alternatehistory.com

It is said that after Guadalcanal, the US and Japanese never fought in any sense with any parity. The US was able to pick the spot and choose the battles and so bring in overwhelming force.

Still, both sides did make over time many changes to improve and do better.

At work, I am doing a lot of data mining, so I decided to try to see what I could find if I looked at WW2 battles to see how the sides relatively military efficiency changed over time. Sometimes data mining surprises me and this is one example when it did so I thought I would request your comments and thoughts.

What I did do was go through the battles, using data from the Wikipedia. I noticed that some figures were dubious, for example, Japanese labourers are sometimes listed as soldiers. Still, I did my best. Furthermore, let me say I am aware that on Allied side, there were often troops from other countries besides the US and similarly, there were troops from other countries, mainly Korea on the Japanese side.

The period I examined was the Island hopping campaign by the US in the Pacific against Japan from late 1943 to 1945. Some of these but not all were extremely one-sided conflicts with many times more American troops than Japanese. As well, the Americans had both air and naval superiority plus better and more equipment on the ground. All these advantages improved over time. Plus over time, more and more Japanese soldiers would surrender so signifying a drop in Japanese military determination.

Here is a table of the US Island hopping campaign from 1943 to 1945.
Battle, Start,Day No, Days, US, US-dead, Japan, Japan-dead
Battle, Start, D3, E3, F3, G3, H3, I3,
Battle of Tarawa ,20/11/1943, 713, 4, 35000, 1009 ,4819, 4673
Battle of Kwajalein ,31/01/1944 ,785 ,4 ,42000 ,372 ,8100 ,7870
Battle of Saipan ,15/06/1944 ,921 ,25 ,71000 ,2949 ,31000 ,29000
Second Battle of Guam ,21/07/1944 ,957 ,21 ,36000 ,1747 ,22000 ,18040
Battle of Tinian ,24/07/1944 ,960 ,9 ,30000 ,328 ,8810 ,8010
Battle of Peleliu ,15/09/1944 ,1013 ,74 ,10994 ,1794 ,11000 ,10695
Battle of Angaur ,17/09/1944 ,1015 ,14 ,15000 ,260 ,1400 ,1338
Battle of Luzo ,9/01/1945 ,1129 ,219 ,175000 ,8310 ,250000 ,205535
Battle of Iwo Jima ,19/02/1945 ,1170 ,36 ,70000 ,6812 ,22060 ,21844
The Battle of Okinawa ,1/04/1945 ,1211 ,82 ,183000 ,12513 ,117000 ,100000


As I used excel, for my variables, I used excel conventions.
D3=Number of days since Pearl Harbor
E3=days the battle raged.
F3=US attacking force
G3=US dead, it may include air force too. I am not sure what the wiki uses
H3=Japanese original defending force.
I3=Japanese dead.

The totals were on this table
E3=488
F3=667994
G3=36094
H3=476189
I3=407005

Please bear with me, as I think, it will be interesting.

I am trying to measure E3 in terms of D3, F3 and H3 so the formula my computer program came up with was

E3=32.76+0.001234*H3 + 4.372*TAN(D3) - 0.0007463*F3 - 10.57*SIN(5.776 + F3)

So plugging these values into these equations, I have

Battle, E3
Battle of Tarawa ,3
Battle of Kwajalein ,5
Battle of Saipan ,26
Second Battle of Guam ,22
Battle of Tinian ,8
Battle of Peleliu ,74
Battle of Angaur ,14
Battle of Luzo ,219
Battle of Iwo Jima ,36
The Battle of Okinawa ,82

The totals on this table are E3=488 days

Which is almost spot on to what the actual figures were which is pleasing.

What I then decided to do was change the dates of the battles.

So I asked the computer let us assume that all battles took place on 20/11/1943. What would be the result? The total of E3=403 Days

As you see the Japanese in this model fought fewer days

So I asked the computer let us assume that all battles took place on 1/04/1945, the day of the Battle of Okinawa which was seen as a dress rehearsal for the invasion of Japan. Now the result was now.

E3=928 Days

As you see the Japanese in this model fought more days with the same resources. The conclusion here is that the Japanese are actually getting better over time faster than the USA armies which fit in well with the change in Japanese strategic plan during this period to hold off the American advance as long as possible and this model suggest that they were succeeding.

This would lend weight to those that argue that the invasion of Japan was not going to be as quick as some suggest but a bloodbath.

Any comments on this?
Top