What really happened at Prokhorovka??

They aren't, really. Their a mishmash of incoherency and rambling illogicalness, when they aren't factually incorrect. I'm sure anyone else on this forum would agree.

Those are assertions. Now lets look at your evidence.

ASW.

I do. What you transparently don't know is that the Japanese didn't. Mark Parillo goes into this extensively in "The Japanese Mechant Marine in WWII". Parillo identifies inadequate Japanese ASW tactics and technology as the most important reason behind the annihilation of the Japanese merchant marine and the subsequent starvation of the Japanese war machine. He notes that the Japan failed to put more than the most minimal pre-war effort into the protection of their maritime commerce, despite being an island nation dependent on seaborne supply, leaving them impossibly behind in ASW technology and convoy tactics once the war began and continued to devote only the most minimal attention, ignoring the recommendations of the experts who identified and recommended otherwise.

His argument ignores two things of which you also seem unaware. Yes, I know you bring up decisive battle, but you seem to not know why...

1. The Japanese were perfectly capable of convoy defense when they needed it. They had the tools in that their mostly French and later German sonars were fully the equal of at least British sets. Their depth charges and naval artillery ASW rounds (Did you know they had those?) were suitable for combating subs which they expected to do in shallow waters. When they got into deep water with both their ASW forces and subs they got into trouble.

2. This gives a more accurate reason why the IJN did not invest in ASW from the start. The ultimate reason given in those arguments is cited as psychological or cultural. Nonsense. The IJN was well aware of U-boat warfare since they had conducted ASW operations in WW I in the Mediterranean. What changed for them in WW II was that they faced a quandary. They could either to build a battle fleet or they could convoy escort in their fight against the USN. They lacked the resources to do both at the same time though they had the tools and the know how. They chose the doctrine of "decisive battle and short war" and gambled they could fight such a war, sacrificing up to half their merchant marine if necessary assuming WWI style U-boat performance. They were pleasantly surprised when the US sub force proved ineffective and misapplied during 1942 and 1943. They were less happy when their battle fleet proved unable to force a quick decision. Of course by 1943 when they realized their deliberate gamble had failed, they shifted resources into ASW and it became a losing race in a long war they had not intended to fight.

This was a consequence of the Japanese focus on "decisive battle" to the exclusion of all else. The navy they constructed was extremely "top heavy," with considerable front-line strength, but lacking the escort forces to back it up. This lack of priority is shown organizationally. Prior to the war there was actually no one organization within the Naval General Staff responsible for convoy escort. Instead it was a secondary - or even tertiary - responsibility for four separate sections. This inevitably meant that it was a priority for none of them. The few offices tasked with convoy and escort management handled it only on a part time basis, and with no central organization taking ownership of ASW as a priority, Japanese practice and technology never advanced beyond a very basic state.

There was such an organization. But once again it was subservient to the doctrine and economics that the IJN had to face.

Ramirez allows that the argument about civilian oversight is only part of the story. The relative material position of the Royal Navy and the merchant marine of the United Kingdom prior to both wars was distinctly superior to that of the Japan in 1941, meaning that the British had breathing room to make and learn from mistakes that the Japanese simply couldn’t afford. Moreover, the Japanese strategic class believed that any war that could not be won by short, decisive battles simply could not be won; there was no point in dedicating resources to a long war when victory under such circumstances was impossible.

I point out sourly that WW II showed that not even the RN was good at ASW, despite their "so-called preparations" pre-war that were massively miniscule compared to the magnitude of the threat.

The real problem in this is that ASW is a massively demanding affair, as the British and Americans found out in the Atlantic. It requires a confluence of advanced sub-hunting technology, sufficient numbers of escorts, and well trained escort crews. Even the Allies also lacked in these areas pre-war, but they still put a lot more effort into it than the Japanese did, and - most importantly - they had the industrial advantage to produce a vast quantity of shipping to make up for their mistakes until they could get it right.

Numbers and crews, you got that part right. You forgot German incompetence at sea, but what the hey? Not everybody gets to fight a tyro like Doenitz and gets time to learn.

The Japanese had no such industrial margin, but in a wonderful twist of fate for them, they got that margin elsewhere. Due to BuOrd's epic bungling, American submarines were nearly toothless for the first years of the war. The Japanese utterly squandered this grace period, becoming complacent and making no improvements to their woeful escort practice, and then by the time sinkings skyrocketed it was far too late for any reform to work. Even then, they continued to divert resources away from the escort command to Combined Fleet and its continual readiness to wage the decisive battle, so the escort forces always had whatever leavings the battlefleet felt it could part with.

I AM AN EXPERT ON THAT SUBJECT.

In the end, it wasn't that the Japanese made a conscious decision to neglect ASW as it was a side effect of their utter focus on the decisive fleet battle. The Japanese military simply didn't think about economic matters much at all and when those few whose job it was to think about those matters raised their (very serious) concerns, their realism was generally ignored. For example, when one of the IJNs few economic experts basically tried to explain to another fleet officer demanding an impossible shipping requirement that logistics just doesn't work that way, he was told; "shut up, you're hurting my brain." This about sums up the amount of intellectual rigor with which the IJN approached the ASW problem and made the subsequent results predictable.

And you would be wrong.

Whether Japan wins or losses the Coral Sea doesn't affect any of this.

I explain how Australia fits starting here. Read it. It takes about 20 pages and includes everything from the geography and infrastructure of Australia to the naval war that occurred because of it and why. You have no idea how the lack of a good road from Alice Springs to Darwin shapes a naval war? Why Coral Sea happens can be traced to Menzies.
Okay, and? The Central Pacific Campaign could peel it just as well as the South Pacific did. What's more, the Japanese failed to leverage those air perimeters into anything meaningful against the American fleet OTL, with American submarines routinely slipping past them and American carrier groups routinely smashing and isolating them for the subsequent invasion force to come in, so I don't see why winning at the Coral Sea would suddenly change that.

You got to attrit the IJN. If you are the inferior USN and you are still late 1943 to early 1944 before you can blue water fight the IJN on equal terms and your most effective ally and westernmost base is threatened by IJN/IJA plans like FS...

Midway wasn't guarding any sort of SLOC. And the islands the Japanese aimed to seize with the Coral Sea only guarded the Hawaiian-Australian direct SLOCs. Even had those islands been captured and that SLOC severed, the direct Pacific Coast-Australian SLOC, which ran further to the south and east, would still be open.

Midway at its position was ultimately untenable for the IJN. BUT it could be a forward recon/raid base until retaken. You cannot run things through Pearl Harbor if the enemy has his version of Watchtower.

About the Australian SLOCS.

Ever hear of the Sydney Raid? How about the aborted IJN submarine campaign off the east Australian coast?

No? As I noted, the Pacific Coast-Australian SLOC would still be open and the logistics for the Central Pacific Campaign would be unaffected as it ran through Hawaii, not Australia.

And as I pointed out, RTL US reactions to IJN efforts against HAWAII and the Australian east coast shows the converse. IOW, the USN does not agree with you.
Which would be nice, if not for the fact that Hawaii proved to be sufficient as the main base for the submarine offensive throughout the war.

Hawaiian based subs refueled at Midway so they could reach their east China sea patrol stations and have adequate time on patrol. Perth based subs were able to reach the south China sea, so guess what? Your statements are in error.

It's an interesting contradiction in this paragraph. You say you can't hold the sea, then proceed to describe exactly how one holds the sea. Nonetheless, none of this spiel changes that the fact the Central Pacific Campaign would cut the connection between the Home Islands and Southeast Asia just as well as the Phillipine Campaign did. The main reason the Solomon Campaign was mounted was because it was the only place the US had the resources to go on the offensive while it otherwise building up for the main thrust across the Pacific. The Americans didn't even expect the Japanese to fight as hard as they did for it and waste so many of their resources trying to defend it. The American planners expected they'd have to kill the Japanese Rikkos with the Central Pacific Campaign when it got off the ground, so the fact the Japanese committed a bunch of them to the Solomons proved to be a pleasant surprise.

Use of the sea is a lot different from holding it. Example; subs.

The Central Pacific drive does not cut jack diddle unless you take either Taiwan or the Philippines because strategic bombing cannot throttle a SLOC. You need tactical air and a lot of it. And as the geography dictates, so you go where those airfields can interdict the China coastwise trade.

upload_2019-9-1_9-23-19.png


They could have done that OTL. Even after the losses of '42 and '43, they had more then enough aircraft to try and wage an ASW campaign. The problem was they didn't, because they didn't understand ASW tactics. American submarines in 1942, '43, and '44 routinely sailed past the islands and coastal sea lanes completely unmolested by the Japanese (and, once the early technical problems were fixed, to utterly slaughter Japanese merchantmen). All the sort of chokepoints in which competent ASW should have made no go zones for submarines instead became dying grounds for Japanese merchant ships. Nothing about the Coral Sea changed any of this.

AT NIGHT.

So did the Germans until the British got airborne radar.

Coral Sea gave the US Perth, so yes it did change the shape of the naval war.

Except as I noted above, we could. The key staging ground for the Central Pacific Campaign was Hawaii, not Australia. The industrial capacity to build-up that logistical apparatus and the overwhelming naval force it supported is in the Continental US. The ultimate effectiveness of the Submarine campaign was made possible by woeful Japanese incompetence at ASW. The outcome of the Coral Sea affected none of these.

See how you get to the Philippine Islands and finally cut the South China Sea? You really do not understand what happened in the Pacific War.
 
His argument ignores two things of which you also seem unaware. Yes, I know you bring up decisive battle, but you seem to not know why...

1. The Japanese were perfectly capable of convoy defense when they needed it. They had the tools in that their mostly French and later German sonars were fully the equal of at least British sets. Their depth charges and naval artillery ASW rounds (Did you know they had those?) were suitable for combating subs which they expected to do in shallow waters. When they got into deep water with both their ASW forces and subs they got into trouble.

Again, we have you posting links which do not support what you say nor contradicts either me or Parillo. Here is everything the first one has to say about Japanese ASW:

“Japanese antisubmarine defenses never approached the sophistication of Allied defenses in the Atlantic. The Japanese Navy did not even establish an antisubmarine warfare school until March 1944. Convoying was adopted rather late in the war and too few ships and planes were assigned to escort duty. Small carriers that would have been ideal for escort were used as aircraft ferries instead. Japanese depth charges were too small and were usually set too shallow, at least until one of the stupidest men to ever darken the doors of Congress blurted out in a press conference why American submarines were able to evade counterattack. The Japanese did make effective use of minefields and developed a working airborne magnetic anomaly detector (Jikitanchiki), but the former were partially negated by new Allied mine detecting sonar, and the latter was limited in detection range and never available in adequate numbers. The Jikitanchiki was not very sensitive, requiring the plane to fly no more than 40 feet above the surface.“

And:

"Japanese antisubmarine tactics were primitive early in the war and did not improve nearly fast enough. Ironically, the Japanese squadron in the Mediterranean during the First World War had gained extensive experience in convoy escort, but the lessons were forgotten and the experience squandered after the war."

And here is everything the second link has to say about Japanese sonar:

"Thus a nondirectional hydrophone could be used for the return signal, avoiding the need to pause at each bearing to wait for the return. Such sonar was fitted to American submarines towards the end of the war, which allowed them to penetrate minefields protecting the Sea of Japan. This was a considerable shock to the Japanese, who had assumed that the Sea of Japan was a safe haven for their merchant shipping."

In no way do either of these quotes support your claims that Japanese sonar was the equal of the British. The first links observation that Japanese ASW experience in WW1 was squandered jives much more readily with my assertion then yours. I also can't help but fail to notice your strawmanning: I never said the Japanese lacked depth charges or sonar. What I said was that the depth charges and sonar they had were inadequate and their employment of what they did have cripplingly poor.

2. This gives a more accurate reason why the IJN did not invest in ASW from the start. The ultimate reason given in those arguments is cited as psychological or cultural. Nonsense. The IJN was well aware of U-boat warfare since they had conducted ASW operations in WW I in the Mediterranean. What changed for them in WW II was that they faced a quandary. They could either to build a battle fleet or they could convoy escort in their fight against the USN. They lacked the resources to do both at the same time though they had the tools and the know how. They chose the doctrine of "decisive battle and short war" and gambled they could fight such a war, sacrificing up to half their merchant marine if necessary assuming WWI style U-boat performance. They were pleasantly surprised when the US sub force proved ineffective and misapplied during 1942 and 1943. They were less happy when their battle fleet proved unable to force a quick decision. Of course by 1943 when they realized their deliberate gamble had failed, they shifted resources into ASW and it became a losing race in a long war they had not intended to fight.

Well, to start with, your provided link is a Q&A board where any rando can spout off an opinion and not a widely accredited and acclaimed academic work like I pointed too. Even then, the most upvoted and thorough answer, which extensively cites their sources to a mini-bibliography of academic texts, totally contradicts all your assertions and supports mine. Again, I marvel at your inability to actually back-up your arguments with any sort of academic, well-sourced work that actually says what you are claiming.

There was such an organization.

Oh? There was such an organization? Name it then.


Again, you post a link that says what I said: the Japanese obsession with decisive warfare caused them to neglect escort warfare. Funny how every single link you've thus far posted to anything remotely academic (as opposed to your own rambling) supports my argument and not a single one supports yours.

I point out sourly that WW II showed that not even the RN was good at ASW, despite their "so-called preparations" pre-war that were massively miniscule compared to the magnitude of the threat.

Given how poorly you've supported your arguments, appealing to yourself is like... I don't know, trying to cite David Irving in a argument on the Holocaust or something.

Numbers and crews, you got that part right. You forgot German incompetence at sea, but what the hey? Not everybody gets to fight a tyro like Doenitz and gets time to learn.

The Germans were awesomely competent when it came to submarine warfare at the start of the war and this is reflected by the enormous tonnage losses the Anglo-Americans suffered in 1939-'42. In the end, it took the British years to adapt and from a higher tactical and technological starting position then what the Japanese had... but unlike the Japanese, they still adapted. As I pointed out, the Japanese also had years to learn to adapt thanks to American incompetence in things like torpedos, but unlike the British they completely squandered it.

Doenitz’s main failing was a lack of moral integrity rather then the lack of intellectual integrity which afflicted the IJN.


The crass ignorance, inability to back-up your arguments with more then a "your wrong", rejection of well supported and extensively sourced academic studies with no adequate rebuttal, and the provisioning articles which blatantly contradict your assertions all suggest your really a intellectual lightweight and the farthest cry from an expert there is. This can be seen by how nothing in this link actually contradicts any of my statements and considerable amounts which support it, such as the interviewed Rear Admiral discussing problems of inefficiency caused by the divided control of escort ships.

I explain how Australia fits starting here. Read it. It takes about 20 pages and includes everything from the geography and infrastructure of Australia to the naval war that occurred because of it and why. You have no idea how the lack of a good road from Alice Springs to Darwin shapes a naval war? Why Coral Sea happens can be traced to Menzies.

Again, citing your own poorly conceived and supported arguments is not something an expert does and you have continuously failed to support your base assertion that the Americans.

You got to attrit the IJN. If you are the inferior USN and you are still late 1943 to early 1944 before you can blue water fight the IJN on equal terms and your most effective ally and westernmost base is threatened by IJN/IJA plans like FS...

Again, I like how your own link states that Operation FS would not be able to force Australia out of the war and it would take a follow-up invasion that Japanese generals themselves (while they did not rule out an attempt) regarded as logistically impossible to knock them out of the war. And attriting the IJN will still happen, just in the Marshall's and Gilbert's like American planners expected to happen. By late-'43/early-'44, the US won't be blue water fighting the IJN on just equal terms, but on superior ones.

Midway at its position was ultimately untenable for the IJN. BUT it could be a forward recon/raid base until retaken. You cannot run things through Pearl Harbor if the enemy has his version of Watchtower.

The incoherency of your position is abstounding. Somehow Midway is simultaneously an untenable position and a forward logistics base for operations against Hawaii on the scale of fucking Australia? And somehow the tiny pair of Midway Islands is going to support Japanese naval and air forces large enough to seriously interdict American shipping in Hawaii, but the network of islands the US seized across the Central Pacific, many of which were significantly larger then Midway Islands, can't support American naval and air forces to mess with the surrounding Japanese SLOCs? Make some goddamn sense, will you.

About the Australian SLOCS.

Ever hear of the Sydney Raid? How about the aborted IJN submarine campaign off the east Australian coast?

And did any of these actually sever the Australian SLOCs? Did they even come close?

And as I pointed out, RTL US reactions to IJN efforts against HAWAII and the Australian east coast shows the converse. IOW, the USN does not agree with you.

Prove it. Cite actual documents and academic research which says that American warplanners viewed the loss of the Australian base not just as a setback, but as something which would outright lose them the war. Because so far you've backed up your claims with jack. Put up or shut-up.

Hawaiian based subs refueled at Midway so they could reach their east China sea patrol stations and have adequate time on patrol. Perth based subs were able to reach the south China sea, so guess what? Your statements are in error.

The US did indeed establish a submarine refueling base at Midway, but I don't see anything suggesting it was absolutely vital. Nor do I see anything preventing the US from re-establishing said base when they inevitably retake the islands, assuming (A) they lose the carrier battle of Midway and (B) the Japanese are able to execute a successful invasion of the island.

The Central Pacific drive does not cut jack diddle unless you take either Taiwan or the Philippines because strategic bombing cannot throttle a SLOC. You need tactical air and a lot of it. And as the geography dictates, so you go where those airfields can interdict the China coastwise trade.

View attachment 484747

Remarkable as to how you talk so much about geography yet display astonishing geographic ignorance here. Here's what we get when centering that circle on the Central Pacific Campaign's penultimate* objective of the Rykyu's (or at least as centered as I could get it via eyeballing... it's the upper right circle, in case I need to make that clear):

ruCth18.png


Oh shit son, looks like it covers the shipping routes Japanese vessels would have to take to get from Southeast Asia to the home islands just as well! And given that the Ryukyu's were regarded as large enough to field enough land-based aircraft for the support of the largest naval invasion ever planned, that means could easily handle the requisite number of anti-ship aircraft needed to interdict Japanese shipping from Southeast Asia, never mind all the submarines!

Also, the Japanese would be quite surprised to learn that strategic bombers can't throttle SLOCs, given that B-29 dropped mines were what throttled their SLOCs to Korea and Manchuria and even helped gut ferry traffic between the home islands.

*The ultimate objective being the Japanese home islands themselves.

AT NIGHT.

In June of 1944 four Combined Fleet destroyers attempted to escort six troop ships to the Marianas. Attacking in broad daylight American submarines sank five of the troopships. As if to highlight how atrocious their understanding of ASW warfare was, the Japanese convoy commander was commended for getting at least one of the transports through! [Parillo, "The Japanese Merchant Marine in WWII," p.120] In case it's unclear, this is atrocious escort performance. It was also the norm for the IJN's convoy performance.

You really do not understand what happened in the Pacific War.

Pot, kettle's calling you!
 
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Should note that the IJA Naval forces took ASW more seriously than the IJN

I can believe that. The army winding up being better at ASW then the navy sounds precisely like the sort of dysfunctionalism that plagued the Japanese armed forces.
 
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I am thinking that the dilution would have been minimal.

The Waffen SS. like a lot of elite units, had an extremely effective internal training program that delivered first class training to conscript and volunteer alike. Though volunteers were preferred, anybody passing through that the training would get very high quality training by veteran instructors and large doses of well delivered Espirit du Corps propaganda.

Also, conscripts come in different flavors- and the SS was permitted to get the tastiest. Waffen SS officers and NCOs routinely screened groups of conscripts for capable men and then selected them for transfer to Waffen units. Waffen SS representatives were also allowed to make recruitment pitches to conscripts where capable men who had hidden themselves deep in conscript ranks were encouraged to come forward and volunteer.

Maybe something like: "You are being transferred into a combat unit regardless. Would you rather be in a difficult situation with say the 343 ID on the vast, wintery steppe- or would you rather be in that same situation with Das Reich? Which unit do you think has a better chance of getting out? Our spaces are limited to the best. Think about it... ."

You have to bear in mind that these units would have incurred high losses during the winter campaign (3ed Kharkov) for which see Last Victory (Nipe). One suspects many of the replacements went to the Panzer grenadiers though some (like Wittman) went to the Panzers. Against that there were several months of training and integration. These men would be indoctrinated with a high esprit de corps but they lacked combat experience. Which those who survived Kursk got plenty of. Which explains their performance at the River Mius and 4th Kharkov.

However, as Nipr shows their willingness to fight as hard as they did often incurred very high losses. One uspects many of the replacements would not have survived the summer
 

Deleted member 1487

@ObssesedNuker
Sorry it has taken so long for a response, the forum ate my reply to your last long post to me...so it will be a bit longer until I retype it.
 
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