Logistics in the Pacific Theater

wasn't it just a matter of how fast/much the Allies could move men and materials, and build airbases that decided how quickly the war would end?? the Japanese lost the best of their pilots at Midway and early Solomons era....the islands to be assaulted cut off tactically and strategically by subs/etc....and the US didn't even use ALL its power in the Pacific...in other words, the Japanese didn't have a chance at at all to win??

 

Logistics played a huge part. Indeed Gaudalcanal was a rather limited effort due mostly to logistics and of course the Eurpope first policy.

As an aside the IJN didn't really loose all that many pilots at Midway most of them were rescued. They did loose a lot of their ground crews though. For this topic I highly recomend Shattered Sword. As to the impact of the Solomons if you haven't read it check out:
http://www.combinedfleet.com/turningp.htm
and
http://www.combinedfleet.com/economic.htm

 

that looks like a good one...

 

It also has to do with how they really had no place to retreat to. They were surrounded by water and unless their navy came to the rescue, the Japanese didn't really have any choice but to keep fighting. This also damaged their logistics, because since they were surrounded by water and cut off by the US navy, the Japanese could not resupply themselves very well.

 

The real problem with Japan's pilot training programs was that it was about 4 years in length.

 

hold it!! really? anyone know the US program length?? what was the big difference in US and IJN training?? this is interesting....

 

but of course, the IJN pilots had the approximate number of flying hours in 6 months as did the US pilots??

 

I did read where the early IJN pilots did a lot of gymnastics/athletic training??????I take it the US pilots did not?

 

Note that the IJN and the IJA had very different training programs. While the Caiden book Samurai shouldn't be taken as gospel on such matters the overview of IJN training presented is a good starting point. The Japanese also revised their training program significantly as the war went on but suffered significant qualtiy decreases in the process.

 

The biggest issue is Japan had no plans for mass training pilots, they did not rotate pilots in and out of combat a the Americans did to help train the next wave. Once Japan started losing pilots they had no way to make up the losses and thus started a death spiral.

 

I read that many, many years ago....

 

And then on top of that they began wasting what little experienced pilots they had towards the end of the war by using them for kamikazes, which was a major big waste.

 

yes,

Germany didn't rotate either? and what about prospective trainees??? of course the US had many, many more applicants/'pre'-qualified trainees and as Lrusso showed, [ thank you L ]many washed out....so, it seems like the US could afford to flunk a bunch of the POORER trainees

 

this seems like common sense, to have vets train the bootcampers....I take it they didn't have the manpower for this?

 

yes, so they just trained the next to just be able to take off!! no need to land or dogfight

 

Germany did not rotate pilots either, in fact in 1942 they had such a need for bomber pilots that they shut down their bomber trainings schools. The Kamikazi's pilots were not the trained ones. They used the few experienced left to guide them to the target areas.

 

Sakai (who incidently was rotated out all though that was likely due to injuries suffered and I believe trained pilots for a while) was sent on a Kamikazi mission. That was fairly early on so they had enough fuel to return when they couldn't find any targets.

 

although I read his book many, many years ago, I do remember he was hurt badly, and had a long way to fly home...