Very interesting post up at Larry Person’s Battleswarm Blog

The Pacific campaign of World War II is often presented as uniquely tough for the Americans that fought there. But it was absolutely deadly for Imperial Japanese Navy seaman and aviators. Here are a couple of videos that say why.

First up: 91% casualty rates.

• “91%. That’s how many Japanese carrier crew members were dead by August 1945. Not casualties, dead. For every 100 men who served on Japanese carriers, nine survived the war.”
• “The Imperial Navy started with 10 fleet carriers. They ended with zero.”
• “The Japanese started war with the best carrier pilots in the world. Each one had over 800 hours of flight training. By 1944, new pilots got less than 50 hours. Why? Because Japan made a fatal decision. They never rotated experienced pilots home to train replacements. Every veteran stayed in combat until they died. And they all died.”
• “Here’s the brutal arithmetic. At Midway, Japan lost four carriers and 322 aircraft. But here’s what destroyed them. They lost 110 veteran pilots. Each one had over two years of training. Japan produced 200 new pilots per month. America produced 2,500.”
• “The carriers themselves were death traps by design. Japanese damage control doctrine was offensive spirit overcomes material weakness. They literally didn’t train damage control.”
• “American carriers had firefighting schools. Japanese carriers had buckets.”
• “When the Taiho was hit by one torpedo, the crew didn’t know to turn off ventilation. Aviation fuel vapors spread through the ship. Six hours later, one spark turned the entire carrier into a 27,000 ton bomb.”
• “A survivor from the Shokaku described it. ‘The American dive bombers came from the sun. Three bombs. That’s all. Three bombs and 20 minutes later, our carrier was gone. 1,360 men. The water was on fire. Those who escaped the ship burned in the ocean.’”
• “Japanese carriers packed aircraft everywhere. In the hangers, on deck, in the passages. The Akagi carried 91 planes in space designed for 60. When one bomb penetrated to the hanger, it didn’t destroy one plane. It destroyed 20. The chain reaction of exploding aircraft turned carriers into crematoriums.”
• “The real killer was Japanese carrier doctrine. They armed and fueled aircraft in enclosed hangers. Americans did it on deck. One bomb in a Japanese hanger meant every plane exploded in a confined space. At Midway, the Kaga took four bombs. 711 dead in 9 minutes. The survivors said the hangar deck turned into a blast furnace fed by aviation fuel.”
• “Japanese carriers had no radar-directed anti-aircraft guns until 1944. They aimed manually at 400 mph aircraft. Hit probability: 2%. American carriers with radar directed guns 18%. That’s not combat, that’s mathematical suicide.”
• “After losing four carriers at Midway, Japan had six fleet carriers left. In the next two years, they built seven more. America built 90.”
• “Japan launched one new carrier in 1944. America launched 19.”
• “The Japanese were fighting industrial capacity with human spirit. Spirit lost.”
• “The pilot training collapse was even worse. By 1944, American pilots got 300 hours of training, including 100 hours in operational aircraft. Japanese pilots got 30 hours total, mostly in gliders to save fuel. They couldn’t land on carriers in calm seas, much less combat.”
• “At the Philippine Sea, the Great Mariana’s Turkey shoot, Japan lost three carriers and 400 aircraft. But here’s the devastating part. They lost 450 pilots. Only 43 were rescued. America lost 29 aircraft. The kill ratio was 13 to 1. That’s not a battle. It’s an execution.”
• “A captured Japanese naval officer admitted, ‘We knew after Midway. We knew we couldn’t replace the pilots. Every carrier operation after that was a suicide mission. We just didn’t call them that yet.’”
• “The Shinano tells the whole story. The largest carrier ever built, 72,000 tons, sunk on her maiden voyage by four torpedoes from one submarine. 1,435 dead. The crew didn’t know how to use damage control equipment. They had watertight doors that they didn’t close. The pride of the Japanese Navy sank because nobody taught the crew basic damage control.”
• “By 1945, Japan was using converted battleships and cruise ships as carriers. The pilots couldn’t actually land on them. They were one-way launch platforms for kamikaze attacks. The crew’s job was to sail to launching range and die. Survival wasn’t part of the mission profile.”
• “The last operational Japanese carrier, the Amagi, was destroyed at anchor by American aircraft. The crew was still aboard, waiting for aircraft that would never come. Pilots who didn’t exist for a war already lost.”
• “Japan started with 3,500 trained carrier pilots. By war’s end, 112 were alive. The carriers that revolutionized naval warfare became steel coffins for 25,000 sailors who believed offensive spirit could overcome mathematical reality.”
• “The Japanese carrier fleet didn’t lose the war. It committed industrial sepukuku, taking 91% of its men with it.”

Second: The power of ice cream. Japanese POWs saw what Japan was up against. Instead of being tortured to death as their commanders had led them to believe, their captors provided them with more food than Japanese officers ate.

• “He held a tray loaded with more food than his entire squadron had shared in three days. Fried chicken, mashed potatoes swimming in butter, green beans, white bread, apple pie, and a glass of cold milk.”
• “The American sailor behind the serving line, irritated by the delay, gestured impatiently at the ice cream station. You want chocolate or vanilla? The question made no sense. Ice cream didn’t exist on warships. Ice cream required refrigeration that combat vessels couldn’t spare. Yet here, on America’s most battle hardened carrier, enemy prisoners were being offered a choice of frozen desserts.”
• “That moment his understanding of the war, of America, of everything began to crumble. Across the Pacific War, approximately 35,000 Japanese military personnel would experience American naval captivity and witness abundance that shattered everything they believed about their enemy’s weakness.”
• “They discovered carriers where enlisted sailors ate better than Japanese admirals, where machinery produced fresh water from seawater in unlimited quantities.”
• “These encounters with American naval logistics would demolish the spiritual foundations of Japanese military ideology more thoroughly than any defeat in battle.”
• “While Japanese sailors subsisted on rice balls and pickled vegetables, American crews consumed 4,100 calories daily of varied fresh foods.
• “While Japanese carriers hand-pumped aviation fuel, American ships automated everything.”
• “Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, mastermind of Pearl Harbor, who later became a Christian minister in America, documented his 1945 rescue experience aboard the USS Missouri.” They gave him coffee with cream and sugar and apologized for being out of donuts “while Japanese forces were eating leather belts.”
• “The Imperial Japanese Navy’s own reports captured after the war showed that by 1944, enlisted sailors received approximately 1,400 calories daily.”
• “Vitamin deficiency was endemic. Beri beri, scurvy, and night blindness plagued crews.”
• “Japanese prisoners watched American damage control parties, exhausted from fighting fires and flooding, receive ice cream sundaes as battle rations. The cognitive dissonance was overwhelming. Their nation, fighting for its existence, couldn’t provide basic nutrition to forces. The enemy, supposedly decadent and weak, gave ice cream to sailors during combat.”
• “The laundry facilities stunned Japanese prisoners accustomed to washing clothes in seawater. American carriers had industrial washing machines, dryers, and pressing equipment. Enlisted sailors received clean uniforms twice weekly.”
• “The evaporators on USS Enterprise could produce 140,000 gallons of fresh water daily. More than the entire Japanese carrier force could produce combined.”
• “Japanese naval medicine focused on returning wounded to duty regardless of condition. American sick bays treated enemies with the same advanced care as their own sailors. Operating theaters on carriers had X-ray machines, blood banks, surgical equipment matching shore hospitals. Antibiotics, particularly penicillin seemed like magic to Japanese medical personnel who watched infected wounds heal in days instead of killing in weeks.”
• “Japanese ships limped back to homeland ports for any significant repair. American vessels fixed themselves while underway. Floating dry docks, repair ships, and carrier machine shops could manufacture replacement parts, rebuild engines, and fabricate entirely new equipment. USS Enterprises machine shop could produce any part smaller than an airplane engine.
• “The welding shop operated continuously.The electrical shop rewired systems while the ship fought.”
• “When kamikaze attacks intensified in 1945, Japanese pilots who survived crashes witnessed American damage control superiority firsthand. Ryuji Nagatsuka, rescued after his damaged Zero ditched near USS Randolph, watched the carrier’s crew repair kamikaze damage while conducting flight operations. They had foam that stopped fires instantly. Pumps that removed water faster than it entered. Metal plates that sealed holes while we watched. Teams worked with choreographed precision. No shouting, no confusion.They fixed in hours what would have sunk Japanese carriers.”
• But always they get back to the food: “Bakeries produced 15,000 loaves of bread daily. Butcher shops processed whole beef carcasses stored in freezers larger than Japanese submarines. Ice machines produced tons of ice daily for food preservation and drinks. The galley on USS Enterprise used more electricity than entire Japanese destroyers.”
• “Seaman First Class Hiroshi Nakamura, imprisoned aboard USS Saratoga, wrote in a hidden diary, ‘The Americans celebrated their Christmas while we attacked them. Every sailor received presents from organizations at home. Cigarettes, candy, books, razors. The mess hall was decorated with paper and lights. They sang songs and played music. They were happy. We were starving and dying for the emperor while our enemies celebrated with abundance. This was when I knew Japan had already lost.”

The takeaway: Logistics wins wars.