Anyone interested in some intellectual exercise?

Now for something a little different,

We have spent a fair bit of time on convoy escorts and ASW options, but little on what they are to protect. Our pre-war merchant fleet is what it is and there is nothing we can do about that except make do. We do however seem to have perhaps a million tonnes of production per year that we can fashion to our taste. I've delved into the Pacific War Online Enclopedia Data base for this list of what Japan did build.

On first impression not an inspiring selection and considerable confusion in building priorities to my mind. Far too many classes of ships and many were poorly built. It seems they started building decent hulls at first, switched to low quality hulls mid war and switched back to quality hulls late war. I would suggest picking one or two designs in each type (Cargo/Tanker) that seem the best mix and stick to them though out to get some commonality and economy of scale. A fair number of the Cargo ships were Coal powered (to save oil I guess) and my be an option worth pursuing. Tankers are all oil powered. The greatest number of both cargo and tanker hulls built were small (under 1,000 tonnes) and all Japanese types were smaller than American Liberty/Victory class ships.

Tankers

Class Tonnage Length Speed(max/cruise) Powerplant Range (cruise speed) Number built Total tonnage

1TL 9,977 526' 18.5 knots/15 knots Turbine 10,000 23 229,500

1TM 6,400 416' 15/12.5 knots Turbine 7,000 32 204,750

1TS 1,020 213' 12/10 knots Oil 3,700 8 8,000

2AT 6,600 448' 13/9.5 knots Turbine 4,000 44 290,500
(Converted 2A cargo ships with inserts in holds-not efficent according to PWOE)

2TEd 870 210' 9/7 knots Diesel 4,000 138 120,000
( PWOE- Slow, fragile and easy prey to submarine attack)

2TL 9,950 576' 15/13 knots Turbine 8,000 28 278,500

2TM 2,850 324' 11/9 knots Turbine 5,000 34 97,000
(PWOE- Slow, fragile, easy prey to submarine attack)

3TA 7,200 423' 13/? knots Turbine 4,000 1 7,000
(Late war)

3TE 870 210' 11/9.5 knots Diesel 2,000 11 9,500
(PWOE- Slow, fragile, Easy prey and unreliable)

3TL 9,961 516' 19/16 knots Turbine 8,000 3 30,000
(late war)

I favor the 1TL class for Fleet Oilers, with us building perhaps 1or 2 per quarter (more if needed). It would also make a good hull for CVE's should decide to build in quantity.

If we concentrate on one class of tanker we could produce perhaps 150+ hulls with the steel allocated to the historical builds.
I would suggest the 1TM for this. Decent speed, 418' deck for MAC conversions, reliable, 7,000 mile range and availble now.

We of course could design our own.

Will post Cargo ships in a later post.

 

That seems a reasonable assessment, though it does leave us building two types. (A "Cadillac" fleet oiler and an "economy" merchant tanker.) We will also need additional troop ships, grain ships, general cargo ships, and a few fleet auxiliaries. At a guess, I would think the grain ships are the highest priority there, since we've got to import rice from Indochina, at least, and perhaps other places.

I'd lean away from importing it from China right now so that we can avoid creating shortages and the associated graft and ill will. Indochina is a much longer round trip, but they do have surpluses. Can we still hope to import rice from the Philippines, in spite of the oil embargo? It might help to build good will on that quarter if we continue to do business with them.

In other news, I'm slowly building a database of our merchant shipping. It will take time, as it's a large endeavor, but it will help. I have a comprehensive list of our extent fleet destroyers. (Lord do I wish we had more.) And I have at least brief lists of all our larger combatants built through the end of the war.

I'm still having trouble with civilian dockyards. There was a thread on the yahoo NavWarGames group about WWI era British dockyards overseas and it was suggested that there was a complete list in Jane's, but I can't find it in either the 1939 or the 1942 edition.

Sincerely,
NS.

 

As Japan built 10 different class's of Tanker during the war, reducing it to only 2 seem a tremendous saving. I suspect we will need to replace at least some Fleet Oilers over time, so we should be prepared with a design. Building 3-4 a year seem prudent and of course we could build more if we have to.

Plan to deal with cargo/bulk carriers in another post, only 13 class's of those!

 

Well said, Herr Ulrich. My salute to those young men as well!

 

it does leave us building two types. (A "Cadillac" fleet oiler and an "economy" merchant tanker.)

If we can make do with just two types of tankers, I'd say we're doing well!

 

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Thanks, LWD. Great links. The variation between the U.S. and Japan is staggering, to say the least. GDP in 1990 international Geary-Khamis dollars from Angus Maddison's acclaimed economic research.

Interesting to note the devastation the depression wreaked from 1931 to 1936 in the U.S. Notice Japan rebounded in 1932 from their depression hit that crimped production in 1930 and 1931.

A steady ramp up in U.S. output as Hitler's Wehrmacht marched across Europe and the absolute explosion after American rage and loathing was ignited on Dec. 7, 1941. The impending doom to Japan is obvious in 1944 (1943 should be considered a super human effort considering their predicament) and the destruction is complete in 1945. Another reason for our troops to fight by the rules of the Hague and Geneva Conventions would be to alleviate the post - war devastation to some (hopefully much greater) extent. In this regard I know General Nishio and his staff will excel, as will the SNLF of The IJN.

This may be considered hindsight by some but the writing is on the wall throughout the 1930's as Admiral Yamamoto (and other Military Officers) called attention to prior to Pearl Harbor. Do not alert the sleeping dog and suffer the wrath of their full production might or trouble will follow, most assuredly.

Angus Maddison (6 December 1926 – 24 April 2010) was a British economist[SUP][1][/SUP] and a world scholar on quantitative macroeconomic history, including the measurement and analysis of economic growth and development. He was Emeritus Professor at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Groningen (RUG), Netherlands. Also worked at Harvard.

 

Yes. Two classes will be an enormous improvement on 10. Sorry. Valid point.

 

Something different, Part Two, Cargo ships

During the war Japan built 13 types of bulk/cargo ship. The majority (450+ out of 760+) under 1,000 tonnes. As with the tankers, early war were solid (1 class), midwar (2 class) were junk,slow, fragile, easy prey and unreliable mechanicly, late war (3 class) return to better built ship, but only a few were completed.

One difference was that many were coal driven ships. On the positive side this would save much fuel oil for the fleet, downside we lose a little speed and leave alot of smoke in our wake which could make tracking them easier. As I suspect that much of our prewar fleet are also coal fired and for the oil savngs I'm willing to live with these typs over purely oil driven unless there are objections.


Class//Length//Speed(Max/Cruise)//Powerplant//Range(cruise)//Number built//Total tonnage built

1A//6,400//445'//15/13.5 knots//Turbine//13,000//3//19,000

1B//4,667//387'//14/11.5 knots//Coal//7,000//21//98,000

1C//2,700//321'//14/11 knots//Coal//5,000//54//145,000

1D//1,900//286'//12.5/10 knots//Coal//3,800//40//76,000

1E//830//213'//12/10 knots//Diesel//6,000//24//20,000

1F//490//175'//12/19 knots//Diesel//3,000//35//17,000

1K//5,244//416'//12/10 knots//Coal//8,700//32//168,000 (1K was a bulk Ore carrier)


2A//6,660/449'//13/9.5 knots//turbine//4,000//70+//466,000

2D//2,300//300'//11/9 knots//Coal//4,000//80+//184,000

2E//873//210'//9/7 knots//Diesel//2,000//400+//349,000

All "2" class ships were slow/Fragile/and easy prey to submarine attack-2A's were also unreliable


3A//7,200//449'//15/12 knots//Turbine//4,000//1/7,000

3D//3,000//342//14.5/12 knots//Coal//4,000//1/6,000

3E//870//210'//10.7.5 knots//Diesel//2,000/2/2,000

"3" class all late war designs.


We will need Bulk ore carriers so I say build one 1K class every three months (4 per year)

We could use a good troop/priority carrier so I say build 1A's at about the same rate as 1K's (4 per year)

Subtracting the extra tonnage for the 1A's, we should be able to lay down 6 1B hulls per month as our primary bulk cargo carrier (about 72 per year). This would give us 3 types for production and about half as many hull as historicly built, but that would ease our convoy task (fewer hulls to shepard). By concentrating on 3 types only we might see enough savings to up these figures a little.

The combined Tanker/Cargo tonnage does not seem to equal the potential total production, so I am supposing the balance can be found in Tenders, CVE's, aircraft ferry's and other misc. shipping. Cannot seem to find any wartime production of 'Grainships' SP, so I am guessing they settled for general cargo ships.

 

How did you determine "potential total production"? Could it be that a factor that's not being conisdered is limiting the produciton? There's also the possiblility that the Japanese wanted to maintain some sort of reserve with some resources. Just in time works fine if there are no surprises but if you are using all your steel as soon as it becomes available then your ability to respond to emerencies is limited and less efficient.

 

This list Does Not Include CVE's, Landing Ships, Tenders and such which we know they did build so there must be some unaccounted for materials. Natually how much steel, etc. we have every month will dictate how much we can build. The figures for our projected builds is a monthly average based upon totals actually built. Actually I am hopefull that between better convoy protection (more supplies reaching Japan), avoiding war with the US for 6 months to a year and us concentrating on a more selective building program can modestly improve these numbers by perhaps as much as 10%.

 

Honorable Prime Minister,

You give good basis for a program. I've put out requests for information on other fora to see what else I can learn of our commercial shipbuilding capacity. Favoring fewer larger ships seems sensible, so long as we have the graving docks and slipways for it. It may well be that we don't need a dedicated grain ship. We would be able to ship grain a little more quickly like that, but there would be no real potential for a backhaul, so it would be less efficient. We have essentially the same problem with our tankers, of course but oil is perhaps more crucial. Does anyone know precisely how much foodstuff we need to import every month?

It is a fine plan and we are fortunate to have you as our Prime Minister, Mr. Belesar. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Admiral Noka

 

Japanese Food Management in World War II
Japanese Food Management in WWII, 1953


Military production of Japan in World War II from 1939-1945.

Japanese production and inports.

Hope this is of value Admiral Noka.

 

That should help quite a bit, actually. My takeaway from this is that we need to import about 3 million tons of foodstuffs annually to maintain sufficiency. (Maybe slightly more as we gear up to account for loss in efficiency, but 3 million should about do it.) If we can keep our food imports higher and better it might even lead to appreciable improvements in our production elsewhere. (Happier, better fed workers are more productive workers, all else being equal.) Really brings home the oil problem.

 

3 million tons might be a low-ball figure. After all, Manchukuo/Manchuria was exporting roughly 2.5 million tons of her major agricultural products in 1939, although, only 1/3 of this was going to the Japanese Empire proper. In the late 30's, Japan was importing roughly 2 million tons of rice, 1.1 million tons of sugar, and about 775,000 tons of soybeans. And, that's, just the major foodstuffs, and does not mention other grain imports, or meat imports. Then, there would be the natural resource imports to consider. This all quickly adds up to us being behind the "eight-ball" when it comes to merchant shipping.

I see that belasar has already posted a summary link to "Japanese Food Management in WWII", so here is the Google Books version that I have been looking over. The last third of the book is missing, as well as, several intervening pages, but there are several useful items left for us.
Japanese Food Management in World War Two - Bruce F. Johnston - Google Books

 

Found another interesting source:
Bankrupting the Enemy: The U.S. Financial Siege of Japan Before Pearl Harbor - Edward S. Miller - Google Books
page 126 has an interesting graph of scrap iron stockpiles and imports for Japan up to 42. Other resources are discussed.

 

To revisit the 5"/50 vs 5"/40 debate pertaining to re-equipping the the 5"/50 turrets with 5"/40 weapons. I have not been able to find any internal schematics of the 5"/50 turrets. But, given the low loading angle of those turrets(5-10 degrees elevation), I think it would probably be impossible to load them at high elevations. Thus, there exists the same possibility that it will be impossible to load the 5"/40 at high elevations in the 5"/50 turret.

As has been mentioned earlier, the train rate of the 5"/50 turret was very slow(4-6 degrees per second), but the train rate for the 5"/40 was hardly any better(6-7 degrees per second). Only, in the B1 gun mounts on the Mutsu Class destroyer/destroyer escort, with better turret motors, was there any improvement in training time(16 degrees per second). So, without providing better turret motors to increase the turret speed of the 5"/50 turret, we really will not see much benefit from mounting 5"/40s in them.

If we take the low ROF figure for the 5"/50 of 5 rounds per minute, this would give us 6 seconds for raising and lowering the gun, and 6 seconds to load the powder bag & shell - is this doable? As I have not seen much information on these guns outside of navweaps.com This is opposed to the firing rate of 14 initially & 8 rounds sustained fire from the 5"/40. So, while the initial firing rate is fairly good, the sustained rate does not offer as much compared to the 5"/50.

Given all of this, I am not to inclined to switch over the 5"/40s into the 5"/50 turrets. It seems that it will be a lot of work & to for little benefit. Perhaps, if we could design a new main turret around the 5"/40 and equip that on destroyers coming in for repair/modernization and our new construction. But, then again, that will take time & material.

It might just be best to leave the 5"/50s as is, but outfit them with more powerful turret motors to allow for a faster training rate, and, if possible, design a power loading mechanism that allows the 5"/50s to be loaded at high elevations(although given the confines of the turret, such high angle loading may not be possible). This, to me, is the best compromise between effort expended and achieving good performance turrets.

 

An excellent weapons outfit. We could probably use an extended Otori class hull, with less powerful engines as a basis. Or, perhaps, an enlarged Shimushu hull, with slightly more powerful engines.

And don't forget a first-rate sonar/hydrophone outfit either.

 

Looking at the link I posted, Japan constructed 260,000 tonnes of merchant shipping in 1942, raised it to about 800,000 tonnes in '43, doubled again in 1944 to about 1.700.000 and was projected to finish at about 1,000,000 in 1945 (had they lasted a whole year).

Imports for the period remain fairly close year to year, so why the low figures for 42 and 43? Were they hoarding?

 

Initially they had huge stockpiles of commodities and materials, getting ready for the conflict. I've got the data on what and where if i can figure how to post it.

 

First please allow me to apologize to my esteemed colleges for being rather distant from these deliberations these last couple weeks. As happens to so many of us, sometimes real life simply gets in the way.

As to the food situation in the home islands. If we can seize the SRA quickly with little sabotage to the working infrastructure perhaps we may be capable of reducing some of our food shortages by eliminating the need to turn too much food into bio-ethanol fuels? Of course this affects us more the longer we remain at war, and we should have a couple years before we may need to visit the idea of turning our food into fuel