Japanese War Gadgets

Yup. Probably just powerful enough to take yourself out and maybe the guy trying to capture you.


tom

 

Read three things:

1) A summary history of the work of Edward Deming.

2) A summary of the Japanese evaluation of a captured USAAC P-51C.

3) A summary of the respective US and Japanese manufacturing capacity.

I do not believe that the Japanese penchant for low-cost, high-quality efficient production developed until after the war. It was largely a result of consistent application of the results of statistical quality-control theory as developed by Edward Deming. During the war they were certainly not dramatically better at making gadgets than anyone else.

The Japanese evaluation of the P-51C mentions that it had all sorts of goodies they envied. Better pilot comfort, better radio equipment, fancy navigational equipment (very handy in the Pacific), higher-quality canopy, et cetera. Even if the KI-84 could fly and turn with it, it just wasn't as nice or as fancy.

Finally, the USA had at least seven times the manufacturing capacity and twice the population of Japan. Even if the Japanese enjoyed a large qualitative superiority in weapons design (which they didn't, certainly not after 1942), so what? They'd get eaten anyway.

 

If memory serves, Japan only had a limited amount of raw materials to make weapons thanks to the trade embargo. True Japan had a lot of stuff to use on us, but without the raw material, they can't test it or make enough to use. No materials, no armada. In conventional warfare, numbers plays a large role. Even though you got a Yamato-class battleship, if there are over 200 dive bombers or torpedo bombers flying around, the fact that you have the most powerful battleship in the world doen't matter at all. You try fighting against an angry mob by yourself.

 

I think there's evidence that the Japanese manufacturers couldn't make their stuff to quite top-notch standards. Look at all the problems the Ki-61 had with its engine. The Bf 109 had no such problems, and the Ki-61 was using a license-produced version of the same engine.

 

The Japanese were rather dependent on over seas iron/steal. There were deposits in Japan but they were rather low quality and I don't believe particualry large. Japan was very dependent on US imports in this area in particular and the US embargoed scrap metal well before oil.

 

a lot of the comments here mystify me. people must be forgetting one ancient law in combat which is to belittle a defeated nation is to belittle the victor.

that comment on bolt action rifles. it was only the US that had a semi-auto rifle as a standard battle weapon and it came rather late in the war. the numbers don't even point to it being a decisive weapon.

i would rather read how japanese paratroopers were armed only with pistols.

 

Not sure " gadget" is appropriate. A gadget, to me, is a small technical device that is a bit of a novelty. Did Japan have any "gadgets" during WW2? Gizmo's/ gadgets weren't really around until transistors etc?

 

This suggest the term predates WII:
Where Did the Word "Gadget" Come From?
as does this if you look down near the middle of the page
gadget: Definition, Synonyms from Answers.com

 

The Garand M-1 had been relegated the standard battle rifle for the US military pre-war (1936-38?) with an improvement in the gas system in 1939, however production lagged behind need and the first (to my knowledge) of it being distributed en masse was to the Big Red One Division prior to their landing in Operation Torch. That is definitely NOT late in the war, at least not on the American participation side, the only nation which had the semi-auto as the standard. Now, the USMC were the "Red-headed Stepchild" again, and they didn't get issued Garands until much later than the Army did.

And it wasn't (contrary to some USMC tales) a rifle they didn't want, preferring their old Springfields. That is a sort of "sour grapes" tale. Before war's end, over 4 million Garands had been produced, and no less a military authority than General George S. Patton, Jr. proclaimed it, "the greatest single battle implement ever devised by man." What "small numbers"? What not a "decisive weapon"?

 

Excellent. A folding pocket size torpedo fin. Go gadget go....Cool pic man. Thumbs up.

 

marines were fighting with the springfield as late as second-half 1942. the garand coming out in 1943 sounds a bit late to me.

as to numbers, i'm not referring to the number units produced and issued. i'm talking about the fact that small arms from 1900 to desert storm accounted for only 5% of war casualties.

but i'm close to agreeing with patton in a very qualified sense of the word.

 

Early in development the garand had a bad reputation, so much that it was nicknamed the "jamming jenny." Given that they adopted it later, and pursued the development of the Johnson Rifle, I would tentatively conclude that the USMC was less sold on the garand than the Army was.

I recall some interesting Japanese experimental semi-autos that mated the Pedersen action to the Johnson magazine. Really though, a semi-auto rifle for every soldier was a luxury only the world's richest and most robust manufacturer could afford.

 

Japan had exactly two modern battleships in WWII, the sisters Yamato and Musashi, the rest were super-dreadnoughts of pre-WWI vintage or WWI designs completed in 1920-21. Between wars they were uprated and modernized, but they still lacked the edge newer design enjoyed. With the introduction of the North Carolinas, the South Dakotas, and especially the Iowas the USN jumped into a qualitative and quantitative lead -- 16" guns, superb armor, high speed, long endurance and over-the-horizon fire control unmatched by anything afloat -- superbly engineered for long range gun duels in the open ocean. The Yamatos were Japan's attempt to counter the new US fast battleships by jumping a generation to what could be thought of as the post-WWII battleship. Unfortunately for the IJN the "next generation" was extinction, the CV was the real capital ship.

The Yamatos were undoubtedly awesome, yet as counters to the US battleline they fell short in too many areas to fulfill Japan's ambitions for them. Assuming configurations and equipment as of 1944, a fight between an Iowa and a Yamato goes to the American, seven falls out of ten (my opinion, of course). Any two of the others vs. a Yamato is a six-to-four decision. Any three of the SoDaks and the North Carolinas means the deep six for a Yamato, assuming that the US captains know to keep the fight at maximum range.

The only real advantage the Yamatos had over the USN was the fact that they didn't know about their 18.1" rifles. The USN believed they were 16s, so they might have closed the range and suffered heavily as a consequence. The only real utility the Yamatos offered the Japanese was getting into a position to surprise the Americans at close range when the fast battleships were elsewhere, such as at Samar. (I've argued elsewhere that Samar was the Yamato's only chance to really serve a decisive purpose, but VADM Kurita SNAFU'ed that totally)

 

I'd rate it quite a bit closer but it would depend a lot on conditions and whether other ships were involved.

See: What did the USN know about Yamato and when?