Japanese navy in WWII

Maybe, but if the pattern held even if the US lost tactically they would've destroyed more Jap planes, as they did in every single carrier battle in WW2, including 1942 when Japs supposedly had its superb pilots going against F4F. You certainly can't rule out the possibility that the Japs performed as shit as they did for reasons other than their pilots' abilities, but it's lunacy to assume that they were better despite them performing like utter shit in every single battle.

So allot like how Germany lost allot of their experienced troops in 1941 during Barbarossa.

Except Germany had a positive k/d ratio so it's actually a lot more like how the Soviets lost a lot of their experienced troops in 1941 during Barbarossa.

Probably inadequately modeled wargames, like the godawful Japanese damage control not being taken into account.

You know the maxim about never fighting a land war in Asia? There should be another one about not fucking with the US Navy.

>Normal soldiers
>Experienced
They didn't have a problem with experienced troops, but simply not the time nor the resources to train them.

>are the simulations so out of touch?
>no, it's the actual battle who is wrong.

My scenario stands!

Don't blame me, just sayin. Even if the Japs did win it would only have postponed the inevitable for a year or so.

They got unlucky with Pearl Harbor. If they'd stuck the day before or a day after, the US would have been fucked without the aircraft carriers and likely withdrawn from the Pacific Theater, leaving the Brits and Aussies to the mercy of the Japs.

Their lack of recon and overall impatience lead to their overall defeat.

Group of dive bombers got lost and magically appeared at the perfect moment.

If they struck the day before there'd still have been no carriers and if they struck the day after they might have gotten the Enterprise, which is no guarantee.
Their recon and impatience had nothing to do with their decision on attack on Dec 7. They were under radio silence for weeks leading up to Dec 7.

>Don't start a land war in asia
>Don't start a sea war against an Anglo

I don't mean a literal day. It was a poor choice of time. I meant if Japan hadn't attacked at that specific time and date, they'd have maximised their impact on the US war effort and diverted US attention from the East to the West, possibly changing alot of the war.

Instead, they hit alot of surface warships, missed the entire carrier fleet and then ran off thinking they were completely victorious because Japan's leaders were set on the idea of a single grand victory winning the war, which MIGHT have happened if it hadn't fucked up on such a grand scale, instead of going 'Oh hey, we better look for the carriers' or 'Hey, we better take Pearl Harbor for a forward port'. The US was entirely lucky in that scenario that Japan was a fucking blustering retard and hadn't doubled down on their attack as an occupation.

Their objective was to buy 6 months' time and they got almost exactly that.

Inadequate industrial capacity and resources.
btw just made this picture pretty proud desu

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>How did the Japanese navy in WWII go from being possibly the best in the world in 1941 to being absolutely incompetent by 1944?
because they woke up a sleeping giant.

Japan couldn't have taken Hawaii, that's insanity. They were doomed as soon as they struck pearl. Their miscalculation was the same as everyone doing strategic bombing: That getting hit makes you shy away and want peace. The reality as proved by Germany over London and rotterdam along with Britain over Dresden and Cologne is that hitting civilians just makes them angry and counterintuitively helps them put up with a lot worse shit for victory than if the war was a long way away.

Most of the US fleet that fucked Japan raw late war was built after pearl got attacked, sinking the carriers in a first strike might have delayed US operations in the pacific a little, or might have forced the UK to divert more of her carrier force to protect Australia, leaving the med more exposed. It wouldn't have changed the outcome at all, however.

Pearl Harbor was the very opposite of strategic bombing. It's simply stunning how stupid your entire post is but what can you expect starting from such a retarded presupposition.

The Japanese gambit was that by destroying US capability in the Pacific the US would sue for peace on favourable terms to the Japanese and let them expand south. Instead it just made the US angry. Similar to much of the strategic bombing theory pre war that "killing civilians in their homes" would force the govt. to sue for peace quickly. Instead it just hardened everyone's resolve.

Merica.

You are repeating a meme that has no factual basis. Japanese did not think that, or if they did, they left absolutely no records of such rationale behind their war planning. Moreover everything else they did leading up to and immediately following PH contradicts the theory that Japan just kinda expected the US to give up.

>possibly the best in the world in 1941

lol

1. USN
2. RN
>POWER GAP
3. IJN

>literally making shit up

why

>Objectives

>The Japanese attack had several major aims. First, it intended to destroy important American fleet units, thereby preventing the Pacific Fleet from interfering with Japanese conquest of the Dutch East Indies and Malaya and to enable Japan to conquer Southeast Asia without interference. Second, it was hoped to buy time for Japan to consolidate its position and increase its naval strength before shipbuilding authorized by the 1940 Vinson-Walsh Act erased any chance of victory.[51][52] Third, to deliver a blow to America's ability to mobilize its forces in the Pacific, battleships were chosen as the main targets, since they were the prestige ships of any navy at the time.[51] Finally, it was hoped that the attack would undermine American morale such that the U.S. government would drop its demands contrary to Japanese interests, and would seek a compromise peace with Japan.[53][54]

>Finally, it was hoped that the attack would undermine American morale such that the U.S. government would drop its demands contrary to Japanese interests, and would seek a compromise peace with Japan.[53][54]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor

Literally on the wiki my guy.

Yeah two "sources" which are book names without page numbers. It's a worthless article as are most wiki articles on the PTO.

>fighting a vastly reduced USN
Not particularly. Most of the ships hit in Pearl were old hulls from the early interwar period.
The aim of the harbor strike was to buy the Japs enough time to take and fortify the resources they needed to hold the Americans off until the fighting would stagnate and one side could sue for peace.
They failed spectacularly at that objective and even if they had hit all of the carriers it would have pushed the conclusion of the war back by 6 months at the most when you factor in the retarded production capacity of the US that was already in the process of ramping up to a full war economy.

>Not particularly. Most of the ships hit in Pearl were old hulls from the early interwar period.
Most of the ships in any navy were old hulls from the early interwar period. USN was reduced because it had fewer of such old hulls than Japan did, and then further reduced because it had to devote half of its resources to the Atlantic.

Pilots are generally much less expendable than ground troops, especially cannon fodder grunts armed with a cheap rifle.

american rotated good pilots back stateside to teach noob pilots how to git gud
japs didn't rotate, your vets just died and got replaced with noobs

Japs didn't even bother trying to rescue downed pilots, just left them to slowly die in the Pacific.

>Most of the ships in any navy were old hulls from the early interwar period.
Frontline destroyers and cruisers in USN and IJN were mostly post ~1930. Battleships were of course old thanks to restrictions, but they barely did anything anyway.
Does anybody have numbers of all IJN, USN and RN ships on Pacific around the beginning of 1942?

IJN had 10 post-30 cruisers. USN had a fuck ton of post-30 cruisers but I don't get your point. Are you saying that IJN was better off wasting their opportunity cost on cruisers? because that's a fucking retarded idea.

military history visualized has a great video on navy sizes at the outbreak of war

I'm just not so convinced if USN was "reduced".

>IJN was better off wasting their opportunity cost on cruisers?
What opportunity cost?

The zero was a fucking deathtrap once people learned to stop trying to turn with it. Everything America had was faster and better protected.

Quads of USN superiority

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At the outbreak of war Japanese naval aviation was among the best in the world, but had a modest size of between 3,000 and 4,000 pilots, of which only 1,500 were trained for carrier operations. Pilot losses up to Midway were nothing too serious, only 70, and during Midway the number was higher at 100, although two thirds of pilots shot down were able to be rescued. The real turning point came after Guadalcanal, when the mounting losses made the IJN force back into action those pilots who were injured in battle and had not yet received enough time to rest and recover. They even began to use their best-trained carrier pilots on land airfields, since it was considered too dangerous to deploy them on a carrier. Morale dropped as a result. The fighting in the Solomons wiped out much of the experienced IJN pilots. Recovering downed pilots became more difficult, and those that operated there were denied leave due to their importance, further sapping morale. In just one of the six battles of this campaign, the Battle of Santa Cruz, 150 pilots were lost. Tadashi Yamamoto, an IJN officer who served in the Solomon battles, was of the opinion that "almost all of the Navy's first class pilots were lost in the Solomon Operations". The IJN consequently became increasingly desperate for new pilots, forcing many of them through early graduation at a great cost to training hours. Before Guadalcanal they went through 800 hours of flight training, after the battle 600, and in 1944 a mere 500 or less. As a result, IJN pilots not only became increasingly incapable of dealing with their American counterparts, they also were losing the battle against their own aircraft, as the data shows. In 1942-early 1943 non-combat losses of aircraft were not much higher than combat ones. The situation reversed, however, and between January/May 1944 763 planes were lost in combat, but 2,393 outside - a ratio greater than 3:1.
tl;dr desperation and poor training is why, at least regarding naval aviation.

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>Crazy American luck in the Pacific theater, in the form of one goddamn ship made of rabbit feet and horseshoes.

>Yorktown dodged 8 torpedoes at Coral Sea. The one bomb that hit breached her deck armor and landed about three cunthairs away from blowing her boilers up and turning the ship into a fucking fireball, but by blind luck and good damage control did not.

>She should require about a month in yard for repairs.

>Two days later, she leaves with dockworkers still on board and goes to fight at Midway.

>At midway everyone else run their bombers into a goddamn band saw. Hornet's attack group is wiped out. Everyone else gets back less the one squadron.

>Yorktown and big E's dive bomber strike blunders into the show late and catches the Jap CAP at about four feet off the wave tops, so they blow the shit out of three fleet carriers piled with recovered aircraft, gas and ordinance on the deck. You can call this luck or just terrible Jap damage control and weapons handling. The result is the IJN loses three irreplaceable carriers at once.

>The last Japanise carrier launches a strike at the Yorktown. Remember how those three Jap carriers exploded like huge piles of avgas and bombs?

>The Yorktown is hit by 3 bombs and a goddamn Kamakazi. They put out the fires and got back to work. Then they got hit by a torpedo. Then another.

>At this point the people on the ship got spooked and thought "well, that HAS to be all she can take, let's GTFO"

>Everyone leaves.

>The next morning: Ship still floating there.

>Their lack of recon and overall impatience

They didn’t have a very big window to work in. They were right at the ragged edge of how far they could push their logistics chain as it was. They had absolutely zero loiter time available. Beside the risk of being spotted, their fuel reserves were sloshing around the point of no return.

>It wouldn't have changed the outcome at all, however.

Might have delayed the fall of Germany by a few months. Imagine the butthurt if Japan threw in the towel first, and Germany wound up being nuked. This board would be knee deep in radioactive wehraboo salt. And what would Kraut anime look like?

Why didn't Japan launch a follow up attack on the US fleet at Pearl Harbor after the air attacks?

Couldn't they have soundly crushed the US pacific fleet then and there if they didn't give them the time to recover?

Threat of US aircraft carriers and surviving fleet assets capable of kicking Japanese butts. Remember that Japan was operating at the very end of their combat range during Pear Harbor

>vastly reduced
US carrier fleet was coincidentally not at Pearl Harbour during the attack.

And they were pretty good. They destroyed the British fleet there, and the Russian fleets although that was in ww1

>They destroyed the British fleet there
They sank some ancient cruisers and destroyers. IJN never engaged the actual RN fleet in 1941-42.

>and the Russian fleets although that was in ww1
Russians and Japanese were on the same side in WW1 you retard.

>>Yorktown and big E's dive bomber strike blunders into the show late and catches the Jap CAP at about four feet off the wave tops, so they blow the shit out of three fleet carriers piled with recovered aircraft, gas and ordinance on the deck. You can call this luck or just terrible Jap damage control and weapons handling. The result is the IJN loses three irreplaceable carriers at once.
Except that IJN carriers rearmed/refuelled on the hangar deck, not the flight deck

Weren't they in the middle of spotting a new strike when they got caught, so the nips had almost a full deck load of fully fueled and armed aircraft?
IJN policy was to always try for a fully spotted load while the USN was more likely to just try and get wings in the air fast.
This is all half remembered trivia so correct me where I'm wrong.

IJN literally raped the state of the art British BB as if it was nothing

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Also the 3rd wave would have returned after nightfall.
He didn't really state otherwise.
There is no too good record if they were still fueling and rearming or if all were loaded, but that doesn't matter too much. Bombs were made to blow after penetrating so it was as dangerous for them in hangar anyway. The latest US attack delayed their launch and they still had to service the CAP.
>You can call this luck or just terrible Jap damage control and weapons handling.
That's certainly not what damage control means. Though I guess this and a pair of somewhat similar cases is where the meme that Japanese damage control was pants on head retarded comes from.

The Nips policy, as well as the german one, was to keep their highest scoring aces in combat until they died (Marsailles is an example of this) . The Americans policy was to remove their highest scoring aces and had them train new pilots, giving them some experience on how to fight the luftwaffe or the IJN/IJA. Better trained pilots means more kills. Having better planes helps, but in the case of the F4F, a plane considered to be less than that of a A6M, scored a 9:1 "kill" (pilots call them victories) ratio in the Pacific. Taffy 3 also had 6 escort carriers at Samar.

Part of damage control is keeping your fuel and ammunition in armored magazines, way the fuck away from everything. You send up only as much as is needed on elevators.You also keep the blast doors closed, even if it means slowing people down opening and closing them every time you need to move.

Piling it up around the aircraft to load them faster works to get aircraft up faster, and Jap carriers did manage a higher sortie rate then Americans.

They also fucking exploded when hit, with three lost after 2-4 hits from dive bombers.

Yorktown was hit by 3 bombs, a Kamakazi, 5 torpedoes, and was almost totally evacuated with low loss of life. If available destroyers and tugs had focused on salvage rather then sub hunting and personnel recovery they could almost certainly have saved the ship.

That is what good damage control does.

Show me this. If I remember my history correctly, the reasons that the US won the battle of Midway are as follows
1) Americans craked the japanese code with their own Turing computer, called "Purple"
2) PBY Catalinas located the Nip fleet before they attacked
3) Yamato made the error to switch from bombs to torpedos on his carriers after they were loaded with bombs, tying up his aircraft on the decks allowing american carrier aircraft to destroy 3/4ths of the Nip carriers in one swoop. I don't remember any "war games", because in June 1942, the US only had 3 carriers in theater and wouldn't have had that kind of resources. Make sure to take your meds so you don't start hallucinating Man in the High Castle again.

No one except for Hitler in Warsaw were bombing civillians. The whole bombing of civillian targets between the British and the Germans was cause because the Germans accidentally dropped a bomb in suburban London and the Brits bombed Hamburg with Mosquito bombers a day later. No one had plans pre war because no one wanted to do it.

The Thach Weave has a lot to do with that. IJN and army flyers were trained to get on a target's tail and stay there. The intersecting weave puts the wingman in perfect position to waste the zero, and with six .50s shooting incendiaries the zero would turn into a fireball before the 7.7mm's of the Zero could finish the Grumman.

A fuck of a lot of Wildcats landed shot full of holes. Damn near every zero landed with a pristine paint job.

Damage control happens after an accident or attack.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damage_control

Yamamoto wasn't deciding that. There many other important things that happened, but you should go read them yourself.

Yeah it wasn't Yamamoto that decided that. The issue was that the bombing of the island was to draw out the american fleet (so it was a diversion) but the first bombing raid was so successful they (not yamamoto) wanted to do another one. Then the american fleet was detected and the commander of the carrier followed what the book said he should do in that situation and started changing to torpedoes.

Like regular anime, but with more preggo Anne Frank

Then what did the allies plan to do with their heavy four engine bombers?
>Damn near every zero landed with a pristine paint job.
That's not true if Japanese testimonies are true. There were planes that had to be dumped in the sea after landing, but not too many thanks to the suicidal nature of their pilots.
About as important simple tactic was to force a tailing Zero to head-on another Wildcat. Even without the armament and armor difference such move usually favors the defender.
At any rate 9:1 win loss ratio is good, but it should be noted that most of those kills were highly flammable bombers.
They could never catch the Japanese.

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Thats a myth thats been debunked.
Even the jap ship records show they fucked up tactically. The us did have a bit of luck though

Why didn't the japanese navy engage their battleships in pearl harbor in a follow-up after the air-raid?

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They'd have ran out of fuel.

they were so close though, I don't think fuel would have been an issue

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Out industrialized.

because they didnt know where the enemy carriers where, and the enemy would now be on high alert
they gambled that the damage they did was going to be enough rather than risk turning their victory into a failure by sticking around too long, since their main weapon was surprise

as it was, they werent willing to send a third wave
Wikipedia tells the rest
>American anti-aircraft performance had improved considerably during the second strike, and two thirds of Japan's losses were incurred during the second wave.[108]
>Nagumo felt if he launched a third strike, he would be risking three quarters of the Combined Fleet's strength to wipe out the remaining targets (which included the facilities) while suffering higher aircraft losses.[108]
>The location of the American carriers remained unknown. In addition, the admiral was concerned his force was now within range of American land-based bombers.[108] >Nagumo was uncertain whether the U.S. had enough surviving planes remaining on Hawaii to launch an attack against his carriers.[109]
>A third wave would have required substantial preparation and turnaround time, and would have meant returning planes would have had to land at night. ]
>The task force's fuel situation did not permit him to remain in waters north of Pearl Harbor much longer, since he was at the very limit of logistical support. To do so risked running unacceptably low on fuel, perhaps even having to abandon destroyers en route home.[111]
>He believed the second strike had essentially satisfied the main objective of his mission—the neutralization of the Pacific Fleet—and did not wish to risk further losses.[112] Moreover, it was Japanese Navy practice to prefer the conservation of strength over the total destruction of the enemy

they werent even willing to send more planes, its unlikely they would have wanted to over extend their battleships as well

Running at combat speeds consumes fuel way faster. The Americans still had carriers and new land based planes coming.

most Jap planes had little to no armor & rifle-caliber machine gun armament, Americans had both armor and .50" machine gun armament, even if Jap pilots were better than Americans, if they couldn't penetrate the American planes' armor all of their advantages were nullified, once Americans started fielding planes that outperformed Japs in addition to having better armor the Japs were irreversibly screwed.

>despite outnumbering the USN aircraft
Only in Santa Cruz and air to air kills were very even during 42.
USN AA always shot down many times more Japanese and due to early warning radar they weren't losing as much aircraft on carrier decks. Any amount of experience simply wasn't saving bomber pilots from AA and fighters. Due to their losses it's even hard to say if they were more accurate, but at least they didn't get lost like Americans during Midway. There were some tactics developed to get through AA fire, but that was later and it didn't end up having much effect.

Yeah it's possible that the reason Japs died like flies was because of reasons other than their pilots' competence. But like I said it's pretty retarded to start from the preposition that the Japanese were superior and try to fit known facts to that supposition. It's far more logical to look at the facts that draw the conclusions, including whose pilot cadre was better at killing others and not dying. The facts suggest that it was the Americans.

>Only in Santa Cruz and air to air kills were very even during 42.
Coral Sea
>Jap 92 aircraft lost, USN 69 aircraft lost
Eastern Solomons
>Jap 75 aircraft lost, USN 20 aircraft lost
Japs had the numerical advantage each time out. And if air to air kills were very even, isn't odd that we still see people make the following two assumptions:
1. The Zero was vastly superior to the F4F.
2. Japanese pilots were the best in the world.
Because the actual performance of Japs in Zeros were not very good.

To be fair, enterprise was low on aircraft after having just delivered planes to Midway and Lexington was also low

>Japs had the numerical advantage each time out.
In amount of carrier aircraft? Certainly not.
Most important thing to notice about those aircraft losses in both of those battles is that the Japanese lost a light aircraft carrier with most of their planes aboard.
Fighter to fighter actions were so limited, that there is no point to draw any conclusions about their performance. Maybe Guadalcanal and other campaigns with plenty of fighter to fighter engagements could offer a better view.
I don't really know if there was any point to consider Zero pilots the best in the world. They were certainly poor at adapting to the new tactics that the Americans started to use.

>aircraft losses at Coral Sea
how many of those were air-to-air -kills? Jap ships' air defense was a joke, Americans' was not

>Solomons
again how many were air-to-air kills?

>Japs always had numerical superiority
uhh, no they didn't, at Coral Sea Japs and Eastern Solomons the numbers were even/slightly in USN's favor as far as aircraft are concerned, the number of ships isn't that important when talking about war in the air, Japs' air defenses (radar *and* anti-air guns' numbers and quality-) were a joke.

best timeline

Thanks, user.

Attrition of skilled personell.

Basically, all their experienced people got killed and they could train replacements fast enough.

No. Akagi's flight deck operations from 0837 to 1010 were:
0837-0900: recover Midway strike force
0910: recover CAP
0932: launch CAP
0951: recover CAP
1006: launch CAP
1010: recover CAP
15 minutes later, she and two of the other carriers were bombed. . To spot and then launch a strike against the US forces, at the very minimum 30 minutes were needed, with 45 minutes being typical.

Still, the RN and IJN never engaged in more than small actions with one another, and I doubt either would have wanted or been capable of any more than that i.e. both had bigger problems closer to home.

>I don't remember any "war games", because in June 1942, the US only had 3 carriers in theater and wouldn't have had that kind of resources
Post war table tops

The US had a bit of luck but it would be chalked up to taking the appropriate risks, not the US getting handed a victory on a platter.

The US had some knowledge of Japanese plans from code cracking.
The Japanese carriers had retarded damage control doctrine and the Japanese split their forces up too far to help each other. Japan fucked up majorly.

YOu mean the Russian Navy that got destroyed a few years early by the japanese?

>The Japanese carriers had retarded damage control doctrine
I don't know what their doctrine was, but this is a glaring example of poor damage control:
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_aircraft_carrier_Shinano

>RN
>Russian Navy
Fuck off kid, adults are talking.

Go look up what happened to Taiho as well.

Yeah, RN was occupied in the north atlantic and mediterranean against the Germans and Italians for most of the war, when they finally did make it in force over to the Pacific, the US was already in full beast mode and most of the Japanese fleet was already rusting at the bottom of the Pacific. Still, they made up 20-30% of the Allied fleet and airpower around Okinawa which is no mean feat. iirc carriers were also operated in more foward positions to bait Kamikaze attacks because of the armoured flight decks.

>The USN liaison officer on HMS Indefatigable commented: "When a kamikaze hits a U.S. carrier it means 6 months of repair at Pearl [Harbor]. When a kamikaze hits a Limey carrier it’s just a case of "Sweepers, man your brooms."

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>takes multiple submarine torpedo hits
>watertight compartments not completed
>pumps not installed
>plenty of civilians aboard
>glaring example
No it's not. There was no hopes to save her with any damage control.
This is more like it. The best example what idiot commander and green crew can manage. Though it's not too clear if they could have entirely cleared the fuel vapors even if they tried.

The Japanese also had the carrier which took the greatest beating and survived home.

>There was no hopes
It seems like they didn't take any decisive action for nearly 90mins after the torpedo's struck.

Even for wiki, that's a shitty link.

Damage control are procedures and actions taken to minimize the effect of damage. They include reactive measures to contain and minimize damage after an incident and proactive measures to minimize the effects of damage before an incident.

>proactive measures to minimize the effects of damage before an incident.
so the ultimate form of damage control is to keep ships on drydock instead of launching them?

According to whom?
How is it damage control if you haven't taken damage in the first place?

You are fucking retarded
The Yorktown took 3 bombs in Coral Sea and almost sank but the US had good damage control doctrine and planning, they towed it back to Pearl, repaired it for two weeks then sent it back to Midway. It was so damaged that the Japanese thought it sank.

Also the US would make composite units of flight groups when their numbers wained from losses, the Japanese did not do this and as a result had a ton of flight crew and aircraft just sitting around during Midway waiting for reinforcement/replacement instead of making composites.

The Japanese didn't even really have firefighting equipment ready at hand on their carriers during midway. After Midway they had to throw all their carrier doctrine away because it sucked.