I have little respect for the IJN's brilliance or for its logistical skills. That said, having the most expensive warship your country has ever produced sitting in harbor, with fueling facilities available, for two days without giving it a fill up before heading north into combat (in a war that Japan still believed it could win) seems to be a stretch even for the loons running the Japanese Navy.
The question has been raised as to how competent the IJN was in refueling the Musashi.
This is not really the question.
Let me quote again from Combined Fleet about the Musashi (in red)
18 April 1943:
Acting on "Ultra" codebreaker's deciphers and authorized by President Roosevelt, 18 Army Air Force P-38s take off from Henderson Field, Guadalcanal, intercept and kill Admiral Yamamoto over Bougainville while his Mitsubishi G4M1 "Betty" bomber is en route from Rabaul to the IJN air base on Ballale. A second G4M1 carrying Yamamoto's Chief of Staff, Vice Admiral Ugaki Matome is also shot down, but Ugaki survives.
23 April 1943:
In the evening, a flying boat arrives, carrying the ashes of Yamamoto and six of his staff officers. Yamamoto's ashes are secretly transferred to the Admiral's sea cabin under the supervision of senior staff officer Captain Kuroshima Kameto (44).
Vice Admiral (later Admiral) Kondo Nobutake (35), the CinC, Second Fleet and the acting CinC, Combined Fleet, arrives for a staff conference with Vice Admiral Ugaki and others.
25 April 1943:
Truk. At 1500, Admiral (Fleet Admiral, posthumously) Koga Mineichi (34)(former CO of ISE) arrives on an "Emily" from Yokosuka, ostensibly for an inspection tour. It is not made public until May that Koga, the former CinC of the little China Area Fleet, is the new CinC of the Combined Fleet.
Here is what happens next.
Koga, Mineichi rushes out by flying boat to personally take over the Combined Fleet.
Now understand that Koga, Mineichi flew from Yokusuka to Chu'uk?
He could have flown back the same way after the change of command and taken Yamamoto's ashes back with him? What happened?
On April 3, 1943 American codebreakers found out that he was flying from Rabaul, New Britain to direct an attack on the Solomon Islands. So they blasted him out of the sky and called it “Operation Vengeance.”
Still, he was promised the Musashi. So they recovered what was left of Yamamoto, cremated it, and chucked them in the cabin reserved for him. Aboard Musashi, that is.
Because she had cost so much, Japan didn’t want her overseas, preferring her for local defense. But as the tide of war turned and they lost more vessels, they had no choice. So when the Allies attacked Japanese forces on Attu Island (part of Alaska) from May 11 to 30, the Musashi sailed to the North Pacific to teach the Americans a lesson.
Except that she couldn’t find them. So she sailed back to Kure to drop off Yamamoto’s ashes for the state funeral. Then she made her way to Attu to give the Allies a piece of her mind – by which time the Americans had already secured their own territory.
Now, then... A comment has been made about the loons running Combined Fleet.
Well,
Ugaki, Matome "The Golden Mask" made darned sure that probably, the most competent of the senior surviving Japanese admirals;
Kondo, Nobutake, got Kimmeled in that "bizarre" and that is the only way to describe it, "officers call" of the collective Combined Fleet High Command". Maybe the fiasco of First and Second Guadalcanal had something to do with it. It was all Yamamoto's fault, but the Japanese admiral had just been "martyred" and someone had to take the blame for the operational disaster that was Guadalcanal.
Koga went out of his way to ruffle shuffle Combined Fleet as a consequence to shake some life back into the force.
Koga has sometimes been characterized as a cautious, conservative officer, but the plans he was formulating at the time of his death suggest otherwise. He planned an aggressive counteroffensive in the
Aleutians that was foiled by the loss to explosion (probably from mishandling of
munitions) of the battleship
Mutsu and crippling by American
submarines of the
light carrier Hiyo. He then began reorganizing Combined Fleet along American lines, as task forces built around carriers, and organized a land-based air fleet to work in coordination with the carrier forces. He planned to conserve his forces to inflict maximum damage on the Americans when they closed in for the kill.
I am of the opinion that the scratch sortie of the forces built around Zuikaku and Shōkaku and Musashi was the initial germ of an idea we will developed in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, a full year later.
However it was supposed to work, bear in mind that Musashi carried Yamamoto's ashes back. There was ceremonial transfer involved, a simultaneous Pearl Harbor type command dislocation in progress, and...
... That said, having the most expensive warship your country has ever produced sitting in harbor, with fueling facilities available, for two days without giving it a fill up before heading north into combat (in a war that Japan still believed it could win) seems to be a stretch even for the loons running the Japanese Navy.
Not for me. (^^^) The "loons" running the IJN turned HIJMS Musashi in the middle of a war INTO A FUNERAL BARGE and burned up a huge amount of fuel oil convoying a box of about 3 kgs of mortal remains.
About 4100 nautical miles and a whole two weeks? What about a sortie from Chu'Uk? Try 2,900 nautical miles and 8 days? Of course the flattops have to run out and rendezvous at sea with the Musashi SAG task group, but that seems to have not bothered the IJN previously. WHY have everybody head for Kure?
It is only a guess, but I suspect that aside from the ceremonial razzle-dazzle, the IJN section at IGHQ wanted KOGA to head up the revenge against the Americans.
Then the bumbling team of Kincaid, Rockwell, Dewitt (A real incompetent and racist bastard), Landrum and Brown managed to take Attu in two weeks. See my previous remarks regarding Yamasaki.
I do not see the situation improving for the Japanese as to circumstances that will improve the odds against them.
