently and courageously, the Japanese fleet, post-Midway, could have made a more interesting war out of it.

100% agreed.

A)that Yamamoto had failed to train and advance the careers of a cadre of like-minded officers who could continue his successful doctrines after his death.

There's a lot of argument that Yamamoto was still a battleship admiral himself, and not a particular successful one, despite his influence in creating the Kido Butai and the Pearl Harbor attack.

The Midway plan was far too complicated and violated every rule of force concentration.

Yamamoto never committed his full forces at Guadalcanal in the early days, when it could have made a difference. He piecemealed them into the grinder. The difference at Guadalcanal is we were throwing in everything we had available, the Japanese never did that. Why did Yamato and Musashi sit at Truk the whole campaign?

The fact is he was hoarding his forces for the overwhelming surface showdown the that the Japanese learned from Tsushima won wars, and goes along with your observations of Asian vs. Western warfare.

B) Having demonstrated the ability of carrier-borne airpower, and naval aviation in general, in the first 100 days or so of war, the Japanese made no effort to improve their pilot training, replacement/rotation policies, or to expand the pool of available pilots.

Agreed.

C) Having demonstrated the effectiveness of naval air power operating from carriers...the Japanese were content to build only 7 new carriers from 1942-45...

I wouldn't say "content", rather "were only able to." Carriers weren't the only class of ship they needed to build. Destroyer and merchant vessel losses were heavy, they realized too late they had no ASW escorts, and there were damaged ships to be repaired. This is a pure example of Japanese vs. American industrial capacity, and they lost.

D), E)and F) Agreed.

“Yamamoto never committed his full forces at Guadalcanal in the early days, when it could have made a difference. He piecemealed them into the grinder. The difference at Guadalcanal is we were throwing in everything we had available, the Japanese never did that. Why did Yamato and Musashi sit at Truk the whole campaign?”

Quick and dirty: Bad intelligence, even worse use of intel that turned out to be good, effective counter-intel on the Allied side, staged manuevers in the Indian Ocean by the Brits which drew Japanese strength away from the Western Pacific, lack of air cover available to Yammamoto’s surface forces (provided by carriers).

“The fact is he was hoarding his forces for the overwhelming surface showdown the that the Japanese learned from Tsushima won wars, and goes along with your observations of Asian vs. Western warfare.”

Partially correct; yes, there was the lesson of Tsu-shima, but the airplane and radar had made another Tsu-shima practically impossible (although Leyte Gulf came pretty damned close), not to mention the American ability to read Japanese codes. It would have taken a VERY stupid American Admiral to blunder into a Jutland/Tsu-shima style battle. Both sides began the conflict with a naval doctrine that was pretty much based upon old-fashioned, Jutland-style tactics, and experience showed that such tactics were still sound -— there were over 50 surface engagements in the Pacific War, two dozen of them in the waters around Guadalcanal itself!-—, but many of these battles were the result of circumstances, and not strategy.

Unlike Tsu-shima, the Japanese would not have the opportunity to leisurely lounge about for months, waiting for a slow and antiquated foe, totally unalerted to his predicament and blindly walking into a Japanese trap. They knew this, and the belief that the “One Great Battle” plan was really more an act of desperation than sound strategy, particularly after Japan began to suffer reverses.

The Japanese could not afford to hoard their naval forces while waiting for this speculative all-out battle; the Japanese navy needed to be active. That it wasn’t is the fault of higher commanbd, which was uniformly timid, ill-served by intelligence, and blinkered by ignorance.

“I wouldn’t say “content”, rather “were only able to.”

Actually, a quick review of Japanese naval construction from 1942-44 shows differently. Vital resources were still being poured into surface and submarine forces (the two WORST performing Japanese weapons of the war? the Battleship and the submarine), and there is evidence to suggest that this was the case because the Japanese naval air forces had been gutted by the Midway, Phillipine Sea and Solomons campaigns, and the higher-ups saw no need to produce ships for which there would be no crews. This phenomena is remarkable, and occurs quite a lot during the history of the Pacific War: Japanese policy-makers are both simultaneously aware of, and unbelieving of, the realities of the situation they found themselves in. This is absolutely stunning; someone (many someones) actually knew the carrier was the winning weapon, but, assessing the prospect of fielding a new carrier fleet with the handicaps being experienced (no fuel, no experienced pilots to teach new students, few experts on tactics, inability to buck tradition and modify the training program, etc), made what is a typically Japanese decision: build surface ships — we can get crews for those.

We won’t even go into their experiments with the “all-torpedo” cruiser, for example.

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