How well did the Japanese navy perform both tactically and strategically during the course of the second word war?

How well did the Japanese navy perform both tactically and strategically during the course of the second word war?

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>tactically

decently in the beginning of the war, especially at night. Japan had some decent equipment and they knew how to use it properly.

later in the war they got absolutely annihilated in every encounter, mostly because they lacked fire control radars which allowed them to shoot at things 20 miles away in the dark like the Americans could do

>and strategically

pretty horribly all the way through. Japan had some really ridiculous ideas about how naval engagements worked on a grand scale and basically just threw away most of their fleet on wild goosechase bullshit or kamikaze-esque nonsense while constantly insisting that what they really needed to do was mass their fleet all in one place and then the Americans would magically bring THEIR fleet there and the Japanese would win somehow.

Tactically they were initially successful against Allied navies in the first months of the war, inflicting heavy casualties on the enemy for very light ones of their own and letting the Army conquer vast stretches of territory. In the night battles around the Solomons they also did well.
Strategically they failed to accomplish anything that would bring the Allies to the negotiating table, futilely groping the vast stretches of ocean from India to Midway in search of a decisive battle. They got one, but it didn't go their way, and the rest is history; the IJN virtually ceased to exist by late 1945. They also completely neglected anti submarine warfare until it was too late, leading to the severing of Japan's vital supply lines that she went to war over.

>They also completely neglected anti submarine warfare until it was too late, leading to the severing of Japan's vital supply lines that she went to war over.

minelaying contributed enormously to this. mines actually sunk more ships in terms of effort expended vs kills made than subs did. partly because the japs were also garbage at minesweeping in addition to hunting subs and protecting convoys. the japanese minesweeping commander actually said after the war that if the americans had started laying mines sooner it may have shortened the war by a year as Japan simply did not have enough equipment to deal with the huge quantities of mines we were dropping.

>They also completely neglected anti submarine warfare until it was too late, leading to the severing of Japan's vital supply lines that she went to war over.

What was the reason for this neglect? Was it because submarines/anti-submarine ships were a less desirable billet than BBs or CVs, which in turn led to the brass being mostly guys who discounted the importance of the fleet auxiliaries?

>the IJN virtually ceased to exist by late 1945
no shit, the war was over

>What was the reason for this neglect?

Prior to the start of the war, Japan had little experience in dealing with subs, unlike the Brits and Americans who had encountered u-boats in WW1.

Then for the first half of the Pacific theater in WW2, American subs were pretty useless due to many small factors (bad training, sub commanders who weren't aggressive enough, defective torps). Later on the Americans sorted this shit out and their subs/torps became extremely effective, especially against the Japs who had still not figured out how they were supposed to deal with subs. Japs consequently got BTFO.

They were completely fixated on the Mahanian doctrine of decisive battle and submarines were seen as subsidiaries to fleet actions for scouting and harassing instead of undertaking an independent campaign against merchant shipping. Historical experience only entrenched their beliefs; first at Tsushima and then in WW1 where even though they participated in ASW maneuvers in the Mediterranean they were more interested in the case of Jutland than the U-boat war. Simply put, they were more interested in big guns than destroyer escorts.

you should have used jap navy flag

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Does anyone have any projections on Japan's geo-political pivot? The last one I read (a StratFor product, yeah I know) had Japan pivoting 2050 or so in response to a manpower shortage and a Chinese power vacuum.
But I just don't see it.
Japan will never join up with China or Korea; there's just too much bad blood and hatred. But I can't see them staying vassal to USA long-term. Despite the common image of a dying, decadent Japan, they're still a powerhouse and they will always need to ensure sea lanes to resources and markets. The ability of the elite to turn the population towards new goals is unparalleled.

Your prose feels like chinesium to me.

that hurts. i'm a soprano-american and now i'm sad.

Japan will be under primarily US influence so long as America maintains its position as the global naval power. They rely way too much on sea trade to risk losing American naval protection.

To be fair, the USN also followed a similar doctrine before the war and also planned on using BBs in similarly "decisive battles". They just realized WAY sooner that there was no advantage to following that doctrine when they saw how useful aircraft carriers were at the very beginning

I think it's really more than we just got lucky as hell at Midway. When you read the accounts of what happened you realize how close we came to get our asses handed to us. It really comes down to the fact that the Japanese were fucking retarded when it came to searching for the enemy, leaving gigantic gaps in their search patterns for absolutely no reason at all. If the Japs had found our fleet sooner we would have had one hell of a fight on our hands rather than the cakewalk it turned into on account of utter Japanese incompetence.

After that, it didn't really matter what ships we used or in what way. Japan was fucked. Add to this our ability to churn out ships and our overwhelming superiority in the air and on the ground, and the nips never had a chance. It was fucking Over in 1942, it just took them three years of throwing their best males into the woodchipper and watching 50 of their biggest cities get turned into dust to wake up and realize that not only were they not going to win this war, but that America was literally going to occupy them and rape them until they changed their culture to something that suited us. Fucking retarded slant-eyed cocksuckers lol

It's not that the Americans decided that early, it's that they were forced to use what little forces they had early on, which was their aircraft carriers. They also didn't choose one or another as they built both aircraft carriers and battleships. They even went full retard with the Alaska class.

The Japanese realized how central carriers were to modern naval warfare after Midway and subsequently canceled all BB construction in favor of CVs. The US finished quite a few battleships throughout the rest of the war.

>Alaska class.
What's wrong with it?

They performed pretty well during the Massacre of Savo Island.

It's a battleship with undersized guns.

Ironically the fact that we didnt rape them that much both symbolically and literally caused them to quickly become fairly pro american once the commies rose to power just across the sea.

This, basically going after non-capital ships was beneath their dignity.

Way of the zen bullshit. The Japanese allowed pride and religion to cloud their judgment.

>It's not that the Americans decided that early, it's that they were forced to use what little forces they had early on
this
The only things really left after Pearl were carriers and submarines, so we got really fucking good with carriers and submarines

the carrier aviation advocates also jumped on this fact and after midway the navy was convinced that carrier aviation was the way to go.

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Admiral King had staged a war game pearl harbor attack using carriers a few years before the war started. Plenty of brass knew which way the wind was blowing.