I can see your point on Hart and the General Board report.. from my readings, I also think Thomas Hart would have shot Mac Arthur, for his screw ups, and betrayal of a 40 year long friendship, if given the opprtunity. Hart paid attention to the information coming to him from CAST and relays from them of HYPO information. Hart wanted more vigorous searches over Taiwan, but Mac refused..
...Those Marvelous Tin Fish: The Great Torpedo Scandal Avoided
- Thread starter DaveJ576
- Start date
This is an ITTL pre-battle situation map on 1 May 1942.
Referring to the ITTL Coral Sea Order of Battle, the Americans and Australians have to scramble to meet the expected Japanese operation. Part of that hurried preparation is to deploy land based air forces and to dispatch submarines.
Considering the RTL difficulties involved, I want to bring up just a few items of interest.
I am not a fan of LTGEN George Brett. He did a great deal to cause administrative confusion and disorganization during his time with ABDA-AIR and he brought that lack of talent to Australia when he set up USAFIA. The USAF sort of glosses over this gentleman and that episode. In this debacle, his inept air deputy was LTGEN Lewis Brereton, the AAF guy who lost the FEAAF on day 2 of the war as his planes were caught on the ground. Later on, this gentleman, would apply his talents to army paratrooper operations in Europe with the same sterling results.^1 The USAF does not like to talk about him much, either. During Operation MO, because of their combined bungling, (And MacArthur's) a 150 kilometer wide gap in the air recon coverage SE of San Cristobal Point on Makira in the RTL was left uncovered by air patrols so that Hara could sneak his way through that gap between Makiro and Ndeni of the Venatu island group to come in behind Fletcher and blindside the American from the east. It was not so much Fletcher's inexperience as a carrier commander (as Lundstrom notes) but the complete bollixing of the recon plan out of Noumea that caused this circumstance to happen. It is to GEN MacArthur's credit, after the Curtin government and its military commanders complained about this event and other fiascos in progress, that these two men who failed at Coral Sea, were expeditiously replaced by a new AAF guy, GEN George Churchill Kenney of USAF fame of the famous 5th Air Force. HIM the USAF loves to discuss... and well they should.
^1 Does one detect a note of sarcasm?
Then there is the USN half of the circus. And it was a circus, especially among the submariners. One can almost fault CAPT (later RADM) Ralph Christie from the start at Brisbane, but when one considers that he had to create a shore establishment, lease, beg or steal pier space and organize SubSWPOA (Brisbane) from almost scratch despite US subs basing from there for two months, one has to ask what this gentleman was doing during those two months. CAPT James Fife appears to have been playing Navy politics and apple polishing his captain's eagles instead of his job.
Then there is the other submariner, who is in region. "Uncle Chuck" aka RADM Charles Lockwood was up to his ears out in Western Australia with troubles of his own at the time, trying to organize Fremantle near Perth as a SubSWPOA base and also attempting to set up a forward base at Exmouth. Exmouth was one of Lockwood's few failures. Totally excusable, if one reads my analysis of pre-battle logistics and the attendant Japanese air campaign that made Darwin (tides), Tjilatjap (overrun), and Exmouth (bombed) unsustainable.
In this ITTL, there is a temporary USN base in the Fiji islands, where SubDivs 51 and 52 operate from the USS Griffth (AS-13).
A quick examination of harbor and facilities shows why in this ITTL, Christie will move on to Brisbane after the Battle of the Coral Sea.
Anyway, this gentleman, VADM Herbert F. Leary, a complete non-entity, managed to make things worse by not appointing an overall ComSubSWAPOA, to oversea the theater's two (three in this ITTL) separate submarine commands. He was another apple polisher.
Pay attention as this (^^^^) works out. Christie will use his Mackerels in accordance with prevailing USN (RTL) doctrine, and will earn mixed results. The AAF will do better (and worse) and the USN will have a few surprises, too, both good and ill.
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Regarding the Dolittle Raid...
...It was well named for doing very little. It is why the greatest famous non-nuclear raids were the Kido Butai raid on Pearl Harbor and the 617 Squadron 'Dambusters' raid. I kid you not.
...It was well named for doing very little. It is why the greatest famous non-nuclear raids were the Kido Butai raid on Pearl Harbor and the 617 Squadron 'Dambusters' raid. I kid you not.
Sorry, no. Yamamoto was expressly opposed to Coral Sea. He wanted the "decisive battle", which is to say MI, not MO. Yamamoto wanted MI before MO went ahead. His insistence on it effectively crippled both, by denying access to CVs for MO, & the resultant losses hampered (perhaps crippled) MI. It was the conflict between them that led to the "splitting of forces" & the reduction in CV strength at Coral Sea, because force was being husbanded for MI. It led to neither being fully effective.
IJNHQ wanted New Caledonia, Fiji, & Suva, & Yamamoto effectively vetoed them, too.
As I understand it, Doolittle gave Yamamoto the trump card he needed to push MI through.
Among Lockwood's troubles, I would add the continuing feud with Carpender; by the time they "called the ref", the two were, as Blair puts it, "on the verge of mayhem".
(In this context, it is a good thing duelling had been outlawed...)In defense of Brereton (& I'm not his #1 fan), he seems to have asked for the OK to launch against Formosa, but Sutherland wouldn't put it to MacArthur--& MacArthur was too busy reading his Bible (believe it or not) for the first 8 hours after he got his orders, direct from Marshall, to "Execute Rainbow 5".
So who do you blame?I'd also take Pickett's remark into account...
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Do not think of yourself as being wrong. Believe me, too many popular histories are out there written that directly link the Doolittle Raid to Operation MI as cause and effect and maintain that the Doolittle Raid is the prompt of the other operation, and that also suggest that Operation MO is another causal factor to Operation MI.
The problem with this view of events is that it is not what the Japanese thought they did at the time. It is an European or British-American cultural view of what they think the Japanese thought they were doing.
This distorted (Credit Purcell and Tully, authors of Shattered Sword for a new interpretation of Japanese intent for non-Japanese students of the Pacific war.), view is not entirely correct. The Japanese military had a pre-war plan of phased operations that was based on faulty war-game predicted results and or fantastical expectations of their operations in development.
It was a mirror of War Plan Orange (First promulgated in 1890.), that anticipated the major enemy was, and war in Japan's future would be against, the United States. Since from the beginning the Japanese thought they would be the aggrieved and attacked party, their initial concept of operations was "defensive". They maintained this view of how their war would be fought right up to their final defeat. I kid you not.
Yeah. The one thing westerners did get correct about the Japanese mindset, is that the Japanese did not see themselves or could not imagine themselves, as outsiders (foreign nations) saw them. (A delusional trait that Americans share with them.), as outright aggressors and colonial imperialists . The Japanese were self-delusional. They, the Japanese, honestly thought their aggressions and imperialisms were defensive actions, a matter of national self-defense.
The Japanese military, thus, conceived of their offensive operations as "counterattack" or defensive operations to seize impregnable defensive positions upon which a superior enemy could be worn down and eventually exhausted and defeated by their "defensive operations". i.e. "counterattacks".
Notice those phrases "defensive operations" and "counterattacks".
Ambush and Decrease. The Americans, themselves, thought the idea of charging across the Pacific to seek decisive battle as the Japanese, thanks to their flawed perception of Mahan, thought would happen, was utter nonsense. So, not only were the Japanese delusional about how their military operations would be perceived, but they completely misread the Americans and MAHAN. And what the American predicated response would and should be.
Yeah, the Japanese read Mahan and bought into decisive battle as the means of fighting a "limited war".
Did I mention that the Americans were/are a "cowboy culture"?
Anyway, the Japanese thought that within the limited time and means they had, they had to move quickly to establish "unassailable positions" to force the Americans to attack them so the IJN could fight their defensive battle of "ambush and decrease" and then a Tsushima-style battle of final annihilation. The sudden "range of national defense" after Pearl Harbor, quickly included urgent simultaneous counterattack strikes in all directions at once, at Sri-Lanka, at New Caledonia and Fiji, and at Midway Island; or as near as possible in time to establish the "defensive position" and to force/provoke a "decisive battle" with the Americans after Pearl Harbor; somewhere, anywhere, to generate the negotiated peace settlement after the expected American defeat. Notice ALL of these operations were planned in November/December 1941 and it was that paragon of naval genius, Yamamoto, who was the author and the blame point for this insanity from start to finish?
The only tack-on to the utter craziness of "Phase II Operations" that unfolded as the Japanese planned it, was the IGHQ demand for "defensive positions" operations in the Aleutian Islands. THAT was the actual contribution that the Doolittle Raid contributed to the Japanese strategic madness in progress. Further dispersion of Japanese efforts resulted; so, yes, the Doolittle Raid did contribute to the victory of Midway to that extent. But... the MA operation was probably going to happen in any case as there was an independent of Yamamoto IGHQ lobby for that bit of insanity as well. It just might have been delayed or postponed by MI. It was not delayed, due to Doolittle. The three light carriers, so employed by Hosagaya, were diverted from the proper main axis; but when you examine Yamamoto's other dispositions for MI; it apparently would not have mattered anyway if MA had not been tacked on. The in-built ambush opportunity, Nimitz was offered, was still present in the peculiar dispositions and arrival times Yamamoto planned for the six independent formations; out of mutual air or surface support of each other.
All the Americans have/had to do, as the Japanese so obligingly offered themselves up piecemeal "in defensive operations" to have their throats cut, was sharpen their knives and be ready to slice away as the opportunity presented itself. This is the gross over-simplification of the naval war up to Operation MI, but it is the main outline.
WATCHTOWER changes the war. The Americans implement Orange, not exactly along the axis they expected, but it is recognizable as PLAN ORANGE (1935) as the island hopping campaign, (CARTWHELL) that had so long been war-gamed as American offensive plans in phased stages, as operation by operation, to avoid the Japanese attrition tactics outcomes they expected. CARTWHEEL as it unfolded at sea, was an American attrition battle of losses of course; but it was roughly a one for one exchange ratio, and that was the exact American intent. Ironic; as the Americans remained numerically inferior through 1942 and much of 1943, for they were doing exactly what the Japanese thought they would do. The Americans were attacking.
You see, Mahan preached: "command of the sea" and "destruction of enemy commerce" as conjoint operations in a naval campaign; his center ethos and thesis; was use of the sea by the attacker and denial of use by the defender. The "decisive battle" was only one of a single means to the end. Not the end, itself. The other means, blockade, raids and offensive amphibious operations in a naval campaign, was also to be employed to deny use of the sea. That is MAHAN.
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There is some small justification for it, given the oil embargo was effectively a death sentence, & given the Japanese goal was autarky. That autarky was a stupid idea isn't (exactly) delusional, even if wrong.
I don't disagree the response was.
I'm taking you to mean this is equally a delusion. I'd suggest it was more complicated. IJN (& IJA) SOs were so badly educated (or trained), they didn't know the difference between tactical & strategic victory.
And they didn't understand the difference between fighting a geographically-constrained war against politically weak or corrupt govts & a truly blue-water war against a strong & determined enemy. (I include the Brits in that assessment, because, IMO, the Brits could've beaten Japan alone, after finishing with the Germans.)If there's delusion, it's added to ignorance (or stupidity), or maybe a product of it.
I'm not sure "planned" is the word.
Things had gone so well in the first 6mo, IGHQ was effectively calling audibles after that. They didn't know they weren't facing a 3d string college team anymore, they were in The Show (to borrow a phrase), & while the USN might've gone down a couple of TDs by the end of the first quarter, it was far from over--& the game wasn't going get called short of an earthquake.That may be. (I'd disagree.) If true, IGHQ seriously misread him, & completely ignored the need to protect the SLOCs.
If it is true, I have to wonder why they did ignore it, & why they husbanded the fleet so carefully & so studiously avoided engaging when presented opportunities. (Given they weren't fuel-limited, which I'll grant they were by 1944.)
There is some small justification for it, given the oil embargo was effectively a death sentence, & given the Japanese goal was autarky. That autarky was a stupid idea isn't (exactly) delusional, even if wrong.
I don't disagree the response was.
The Japanese were politically split between the modernists (Meiji crowd; what are mistakenly called liberals in the West, but who are more properly identified as progressive totalitarians) and the traditionalists (Yamato faction, or the Japan for the Japanese crowd.). The nearest thing in modern liberal thought as an American would understand it, is Roosevelt Republicanism, vs. 1848 Know-Nothings. Now that is politically insane by any reasonable modern metric. Some choice here between "Manifest Destiny 1890s, charge across the Pacific style to conquer China" and "We must exclude then and yet emulate the foreign devils to preserve our Japanese culture; i.e. carbon copy Wilhemine Germany and Edwardian England to survive as Japanese!"
This spilled over into Japanese military politics. One guess as to which banner the Imperial Japanese Army followed. (Hint: it was not the Meiji faction.). And if the IJA were going to imitate that lunatic; Lewis Charles Levin, guess what the Imperial Japanese Navy embraced? Commerce, look outward, embrace international trade partners and conquer them, as their mentors, Germany and Great Britain did.
I'm taking you to mean this is equally a delusion. I'd suggest it was more complicated. IJN (& IJA) SOs were so badly educated (or trained), they didn't know the difference between tactical & strategic victory.
If there's delusion, it's added to ignorance (or stupidity), or maybe a product of it.
Not understanding the difference between strategy (national goals), operational art (diplomatic, economic and military deployments and use to further national goals through coercive operations to influence the enemy or competitor to behave or accept in a fashion; to further aforesaid national goals), and tactics (how to fight) is not unique to the Japanese military (Cough, MacArthur and Roosevelt, cough.). Neither was the insane political split (^^^^ US Army = Republicans, US Navy = Democrats) endemic to just the Japanese military services. Legendary arguments erupted between Marshal and King over strategy, whether to stomp Germany flat and let Japan dangle a bit, or stomp them both flat at the same time? King won that argument, Yamamoto fashion, by using the operational art to drive grand strategy--> a completely backwards way of doing things militarily, did you notice? This is no different from Yamamoto's lunacy. The Navy, under King, simply did what it pleased and the Army was dragged along for the Pacific ride. Two factors obviated King's nuttery. Nimitz and his gang of admirals (Except for Halsey and that gentleman, Mitscher, who had to be babysat, always.) were probably the best operational artists and tacticians the allied side produced in WWII. Of course MacArthur, the other factor, further helped further King's cause. They, Marshal and King, disagreed all across the American dividing line about national goals and priorities, down to Japan's surrender and while Marshal appears to win on paper, it is King who has the results to show who actually won the intramurals in Washington. At least the IJA (Tojo) and IJN (Yamamoto) agreed on one thing===> conquer China as a buffer against Russia. They did not fight about that policy issue.
I'm not sure "planned" is the word.
The plans were Yamamoto's, whipped up by his Combined Fleet staff in November/December 1941 before Pearl Harbor, to be used as immediate naval exploits before actual Phase I operations bore fruit. IGHQ, both IJA and IJN was not so stupid that they did not recognize looney-tune when they saw it. They were dragged along willy-nilly by Yamamoto's "vision" however. After Nimitz had Yamamoto ambushed and killed, Japanese planning and execution starts to make some strategic, operational and tactical sense along "traditional" east Asian military practices. Misdirection, convergence on a single objective, and synergistic (additive) effects from disparate means employed to negate superior enemy numbers (Sun Tzu) become evident. We see this at Philippine Sea and at Leyte Gulf. Also the adoption of the manned cruise missile at the tactical level to get through the USN AAA and the fighter wall shows incredibly competent military analysis among the Japanese operational commanders at that stage of events to redress that imbalance of offense/defense at the tactical level. But of course after Yamamoto screwed the war up, it was too late for these "quick fixes" and re-orientations .
YMMV about Mahan, but after reading his analysis of the Napoleonic Wars, how anyone can come away not understanding "decisive battle" means on the trade lanes and the objective is free use for self of the sea, and denial to the enemy, escapes me. Wiping the enemy merchant and war fleet out, is the end result. How that happens may mean Trafalgar or it may mean close blockade off Le Havre and letting the French rot at anchor, but to Mahan, it is all the same; use of the sea.
Because they were still superficially reading and not understanding Mahan. As a modern referent enemy to America does.^1
^1 Could mean, but not necessarily Russia. There is one other imitator, who seems bent on repeating Japan's mistakes.
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The Battle of the Coral Sea; 4 May to 8 May 1942
What's Up, Doc? What's hubbub, Bud? Why Fight Here?
The Battle of the Coral Sea was a four day battle that was spread across the 4th to 8th May 1942. As a contest, it can be seen in isolation as the first air/sea battle, the first tactical evolution, between a predominantly American-led allied fleet centered around aircraft carriers and a Japanese fleet, also centered around aircraft carriers, or as the tail-end coda battle of the Japanese Phase I naval operations to conquer the Indonesian Archipelago as a furtherance of her national goals. Which viewpoint, tactical or strategic, one takes really does not matter, though, as the Japanese and the Americans fought operationally to determine whose navy would control the sea lanes approaches to eastern Australia. In that sense, the contest was and should be properly lumped into that interregnum period of Pacific War actions, wherein the Japanese and the Americans struggled to determine who would hold the initiative, that is who would be permitted to use the seas to carry the struggle forward offensively, and who would be denied. That, my friend, puts the Battle of the Coral Sea solidly in the category of the applied operational naval art. It cannot be properly understood, why anyone would fight in the Coral Sea unless it was a contest on the sea lines of communications to Australia.
The Japanese did not understand this fact.
The Japanese, if they had understood their true objective in this battlespace, would have brought the majority of the Combined Fleet, or at least the entire 1st Air Fleet (Five attack carriers, minus the Kaga, which was limping her way home to Sasebo to be repaired after she was ambushed by several US submarines.), to this action. If there was a compelling reason for the Americans to fight at the wrong place at the wrong time, in tune with Yamamoto’s desire to bring about his Pacific Tsushima, before the Americans Plan Oranged him to death, it would be a threat to their SLOCs to Australia. Nimitz could not tell his operational commanders at the Coral Sea to run away from the fight if their survival was threatened, as he gave verbal orders to Fletcher and Spruance to do at Midway. “Save the carriers. We can get Midway back later if we have, too.” Fletcher and Fitch had to fight to the death, if necessary, to prevent the fall of Port Moresby, to keep Japanese land based air power out of there, and to more importantly, try to prevent the Japanese from establishing themselves in the eastern Solomon Islands. Of course, looking back on the results of the Battle of the Coral Sea some seventy six years later, it can be seen that the allied fleet was not entirely successful in preventing the Solomon Islands half of the Japanese evolution. However; Port Moresby did not fall by amphibious attack and that was a key event. It was the first time the Imperial Japanese Navy had been denied the use of the sea. And so, it was at the Battle of the Coral Sea; not the Battle of Midway, that a student of the naval operational art can see that the Imperial Japanese Navy loses the initiative and never regains it.
So what did the Japanese think they were doing, if they did not understand the true purpose of such a Three Stooges naval exercise, they planned, such as Operation MO?
More or less in conformity with their doctrine of defensive counterattack operations, the IJN sought to strengthen their defensive position geographically in the Southwest Pacific by establishing a garrisoned airbase at Port Moresby which they would capture ready-made from the Australians, and for the moment set up a seaplane base at Tulagi (in the southeastern Solomon Islands) to serve as a reconnaissance outpost, until they could find a suitable island in region to create a proper bomber base to support a Rikko. The typically complicated plan, to accomplish these split objectives, involved four major units of Japan's Combined Fleet. These included two fleet carriers in a strike force carrier action group (SFCAG ) and a light carrier centered task group to provide close cover for the two convoyed invasion forces (CCAG). It, all, was to be directed out of Rabaul from the shore headquarters of Japanese VADM Inoue, Shigeyoshi. As an exercise, it did offer an unusual example of Japanese unity of command and purpose as 4th Area Fleet, Inoue’s headquarters, had supreme authority even over the IJA army South Seas Detachment which the Imperial Japanese Army was so gracious to loan for the Port Moresby half of the operation.
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The Coral Sea Order of Battle.
IJN 4th Fleet – VADM Admiral Inoue, Shigeyoshi
CL Kashima (Inoue's flagship, anchored at Rabaul during the battle)
Note: these were “training ships” and flagships of various commanders during early Japanese war operations.
Tulagi Invasion Group – RADM Shima, Kiyohide
CM (minelayer) Okinoshima (Shima's flagship) CM Kōei Maru
AP (troop transport) Azumasan Maru
DD (destroyer) Kikuzuki (sunk by submarine), DD Yozuki
AM (minesweepers)Wa #1 (sunk), AM Wa #2 (sunk), AM Hagoromo Maru (sunk), AM Noshiro Maru #2 (sunk), and AM Tama Maru (sunk)
SC (subchaser) Toshi Maru #3 and PG Tama Maru #8
Troops embarked for the Tulagi expedition were 400 troops from the 3rd Kure Special Naval Landing Force (SNLF) plus a construction detachment (rump company of Korean slave labor troops) from the 7th Establishment Squad.
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Support Group/Close Cover Force – RADM Matumo, Kuninori
CL (light cruiser) Tenryū (Marumo's flagship), CL Tatsuta
AV (seaplane tender) Kamikawa Maru
-AV Kamikawa Maru air group – 12 aircraft
-AV Kiyokawa Maru air group –12 aircraft (attached)
PG (gunboat) Keijo Maru, PG Seikai Maru, PG Nikkai Maru
Covering Group/Main Body Support Force – RADM Gotō, Aritomo
CVL (light carrier) Shōhō (sunk)
-Shōhō Air Group – Lieutenant Nōtomi, Kenjirō
-Shōhō Carrier Fighter Unit – 8 Mitsubishi A6M Zero and 4 Mitsubishi A5M fighters
-Shōhō Carrier Attack Unit – 6 Nakajima B5N Type 97 torpedo bombers
Note: The Shōhō embarked air group was supposed to be evenly split between 14 fighters and 16 scout/torpedo planes. It lost over the better half of its complement to make up Nagumo’s losses incurred during the Indian Ocean raid. The Japanese by this period of the war, had suffered so many aircraft losses in their frontline IJN aviation units, that they were stripping second line units of trained pilots and first line aircraft for replacements to areas and units regarded as more critical; which goes directly to the seriousness with which they regarded Operation MO; does it not? Operation MI, in the planning stages, had first priority, the Darwin air campaign was second, and the Philippine Island campaign was third. Guess who has the scrapings of the IJN Air Service? (^^^^)
CA (heavy cruiser) Aoba (Gotō's flagship), CA Kako, CA Kinugasa, CA Furutaka
DD (destroyer) Sazanami
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Port Moresby Invasion Group – RADM Kajioka, Sadamichi
CL (light cruiser) Yūbari (Kajioka's flagship)
DD (destroyer) Oite, DD Asanagi, DD Uzuki, DD Mutsuki, DD Mochizuki, DD Yayoi
PG (patrol gunboat) Ukn 1, PG Ukn 2
Transport Unit – RADM Abe, Kōsō
CM (minelayer) Tsugaru
Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) APA (transport) Mogamigawa Maru, APA Chōwa Maru (sunk), APA Goyō Maru, APA Akiba Maru (sunk), APA Shōka Maru.
Imperial Japanese Army (IJA)- APA Asakasan Maru, APA China Maru, APA Mito Maru (sunk), APA Matsue Maru, APA Taifuku Maru, APA Hibi Maru (sunk)
ATF (salvage tugboat) Woshima (sunk)
AO (oilers) Hoyo Maru (sunk), and Irō
MSC (coastal minesweeper) W-20 (Wa #20), MSC Hagoromo Maru, MSC Noshiro Maru #2, MSC Fumi Maru #2, and MSC Seki Maru #3.
Here are the rest of them: approximately 500 troops from the 3rd Kure SNLF plus the remaining construction specialists (Korean slave labor troops; the Japanese are fond of their euphemisms during this era) from the 10th Establishment Squad on the IJN transports.
And we have the South Seas Detachment of approximately 5,000 IJA troops packed on the IJA transports. These are the famous conquerors of Wake Island. These gentlemen were the IJA elite amphibious unit who wanted to take Port Moresby. They were to attack Midway a month after this Operation MO failed. They would be disappointed there, too. On their third attempt, the butchers of Wake Island would get their chance against Port Moresby again, to show how good they were against prepared allied troops in battle. The Australians cut them to bits on the Kokoda Trail.
Carrier Striking Force – VADM Takagi, Takeo
Note: We’ve seen him before. Java Sea was a “famous victory” so the IJN rewarded him with this operation. In the RTL he was lucky to get out of Operation MO alive. Let us see if he makes it this time?
Carrier Division 5 – RADM Hara, Chūichi, Officer in Tactical Command
CV (attack aircraft carrier) Shōkaku (sunk)
-Shōkaku Air Group – LTCDR Takahashi, Kakuichi
-Shōkaku Carrier Fighter Unit – 21 A6M Zero fighters
-Shōkaku Carrier Bomber Unit – 20 Aichi D3A Type 99 dive bombers
-Shōkaku Carrier Attack Unit – 19 Nakajima B5N Type 97 torpedo bombers
CV Zuikaku (Hara's flagship)
-Zuikaku Air Group – LTCDR Shimazaki, Shigekazu
-Zuikaku Carrier Fighter Unit – 25 Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighters
-Zuikaku Carrier Bomber Unit – 22 Aichi D3A dive bombers
-Zuikaku Carrier Attack Unit – 20 Nakajima B5N torpedo bombers
CA (heavy cruiser) Myōkō (Takagi's flagship), CA Haguro (sunk)
DD (destroyer) DD Ushio, DD Akebono, DD Ariake, DD Yūgure, DD Shiratsuyu, DD Shigure
AO (oiler) Tōhō Maru (sunk)
Submarine Force – CAPT Ishizaki, Noburu
-Patrol/Scouting Group – I-21, I-22, I-24, I-28, and I-29
-Raiding Group – Ro-33 and Ro-35
25th Air Flotilla (also called the 5th Air Attack Force) – RADM Yamada, Sadayoshi
-4th Air Group (based at Rabaul) – 17 Mitsubishi G4M Type 1 land attack bombers
-Tainan Air Group (based at Lae and Rabaul) – 18 Mitsubishi A6M Zero and six Mitsubishi A5M fighters
-Yokohama Air Group (based at Rabaul, Shortland Islands, and Tulagi) – 12 Kawanishi H6K reconnaissance and 9 Nakajima A6M2-N seaplane fighters
-Genzan Air Group (based at Rabaul) – 25 Mitsubishi G3M Type 96 land attack bombers
Note: These are the Rikko units which will give TF 17 (Yorktown RADM Frank Jack Fletcher) a terrible time during the Tulagi raid.
88888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888
Allied forces
Task Force 17 – RADM Frank Jack Fletcher (flagship Yorktown)
Task Group 17.2 (Attack Group) – RADM Thomas C. Kinkaid
CA (heavy cruiser) Minneapolis, CA New Orleans, CA Astoria, CA Chester, CA Portland
DD (destroyer) Phelps, DD Dewey, DD Farragut, DD Aylwin, DD Monaghan
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Task Group 17.3 (Support Group, from Task Force 44) – RADM John Gregory Crace (RN)
CA (heavy cruiser) Australia, CA Chicago, CL (light cruiser) Hobart
DD (destroyer) Perkins, DD Walke
Note: This Walke is the Sims class, not the Paulding class that was scrapped under the terms of the LNT.
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Task Group 17.5 (Carrier Air Group) – RADM Aubrey Fitch, (from Lexington) Officer in Tactical Command (OTC)
CV aircraft carrier Yorktown (badly damaged)
-Yorktown Air Group – LTCDR Oscar Pederson
-Fighting 42 (VF-42) – 17 Grumman F4F Wildcat fighters
-Bombing 5 (VB-5) – 18 Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bombers
-Scouting 5 (VS-5) – 17 SBD Dauntless dive bombers
-Torpedo 5 (VT-5) – 13 Douglas TBD Devastator torpedo bombers
CV aircraft carrier Lexington (badly damaged)
-Lexington Air Group – CDR William B. Ault
-Fighting 2 (VF-2) – 21 F4F Wildcat fighters
-Bombing 2 (VB-2) – 18 SBD Dauntless dive bombers
-Scouting 2 (VS-2) – 17 SBD Dauntless dive bombers
-Torpedo 2 (VT-2) – 12 TBD torpedo bombers
DD (destroyer) Morris, DD Anderson, DD Hammann, DD Russell
Task Group 17.6 (Fueling Group) – CAPT John S. Phillips
AO (oiler) Neosho (sunk), AO Tippecanoe
DD (destroyer) Sims (sunk) - LTCDR William Arthur Griswold†, Worden(KIA)
Task Group 17.9 (Search Group) – CDR George H. DeBaun
AV (seaplane tender) Tangier. Based at Noumea
-Patrol Squadron 71 (VP-71) – 6 PBY-5 Catalinas
-Patrol Squadron 72 (VP-72) – 6 PBY-5 Catalinas
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South West Pacific Ocean Area (SWPOA)– GEN Douglas MacArthur
Allied Naval Forces – VADM Herbert F. Leary
Note: After Hart left ABDA for Washington and exile on the General Board, this gentleman moved up in the pecking order to be MacArthur’s USN guy. He only lasted until 1 September 1942. AFAICT, Leary managed the unique feat of torqueing off MacArthur (not hard to do), Uncle Chuck Lockwood (Who considered him a “cautious man”.) and Nimitz (Who considered him to be something a lot worse than cautious.), so Leary dug his grave three ways to Sunday and had to get out one horse ahead of a review board. For the record, if Leary was not what was wanted in those dark days, his replacement, VADM Arthur S. Carpender, was worse. The Australians hated him with a passion. MacArthur regretted dumping Leary for him and Uncle Chuck would have solved him the Stephen Decatur way, if they still allowed that kind of thing in the United States Navy. Carpender will ruin the submarine operations during the Battle of the Coral Sea ITTL.
Task Group 42.1 – CAPT Ralph Waldo Christie in submarine tender USS Griffin at Brisbane
-Subdiv 53 – LTCDR Elmer E. Yeomans:
Mackerels (ITTL)
-20......................SS(E)-223.....USS Mudfish..................................(LT(s.g.) O. E. Hagberg)
-22......................SS(M)-225....USS Mudskipper.............................(LTCDR J. R. Craig )
-23......................SS(P)-226.....USS Modok....................................(LTCDR E. J. MacGregor, 3d)
-24......................SS(E)-227.....USS Mooneye.................................(LT(s.g.) J. B. Azer )
-25......................SS(E)-228.....USS Mojar......................................(LTCDR C. B. Stevens, Jr)
-26......................SS(K)-229.....USS Morid......................................(LRCDR R. R. McGregor)
Subdiv 201 – CDR Ralston B. Van Zant:
More Mackerels (ITTL)
-27.....................SS(K)-230...USS Machete...................LT(s.g.) Henry Glass Munson
-28.....................SS(K)-231...USS Mahseer...................LTCDR Edward Shillingford Hutchinson
-29.....................SS(K)-232...USS Mandarinfish.............LT(s.g.) Wereford Goss Chapple
-30.....................SS(K)-233...USS Minoga.....................LTCDR Philip Niekum
-31.....................SS(K)-234...USS Mola.........................LTCDR Gordon Campbell
-32.....................SS(K)-235...USS Morsa.......................LTCDR James William Blanchard
Notes: Reader, you and I have waited for this… The Mackerels are going to war against the IJN.
Task Force 44 – temporarily assigned to Task Force 17, (see Task Group 17.3 above)
Allied Air Forces – LTGEN George Brett (Another AAF general like GEN Brereton. YMMV.)
United States Army Air Forces:
8th Pursuit Group – Archerfield, Brisbane, (I cannot help it, I love reworking birds to work as they should have. See below.)
-35th Fighter Squadron – Port Moresby
---14 Bell Aircraft P-39 Airacobra fighters
-36th Fighter Squadron – Port Moresby
---12 Bell Aircraft P-39 Airacobra fighters
49th Pursuit Group – Darwin,
-7th Fighter Squadron – Darwin
---29 Curtiss P-40 fighters
-8th Fighter Squadron – Darwin
---28 Curtiss P-40 fighters
-9th Fighter Squadron – Darwin
---32 Curtiss P-40 fighters
3rd Bombardment Group
-8th Bombardment Squadron – Port Moresby,
---22 Douglas A-24 Dauntless dive bombers
-13th Bombardment Squadron – Port Moresby
---16 North American B-25 Mitchells
-90th Bombardment Squadron
---11 North American B-25 Mitchells
19th Bombardment Group – Townsville,
-30th Bombardment Squadron
---17 North American B-17B Flying Fortress bombers
40th Reconnaissance Squadron
---6 North American B17R Flying Fortress bombers
22nd Bombardment Group – Townsville and Cairn
-93rd Bombardment Squadron -Townsville
---16 Martin B-28 Dragon bombers
435th Bombardment Squadron - Cairn
---16 Martin B-28 Dragon bombers
Royal Australian Air Force
No. 11 Squadron – Townsville 6 Consolidated PBY Catalina seaplanes
No. 20 Squadron – Cairn 8 Consolidated PBY Catalina seaplane
No. 24 Squadron – Townsville, 3 CAC Wirraway figher/trainers
No. 32 Squadron – Port Moresby, 12 Lockheed Hudson patrol bombers
No. 75 Squadron – Port Moresby, 3 Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighters
Port Moresby garrison – approximately 5,000 troops under Major General B. M. Morris
30th Infantry Brigade
-39th Infantry Battalion
-49th Infantry Battalion
-53rd Infantry Battalion
-13th Field Regiment
-23rd Heavy Anti-Aircraft Battery
-Detachment, 1st Independent Company (scouts)
-30th Infantry Brigade Signal Section
-30th Infantry Brigade HQ Defence Platoon
Moresby Fixed Defences
-Moresby Fixed Defences Fortress Engineers
-Moresby Fixed Defences Anti-Aircraft Artillery (six 3-inch guns)
Other units with 30th Brigade
-1st Army Troops Company
-7th Field Company
-1st Section, 1st Mechanical Equipment Company (combat engineers in American army vernacular)
-8th Military District Survey Section (topology unit mapping the Kokoda Trail which had never been done before.)
-8th Military District Bomb Disposal Section (EOD unit getting a lot of practice. The IJA was dropping a lot of dud ordnance on Port Moresby)
-8th Military District Signals (One of the best combat signals units anywhere at this time. They had better Japanese speakers than the Japanese in the region. And the IJA sure liked to yak on the radio.)
-8th Military District Defence and Employment Company
-New Guinea Volunteer Rifles
-Papuan Infantry Battalion (Valuable scouts and rangers who made the difference on the Kokada Trail. They never get enough credit for the victory.)
-8th Military District Section Intelligence Corps (See the Signals Unit)
-15th Supply Personnel Company (Unsung logistics heroes)
-8th Military District Bulk Issue Petrol and Oil Depot (ditto)
-A Section, 8th Military District Mechanical Transport Company(bears repeating)
-Base Hospital (Yup, again.)
-3rd Field Ambulance (Same.)
-113th Convalescent Depot (Same again.)
-8th Military District Dental Centre
-45th Dental Unit
-253rd Dental Unit
-256th Dental Unit
-274th Dental Unit
-301st Dental Unit
-421st Dental Unit
Note: The Australian army had a thing about teeth?
-15th Optical Unit
Note: Same for eyeglasses.
-8th Military District Depot of Medical Stores
-16th Field Hygiene Section
Note: Medical support in Papua / New Guinea was a thing the SWPA often neglected to the detriment of the fighting troops. Like with combat engineers, it seems the corncob pipe smoker (MacArthur, who should know better.), could not understand why his theater might need more doctors and dentists than the TO and E allotted. SE Asia is not Europe.
There is fungus among us and other nasty bacterii and virii to kill off poor Joe Private. At least the Australian army understood that much about where they are headed. Whatever one might criticize Blamey, he understood that medical care in the wild unknown was a bring your own along affair. But even the Australian army did not provide enough as the Buna and Goa campaigns would demonstrate.
-8th Military District Ordnance Depot
And now for the tail enders of 30th Brigade
-19th Ordnance Ammunition Section
-109th Infantry Brigade Group Field Workshop (fixes all the broken vehicles)
-109th Infantry Brigade Group Ordnance Field Park (fixes all the broken weaponry)
-30th Infantry Brigade Provost Platoon (fixes all the legal problems; i.e. lawyers and policemen)
-8th Military District Accounts Office (paymaster)
-8th Military District Postal Unit
-8th Military District Records Office
-8th Military District Stationery Depot
-8th Military District Printing Section
Note the paperwork involved?
-8th Military District Graves Registration and Inquiries Unit
-8th Military District Laundry and Decontamination Unit
-8th Military District Army Field Bakery
-8th Military District Base Depot
-8th Military District Marine Section
-8th Military District Canteen Services
-8th Military District Training Centre
-Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit
Notes: Politicians, lawyers, mechanics, postal clerks, cooks, bottle washers, the supply guys, jailers, the paperwork clown corps and the USO show. What army travels without these tail-enders?
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Opening Moves.
In January 1942, around the 17th of the month the Combined Fleet staff suggested to Imperial General Naval Headquarters that an invasion of Northern Australia be mounted to prevent Australia from being used as a base to threaten Japan's perimeter defenses in the expected conquered Southern Resources Area (The eastern Indonesian Archipelago). The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA), however, rejected the recommendation, as another lunatic scheme from the ever fertile imagination of the true author, Yamamoto, Isoruku. Sugiyama, Hajimi bluntly told his naval counterpart, Nagano, Osami that the army had neither the ships nor the troops for such a mad scheme.
Meanwhile, VADM Inoue, Shigeyoshi , commander of the IJN's Fourth Fleet (also called the South Seas Force) which consisted of most of the IJN naval units currently in the Southwest Pacific area except submarines, warned IGHQ that the occupation of Tulagi in the southeastern Solomon Islands and Port Moresby in New Guinea, which would put Northern Australia within range of Japanese land-based aircraft, was absolutely necessary to ensure the Phase I defensive perimeter he was expected to establish. Inoue argued that these locations in Japanese hands was necessary for the defense of Rabaul on New Britain. IGHQ, specifically the IJA, accepted Inoue's “more reasonable” (intense sarcasm), proposal and accepted Yamamoto’s further proposed operations, using these two locations as supporting bases, to seize New Caledonia, Fiji, and Samoa and thereby “cut the supply and communication lines between Australia and the United States”. Somebody at IGHQ understood Mahan? Too bad it was not the IJN.
Just what did this Operation entail? What did the Japanese expect to accomplish?
Operation MO, had to await for VADM Inoue, Shigeyoshi and GEN Terauchi to finish their operations in progress during February and March before the planners knew what forces they would be able to use. It was not until mid-April before the final details gelled and the operating forces were assigned (See Order of Battle above ^^^^). Like most Japanese plans at this stage of the war, the initial proposal differed from the final IGHQ staff product. Yamamoto, back in January, through his staff, had allotted two light and three heavy carriers as the close and distant cover forces in the belief that a yoke operation, in which two objectives were to be simultaneously attacked should have a powerful central strike force as the distant cover and two attached cover forces. Nobody in January had given thought to the troops necessary. The staff officer responsible for that part of the plan, a LTCDR Fujita, Fukedome had scribbled in notes to the effect that a couple of battalions of special naval landing troops packed in six or seven transports would suffice. That was the kind of sloppy planning Combined Fleet staff generated. Three months later, with the surprisingly heavy losses of oil tankers and persistent and worrisome American submarine attacks on both the Japanese merchant marine and more alarmingly the IJN, itself, the forces available for Operation MO had to be severely cut back. The Carrier Strike Force (SFCAG) would have to be built around two carriers, not three, as 1st Air Fleet was down to five and could only spare the two newest and freshest carriers, the Zuikaku and Shokaku. The other three had to replenish and refit after the unexpected operational losses of air crew and ship wear and tear during the Indian Ocean raid. A hundred pilots and planes needed replacement. Even though Zuikaku and Shokaku would go into MO under strength, they could borrow pilots and planes from the recently torpedoed Kaga to make up their own losses. The Kaga loaners should be more than enough to handle the decrepit allied opposition expected.
Planning by timetable instead of the operating limits
One can tell the difference between a Yamamoto generated idea and an IGHQ plan by the rigid attention the staff planners in Tokyo pay to timetables and objectives by priorities with no clue as to what might be the local conditions that make such timetables impractical. Give Combined Fleet staff credit. They were out there in the Pacific and understood that wind and wave wreck timetables faster than a drunken steersman on a commuter train.
For example; the IGHQ plan called for Port Moresby to be invaded from the sea and secured by 10 May. The plan also included the seizure of Tulagi on 2–3 May, where the navy would establish a seaplane base for potential air operations against Allied territories and forces in the South Pacific and to provide a base for reconnaissance aircraft. Both moves were to be escorted and guarded by a single covering force based on the light carrier, Shoho, which was assigned significantly, not to provide air defense for the two troop convoys from allied air attack, but to provide anti-submarine escort from the increasingly dangerous American submarines in the area. How the Shoho was supposed to provide this ASW protection for two forces that would be almost 1,000 kilometers apart was not well thought out, but the idea, here, seems to have been, the Shoho close cover group would dart in with the Tulagi expedition, hang around just long enough to see the troops wade ashore safely, then shuttle back to the Port Moresby convoy, waiting on it at the Jomard Passage rendezvous point, join up and close cover it all the way to Port Moresby. Of course, the plan assumed this Shoho yoyo would go off like clockwork. Nobody, at least, from reading the document, had made provision for the possibility that the Shoho would be sunk. In any plan, there is a mission critical fail circumstance built in. Good planners assume that it is impossible not to have such a circumstance and usually make provision for a fallback option, such as abandoning a non-executable secondary objective to ensure the primary objective is achievable. In this such case, Inoue had made it clear, as the operational commander, that he regarded Port Moresby as his primary objective . He could have taken the IGHQ plan and had his own staff reverse the order of objectives, concentrated all the forces assigned to him and headed them for Port Moresby, first; seized it, and then have his forces wait to meet the Allies under cover of his air forces based at Lae. It is what an American or British admiral would have done; if handed the garbage operations order Operation MO was. Such latitude in mission implementation was lacking in the 1942 IJN. Whether, it is the go-along- to-get-along attitude, or the "respect for juniors" problem that Inoue had, the result was that he executed the rotten plan he was given exactly as it was sent to him. Worse, though, Takagi, Hara, and that utter imbecile, RADM Gotō, Aritomo, his three incompetent tactical commanders, would follow those same orders exactly and lead their respective commands into disasters that could so easily have been avoided, considering the many mistakes the opposing Americans made.
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Quite a timetable; was it even feasible? The IJN section at IGHQ hoped so, because their plans post MO, immediately included an exploitation phase called Operation RY. This operation would use ships freed up from the success, expected from MO, to acquire agricultural soil enrichers and phosphates from the islands of Nauru and Banaba (Ocean Island) by the expedient of landing troops on the coral spits, so that Japanese colonial imperialist dynamiters could cheat the native peoples by robbing them, and remove the crystalized and quite valuable bird guano top soil, instead of the British. Cut out the Pacific Phosphate Mining Company, the pre-war middle men in the “fertilizer business” who sold sea-gull droppings to the Japanese, so to speak. THIS was an actual raison de etre for military operations to the IJN? That operation was scheduled to be completed by 15 May 1942. After RY (There’s a phonetic pun.), was concluded, another operation, intended to seize Fiji, Samoa and New Caledonia called FS was to be mounted. This operation, originally planned for the second week of June, would be delayed slightly until the middle of July, because the Combined Fleet would need everything it had that could float to carry out Operations MI and MA to sink the Americans at Midway Island and take over some crab fishing grounds up near Alaska. Does one get the feeling that there is a “Das Englandlied” kind of madness present in the Japanese High Command?
It should be noted, that both the IGHQ and Combined Fleet staffs completely disregarded the threat of American naval aviation in all these preposterous proposed timetables, objectives and planned operations. Perhaps Inoue, Shigeyoshi had a slightly better appreciation of the threat, because his invasion convoys dispatched to Lae and Salamua had recently been clobbered by a dramatic US carrier attack, from VADM Wilson Brown’s TF-11 (Yorktown and Lexington) delivered over the Owen Stanley Mountains no less, on 10 March 1942. Inoue lost five precious transports, 1500 troops drowned, and the seaplane tender, Kiyokawa Maru, had been damaged in that debacle. The USS S-47 had torpedoed and sunk the Japanese destroyer gunboat Hatzikari, in the same operation; so the pesky American subs were also on Inoue’s mind. One can only imagine what he was thinking as he sent Hara, Takagi and Goto on this MO operation. Perhaps the Buddhist fatalism of which Inoue, Shigeyoshi was accused, (A polite and very Japanese way of calling him a moral coward.), which was the suspected reason he recalled everybody after he learned of Shoho’s and Shokaku’s fates, affected him pre-battle instead of post-battle? Anyway, while Wilson Brown was immediately relieved after his successful operation because he was physically exhausted, suffered malaria and at age 60 was clearly worn out, and reassigned to Washington, because King, who was Wilson’s friend, wanted a competent “wise old man” to babysit FDR as a naval aide and keep the American President from making Churchill-type naval mistakes, Inoue was relieved after the Operation MO disaster and posted as the Proctor at the Japanese Naval Academy at Hiroshima Prefecture. It can be assumed that the Japanese, unlike the Americans, understood that those who cannot do the job, are best posted where they can teach the job?
Chaos at the Top, Confusion in the Middle
Remember ADM Yamamoto, Isoruku; commander of the Combined Fleet, was concurrently planning the Operation MI to lure the U.S. Navy's carriers, none of which had been damaged in the Pearl Harbor attack, into a decisive showdown in the central Pacific near Midway Atoll at this time. Despite the clearly perceived need to keep the 1st Air Fleet together as a tactical unit, rest, recuperate, replace losses and repair it as a complete tactical strike unit, Yamamoto, at this moment, for reasons he never explained to anyone, and who should have known better that MO should be postponed until after MI’s results had fallen out, nevertheless detached the two fleet carriers, Zuikakau, Shokaku, gave the light carrier Shoho, an entire cruiser division, and two destroyer divisions, to further support MO from the IJN central force pool, and assigned Inoue personal responsibility for the operation since Nagumo and Yamaguchi were too important where they were, and thus needed for MI. Hara could handle the SFCAG duties. Perhaps Yamamoto overestimated Inoue, Shigeyoshi? Hard to say. Next to Ozawi, Jisaburo; Inoue, Shigeyoshi was the leading aircraft carrier tactical theoretician in the IJN. Perhaps Yamamoto trusted Inoue would know what to do, if a carrier battle did perchance develop?
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What's Up, Doc? What's hubbub, Bud? Why Fight Here?
The Battle of the Coral Sea was a four day battle that was spread across the 4th to 8th May 1942. As a contest, it can be seen in isolation as the first air/sea battle, the first tactical evolution, between a predominantly American-led allied fleet centered around aircraft carriers and a Japanese fleet, also centered around aircraft carriers, or as the tail-end coda battle of the Japanese Phase I naval operations to conquer the Indonesian Archipelago as a furtherance of her national goals. Which viewpoint, tactical or strategic, one takes really does not matter, though, as the Japanese and the Americans fought operationally to determine whose navy would control the sea lanes approaches to eastern Australia. In that sense, the contest was and should be properly lumped into that interregnum period of Pacific War actions, wherein the Japanese and the Americans struggled to determine who would hold the initiative, that is who would be permitted to use the seas to carry the struggle forward offensively, and who would be denied. That, my friend, puts the Battle of the Coral Sea solidly in the category of the applied operational naval art. It cannot be properly understood, why anyone would fight in the Coral Sea unless it was a contest on the sea lines of communications to Australia.
The Japanese did not understand this fact.
The Japanese, if they had understood their true objective in this battlespace, would have brought the majority of the Combined Fleet, or at least the entire 1st Air Fleet (Five attack carriers, minus the Kaga, which was limping her way home to Sasebo to be repaired after she was ambushed by several US submarines.), to this action. If there was a compelling reason for the Americans to fight at the wrong place at the wrong time, in tune with Yamamoto’s desire to bring about his Pacific Tsushima, before the Americans Plan Oranged him to death, it would be a threat to their SLOCs to Australia. Nimitz could not tell his operational commanders at the Coral Sea to run away from the fight if their survival was threatened, as he gave verbal orders to Fletcher and Spruance to do at Midway. “Save the carriers. We can get Midway back later if we have, too.” Fletcher and Fitch had to fight to the death, if necessary, to prevent the fall of Port Moresby, to keep Japanese land based air power out of there, and to more importantly, try to prevent the Japanese from establishing themselves in the eastern Solomon Islands. Of course, looking back on the results of the Battle of the Coral Sea some seventy six years later, it can be seen that the allied fleet was not entirely successful in preventing the Solomon Islands half of the Japanese evolution. However; Port Moresby did not fall by amphibious attack and that was a key event. It was the first time the Imperial Japanese Navy had been denied the use of the sea. And so, it was at the Battle of the Coral Sea; not the Battle of Midway, that a student of the naval operational art can see that the Imperial Japanese Navy loses the initiative and never regains it.
So what did the Japanese think they were doing, if they did not understand the true purpose of such a Three Stooges naval exercise, they planned, such as Operation MO?
More or less in conformity with their doctrine of defensive counterattack operations, the IJN sought to strengthen their defensive position geographically in the Southwest Pacific by establishing a garrisoned airbase at Port Moresby which they would capture ready-made from the Australians, and for the moment set up a seaplane base at Tulagi (in the southeastern Solomon Islands) to serve as a reconnaissance outpost, until they could find a suitable island in region to create a proper bomber base to support a Rikko. The typically complicated plan, to accomplish these split objectives, involved four major units of Japan's Combined Fleet. These included two fleet carriers in a strike force carrier action group (SFCAG ) and a light carrier centered task group to provide close cover for the two convoyed invasion forces (CCAG). It, all, was to be directed out of Rabaul from the shore headquarters of Japanese VADM Inoue, Shigeyoshi. As an exercise, it did offer an unusual example of Japanese unity of command and purpose as 4th Area Fleet, Inoue’s headquarters, had supreme authority even over the IJA army South Seas Detachment which the Imperial Japanese Army was so gracious to loan for the Port Moresby half of the operation.
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The Coral Sea Order of Battle.
IJN 4th Fleet – VADM Admiral Inoue, Shigeyoshi
CL Kashima (Inoue's flagship, anchored at Rabaul during the battle)
Note: these were “training ships” and flagships of various commanders during early Japanese war operations.
Tulagi Invasion Group – RADM Shima, Kiyohide
CM (minelayer) Okinoshima (Shima's flagship) CM Kōei Maru
AP (troop transport) Azumasan Maru
DD (destroyer) Kikuzuki (sunk by submarine), DD Yozuki
AM (minesweepers)Wa #1 (sunk), AM Wa #2 (sunk), AM Hagoromo Maru (sunk), AM Noshiro Maru #2 (sunk), and AM Tama Maru (sunk)
SC (subchaser) Toshi Maru #3 and PG Tama Maru #8
Troops embarked for the Tulagi expedition were 400 troops from the 3rd Kure Special Naval Landing Force (SNLF) plus a construction detachment (rump company of Korean slave labor troops) from the 7th Establishment Squad.
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Support Group/Close Cover Force – RADM Matumo, Kuninori
CL (light cruiser) Tenryū (Marumo's flagship), CL Tatsuta
AV (seaplane tender) Kamikawa Maru
-AV Kamikawa Maru air group – 12 aircraft
-AV Kiyokawa Maru air group –12 aircraft (attached)
PG (gunboat) Keijo Maru, PG Seikai Maru, PG Nikkai Maru
Covering Group/Main Body Support Force – RADM Gotō, Aritomo
CVL (light carrier) Shōhō (sunk)
-Shōhō Air Group – Lieutenant Nōtomi, Kenjirō
-Shōhō Carrier Fighter Unit – 8 Mitsubishi A6M Zero and 4 Mitsubishi A5M fighters
-Shōhō Carrier Attack Unit – 6 Nakajima B5N Type 97 torpedo bombers
Note: The Shōhō embarked air group was supposed to be evenly split between 14 fighters and 16 scout/torpedo planes. It lost over the better half of its complement to make up Nagumo’s losses incurred during the Indian Ocean raid. The Japanese by this period of the war, had suffered so many aircraft losses in their frontline IJN aviation units, that they were stripping second line units of trained pilots and first line aircraft for replacements to areas and units regarded as more critical; which goes directly to the seriousness with which they regarded Operation MO; does it not? Operation MI, in the planning stages, had first priority, the Darwin air campaign was second, and the Philippine Island campaign was third. Guess who has the scrapings of the IJN Air Service? (^^^^)
CA (heavy cruiser) Aoba (Gotō's flagship), CA Kako, CA Kinugasa, CA Furutaka
DD (destroyer) Sazanami
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Port Moresby Invasion Group – RADM Kajioka, Sadamichi
CL (light cruiser) Yūbari (Kajioka's flagship)
DD (destroyer) Oite, DD Asanagi, DD Uzuki, DD Mutsuki, DD Mochizuki, DD Yayoi
PG (patrol gunboat) Ukn 1, PG Ukn 2
Transport Unit – RADM Abe, Kōsō
CM (minelayer) Tsugaru
Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) APA (transport) Mogamigawa Maru, APA Chōwa Maru (sunk), APA Goyō Maru, APA Akiba Maru (sunk), APA Shōka Maru.
Imperial Japanese Army (IJA)- APA Asakasan Maru, APA China Maru, APA Mito Maru (sunk), APA Matsue Maru, APA Taifuku Maru, APA Hibi Maru (sunk)
ATF (salvage tugboat) Woshima (sunk)
AO (oilers) Hoyo Maru (sunk), and Irō
MSC (coastal minesweeper) W-20 (Wa #20), MSC Hagoromo Maru, MSC Noshiro Maru #2, MSC Fumi Maru #2, and MSC Seki Maru #3.
Here are the rest of them: approximately 500 troops from the 3rd Kure SNLF plus the remaining construction specialists (Korean slave labor troops; the Japanese are fond of their euphemisms during this era) from the 10th Establishment Squad on the IJN transports.
And we have the South Seas Detachment of approximately 5,000 IJA troops packed on the IJA transports. These are the famous conquerors of Wake Island. These gentlemen were the IJA elite amphibious unit who wanted to take Port Moresby. They were to attack Midway a month after this Operation MO failed. They would be disappointed there, too. On their third attempt, the butchers of Wake Island would get their chance against Port Moresby again, to show how good they were against prepared allied troops in battle. The Australians cut them to bits on the Kokoda Trail.
Carrier Striking Force – VADM Takagi, Takeo
Note: We’ve seen him before. Java Sea was a “famous victory” so the IJN rewarded him with this operation. In the RTL he was lucky to get out of Operation MO alive. Let us see if he makes it this time?
Carrier Division 5 – RADM Hara, Chūichi, Officer in Tactical Command
CV (attack aircraft carrier) Shōkaku (sunk)
-Shōkaku Air Group – LTCDR Takahashi, Kakuichi
-Shōkaku Carrier Fighter Unit – 21 A6M Zero fighters
-Shōkaku Carrier Bomber Unit – 20 Aichi D3A Type 99 dive bombers
-Shōkaku Carrier Attack Unit – 19 Nakajima B5N Type 97 torpedo bombers
CV Zuikaku (Hara's flagship)
-Zuikaku Air Group – LTCDR Shimazaki, Shigekazu
-Zuikaku Carrier Fighter Unit – 25 Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighters
-Zuikaku Carrier Bomber Unit – 22 Aichi D3A dive bombers
-Zuikaku Carrier Attack Unit – 20 Nakajima B5N torpedo bombers
CA (heavy cruiser) Myōkō (Takagi's flagship), CA Haguro (sunk)
DD (destroyer) DD Ushio, DD Akebono, DD Ariake, DD Yūgure, DD Shiratsuyu, DD Shigure
AO (oiler) Tōhō Maru (sunk)
Submarine Force – CAPT Ishizaki, Noburu
-Patrol/Scouting Group – I-21, I-22, I-24, I-28, and I-29
-Raiding Group – Ro-33 and Ro-35
25th Air Flotilla (also called the 5th Air Attack Force) – RADM Yamada, Sadayoshi
-4th Air Group (based at Rabaul) – 17 Mitsubishi G4M Type 1 land attack bombers
-Tainan Air Group (based at Lae and Rabaul) – 18 Mitsubishi A6M Zero and six Mitsubishi A5M fighters
-Yokohama Air Group (based at Rabaul, Shortland Islands, and Tulagi) – 12 Kawanishi H6K reconnaissance and 9 Nakajima A6M2-N seaplane fighters
-Genzan Air Group (based at Rabaul) – 25 Mitsubishi G3M Type 96 land attack bombers
Note: These are the Rikko units which will give TF 17 (Yorktown RADM Frank Jack Fletcher) a terrible time during the Tulagi raid.
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Allied forces
Task Force 17 – RADM Frank Jack Fletcher (flagship Yorktown)
Task Group 17.2 (Attack Group) – RADM Thomas C. Kinkaid
CA (heavy cruiser) Minneapolis, CA New Orleans, CA Astoria, CA Chester, CA Portland
DD (destroyer) Phelps, DD Dewey, DD Farragut, DD Aylwin, DD Monaghan
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Task Group 17.3 (Support Group, from Task Force 44) – RADM John Gregory Crace (RN)
CA (heavy cruiser) Australia, CA Chicago, CL (light cruiser) Hobart
DD (destroyer) Perkins, DD Walke
Note: This Walke is the Sims class, not the Paulding class that was scrapped under the terms of the LNT.
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Task Group 17.5 (Carrier Air Group) – RADM Aubrey Fitch, (from Lexington) Officer in Tactical Command (OTC)
CV aircraft carrier Yorktown (badly damaged)
-Yorktown Air Group – LTCDR Oscar Pederson
-Fighting 42 (VF-42) – 17 Grumman F4F Wildcat fighters
-Bombing 5 (VB-5) – 18 Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bombers
-Scouting 5 (VS-5) – 17 SBD Dauntless dive bombers
-Torpedo 5 (VT-5) – 13 Douglas TBD Devastator torpedo bombers
CV aircraft carrier Lexington (badly damaged)
-Lexington Air Group – CDR William B. Ault
-Fighting 2 (VF-2) – 21 F4F Wildcat fighters
-Bombing 2 (VB-2) – 18 SBD Dauntless dive bombers
-Scouting 2 (VS-2) – 17 SBD Dauntless dive bombers
-Torpedo 2 (VT-2) – 12 TBD torpedo bombers
DD (destroyer) Morris, DD Anderson, DD Hammann, DD Russell
Task Group 17.6 (Fueling Group) – CAPT John S. Phillips
AO (oiler) Neosho (sunk), AO Tippecanoe
DD (destroyer) Sims (sunk) - LTCDR William Arthur Griswold†, Worden(KIA)
Task Group 17.9 (Search Group) – CDR George H. DeBaun
AV (seaplane tender) Tangier. Based at Noumea
-Patrol Squadron 71 (VP-71) – 6 PBY-5 Catalinas
-Patrol Squadron 72 (VP-72) – 6 PBY-5 Catalinas
=========================================================
South West Pacific Ocean Area (SWPOA)– GEN Douglas MacArthur
Allied Naval Forces – VADM Herbert F. Leary
Note: After Hart left ABDA for Washington and exile on the General Board, this gentleman moved up in the pecking order to be MacArthur’s USN guy. He only lasted until 1 September 1942. AFAICT, Leary managed the unique feat of torqueing off MacArthur (not hard to do), Uncle Chuck Lockwood (Who considered him a “cautious man”.) and Nimitz (Who considered him to be something a lot worse than cautious.), so Leary dug his grave three ways to Sunday and had to get out one horse ahead of a review board. For the record, if Leary was not what was wanted in those dark days, his replacement, VADM Arthur S. Carpender, was worse. The Australians hated him with a passion. MacArthur regretted dumping Leary for him and Uncle Chuck would have solved him the Stephen Decatur way, if they still allowed that kind of thing in the United States Navy. Carpender will ruin the submarine operations during the Battle of the Coral Sea ITTL.
Task Group 42.1 – CAPT Ralph Waldo Christie in submarine tender USS Griffin at Brisbane
-Subdiv 53 – LTCDR Elmer E. Yeomans:
Mackerels (ITTL)
-20......................SS(E)-223.....USS Mudfish..................................(LT(s.g.) O. E. Hagberg)
-22......................SS(M)-225....USS Mudskipper.............................(LTCDR J. R. Craig )
-23......................SS(P)-226.....USS Modok....................................(LTCDR E. J. MacGregor, 3d)
-24......................SS(E)-227.....USS Mooneye.................................(LT(s.g.) J. B. Azer )
-25......................SS(E)-228.....USS Mojar......................................(LTCDR C. B. Stevens, Jr)
-26......................SS(K)-229.....USS Morid......................................(LRCDR R. R. McGregor)
Subdiv 201 – CDR Ralston B. Van Zant:
More Mackerels (ITTL)
-27.....................SS(K)-230...USS Machete...................LT(s.g.) Henry Glass Munson
-28.....................SS(K)-231...USS Mahseer...................LTCDR Edward Shillingford Hutchinson
-29.....................SS(K)-232...USS Mandarinfish.............LT(s.g.) Wereford Goss Chapple
-30.....................SS(K)-233...USS Minoga.....................LTCDR Philip Niekum
-31.....................SS(K)-234...USS Mola.........................LTCDR Gordon Campbell
-32.....................SS(K)-235...USS Morsa.......................LTCDR James William Blanchard
Notes: Reader, you and I have waited for this… The Mackerels are going to war against the IJN.
Task Force 44 – temporarily assigned to Task Force 17, (see Task Group 17.3 above)
Allied Air Forces – LTGEN George Brett (Another AAF general like GEN Brereton. YMMV.)
United States Army Air Forces:
8th Pursuit Group – Archerfield, Brisbane, (I cannot help it, I love reworking birds to work as they should have. See below.)
-35th Fighter Squadron – Port Moresby
---14 Bell Aircraft P-39 Airacobra fighters
-36th Fighter Squadron – Port Moresby
---12 Bell Aircraft P-39 Airacobra fighters
49th Pursuit Group – Darwin,
-7th Fighter Squadron – Darwin
---29 Curtiss P-40 fighters
-8th Fighter Squadron – Darwin
---28 Curtiss P-40 fighters
-9th Fighter Squadron – Darwin
---32 Curtiss P-40 fighters
3rd Bombardment Group
-8th Bombardment Squadron – Port Moresby,
---22 Douglas A-24 Dauntless dive bombers
-13th Bombardment Squadron – Port Moresby
---16 North American B-25 Mitchells
-90th Bombardment Squadron
---11 North American B-25 Mitchells
19th Bombardment Group – Townsville,
-30th Bombardment Squadron
---17 North American B-17B Flying Fortress bombers
40th Reconnaissance Squadron
---6 North American B17R Flying Fortress bombers
22nd Bombardment Group – Townsville and Cairn
-93rd Bombardment Squadron -Townsville
---16 Martin B-28 Dragon bombers
435th Bombardment Squadron - Cairn
---16 Martin B-28 Dragon bombers
Royal Australian Air Force
No. 11 Squadron – Townsville 6 Consolidated PBY Catalina seaplanes
No. 20 Squadron – Cairn 8 Consolidated PBY Catalina seaplane
No. 24 Squadron – Townsville, 3 CAC Wirraway figher/trainers
No. 32 Squadron – Port Moresby, 12 Lockheed Hudson patrol bombers
No. 75 Squadron – Port Moresby, 3 Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighters
Port Moresby garrison – approximately 5,000 troops under Major General B. M. Morris
30th Infantry Brigade
-39th Infantry Battalion
-49th Infantry Battalion
-53rd Infantry Battalion
-13th Field Regiment
-23rd Heavy Anti-Aircraft Battery
-Detachment, 1st Independent Company (scouts)
-30th Infantry Brigade Signal Section
-30th Infantry Brigade HQ Defence Platoon
Moresby Fixed Defences
-Moresby Fixed Defences Fortress Engineers
-Moresby Fixed Defences Anti-Aircraft Artillery (six 3-inch guns)
Other units with 30th Brigade
-1st Army Troops Company
-7th Field Company
-1st Section, 1st Mechanical Equipment Company (combat engineers in American army vernacular)
-8th Military District Survey Section (topology unit mapping the Kokoda Trail which had never been done before.)
-8th Military District Bomb Disposal Section (EOD unit getting a lot of practice. The IJA was dropping a lot of dud ordnance on Port Moresby)
-8th Military District Signals (One of the best combat signals units anywhere at this time. They had better Japanese speakers than the Japanese in the region. And the IJA sure liked to yak on the radio.)
-8th Military District Defence and Employment Company
-New Guinea Volunteer Rifles
-Papuan Infantry Battalion (Valuable scouts and rangers who made the difference on the Kokada Trail. They never get enough credit for the victory.)
-8th Military District Section Intelligence Corps (See the Signals Unit)
-15th Supply Personnel Company (Unsung logistics heroes)
-8th Military District Bulk Issue Petrol and Oil Depot (ditto)
-A Section, 8th Military District Mechanical Transport Company(bears repeating)
-Base Hospital (Yup, again.)
-3rd Field Ambulance (Same.)
-113th Convalescent Depot (Same again.)
-8th Military District Dental Centre
-45th Dental Unit
-253rd Dental Unit
-256th Dental Unit
-274th Dental Unit
-301st Dental Unit
-421st Dental Unit
Note: The Australian army had a thing about teeth?
-15th Optical Unit
Note: Same for eyeglasses.
-8th Military District Depot of Medical Stores
-16th Field Hygiene Section
Note: Medical support in Papua / New Guinea was a thing the SWPA often neglected to the detriment of the fighting troops. Like with combat engineers, it seems the corncob pipe smoker (MacArthur, who should know better.), could not understand why his theater might need more doctors and dentists than the TO and E allotted. SE Asia is not Europe.
There is fungus among us and other nasty bacterii and virii to kill off poor Joe Private. At least the Australian army understood that much about where they are headed. Whatever one might criticize Blamey, he understood that medical care in the wild unknown was a bring your own along affair. But even the Australian army did not provide enough as the Buna and Goa campaigns would demonstrate.
-8th Military District Ordnance Depot
And now for the tail enders of 30th Brigade
-19th Ordnance Ammunition Section
-109th Infantry Brigade Group Field Workshop (fixes all the broken vehicles)
-109th Infantry Brigade Group Ordnance Field Park (fixes all the broken weaponry)
-30th Infantry Brigade Provost Platoon (fixes all the legal problems; i.e. lawyers and policemen)
-8th Military District Accounts Office (paymaster)
-8th Military District Postal Unit
-8th Military District Records Office
-8th Military District Stationery Depot
-8th Military District Printing Section
Note the paperwork involved?
-8th Military District Graves Registration and Inquiries Unit
-8th Military District Laundry and Decontamination Unit
-8th Military District Army Field Bakery
-8th Military District Base Depot
-8th Military District Marine Section
-8th Military District Canteen Services
-8th Military District Training Centre
-Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit
Notes: Politicians, lawyers, mechanics, postal clerks, cooks, bottle washers, the supply guys, jailers, the paperwork clown corps and the USO show. What army travels without these tail-enders?
=======================================================
Opening Moves.
In January 1942, around the 17th of the month the Combined Fleet staff suggested to Imperial General Naval Headquarters that an invasion of Northern Australia be mounted to prevent Australia from being used as a base to threaten Japan's perimeter defenses in the expected conquered Southern Resources Area (The eastern Indonesian Archipelago). The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA), however, rejected the recommendation, as another lunatic scheme from the ever fertile imagination of the true author, Yamamoto, Isoruku. Sugiyama, Hajimi bluntly told his naval counterpart, Nagano, Osami that the army had neither the ships nor the troops for such a mad scheme.
Meanwhile, VADM Inoue, Shigeyoshi , commander of the IJN's Fourth Fleet (also called the South Seas Force) which consisted of most of the IJN naval units currently in the Southwest Pacific area except submarines, warned IGHQ that the occupation of Tulagi in the southeastern Solomon Islands and Port Moresby in New Guinea, which would put Northern Australia within range of Japanese land-based aircraft, was absolutely necessary to ensure the Phase I defensive perimeter he was expected to establish. Inoue argued that these locations in Japanese hands was necessary for the defense of Rabaul on New Britain. IGHQ, specifically the IJA, accepted Inoue's “more reasonable” (intense sarcasm), proposal and accepted Yamamoto’s further proposed operations, using these two locations as supporting bases, to seize New Caledonia, Fiji, and Samoa and thereby “cut the supply and communication lines between Australia and the United States”. Somebody at IGHQ understood Mahan? Too bad it was not the IJN.
Just what did this Operation entail? What did the Japanese expect to accomplish?
Operation MO, had to await for VADM Inoue, Shigeyoshi and GEN Terauchi to finish their operations in progress during February and March before the planners knew what forces they would be able to use. It was not until mid-April before the final details gelled and the operating forces were assigned (See Order of Battle above ^^^^). Like most Japanese plans at this stage of the war, the initial proposal differed from the final IGHQ staff product. Yamamoto, back in January, through his staff, had allotted two light and three heavy carriers as the close and distant cover forces in the belief that a yoke operation, in which two objectives were to be simultaneously attacked should have a powerful central strike force as the distant cover and two attached cover forces. Nobody in January had given thought to the troops necessary. The staff officer responsible for that part of the plan, a LTCDR Fujita, Fukedome had scribbled in notes to the effect that a couple of battalions of special naval landing troops packed in six or seven transports would suffice. That was the kind of sloppy planning Combined Fleet staff generated. Three months later, with the surprisingly heavy losses of oil tankers and persistent and worrisome American submarine attacks on both the Japanese merchant marine and more alarmingly the IJN, itself, the forces available for Operation MO had to be severely cut back. The Carrier Strike Force (SFCAG) would have to be built around two carriers, not three, as 1st Air Fleet was down to five and could only spare the two newest and freshest carriers, the Zuikaku and Shokaku. The other three had to replenish and refit after the unexpected operational losses of air crew and ship wear and tear during the Indian Ocean raid. A hundred pilots and planes needed replacement. Even though Zuikaku and Shokaku would go into MO under strength, they could borrow pilots and planes from the recently torpedoed Kaga to make up their own losses. The Kaga loaners should be more than enough to handle the decrepit allied opposition expected.
Planning by timetable instead of the operating limits
One can tell the difference between a Yamamoto generated idea and an IGHQ plan by the rigid attention the staff planners in Tokyo pay to timetables and objectives by priorities with no clue as to what might be the local conditions that make such timetables impractical. Give Combined Fleet staff credit. They were out there in the Pacific and understood that wind and wave wreck timetables faster than a drunken steersman on a commuter train.
For example; the IGHQ plan called for Port Moresby to be invaded from the sea and secured by 10 May. The plan also included the seizure of Tulagi on 2–3 May, where the navy would establish a seaplane base for potential air operations against Allied territories and forces in the South Pacific and to provide a base for reconnaissance aircraft. Both moves were to be escorted and guarded by a single covering force based on the light carrier, Shoho, which was assigned significantly, not to provide air defense for the two troop convoys from allied air attack, but to provide anti-submarine escort from the increasingly dangerous American submarines in the area. How the Shoho was supposed to provide this ASW protection for two forces that would be almost 1,000 kilometers apart was not well thought out, but the idea, here, seems to have been, the Shoho close cover group would dart in with the Tulagi expedition, hang around just long enough to see the troops wade ashore safely, then shuttle back to the Port Moresby convoy, waiting on it at the Jomard Passage rendezvous point, join up and close cover it all the way to Port Moresby. Of course, the plan assumed this Shoho yoyo would go off like clockwork. Nobody, at least, from reading the document, had made provision for the possibility that the Shoho would be sunk. In any plan, there is a mission critical fail circumstance built in. Good planners assume that it is impossible not to have such a circumstance and usually make provision for a fallback option, such as abandoning a non-executable secondary objective to ensure the primary objective is achievable. In this such case, Inoue had made it clear, as the operational commander, that he regarded Port Moresby as his primary objective . He could have taken the IGHQ plan and had his own staff reverse the order of objectives, concentrated all the forces assigned to him and headed them for Port Moresby, first; seized it, and then have his forces wait to meet the Allies under cover of his air forces based at Lae. It is what an American or British admiral would have done; if handed the garbage operations order Operation MO was. Such latitude in mission implementation was lacking in the 1942 IJN. Whether, it is the go-along- to-get-along attitude, or the "respect for juniors" problem that Inoue had, the result was that he executed the rotten plan he was given exactly as it was sent to him. Worse, though, Takagi, Hara, and that utter imbecile, RADM Gotō, Aritomo, his three incompetent tactical commanders, would follow those same orders exactly and lead their respective commands into disasters that could so easily have been avoided, considering the many mistakes the opposing Americans made.
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Quite a timetable; was it even feasible? The IJN section at IGHQ hoped so, because their plans post MO, immediately included an exploitation phase called Operation RY. This operation would use ships freed up from the success, expected from MO, to acquire agricultural soil enrichers and phosphates from the islands of Nauru and Banaba (Ocean Island) by the expedient of landing troops on the coral spits, so that Japanese colonial imperialist dynamiters could cheat the native peoples by robbing them, and remove the crystalized and quite valuable bird guano top soil, instead of the British. Cut out the Pacific Phosphate Mining Company, the pre-war middle men in the “fertilizer business” who sold sea-gull droppings to the Japanese, so to speak. THIS was an actual raison de etre for military operations to the IJN? That operation was scheduled to be completed by 15 May 1942. After RY (There’s a phonetic pun.), was concluded, another operation, intended to seize Fiji, Samoa and New Caledonia called FS was to be mounted. This operation, originally planned for the second week of June, would be delayed slightly until the middle of July, because the Combined Fleet would need everything it had that could float to carry out Operations MI and MA to sink the Americans at Midway Island and take over some crab fishing grounds up near Alaska. Does one get the feeling that there is a “Das Englandlied” kind of madness present in the Japanese High Command?
It should be noted, that both the IGHQ and Combined Fleet staffs completely disregarded the threat of American naval aviation in all these preposterous proposed timetables, objectives and planned operations. Perhaps Inoue, Shigeyoshi had a slightly better appreciation of the threat, because his invasion convoys dispatched to Lae and Salamua had recently been clobbered by a dramatic US carrier attack, from VADM Wilson Brown’s TF-11 (Yorktown and Lexington) delivered over the Owen Stanley Mountains no less, on 10 March 1942. Inoue lost five precious transports, 1500 troops drowned, and the seaplane tender, Kiyokawa Maru, had been damaged in that debacle. The USS S-47 had torpedoed and sunk the Japanese destroyer gunboat Hatzikari, in the same operation; so the pesky American subs were also on Inoue’s mind. One can only imagine what he was thinking as he sent Hara, Takagi and Goto on this MO operation. Perhaps the Buddhist fatalism of which Inoue, Shigeyoshi was accused, (A polite and very Japanese way of calling him a moral coward.), which was the suspected reason he recalled everybody after he learned of Shoho’s and Shokaku’s fates, affected him pre-battle instead of post-battle? Anyway, while Wilson Brown was immediately relieved after his successful operation because he was physically exhausted, suffered malaria and at age 60 was clearly worn out, and reassigned to Washington, because King, who was Wilson’s friend, wanted a competent “wise old man” to babysit FDR as a naval aide and keep the American President from making Churchill-type naval mistakes, Inoue was relieved after the Operation MO disaster and posted as the Proctor at the Japanese Naval Academy at Hiroshima Prefecture. It can be assumed that the Japanese, unlike the Americans, understood that those who cannot do the job, are best posted where they can teach the job?
Chaos at the Top, Confusion in the Middle
Remember ADM Yamamoto, Isoruku; commander of the Combined Fleet, was concurrently planning the Operation MI to lure the U.S. Navy's carriers, none of which had been damaged in the Pearl Harbor attack, into a decisive showdown in the central Pacific near Midway Atoll at this time. Despite the clearly perceived need to keep the 1st Air Fleet together as a tactical unit, rest, recuperate, replace losses and repair it as a complete tactical strike unit, Yamamoto, at this moment, for reasons he never explained to anyone, and who should have known better that MO should be postponed until after MI’s results had fallen out, nevertheless detached the two fleet carriers, Zuikakau, Shokaku, gave the light carrier Shoho, an entire cruiser division, and two destroyer divisions, to further support MO from the IJN central force pool, and assigned Inoue personal responsibility for the operation since Nagumo and Yamaguchi were too important where they were, and thus needed for MI. Hara could handle the SFCAG duties. Perhaps Yamamoto overestimated Inoue, Shigeyoshi? Hard to say. Next to Ozawi, Jisaburo; Inoue, Shigeyoshi was the leading aircraft carrier tactical theoretician in the IJN. Perhaps Yamamoto trusted Inoue would know what to do, if a carrier battle did perchance develop?
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I can't claim to know any of that. Thx, again.
I might argue he was right, to a degree: from a political standpoint (if not, perhaps, a grand strategic one), a holding action against Japan might have been a bad idea. That pressure to do "something" led to Doolittle is not something I'd defend, however.
I will acknowledge, I read it with a certain amount of bias (or predisposition), based on my understanding of his position, going in, so I may have misread him. In any event, it makes no difference here, since I don't think we disagree IGHQ got it wrong.
This should be in a textbook. The analysis is the best I think I've seen.
If I didn't say it before, I should have.
WTF were they thinking?
If I may opine: that is the varsity squad, with Chapple & Munson on it.
(And no digs at McGregor or Blanchard intended.)If you think the Allied side was bad, the IJA approach would appall you.
Losses to disease (as I recall) exceeded combat losses. (In Western armies, that hadn't been true since before WW1.) And this is with Japan in control of the area that had led production of quinine prewar. So the "paperless office" will never reach the Army? (On top of all that, I can't help thinking about the number of pictures the recce a/c are generating & how many have to be printed & distributed. Which, I guess, is why the support units have the manpower they do...)Which one can? Not unless AIs get a lot smarter. It's like a moving city, & keeping it running takes all the things a city does.
There's an argument for that, which would've reduced the strain on fighter support, flying such long missions out of more-distant bases. The argument against is, the "inner ring" (centered on Rabaul) was easier to hold & would've actually reduced losses in the long run.
That is more in line with the "audible" I mentioned than with what I'd consider actual planning.
Nor, I might add, did anybody consider she & her escort might not actually sink, or even deter, any U.S. submarines...
Judging by the number of Sub Force officers, proven successful operationally, who were removed from the Fleet...
Shall We Read Our Neighbor’s Mail, Gentlemen?
There is a curious technological glitch in Human languages. It is that the East Asian groups of languages are ideograph based on Chinese-based writing systems where pictures form words or phrase groups. What that means is that when mechanical writing (printing by emboss or impact of symbol through a machine such as a printing press or typewriter.), became possible through analog means, the East Asia speakers were stuck with symbol graph based languages that could require up to 10,000+ type sets. That makes a mechanical typewriter almost impossible, unless some means is devised to make the syllabic symbols sets manageable
The Japanese were ingenious and pragmatic. They adapted and overcame. (This explains why the clerk-typists at the Japanese Embassy in Washington on December 6, 1941 were so much slower than their US Navy opponents at the Communications Security Section of the Office of Communications Security at the Navy Department. Japanese typewriters used a rotor and press drum system and a single striker articulator to emboss the ideograph off the drum to paper. (See picture of Toshiba/Matsuba typewriter below.). To take ideograph texts of twenty-one pages worth off a messenger tape or Japanese cablegram format, type it in readable columnar proof-scrap script in readable page form and translate it further into English phonetic script row sets (words and sentences) from a Japanese cablegram, it would take hours.
The US Navy used Romanji script base and western style typewriters and skipped that step completely. It made for translation errors and word meaning drift of course, but it short-circuited an entire step and allowed the Americans to beat the Japanese at their own transcription and translation off the same cablegrams at speed. If one does not understand exactly what this means, it comes down to this gentleman; James Curtis Hepburn, and his Hepburn System which the USN used for Japanese language work. The Japanese Navy, just to keep things interesting for the United States Navy, instead, used Nihon Shiki, the Japanese government officially adopted Romaji (Japanese ideograph to Roman script, 1937 version, so even the IJN was confused and not totally onboard with the changeover until almost 1945!) system for use on western technology based analog communications equipment that their military used, both radio and teletype. The Kana drift is significant, so teasing out intent from an ideograph message block or column (Paragraph format text in English speaker's context.) can be extremely difficult: for of all the languages on Earth, guess which two are among the groups that foreign speakers have the most difficulty understanding in terms of subtleness? English, in its dozen different local varieties, with over half a million core words, and the many varieties of Chinese, of which Japanese and Korean are two major language subfamilies, each with 10,000 + core ideograph symbols, are the two. 10,000 ideographs does not sound like much for east Asian languages, but there are subtle differences in word ideas that combining two or three ideographs in nine different ways yields, and if you permute those combinations out, that is about as many "similar words" as English contains, each not meaning the same exact thing to the others produced. Maru (closed circle or period.), for example, is often translated as "merchant ship" in common baseline English when it is seen as part of a Japanese ship name, but depending on the object, to a Japanese speaker, it can mean a specific type of propelled and walled (castled or fortified) floating or moving object. It does not have to mean "merchant ship" to the Japanese speaker; as an English speaker understands that word at all. ("Oil tanker" would be easy to miss in a decrypted message, for example.)
Just imagine what that means when a Japanese speaker thinks about "aircraft carrier" and "oil tanker" and when the American, who translates the same word groups after breaking into the three stage super-enciphered JN-25 Romaji base book-encoded encryption copied off radio chatter on March 15, 1942 brings a fractured and almost impossible to comprehend frag logistics OP-order related to a suddenly urgently diverted oil tanker ship (Hoyo Maru) movement and rendezvous to RABAUL to meet SHOHO; to either GEN MacArthur, or to VADM Leary, both who appear to be utterly clueless about what it took to find out why this oil tanker radio chatter is important.
Thank Murphy for CINCPAC and HYPO who gets the same decrypted message frag as a correspondent. Does not give Nimitz much time, does it?
===================================
If you think the Toshiba/Matsuba typewriter is complex... try a Sugimoto.
As a further aside, while the British and Dutch work on Japanese ciphers was quite good (It was, make no mistake about it.), the USN's work in the first four months of 1942 on the JN encryption series is absolutely incredible with the limited resources they had. There is no earthly reason, the Japanese could possibly know, that the Americans would break their wartime encryption so quickly. The Japanese thought the language barrier added another pad to the three steps they used. The USN was so good, that by June, before the Japanese blanked them with a changeover, HYPO could tease out intent from as little as 10% of character groups in JN message texts decoded. The oil tanker message I referred to above, the FRUMEL station copied and decoded, was unusual in that 15% of the text was cracked, off a garbled Morse code base transmission out of Truk. It was fortunate that the idiot, who sent it, did not use the Maru code, which was still white noised to the US cryptographers, but used an old JN-series navy code is it not?
As a further comment, while the British and Dutch encryption fell to the Japanese more quickly going the other way, US signals encryption (Baker Able and Sigaba) seems to have held its firewalls, against all comers (including the Germans, who broke into every Allied com channel used and read most everything including American traffic forwarded by other's encrypted means.). Not until the John Walker and Pueblo incidents was that primary wall breached. As I suspect it remains to this day, unfortunately.
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There is a curious technological glitch in Human languages. It is that the East Asian groups of languages are ideograph based on Chinese-based writing systems where pictures form words or phrase groups. What that means is that when mechanical writing (printing by emboss or impact of symbol through a machine such as a printing press or typewriter.), became possible through analog means, the East Asia speakers were stuck with symbol graph based languages that could require up to 10,000+ type sets. That makes a mechanical typewriter almost impossible, unless some means is devised to make the syllabic symbols sets manageable
The Japanese were ingenious and pragmatic. They adapted and overcame. (This explains why the clerk-typists at the Japanese Embassy in Washington on December 6, 1941 were so much slower than their US Navy opponents at the Communications Security Section of the Office of Communications Security at the Navy Department. Japanese typewriters used a rotor and press drum system and a single striker articulator to emboss the ideograph off the drum to paper. (See picture of Toshiba/Matsuba typewriter below.). To take ideograph texts of twenty-one pages worth off a messenger tape or Japanese cablegram format, type it in readable columnar proof-scrap script in readable page form and translate it further into English phonetic script row sets (words and sentences) from a Japanese cablegram, it would take hours.
The US Navy used Romanji script base and western style typewriters and skipped that step completely. It made for translation errors and word meaning drift of course, but it short-circuited an entire step and allowed the Americans to beat the Japanese at their own transcription and translation off the same cablegrams at speed. If one does not understand exactly what this means, it comes down to this gentleman; James Curtis Hepburn, and his Hepburn System which the USN used for Japanese language work. The Japanese Navy, just to keep things interesting for the United States Navy, instead, used Nihon Shiki, the Japanese government officially adopted Romaji (Japanese ideograph to Roman script, 1937 version, so even the IJN was confused and not totally onboard with the changeover until almost 1945!) system for use on western technology based analog communications equipment that their military used, both radio and teletype. The Kana drift is significant, so teasing out intent from an ideograph message block or column (Paragraph format text in English speaker's context.) can be extremely difficult: for of all the languages on Earth, guess which two are among the groups that foreign speakers have the most difficulty understanding in terms of subtleness? English, in its dozen different local varieties, with over half a million core words, and the many varieties of Chinese, of which Japanese and Korean are two major language subfamilies, each with 10,000 + core ideograph symbols, are the two. 10,000 ideographs does not sound like much for east Asian languages, but there are subtle differences in word ideas that combining two or three ideographs in nine different ways yields, and if you permute those combinations out, that is about as many "similar words" as English contains, each not meaning the same exact thing to the others produced. Maru (closed circle or period.), for example, is often translated as "merchant ship" in common baseline English when it is seen as part of a Japanese ship name, but depending on the object, to a Japanese speaker, it can mean a specific type of propelled and walled (castled or fortified) floating or moving object. It does not have to mean "merchant ship" to the Japanese speaker; as an English speaker understands that word at all. ("Oil tanker" would be easy to miss in a decrypted message, for example.)
Just imagine what that means when a Japanese speaker thinks about "aircraft carrier" and "oil tanker" and when the American, who translates the same word groups after breaking into the three stage super-enciphered JN-25 Romaji base book-encoded encryption copied off radio chatter on March 15, 1942 brings a fractured and almost impossible to comprehend frag logistics OP-order related to a suddenly urgently diverted oil tanker ship (Hoyo Maru) movement and rendezvous to RABAUL to meet SHOHO; to either GEN MacArthur, or to VADM Leary, both who appear to be utterly clueless about what it took to find out why this oil tanker radio chatter is important.
Thank Murphy for CINCPAC and HYPO who gets the same decrypted message frag as a correspondent. Does not give Nimitz much time, does it?
===================================
If you think the Toshiba/Matsuba typewriter is complex... try a Sugimoto.
As a further aside, while the British and Dutch work on Japanese ciphers was quite good (It was, make no mistake about it.), the USN's work in the first four months of 1942 on the JN encryption series is absolutely incredible with the limited resources they had. There is no earthly reason, the Japanese could possibly know, that the Americans would break their wartime encryption so quickly. The Japanese thought the language barrier added another pad to the three steps they used. The USN was so good, that by June, before the Japanese blanked them with a changeover, HYPO could tease out intent from as little as 10% of character groups in JN message texts decoded. The oil tanker message I referred to above, the FRUMEL station copied and decoded, was unusual in that 15% of the text was cracked, off a garbled Morse code base transmission out of Truk. It was fortunate that the idiot, who sent it, did not use the Maru code, which was still white noised to the US cryptographers, but used an old JN-series navy code is it not?
As a further comment, while the British and Dutch encryption fell to the Japanese more quickly going the other way, US signals encryption (Baker Able and Sigaba) seems to have held its firewalls, against all comers (including the Germans, who broke into every Allied com channel used and read most everything including American traffic forwarded by other's encrypted means.). Not until the John Walker and Pueblo incidents was that primary wall breached. As I suspect it remains to this day, unfortunately.
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Shall We Read Our Neighbor’s Mail, Gentlemen?
There is a curious technological glitch in Human languages. It is that the East Asian groups of languages are ideograph based on Chinese-based writing systems where pictures form words or phrase groups. What that means is that when mechanical writing (printing by emboss or impact of symbol through a machine such as a printing press or typewriter.), became possible through analog means, the East Asia speakers were stuck with symbol graph based languages that could require up to 10,000+ type sets. That makes a mechanical typewriter almost impossible, unless some means is devised to make the syllabic symbols sets manageable
The Japanese were ingenious and pragmatic. They adapted and overcame. (This explains why the clerk-typists at the Japanese Embassy in Washington on December 6, 1941 were so much slower than their US Navy opponents at the Communications Security Section of the Office of Communications Security at the Navy Department. Japanese typewriters used a rotor and press drum system and a single striker articulator to emboss the ideograph off the drum to paper. (See picture of Toshiba/Matsuba typewriter below.). To take ideograph texts of twenty-one pages worth off a messenger tape or Japanese cablegram format, type it in readable columnar proof-scrap script in readable page form and translate it further into English phonetic script row sets (words and sentences) from a Japanese cablegram, it would take hours.
The US Navy used Romanji script base and western style typewriters and skipped that step completely. It made for translation errors and word meaning drift of course, but it short-circuited an entire step and allowed the Americans to beat the Japanese at their own transcription and translation off the same cablegrams at speed. If one does not understand exactly what this means, it comes down to this gentleman; James Curtis Hepburn, and his Hepburn System which the USN used for Japanese language work. The Japanese Navy, just to keep things interesting for the United States Navy, instead, used Nihon Shiki, the Japanese government officially adopted Romaji (Japanese ideograph to Roman script, 1937 version, so even the IJN was confused and not totally onboard with the changeover until almost 1945!) system for use on western technology based analog communications equipment that their military used, both radio and teletype. The Kana drift is significant, so teasing out intent from an ideograph message block or column (Paragraph format text in English speaker's context.) can be extremely difficult: for of all the languages on Earth, guess which two are among the groups that foreign speakers have the most difficulty understanding in terms of subtleness? English, in its dozen different local varieties, with over half a million core words, and the many varieties of Chinese, of which Japanese and Korean are two major language subfamilies, each with 10,000 + core ideograph symbols, are the two. 10,000 ideographs does not sound like much for east Asian languages, but there are subtle differences in word ideas that combining two or three ideographs in nine different ways yields, and if you permute those combinations out, that is about as many "similar words" as English contains, each not meaning the same exact thing to the others produced. Maru (closed circle or period.), for example, is often translated as "merchant ship" in common baseline English when it is seen as part of a Japanese ship name, but depending on the object, to a Japanese speaker, it can mean a specific type of propelled and walled (castled or fortified) floating or moving object. It does not have to mean "merchant ship" to the Japanese speaker; as an English speaker understands that word at all. ("Oil tanker" would be easy to miss in a decrypted message, for example.)
Just imagine what that means when a Japanese speaker thinks about "aircraft carrier" and "oil tanker" and when the American, who translates the same word groups after breaking into the three stage super-enciphered JN-25 Romaji base book-encoded encryption copied off radio chatter on March 15, 1942 brings a fractured and almost impossible to comprehend frag logistics OP-order related to a suddenly urgently diverted oil tanker ship (Hoyo Maru) movement and rendezvous to RABAUL to meet SHOHO; to either GEN MacArthur, or to VADM Leary, both who appear to be utterly clueless about what it took to find out why this oil tanker radio chatter is important.
Thank Murphy for CINCPAC and HYPO who gets the same decrypted message frag as a correspondent. Does not give Nimitz much time, does it?
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If you think the Toshiba/Matsuba typewriter is complex... try a Sugimoto.
As a further aside, while the British and Dutch work on Japanese ciphers was quite good (It was, make no mistake about it.), the USN's work in the first four months of 1942 on the JN encryption series is absolutely incredible with the limited resources they had. There is no earthly reason, the Japanese could possibly know, that the Americans would break their wartime encryption so quickly. The Japanese thought the language barrier added another pad to the three steps they used. The USN was so good, that by June, before the Japanese blanked them with a changeover, HYPO could tease out intent from as little as 10% of character groups in JN message texts decoded. The oil tanker message I referred to above, the FRUMEL station copied and decoded, was unusual in that 15% of the text was cracked, off a garbled Morse code base transmission out of Truk. It was fortunate that the idiot, who sent it, did not use the Maru code, which was still white noised to the US cryptographers, but used an old JN-series navy code is it not?
As a further comment, while the British and Dutch encryption fell to the Japanese more quickly going the other way, US signals encryption (Baker Able and Sigaba) seems to have held its firewalls, against all comers (including the Germans, who broke into every Allied com channel used and read most everything including American traffic forwarded by other's encrypted means.). Not until the John Walker and Pueblo incidents was that primary wall breached. As I suspect it remains to this day, unfortunately.
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Is CAST the original decoding unit for this information. Iir, CAST Had even better Japanese speakers then HYPO.
CAST was a sensitive national resource (Probably worth more than MacArthur to the war effort.). It was stuck with him in the Philippine Islands at Corregidor at the end. When he came out, it came out with him and was redistributed to various spots, but its best lingusts and cryptologists wound up at the joint Australian/American station at Melbourne, Fleet Radio Unit, Melbourne. (FRUMEL). FRUMEL had forward listening posts at Port Moresby, Darwin, Cairns, and I believe a stay-behind retransmitter in Corrigedor until it fell on May 6, 1942. Most of these forward posts in SWPOA were manned by Australians, RAN or RAAF. Hart and MacArthur butted heads on many things, but their signals people seemed to share radio traffic analysis and decrypt between and among themselves. Wavell was cut out after he almost blew op-sec in early March. MacArthur was another problem child because his HQ would not order deception operations (Recon flights, I blame Brereton and Brett for this bolo.) to cover up Japanese movements revealed by sigint by suggesting instead that allied recon coverage was a lot better than it actually was. Again I blame Brett and Brereton for that additional problem.
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Allied Moves.
Can the Allies Get Their Fractured Act Together?
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OTL It was the British manned FECB (Far East Combined Bureau) in Singapore that helped crack the surface of JN25 in December 41
However the Americans had far from full penetration in real time.
Only around 10% could be read.
In many cases all that could be done was strip off the "super enciphering" improving the traffic analysis but doing little on content.
Station Hypos triumph was much later, in June 42, and was down to other means than fully reading the mail.
BTW when relocated to Kalindi the same British/Empire team fully broke 3 more Japanese codes in late 42.
The simple JN-40 used for navigation issues, JN-152 for organizing merchant traffic and the even harder JN-167 used for similar purposes.
This work exposed almost all the Japanese merchant and naval auxiliary shipping including Troop convoys for the rest of the war.
This should have enabled the submarine campaign to ramp up ... but did not for reasons relevant to this thread.
FYI the biggest mistakes leaking code breaking were AMERICAN including the "Chicago Tribune" fiasco after Midway.
(and the further publicity that resulted from the attempted cover up in the States).
OTL The Japanese noticed the furore and made some minor changes to their codes in August 42 (in time for Watchtower)
These were spotted and reported by the RAN monitoring stations you mentioned and eventually accounted for.
Fortunately these IJN countermeasures were based on the assumption that the USN had got it's warning for Operation MI only from traffic analysis and discounted even the limited penetration that Hypo had at that time
With the British loss of a complete functioning radar network with working sets to the Japanese as a result of their Malayan collapse, RAF bungling, and the fall of Singapore and them not telling the Americans about it, so that the USN had to discover it for themselves in battle (late 1943 during CARTWHEEL), and the British refusal to share their actually very limited SIGINT results with the Americans, one must be careful of the "popular histories" and beliefs about who did what.
Example:
The FRUMEL fight between Rudolf Fabian (USN) and Eric Nave (RAN, but acting on RN orders.), over penetration keys and the American copy of a Japanese enciphering machine, the British having keys to JN-25A and the Americans having the machine, was unhelpful. There was no way the British could have used the machine as they were out of listening range. But they had the first keys to JN-25A, that were a stepping stone to JN-25B that was still blank, and could have saved Rochforte and HYPO wasted duplication of effort (Two months of hard work before HYPO had their own set.), that would have allowed the Americans to read in February what they read in late April.
Then there was the problem of ABDA and lack of USN / RN trust engendered there. With ABDA's total collapse and the RN's own shameful behavior (^^^) pulling out before the Battle of the Java Sea, things between the two "allied navies" became "correct and cold". So, is this really another thing that one should bring up? And does one really want to discuss the MARU codes and their history and the real fact that the codes were simple two stage ciphers easy to crack, that once again the Americans cracked independent of the British and at about the same time? The codes the RN section of the FECB broke were not primary to a desperate USN in early 1942 that was fighting for its life and was the main service attacking JN-25B, not the British; who had neither the listening stations within range, nor the resources in the combat area after the Japanese chased them out of the Pacific and Indian Oceans all the way to the east coast of Africa where FECB finally wound up along with Somerville and the Royal Navy. Look, it was actually the Australians who did most of the work claimed above. Eric Nave was after all RAN.
The Chicago Tribune story was like the Congressman and the details about US subs; it happened. And no the Japanese did not notice about the code penetrations because a hullabaloo was never raised about the Tribune Story. Roosevelt was advised to leave it alone (Wilson Brown earned his pay.), and the Japanese missed it.
Does one want the whole sorry RTL history about the failed RN effort to really make a difference early, when they could have and when it was needed the most?
There is a reason the United States Navy cut the British out of Pacific operations after ABDA (^^^^). It was apparently a good one until Churchill straightened things out by firing the people, who needed to be sacked, and making things right between London and Washington after all this above happened... Of course that was late 1943. By then the damage was done. And so was the RN.
Notes: The FECB was chased out Hong Kong in 1939, then out of Singapore in late December 1941. The RAF and British Army sections went to New Delhi, India. The RN section holed up in Colombo, Ceylon until the 1st Air Fleet bombed them out of there in April 1942.
They fled with Somerville and the RN to East Africa and wound up in Kenya at a place called Kilindini. There they did work on a farmed out and forwarded basis from spillover and forwarded messages that they received from Allied listening posts from SWAPOA and the Central Pacific. They were by then reduced to an useful adjunct tool, not a primary contributor, as the Australians and Canadians had become to America's Pacific war effort.
That's the truth of it as hard as it is to swallow. No judgment here, it just was the way it happened.
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TTL, some of this may be avoided, since all Cast personnel were evacuated aboard the sub tenders, when OTL many were left behind... Where they'd end up, IDK, but Oz wouldn't be out of the question.
As for not flying recon "cover", that is such an obvious risk of blowing the source... It leaves me speechless.
Had that been done in '39 or '40, the Pacific wouldn't have been quite the fiasco it was. Which is another TL entirely.
Am I right to understand that's the movement cypher, or not? I understood Hypo was reading that throughout 1942.
I've seen that designation, but never seen it attached to a specific usage, so, would that have been known as the "'maru' code" in Blair? AIUI, that wasn't broken (or read clear) until Jan '43. When it was, Sub Force sinkings did go up, very appreciably.
as for there never being a "hullabaloo" in the States,
YES the Establishment tries to hush it up but not before there was Grand Jury called and further publicity including radio comments.
The original leak was bad enough though. Hard to Miss this
and actually the Japanese did notice
... in August 42 the the IJN changed their call sign methodology and made other changes because they knew the Americans had warning of MI
(though as I said the changes were badly designed and implemented)
I know some historians even attribute the heavy USN naval losses at the 'Canal to a reduction in the warning from the code breakers
e.g. MacPherson "The Compromise of US Navy Cryptanalysis After the Battle of Midway." Intelligence and National Security 2, no. 2 (Apr. 1987): 320-323.
but personally I've not had a chance read all the material or to evaluate that opinion.
Rebuttal.
Might want to add, that I* read McPherson's article before this latest write up. More likely paths to Japanese discovery and earlier (because Johnson was grand juried in late August 1942: too late for WATCHTOWER), was Wavell (^^^^) in Burma and or the New Zealanders who again blew op-sec around the time of Milne Bay. Shrug. It appears the Japanese knew PURPLE was compromised, because they broadcast that information in August 1942 and FRUMEL and HYPO picked it up and noticed it. But they did nothing out of their ordinary JN-25 code change-over which was scheduled once every three months and was due to happen anyway when WATCHTOWER kicked off. I don't see anything presented (^^^^) sufficient to change the current historic consensus. The Japanese did not know and they did not act on JN-25 out of the ordinary as the USN did when Walker was caught. QED.
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