Trial by Fire: How Japan Developed Bomber Tactics (EP 2/4)
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- Опубликовано: 10 фев 2025
- Series
Episode 1 • ARMY vs NAVY - Fighter...
Episode 3 • Japanese WW2 Air Power...
Episode 4 • Fireballs? Japanese Ai...
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Always nice to see Justin again
Thanks!
I've flown in formation for 2-3 hours at a stretch in piston engined aircraft and it was exhausting. I cannot imagine flying 8 hours in a piston engined fighter in formation.
You just highlighted why missions over Guadalcanal were virtually suicidal for their pilots in the long run.
Why? Plane controls to wobbly?
@ staying in formation requires a great deal of concentration, especially a piston-engine altitudes (turbulence, clouds, etc.) requiring thousands of small control inputs per hour and power setting changes. The heat , vibration and noise is also very tiering. Formation flying jet aircraft at jet altitudes, where the air (and engine) is much smoother is much easier.
Imagine the brain pain getting multiple formations within a formation setup
IJN long-range recon via flying boat was also impressive early in the war. The "Mavis" and "Emily" were both impressive, though in varying degrees vulnerable to air opposition.
Justin only indirectly touched on another issue with the extreme range of missions the Japanese planes were flying. Spending 8 hours in the air to make an attack is itself a kind of virtual attrition factor on your force, because if you'd been able to base them closer you could make more attacks per day using the same number of planes. So you've reduced the potential impact on your target by choosing a mission profile that limits how often you can hit that target. (OTOH that has to be traded off against the benefit of basing your planes beyond your enemy's range, meaning you don't have to worry much about losing planes to attacks on your own airfields)
@@jonathan_60503 i did not watch the entire video, but extreme range attacks also use up fuel and cause more maintenence per mission flown.
The IJA lost an incredible percentages of Ki61s ferrying them from the Philippines to Formosa then Rabaul then to Wewak in west New Guinea. They wound up with a mix of Ki61s and Ki43s that were supposed to be replaced. Common for the IJN pilots to fall asleep on that leg from Guadalcanal to Rabaul. Without radios there was no way the other pilots could wake them.
The IJN pilots of 1941 were more than capable of making those long range flights, but as the war wore on and the original generation was killed off the new recruits didn't receive the same level of training, so from 1943 onwards the Japanese were losing a significant number of aircraft due to pilots simply getting lost over the ocean.
@terrygraham5223 IJN Ace Minoru Honda talks about his fellow pilots going to sleep on the daily grinds from Rabaul to Guadalcanal in one of his 3 parts interviews on RUclips.
And yeah the Navy pilots early on were well trained for the Pacific Ocean. Imperial Japanese Army pilots ferrying new Ki 61s those distances . . . Not so much apparently.
The extreme ranges the Japanese pilots had to fly during the battle of Guadalcanal is usually neglected when accounting for the battle.
IJN planes arrived at Guadalcanal well into their full radius with pilots who had already been flying for several hours. US fliers defending Henderson were fresher and had more fuel, Then IJN fliers had more hours' flight to get home, sometimes nursing a damaged plane. It's under-appreciated how much this contributed to the decreased level of skill in IJN squadrons later in the war. Many experienced IJN pilots lost their lives in the Solomons instead of being there to share their experience with new fliers.
The difference between their early bombing tactics and their dismal results and what came later is striking.
A fantastic look at a topic of Imperial Japanese airpower that never gets looked at or discussed by anyone at any length. Learned a lot new things with this video.
Fantastic work by Justin and others in bringing this to our attention in this video.
Thank you Justin and Chris, for this great series of presentations on Japanese air power. Always learn something new when Justin does a presentation👍
Thank you both!
Thanks Chris & Justin, great informative video !
Thanks!
Do we have any information on how many squadrons Japan had over the course of the war, the distribution between fighter/bomber/recon etc, and regional deployment? Also the number of people per squadron, distribution between pilots/ground crew/others?
Thank you so much! That’s a really interesting question, I think I haven’t seen a tabulated overview yet. I’ll ask Justin!
Justin's response (which seems to have gotten swallowed by YT):
"You can find a good amount of translated data on IJN personnel, including aviation, and a database of all IJNAS Kokutai and Hikotai on *rikukaigun/org*. There is unfortunately not a similar place I know of to get all that information for the IJAAS. There are reference books, mainly for fighters, that will list those units.
The IJNAS and IJAAS both organized differently and from memory the IJNAS went through at least two reorganizations during the war (Nov 1942 and Mar 1944)."
I think Japanese recognition of their limited ability to get sufficient fuel to newly built forward air bases may have been as important as their limited construction capacity. Their tanker fleet was stretched even before it got attritted, but I suspect there were even more constraints on getting fuel ashore and storing it in adequate quantities. I’m not aware of anyone who has studied this, so grateful if anyone knows more.
Interesting! Definitely something to look into
This is a great question that I don't have a full answer to on hand! Reading between the lines in works that draw on Japanese sources, fuel didn't seem to be a limitation for the decisive part of the South Pacific Air War. No works I've read mention it as a constraint until 1944, where things really start deteriorating for Japan. The IJNAS fought hard and continuously, mainly out of the Rabaul area, all the way until they were withdrawn from the region in early 1944. The IJAAS also fought hard in the south Pacific, though lost a massive number of their aircraft on the ground.
"The bomber will always get through" seems ridiculous in hindsight but it reflects the realities of the time. There was no radar to warn of approaching formations, fighters lacked the endurance for standing patrols and bombers were almost as fast or in some cases even faster than contemporary fighters. So it was perfectly rational to assume the bombers would arrive with little warning while defending fighters would be limited to mostly fruitless tail chases as they left. This assumption was even built right into the "Pursuit" designation for US fighter aircraft. Unfortunately for the Bomber Mafia all it took was sufficient advanced warning of incoming raids to overturn these assumptions and it didn't even take radar just a sufficiently dense and properly coordinated network of ground observers.
Regarding airfield construction people can argue all they want about who made the best tanks but the war was actually won by the side that had all of the bulldozers. The Allies were even less prepared for airfield construction but they had a much bigger base to build from and much better tools to build with.
Beans bullets and bulldozers?
On Guadalcanal, the early construction by the Marines was accomplished using a Japanese bulldozer abandoned by the construction crew.
It is why when I read or hear. Drones make tanks unless. Ah history repeats.
Your comment reminds me of the "crisis" of the 1860s and 70s when increases in rifle ranges and accuracy suddenly gave them better range then the artillery of the day. There was much debate about whether artillery was even necessary any more, whihc lasted until artillery development caught up with small arms tech and artillery once again had better range and combat effectiveness than rifles.
A. Try not to piss of the good old U.S.OF A. even when we have a pathetic Marxist isolationest... for a president
B. Also, if you can avoid breaking a Agreement with a guy who resembles a guy like Stalin, do so...
I'm just saying, if you're Fascist with a oversized shoe closet, ( 😜 ) you're better off trying to convince Ava that the shoes aren't yours, you just hold them for a friend than lie to a guy like Stalin, buddy offed his own people "millions" just for living where they did ! And he thought they had to much food and, basically everything... not exactly the kinda guy you want to piss off .
Oh yeah, last but certainly not least, don't be a dick and shave that stupid mustache, it makes look like a bigger POS which you don't need any help doing...
There are memoirs in audio form on RUclips of Masatake Okumiya, who was an air staff officer at Buhin. He mentions, with feeling, how good the Americans were at every aspect of supporting work - base building, medical, logistics, human resources the whole nine yards.
Excellent as always! One of the best channels on here and time well spent!!
Yes... Justin has in-depth knowledge and he communicates his ideas very clearly and fluently. A pleasure to listen to.
You make some of if not the best videos on WWII aviation. Please keep doing this for us all.
Thank you :)
Nice topic ! I can't get enough about IJAAS informations and tactics, would love to hear more !
Just catching up on this fascinating series. I will offer one observation on the comment on forward airfield construction. I spent my career supporting UK veterans. When I first started I had many WW2 clients. An unfortunate number were FEPOWs (Far Eastern Prisoners of War) or some referred to themselves as, guests of the Emporer. I can remember a few descibing how they were used as labour to construct Japanese airfields under the most appalling conditions. Very heavy manual labour, use of plant to construct the runways all on a starvation diet.
From my reading of that book on the Darwin Spitfire wing, the thing that stood out was the single IJN bomber group allocated to harassing North Australia, kept great formation and dropped very accurately but it was undone by small bomb loads/bomb sizes carried by the bomber and the IJN's military intelligence was never able to properly interpret the either the recon or the bombing results, so these attacks were never decisive.
Thank you, Christoph and Justin for an excellent educational video.
And excellent and fresh subject that we haven't all heard or read about dozens of times. Well done, my friend😎👍
learned a lot. Thanks. It is not always easy to combine timelines on different continents and see the parallel development. It is so much more we learn now about things that happened 80y ago, than 30-40y ago. Kind of absurd…
Enjoying this series as I play a game of fighting flattops!
Great vid! Interesting subject and thoughtfully presented. Thank you guys!
It's great you include your sources. Thanks.
A very interesting show. An empire who's reach far exceeded its grasp. Well done.
I recall reading that, on New Guinea, American construction battalions used tractors and bulldozers while the Japanese used picks and shovels. Makes a difference that has combat consequences.
two of my favorites: Justin and Chris!
Thanks, great video!
One thing not mentioned when discussing the extensive use of very long range missions that I wonder about is the effect on logistics and aircraft availability rates. The longer the mission the more fuel consumed, and all that av gas had to be shipped a long way to reach Rabual and their other forward bases - how much extra strain did that place on the Navy's logistics train?
Also airframes and, especially, engines had fairly short service lives in WW2 in terms of air hours, so longer missions mean more repair time and engine replacement even aside from battle damage. It would be interesting to see availability rates for Japanese naval aircraft relative to other air forces.
Great video
Yet another great video, are you planning to send out one video a month in this series?
Likely slightly regular than that - depends on a few other videos I am working on
It seems almost a rule of modern mechanised warfare that you start off with weapons pushing the limits of technology to achieve ambitious strategic goals, but you end up needing something simple, robust and cheap that will simply keep fighting when the fancy stuff is waiting for spare parts. The fastest to make that transition wins.
@@philipdavis7521 Yeah, unfortunately you don't know what the cheap, robust and simple thing has to do at first. The biggest unknown at the start is the nature of the fighting when the two forces clash. Starting off with something simple and robust isn't a viable choice
@@b1rds_arent_real You also don't quite know what 'cheap robust and simple' is actually going to be. Going TOO simple might wind up with a platform that doesn't really do the job quite right, and going too robust might wind up with something heavy and without all the features it actually needs to work properly. Likewise 'too cheap' might translate into 'flimsy and won't hold together' if you get the balance wrong.
George Lucas maybe had the idea from Japanese bomber tactics when picturing the Rebels attacked on large targets in small formations with Y-Wings and B-Wings, bombing capital ships, the gate on the sheild of the Scarif or the Death Star.
The Japanese had nothing close to our CE capabilities. No Red Horse engineering units. No sea bees. Throw on the worst logistics of any WW 2 combatant, it is amazing they did as well as they did.
I think the unpreparedness of the Allies had something to do with it. Plus fighting over such huge distances was another factor. It was also regarded as the lesser enemy, Germany would be defeated first. If the Allies could have focused all their attention on Japan, the war probably would have been over much quicker. Japan was never going to win and I'm glad they didn't (even though I live there).
Thank you for the Japanese videos. Very under-discussed and studied topics.
Really fascinating
It's good to put a face to the name "Bismarck" from TBLF.
Hello Christoph
I recently watched a video of a tour of a company called Gosshawk unlimited in which they’re making FW 190s. One of their main problems was having to translate the original blueprints and diagrams from German to English. That is when I thought of you and your expertise in aviation and languages. Maybe you could contact them as they are looking for experienced people in aeronautics. Thanks for your many wonderful videos.
R. Stevens.
It sounds to me a lot of it early on in the war, came down to lack of reconnaissance and planning, as if the pilots weren’t sure what the target was the were supposed to hit
It's interesting to see how prewar ideas affected how the IJN and USN approached problems. The IJN was apparently more defensively minded, i.e. the US will come to us while the USN was offensively oriented. The USN was going to attack across the Pacific to relieve the Philippine garrison.
The Battle of Britain would have been very different if the Luftwaffe had Japanese fighters with eight hours of endurance.
Very interesting Episode indeed. Doing anything 8 hrs is taxing. But flying, fightigng and retreating in the harsh enviroment of the South pacifc. Thats something else.
Drop one bomb at a time? Dang it! I can no longer give Eagle Dynamics crap for how AI bomb in DCS. It has historic backing.
@@mikequigleyorruneoform7096 only if you play on the South Pacific map! Tbh, though, by the time US and Japan were at war, I don't think this was the case.
Imperial Japan didn't plan on modern warfare taking years. That hurt Japan in China and caused defeat against the USA. Prior to 1937, Imperial Japan would wage a short, brutal campaign that beat the Russians, took Formosa, conquered Korea and resulted in Manchukuo.
Sending the best pilots out NOW would have worked if those pilots didn't have a year of constant combat. The Japanese replacement pilot pipeline took two years to produce effective pilots. How long did it take the USA?
How's the current state of primary sources regarding Japanese aviation during WW2? I always figured we're still limited to observer accounts due to Japan's destruction of wartime documentation. Even when surviving documentation surfaces, it's in an older style of Japanese that most natives can't even read accurately any more.
😢I'm stopping following you today as there's rarely anything to watch anymore and when there is it's only for members.😮 So thanks for the great videos you've shown and good luck.
Anyone else want Justin to hit a beat for a video intro/outro? 🥁
I wonder how much Japanese avaiation "backwardness" can be attributed to the stone cold fact that 90% of the IJN pilots and (I think) most of the IJA pilots and air crew were enlisted men, and thus unable to have the ability to drive tactical, operational and strategic innovation from the bottom up because they were enlisted men, and expected to be fliers who obeyed orders, incredibly proficent technicians, but not military thinkers who have the rank and status of junior officers in western air forces, who are all potential squadron, group and higher unit commanders and innovators. Simply put, there were too few junior IJA and IJN officers to have any influence on senior officers even before the attritional spiral of 1942 kills the majority of them off, and the enlisted veterans with combat experience and potential leadership skills cannot, in a Japanese military culture, ever get a commission.
Japanese had 100 plane raids...
Justin please start your own channel
Does Justin have his own channel too?
What is the best book to read about the 2nd Sino-Japanese war?
Rana Mitter's _Forgotten Ally_ is a nice introduction.
Question from the last video: Overclaiming. How serious was Japanese overclaiming? How was it compared to Allied overclaiming. I've read that Japanese overclaiming was expecially bad. Was that opinion a result of relying only on Allied sources since Japanese mistakes would be obvious but not for the Allied's.
I have this book: The First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign: Naval Fighter Combat from August to November 1942 by John Lundstrom. It's the US Navy experience in Guadalcanal. The author often compares the claims by both the IJN and USN pilots with actual mission records. Both sides overstated their shootdown and bombing kills. But the IJN pilots were excessively exaggerated when reporting the number of planes shotdown over Henderson Field/Guadalcanal. For example claiming 40 planes shotdown and USN records only lost 5 planes. These wild claims by the IJN pilots contributed to bad decisions made by the staff when planning the retake of Henderson Field as the IJN staff had believed the USN/USMC aircraft were being wipeout after weeks of attacks when in reality the "Cactus Airforce" was still viable force. The only success the IJN had at Henderson Field was with a few MASSIVE bombardments by the IJN battleships nearly knocking out all the planes parked around the field. Only some beneficial reinforcements by USMC and orphaned carrier planes restocked the airfield with planes to defend from continued IJN attacks
@@fwa3387 Thank you for summing up. I have read both books. The thing is I also remember allied overclaiming. For example, US claimed two Japanese battleships sunk near the Phillippines in 1942 when no Japanese ships was around. In Wewak MacArthur claimed 200 aircraft destroyed on the ground. Japanese record showed 100. A look into the opponent's archives is needed to identify overclaiming.
You're a drummer?
My reply seemed to get eaten by RUclips (on my end anyway), so I'll repost:
Yup! I also play bass. One of them is hanging just out of frame, haha.
@justinpyke1756 I play bass and drums ............ for 5 mins then my hands hurt, lol.
@@franktreppiedi2208 Haha, yeah I get that. I've really neglected my bass playing in particular as of late.
Ich finde Deine Entscheidung die Hälfte dieser vier Videos frei zu machen, und die Hälfte privat, wofür man was bezahlen muss, total unfair. Der schwache japanische Yen hilft auch nicht.
Mein Vater war ein Marine, der auf Okinawa kämpfte. Deswegen ist mein Interesse an dem Pazifischen Krieg und auch japanischen Flugzeugen länger als Du vielleicht gelebt hast. Ja, ich bin ein 73 Jahre alt Boomer. Ich bin auch ein Rentner, der im März 40 Jahre in Japan gewohnt haben werde. Vorher habe ich Deine Videos genossen. Aber als die Zahl von privaten Videos zunimmt, muß ich mich anders denken. Ich hoffe, Du wirdst diesen Kommenter lesen. Ich bin recht unzufrieden. Ich frage Dich, die letzte zwei frei für alle zu machen, sonst muss ich anders wohin suchen, solche Information zu finden und dafür 'unsubscribe' Deine Videoes.
You Europeans seem to have some strange History books regarding the cause of The Pacific War.
As part of a long line of Australian Infantryman it's a subject I care about.
Berating the Japanese for a lack of forward planning, and linking the Sino-Japanese War to the separate and very unwanted Pacific War implies you're in error as to WHO instigated and wanted the Pacific War, and WHO hadn't wanted it nor planned ahead.
The U.S./British/Dutch/Chinese Oil embargoes left Japan without access to reliable supply, it created an immediate existential crisis that forced Japans hand and it's invasion of S.E. Asian oil fields.
The LAST thing Japan wanted was to fight a two-front War against the U.S..
Do you think they are that primitive?
Does Yamamoto's plan of an initial 12 months ONLY of mayhem against the U.S forces sound like it's Japans idea?
Or his quoted, ''I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”
You've got the wrong attitude, Japan is not the ''Bad Guy'' in the Pacific War.
That War was forced on them by the U.S. and Allied European Powers.
After their initial successes Japan fought on the back foot all the way to Nagasaki.
The Pacific War was instigated to get the U.S. off the fence and into Europe with Britain.
(Surely you do know about Churchill's reaction to Pearl Harbor?).
It was not 'Japans' War, we can take sole ownership of that and all it entailed.
(On a personal note, it seems to me.
Having twice been shamefully late to the last two World Wars, the Yanks are going awful hard to be early for the next one).
Peace.
This is not a criticism of your comments but the churchill/pearl harbor thing has never made sense. It only gains traction due to the ignorance of the actual history of those few days. Churchill was concerned about the ongoing japanese attacks on the British Empire and others in south east asia, which would have been difficult to counter if the japanese ignored US holdings, and the USA continued to remain neutral. This would have permitted the japanese navy free reign.
In reality the US forces acheived little in restraining the japanese for a considerable period.
The Pearl Harbor narrative seems to have been created to try to paint Churchill as the bad guy, pleased at the misfortune of others, rather than someone releived that an enemy has missed an advantageous gamble on US political stubbornnes, after all, FDR had been telling him how resistant the US was to any involvement.
@@johnculver2519 England's survival DEPENDED on U.S. entry and Churchill was hellbent on making it happen any way possible.
DEPENDED.
Can't be denied, end of Story.
Plan B. if the U.S. managed to stay out, the Royals were packed for Canada and 'The Empire" would fight on 'for as long as it takes''.
While Churchill was a amoral, pisspot tosser trading on self-aggrandizing past 'Glories' that gloss over the slaughter of Gallipoli never forgotten by at least Australia.
He was also a cold calculating P.M. who would have fought to the last American, Canadian, Australian and Indian Life to save Britain.
The Brits likely only survived, both in spite of him and because of him.
(Alan Brooke's Bio is a must).
After decades of reading I've decided every sensible non-Briton should loathe him.
Still, this all distracts from the fact that the White Powers took out a rising Asian Power by successfully forcing War on them and eventually bombing them with Nukes.
We are the bad guys.
It's also the last War we Won.
Cheers.
@@johnculver2519 Hmmm, my highly critical comment regarding Churchill seems to have offended the Gods and been censored. (A bit too far to come and book my books though!).
This European/Western failure to acknowledge reality and alternative views is the reason we are becoming the Worlds toilet.
Still, all this intellectual and moral cowardice, and inherent racism detracts from the fact that the White/European Powers successfully forced the Pacific War on a rising Asian Power and then destroyed it with Nuclear weapons.
(Lets hope this doesn't upset diddums too much!).
Peace.
@@johnculver2519 I have to say with the frequency of deleted comments it's quite the racist and shallow Echo Chamber in here.
"Japan is not the bad guy". Sure, tell that to the Chinese and Koreans.
21:30 No losses, but any victories for this longest range sweep ?
Two SB-2s on the ground and five I-153s claimed in the air. Actual A2A losses based on Chinese records was three I-153s and one additional I-153 crashing on landing due to mechanical issues. The Chinese hadn't been expecting fighters given that the sweep was coming in so early in the morning.
@@justinpyke1756 thank you