How could US Offensive Tactics have been improved?

That didn't happen at Midway. In June, 1942, the Japanese were still burning refined bunker grade oil in their ships, including the carriers at Midway. The carriers at Midway were doomed because of the av-gas in the tanks of the planes, and the ordnance in their hangars.

Two years later, at Philippine Sea, fumes from unrefined Miri (on the other side of Borneo from Balikpapen) crude were probably a factor in the loss of Taiho (hit by one torpedo and later destroyed by induced explosions) and possibly other Japanese ships as well. By that time, the Japanese didn't have enough tankers to move oil, reined or not, to where they needed it.

The problem with Borneo crude were not only that it gave off volatile fumes, but also that it was contaminated by a high sulpher content which fouled ships boilers and necessitated frequent shutdowns for cleaning. During WW II, there were no refineries at Miri and no way, besides shipping, to get the crude to a refinery, so the Japanese burned Miri crude unrefined. My father-in-law was an oil-field production engineer at Miri prior to the war and told me that. When the Japanese invaded Borneo, he went into hiding, leaving his wife and family at Miri under Japanese occupation.

The largest and most important petroleum refineries in the NEI were at Palembang on the Island of Sumatra and in the surrounding area. Sumatran crude did not contain that much sulpher, but neither could it be burned without refining.

 

I don't know why you would assume that.

Of the 17 Japanese oilers which were involved in the Midway/Aleutians operation, I believe most eventually returned to Japan. One was sunk in the Aleutians; one, or possibly two, went to Truk before returning to Japan, others called at Guam and other Japanese Pacific bases. I don't have all the TROMS, however.

Japanese tankers were extremely busy in mid-1942, either transporting crude from the NEI to Japanese refineries, or keeping Japanese naval bases and combat fleets supplied with refined oil. By the early fall of 1942, the Japanese fleet was beginning to feel the fuel pinch, not so much because Japan didn't have enough oil, but because it didn't have enough tankers to get it where it was needed on a timely basis.

 

Oh? Which oilers departed directly from the NEI for Operatation MI?

I find only two unaccounted for, all the others departed from the Japanese Home Islands, and most returned there or to Truk.

Please cite your source for the departures from the NEI.

YUSOSEN!

 

Balikpapan was a leading Japanese source for lubricating oil and avgas. To say it was unimportant is not an accurate assesment.

Just the size of the refinery indicates its processing capacity.

 

Don't bother, I'm almost certain none of the Operation MI olers came directly from The NEI or Singapore.

In any case, even if they had, they would have been carrying in late May, 1942, either bunker grade oil refined on Sumatra, or the bunker oil the British had stocked up at Singapore for the PoW and Repulse, so it wouldn't prove anything.

The Japanese didn't get desperate enough to burn unrefined, sulpher-contaminated crude oil in their warship's boilers until mid-1944. And then they only did it, not because they didn't have refined bunker grade oil, but because they didn't have the tankers to move the oil from the refineries in the NEI to where the warships were berthed at Tawi Tawi, Borneo, and Lingga Roads.

 

There are quite a few interesting posts on various topics here. In ref. the amount of NGF support out in the Pacific during the pre-invasion phase, there was almost always disagreement between what the Marine and Army invasion planners wanted, and what the Navy had available in terms of time and tonnage of rounds. Considering just how well the Japanese fortified many of their fortifications, what's amazing is how how effective NGF could be under ANY circumstances.

The other thing to consider is that what was considering to be "effective" had a different meaning between, say the landing on Guadalcanal in 1942, and the final operations on Okinawa in 1945. The Navy's definition of target neutralization meany something very different in comparison to what it menat to a Marine or soldier hitting the beach. Regardless, the Navy never had the ability for unlimited bombardment of objectives on any island campaign.

 

The USN destroyer battle of Vella Gulf did more than bust up IJN hulls,
the psychological win via the Torpedo must have shaken the IJN,

and shaken that Talisman they held,....ie....The Long Lance : )

USN command was finally hitting its stride,
IJN withdrawing to consider.....and reconsider.

The USN bested Japan in the psych department,.....this could be the final truth of WW 2 in the Pacific,
many battles afterward left Japan badly mauled,.....and lying continually to their own about outcomes.

The Long Lance was devastating.......the sight of USN destroyers and cruisers having their bows blown off....with massive secondary detonation from ammo lockers....the men who saw that and lived it.....able to go in and fight some more....is big,

We are aware of the.......wanna go and get back at them of the USN
serviceman,
was it the same for the common IJN sailor......or were they fatally robotic
in their mindset?

 

Naval and aerial bombardment on well fortified Japanese islands often had little effect. Especially on places where the Japanese had lots of time to dig in like Iwo Jima. The japanese knew after awhile what to expect, dug in deeper and prepared their fortifications accordingly. You'd think that if you covered every square inch of a fortified island with enough explosives there'd surely be no one left alive, but this never happened.
Napalm was a product of late world war 2 and saw limited use, it was invented specifically to help destroy these fortifications. Napalm is simply jellied gasoline and it was hoped that when dropped by air, the napalm would trickle through the ventilation ports of the fortifications and burn or suffocate the enemy inside. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didnt, even in the Vietnam war the enemy found ways around this horrific weapon.

A newer weapon of a similar type is the FAE or fuel-air explosive. It is said to be very effective under certain circumstances, the US and other militaries have it, if the US has used it they are not talking about it much probably due to its horrific nature. FAE is air dropped like a bomb, the bomb explodes and scatters a fuel mist over a wide area which is then detonated a fraction of a second later. The concussion effect of such a blast is more power than most fragmentation bombs and is said to be highly effective against troops and soft skinnes vehicles. Not only does the concussion do tremendous damage it also blows the oxygen out of the air - if dropped near a fortified bunker the troops inside might still be destroyed since they still must breathe after all.
As far as i know FAE were not used in WW2, Korea or Vietnam, they have been in the aircraft armory at least since Gulf War 1 and may have been used against dug in Iraqi troops.

 

Well, if US bombardment fleets stayed bombarding an island/atoll for weeks on end, this could mean more attacks, like Kamikazes, bombings, torpedoes, and even large Japanese battlegroups.

The Invasion of Tarawa in 43 basically changed the US' platform for invading islands. Although the Marines easily outnumbered the Japanese defenders, the Japanese did kill about the same amount of troops they had. Killed: 1,000 (roughly) Wounded: 2,000 [roughly] So they did increase the bombardments, but the Japanese also learned from it- they created underground tunnels and bunkers that could easily avoid bombings. The US didn't want to use any gas of any kind, so shelling and bombing was all they could do. Like at Iwo Jima, the place was bombed for three days I believe, and little more than a couple dozen Japanese were killed, if not none at all.

 

....if they had bombardments that lasted weeks, as the OP suggests, we never would've got out of the Solomons!
...a lot of the landings and battles went ''well''--as far as military operations go....tactics were fine..I was just reading about the Solomons yesterday--Halsey praised some of the operations

 

Interesting topic...how about reducing the number of dud torpedoes with better quality control testing prior to the war..you would think they would of had it all figured out by Dec. '41...just a thought tonight.

 

Speaking of tactics, wasn't there some kind of disagreement between the U.S. Army and the U.S. Marines over the operational and tactical conduct of the Army 27th Division on Saipan?
I believe the dispute revolved around the differences in pure doctrine and pace of operations. The 27th's commander on Saipan was accused of letting Marine flanks go unsupported, resulting in more casualties, and the Marines having to move at the pace of the Army, who were trained to be slower, more methodical, and to hopefully incur less in the way of losses with their slower paced operations.
The Marines pointed out that every day spent on an island beachhead was one more day that the supporting fleet was exposed to Japanese attacks. As an example, the Marines cited the loss of the escort carrier "Liscombe Bay" in the Gilberts, whose casualties (682) represented fully a third of the total Marine casualties on Betio itself.

I believe the Marines won out in this tactical argument, with the commander of the 27th (Ralph Smith) being relieved at Saipan by his Marine superior (Holland Smith).

In "Goodbye Darkness", Marine William Manchester is also critical of the failure of the 27th and talks of his particular division getting Japanese children to chant, in English, at elements of the 27th who were arriving to replace his unit.
Manchester's Marine buddies taught those Okinawan kids to chant "Twenty Seventh Division eats s**t!", over and over at the newly arriving units of this National Guard unit.

He says it worked "a treat",

Was this animosity stemming from this basic difference in Marine training?Were Marine units simply trained differently? Or was it something in the philosophy and approach to infantry combat as championed by the U.S. Marines that made them and their operations different?

Chris

 

Just another thought...

That same Army General (Ralph Smith) was also on record to claim that Tarawa, and Betio in partivular, could have been bypassed, or that particular garrison could have been sealed off with minefields and airpower.
The same claim was made for Peleliu.

I personally, think that Ralph Smith lost his command for his outspoken inability to keep his mouth shut. Was his departure on Saipan something to do with the public and private criticism he levelled at the US Marine Corps?

Certainly, Macarthur seemed to feel that Biak could have been handled differently, but he might have been saying that to explain away the losses there, or the time it took away from the rest of the campaign.
Biak was a major change in Japanese defensive tactical policy, because the defence network was away from the beachhead, and not aimed at a waterline defenceive posture at all.
That has been described as "The most murderous (Japanese) discovery of the Pacific War.

What does the forum feel about this issue?

Christopher

 

I've often thought about this too. Prewar planning for a drive across the Pacific called for the first assault to be against the Marshalls, followed by attacks on Japanese possessions like the Carolines. In the 1920s/30s a war was expected to be just the US and Japan; the British-controlled Gilberts were assumed to be neutral. Also the Gilberts were a diversion off the direct route to the Philippines and the Far East.

Of course in the war that actually happened, Britain was an ally and the Gilberts were occupied by the Japanese, so the possibility arose of taking them first and using them as a base for air reconnaissance and bombing of the Marshalls. Even if all went well, this would mean delaying the attack on the Marshalls by a few months. Nonetheless, people began to think that because it was now possible to use the Gilberts, it had become necessary.

 

..hindsight is 20/20
....plus we didn't have Task Force 58/38 in Nov 1943..and more importantly we did not have all the planes/logistics/supplies/supply ships/etc to bypass and seal off all those islands

 

Well, it was called Task Force 50, but it included six CVs and five CVLs. There were also seven CVEs supporting the landings at Tarawa and Makin. We could look up detailed OOBs, but the naval and amphibious forces which conducted the Gilberts operation in Nov 1943 were comparable to those at Kwajalein in Jan-Feb 1944.

The few Japanese aircraft in the Gilberts were wiped out in carrier raids prior to the landings. Ironically the only air threat in the Gilberts was bombers from the Marshalls, one of which put a torpedo into CVL Independence. This I'll admit is hindsight, but a full-scale attack on the Marshalls would have eliminated the air threat at the outset.

We also bypassed most of the Japanese bases in the Marshalls, assaulting only Kwajalein and securing the undefended Majuro atoll. Once those were taken, islands like Wotje or Mili were cut off, as Tarawa and Makin could have been. Once the aircraft on an island were eliminated, little additional effort was required.