ADMIRAL YAMAMOTOS PREDICTIONS ABOUT US INDUSTRIAL CAPACITY

Japanese Admiral Yamamoto had attended a US college [ I think Harvard ] and spent some time in

the USA in the 1920s. He was well aware of the industrial might and capacity of the United States.

He said if we dont destroy the US pacific fleet in the first six months of the war [ww 2] we will lose

the war because of the huge industrial capacity of the USA.We held them at the Battle of the Coral

Sea and defeated them decisively at Midway. The new essex fleet carriers starting showing up in the

pacific in may, 1943 after we had lost the lexington,yorktown, hornet,wasp, etc and the enterprise was

left holding the line in the solomon islands / Qualdalcanal capmpaign.

To the contrary Admiral Karl Donitz thought he had sunk most of our merchant fleet by the summer of

1942. He had never been to the USA [ to my knowledge] and didnt understand the USAs capability

to exceed ship the ship losses incurred by his U boats and the rapid producing of new escort vessels

and technology.

gusord

 

Yamamoto and Donitz were not the only ones surprised. The US was, too! But the US had the managerial skills to go along with resources and mass-production technology, paying close attention to quality control, too. The hierarchies of science, business, and government co-operated to a greater extent than any of the other belligerent nations, too. That was a seemingly unbeatable combination.

 

Well said CTB. Mmmm, refined knowledge. ..Could you expound?..I was thinking the US had so many danger free ports/shipyards, plus Fords' assembly line mentality, and were basically unperturbed by the wars haunting our Allies overseas....Or maybe you just said that...

 

This is quite true, but I believe when he was on the Boston campus area he learned to play "poker", a purely American game at which he excelled. If I am not mistaken when recalled to Japan he also traveled east to west by rail before boarding a ship to Japan. This cross country trip would have impressed Yamamoto with the size and production capabilities of the US as no "book learning" could have. If he went from the east coast to Europe and then home to Japan by sailing east, I've not heard that.

 

Right-o OP, he really did have a grasp of America's potential, and industrial capacity. I have never seen which way he went back to Japan though, did he travel east to west by train, and then a ship across the Pacific, or would he have gone west to east across the Atlantic and then home to Japan? I would think he went by train as I read somewhere that he was impressed with the American scenery and friendliness of its citizens. Just don't know for sure is all.

 

re: Industrial capacity---Can't remember where I read it, but part of the amazing production of America was in COST EFFICIENCY. That is, I remember some stats on production of, I think it was, 40mm Bofors cannon. Let's say the time and cost per unit was "X" when they started...in a year the cost per unit dropped to some 1/5 "X". A similar study of German equivalents had the cost per unit drop to, say, 3/4 "X". This type of efficiency was rampant in American industry. Thus we could produce maybe four times as much stuff for the same cost as our enemies. Obviously war is very expensive to the national economies of the belligerents, and ol' McNamara's "More Bang for the Buck" ethos (from a later era, admittedly) really paid off for the Allies.

 

The problem for the bean counter from Ford (McNamara) was the long stated premise, he knew the cost of everything, and the value of nothing.

 

Somehow I recall that Hitler didn´t worry too much about declaring war to the US as he believed he´d have a year to win before the US enters the war in Europe at all and by then it´s all over as Germany has won everything? So whatever Dönitz thought would not matter to Hitler either in 41-42?

 

I also seem to remember Isoruku Yamamoto describing the brand new battlewagons 'Yamato' and 'Musashi' as "....as useful for modern warfare as a Samurai sword."

"The Peacock" ignored his own advice for Midway, basing his fleet around the behemoths, and failing to concentrate the one class of ship that could have turned that fiasco into a decisive victory, fully capable of bringing the U.S. to the conference table.

The carriers present at Coral Sea should have been at Midway, (Shoho, Shokaku, Zuikaku), and the lighter carriers that went North to Aleutian waters should have been at Midway as well. Concentration of force would have spelt certain victory, with enough aircraft on hand to reduce Midway's defences AND strike Fletcher and Spruance simultaniously.

I don't want to even THINK about the possibility of all three United States Carriers going to the bottom. Even a 'one for one' trade would have worked to Japan's advantage. Yamammoto would have gotten another twelve months at least of unrestricted operations with the Kudo Batai, and who knows what the US Navy would have done at this critical juncture of the world war....

Thank Christ Isoruku ignored his own advice. He always did have a tendency for elaborate battle plans that spread his assets far and wide. The United States concentrated their resources, and with a bit of luck, carried the day.

 

V-Boat... >The carriers present at Coral Sea should have been at Midway, (Shoho, Shokaku, Zuikaku), and the lighter carriers that went North to Aleutian waters should have been at Midway as well. Concentration of force would have spelt certain victory, with enough aircraft on hand to reduce Midway's defences AND strike Fletcher and Spruance simultaniously. I don't want to even THINK about the possibility of all three United States Carriers going to the bottom.<

First off, the Shoho was SUNK at Coral Sea, so was unavailable. Shokaku's flight deck was so torn up from Coral Sea damage as to be unserviceable, so SHE wasn't going anywhere. Zuikaku was untouched at Coral Sea, so DEFINITELY shoulda-oughta been sent to Midway. However, the whole CARDIV's air group was hacked to ribbons, so BOTH carriers were held back to regroup. "Admiral Furashita" (nom de plume) thinks that Zuikaku should have sailed with the Kido Butai to Midway as an "extra deck", maybe even a dedicated "fighter carrier" that could service the CAP over the fleet without interruption of normal operations on the decks of the other carriers.

I am pretty sure that if the Aleutian carriers and the Coral Sea carriers went with Kido Butai to Midway (and we had a reasonable estimate of their carrier strength through intelligence), Admiral Nimitz would have decided NOT to engage them. In the real instance, the Americans had a fourth "unsinkable carrier" in Midway, and about the same number of attack planes as the four carriers of the Japanese. And since we had surprise on our side we could take the REASONABLE gamble that we could eke out a victory under the circumstances. *IF* the Japanese had had seven+ carriers, it would have been foolish to confront them, and little to be gained. Midway in Japanese hands would have been virtually worthless and easily doomed without a constant Japanese carrier presence (and there was no way THAT was going to happen with the fuel situation and needs elsewhere). And SO WHAT if Midway became Japanese---it's too far to Hawaii for bombers (CERTAINLY couldn't be escorted by fighters) to harass and return, and Midway could hold few aircraft anyway. We could raid/STARVE/THIRST them out easily. A US sub surfacing at night and shelling Midway's water tanks or hangars would do damage all out of proportion to the effort.

 

Yamamoto clearly misunderstood the American mindset, thereby leading to the greatest blunder of any high level commander of WWII : the attack on Pearl Harbor, which, ironically was planned as much for its hoped for psychological rather than material effect. Whether Yamamoto knew it or not (doubtful), there was no need to attack Pearl to gain a 6 month window of opportunity (Yamamoto's official justification for Operation Hawaii) - the Pacific Fleet wasn't going to go anywhere far from Pearl for at least that length of time, due to a lack of supply train vessels. We had already written off the Philippines as indefensible because of that limitation (at least by the Fleet, if not by the hoped for performance of their B17s), so we were hardly in a position to affect those Japanese Southeast Asian operations which the Pearl harbor attack was, amongst other things, supposed to guarantee. Considering the extent to which Japan had good spies in Hawaii scouting the US Navy, it's quite an indictment of Yamamoto's capabilities that he made no effort to determine whether the Pacific Fleet could have, in fact, sallied forth to meet the Japanese Navy. Lack of consideration of basic logistics was a "feature" of Japanese planning, the worst example imaginable being Yamamoto's plan to invade Hawaii in late '42. Even the Japanese General Staff knew that was insane, and told him so,which left Yamamoto unmoved by their simple and irrefutable logic. The Midway disaster ended all that nonsense. Coupled with Yamamoto's horrible Midway planning, and the recently exposed faulty planning of Operation Hawaii. it's difficult to imagine why any enemy would not pray that Yamamoto was on the other side. His performance in WWII was the worst of the worst.