Anyone interested in some intellectual exercise?

Why should Hosho and Taiyo be limited to training 50 pilots a month? While you could only base that number of aircraft off them, I think the number of student landings and takeoffs that can safely be accomplished in a day will give a better idea of how many people we could carrier qualify using these two ships. I should guess that they could safely handle classes of several hundred every month, with all students having the opportunity to land and take off many times. I'd anticipate the aircraft operating from land based airfields, making an arrested landing on a carrier underway in the inland sea, being immediately respotted, lifting off, and flying back to the land base. The other carrier could be used in open ocean for more advanced training navigating over open water and landing and launching in less ideal conditions, as weather permits. Pilots could possibly also watch other classes landing and taking off from aboard the aircraft carriers evaluating what those other pilots did right and wrong from another perspective, and learning from them and with them. I will note once again that the U.S. navy anticipates carrying out their enormous pilot buildup using only two small makeshift carriers for initial carrier qualifications and whatever fleet carrier is handy for more advanced training. (I believe they eventually plan to retire Ranger from front line service for this role.) I would suggest emulating this plan. Use Hosho and or Taiyo so long as necessary. Find a pair of ferries we can spare for conversion to light training carriers. The conversion could be quite minimal as no hangar, magazine, or overnight crew quarters would be necessary. There needn't even be permanent fueling facilities. These would be for little more than landing and launch qualification, but that's our most important first step. One additional carrier could eventually be retained, Hosho perhaps, for advanced training. Am I missing something?

 

It would be best to have the bases started and Truk is important because it is the biggest base in the Pacific out side of the home islands.

 

Dear Prime Minister and Admirals,

for the reason that i´m only a Army General i´m not so deep into the needs of the Navy and their pilots. But is it possible to create a starting deck of a carrier on land and/or a swimming reproduction of a landing deck at one of our Bays to train the pilots the landing on it? If the aircrafts are down at the deck we can move it to the coast and let roll the aircrafts off. That would be a possibility to have a practice without the need of a real carrier which should do his duty at a other place. Maybe that Colonel Bobimot can have a look if that is to create?

Sincerely

General Nishio

 

I think gunboats, MTB's and landing barges such as the Daihatsu could be very valuable to your efforts. You could use the river as a supply line to support your advance, they could provide fire support to help overcome enemy defenses , and you could use the barges to make landings upriver, bypassing or cutting off enemy forces. A brown water navy is relatively cheap to create. We have been getting reports from the Soviet-German fighting that Russia is deploying Katyusha rockets that are quite effective. We could possibly develop something along those lines and mount them on large landing barges to provide additional heavy fire support. I'll have to study up on gunboats before I give you an intelligent response as to if the type you mentioned is the best for your needs. This is however, an area that you should place additional planning focus. These mini-amphibious operations may be just the extra tool that allows you to solve our China problem.

 

Thank you much for your support! By looking at the map of China i had this thought and i asked me"When the nature helps you by creating waterways to get into the country, why not using mother natures advice?!" Yes, that have been exactly the reasons for me to use the Gun boats after you´ve tipped me into this direction. Supply lines and ways to give the Chinese a nice surprise in the morning: "Sorry, that we disturbed your sleep, but we want your City! Anything wrong with it?" Awaiting your informations, thanks for that!

 

The problem the Japanese had was too much territory and not enough troops. The Japanese faced the same dilemma the Germans did in Russia

 

Regarding training, I thought we can use naval pilots who are land based since they most of the skills already.

 

Our version of the DB 601 is the HA-40 and has been in production since early 1937. Our version is lighter than the DB 601 and requires even more precise and sophisticated manufacturing processes than the DB 601. Its power output is 1175hp (DB601N the same). We have a more powerful HA-140, 1450hp variant in development (DB 605 1475hp) which should be ready in 1942. Compare this to the Mitsubishi Kasei radial, the most current version of which develops 1530hp, is extremely reliable and development on versions up to 1850hp is in the works. We also have the Nakajima Mamoru (HA-103) recently in service that develops 1870hp and is also very reliable, or the Nakajima Sakae HA-115, 1150hp. The Sakae series while providing slightly less horsepower is capable of running on an extremely lean fuel mixture greatly increasing range, also very reliable. So, no General Nishio the inline engines are not more powerful and their lesser reliability, have greater production requirements, and really only advantage is being more streamlined. I hope this explains our line of reasoning for suggesting that we go with radial engines. I appreciate your voicing your concerns and hope we can count on your support in the council.

 

Honorable Sir,

The concept of a Training Carrier based upon a ferry type ship is interesting and certainly worth further investigation. Regrettably however, it fails to address some of our issues and presents challenges all its own. Allow me to present my concerns.

I continue to view ASW-Training Command as an unified organisation. Preforming two tasks with the same assets, at the same time. As our resources are so slender I feel it is imparitve that we make full use of our assets when-ever and where-ever we can. I feel that the trade off of using partially trained pilots to preform ASW coverage to our merchant fleet is worth the valuable expierence these pilots will get prior to their deployment to front line Carriers. Ferry hulled training ships would provide no organic ASW protection to our merchant fleet.

Further in the near term the greatest threat to the Empire will not be the combined British/Dutch surface fleets but rather their submarine force, and the logical target of this force would be our long and as yet not fully secured line of communication and supply. Reports indicate that German U-Boats are most effective where there is little or no arial coverage to merchant convoys. I feel that the best air coverage a convoy can receive is an organic one, travelling with the convoys themselves. In the long term I see air suppression of enemy submarine attacks as the most cost effective method to combat this threat to the empire.

Not only would our future naval pilots get real world training, so to would the crews of Junyo/Hiyo. The deck crews, mechanics, and ordinary ratings would get large amounts of pratical expierence in an enviroment relatively safe, prior to their transfer to the main fleet after hostilities with the US come to pass.

Observation can be a usefull tool in training, but nothing equates to actually preforming the task itself. A single fish will fill a man's belly, two men can get an adequate meal from that single fish, ten men however will get little nourishment from a single fish. This would be equally true of 100 men trying to learn from a single deck like Hosho. There is also the risk that a lucky enemy strike could send such a ship to the depths along with a disproportional number of our emerging pilots, undoing months of work and expence at a single stroke.

Lastly a training ship based upon a ferry hull is an asset we do not yet posses. First it must be found, and in a nation like Japan with relatively few automobiles, this could prove a challenge. It would need to be removed from its current task, which in turn must be filled in some manner. Then we must find both the time and resources to make the conversion, when so many other tasks remain undone. Lastly once deployed we will have a usefull training tool, but not one that could serve double duty as both a training vessel and as a auxillery warship that could, when the need arose, take an active part in the defence of the Empire.

The Prime Minister

 

The discussions here and some research I've been doing has brought several questions to mind I'd like to throw out there. They may or may not be feasible but I figure between Takao, Carronade and Symphonic Poet these things can be answered.

1.) Shinano-we've got this big hull that we're not going to complete as a BB and will probably convert to a CV that will not be very valuable compared to its displacement and resources allocated to its conversion. Should we just scrap it and use the steel and machinery for better purposes?
2.) We have the Kuma class of light cruisers Kuma, Tama, Kitakami, Oi, and Kiso that are not very valuable units. Could they be converted to small carriers by stripping them down to the main deck and rebuilding their superstructure and adding a flight deck? They are small hulls only 5500 tons or so but they are warship hulls and capable of high speeds and long range. Could a usable light carrier be converted out of them?
3.) I think we will need to lay down new CV's, we have the Tahio building which was laid down in July of 41. Should new CV construction be of this class or of the Shokaku class or the Unryu (improved Hiryu) class which the preceeding regime was considering producing?
4.) The question of carrier escorts has come up several times. Should we consider the construction of a light cruiser class with a heavy AA armament similar in concept to what the US produced in the Atlanta class for carrier task force protection?
5.) Should we look at converting the Yamato and Musashi and providing a very powerfull AA fit by deleting the port and starboard 6" turrets and refitting with 3.9" or 5" mounts, 40mm bofors and 20mm Oerlikons? Their fuel consumption would make them less than optional platforms but for major operations they might prove useful as flagships/AA escorts and their big guns would provide protection from surface threats in confined areas.

 

The Prime Minister

 

Thank you Sir for your explanation! I´d like the inline engines much more but the more experienced members of the council may decide what is the right engine for our aircrafts. If they will find the radial engines more reliable and cheaper to build and maintain, they will have my support on this.

As always the well of our country and our Emperor is above all!

Sincerely

General Nishio

 

1. I agree with and support the Prime Ministers answer to this question.
2. Again I support the Prime Ministers position, however, perhaps if we are still looking for idea's for training platforms for our cadet avaitors, we could do both?
3. My vote is towards additional Shokaku Class CV's. Better armour protection and a larger air wing capacity. Also without looking up the design plans doesn't the Unryu's have a significantly lowered capacity of AvGas? Better able to shake off damage, and remaining longer on station offsets the longer build time in my book.
4. Yes, but deciding what to cut to make this possible is the difficult part.
5. Not at this time, Yamato is only a few weeks away from commisioning. Do we really want to put her in for refit already? Musashi I could possibly support this for, but I'm still a little cautious. There are already six 5" turrets, and any advantage we can gain to offset our numerical inferiority in warships is a plus.

 

I agree precisely with our august Prime Minister.

1. If Shinano can be converted for a cost comparable to an Unryu class carrier we should make use of resources already allocated and convert her. If some or most of her vertical armor can be deleted to save weight and improve speed or hangar space, that would be useful. She could possibly be made into a good complement to Taiho for a reasonable price.

2. The Kuma class cruisers are too small to be converted into suitable aircraft carriers, though they could conceivably make good seaplane carrier/AA cruisers; sort of a miniature Tone with no main armament and only dual purpose secondaries. They could perhaps be given 4-6 3.9" dual purpose mounts in two or three mounts in the bow, a large number of whatever autocannon we chose for our medium AA, and perhaps three to four E13A "Jakes", or if none are available a similar number of E8N "Daves".

3. The Uryus are better follow on units for our purposes, though I'd like to see improved horizontal defense. Perhaps forgo the belt and use an improved turtle armored deck. I think an armor scheme more like earlier protected cruisers would be more useful than the armored cruiser based schemes currently favored, since there's no need at all for our carriers to be involved in surface gunnery action, and thus should have no need to defend against flat trajectory hits. Adding useful horizontal armor on such a low displacement platform, say two to four inches, would probably necessitate keeping the armored deck relatively low to the waterline. and thus at or below the hangar deck level, as has been conventional in our carriers so far. Shokaku and Zuikaku were built with panels designed to "blow out" venting blast damage inside the hangar out the sides rather than up through the flight deck. The Americans simply use open hangars. Perhaps this would be desirable in the warmer tropical climates in which we anticipate many of our operations, though an open hangar so low to the waterline may be impractical.

4. Perhaps conversion of our numerous and somewhat dated light cruisers could serve this purpose, as above.

5. I don't know that there's any particularly good use the the Yamatos. They were a vanity of the last administration. If it were economical to operate them I'd give them an improved scouting capability, possibly even at the expense of the rear turret. Certainly it would be worthwhile to improve the AA defense of the fleet, if these ships can be used economically to do so. Any use is better than none. Perhaps given our needs it might even be worth considering stripping them to their hulls and converting them, if Shinano turns out to be useful. I have no good conception of what to do with these. It's conceivable that they could be useful eventually. Perhaps we should mothball them for now and wait to see how they might best be used.

 

perhaps we could take three of the Kuma's, say Kuma and Tama, and Kiso and
convert them to training carrier platforms? as they would not really be able to carry many a/c at a single time,but as a platform they would be invaluble as it would free up two carriers for combat ops. perhaps convert the remaining units to Heavy AA escorts for the other units.

 

Honorable Prime Minister,

I think I am perhaps not explaining myself fully, and that our ideas on training are not actually incompatible.

I would not base any aircraft or aircrews aboard the makeshift training carriers I'm suggesting. They would be little more than the floating flight decks Gen. Nishio is suggesting to be "towed" out into the bay every morning (by their own engines) and "towed" back in every night. The aircraft and crews would be housed ashore and would never all, or even mostly, be on the "carriers". The carriers wouldn't be intended to support more than one aircraft at a time to be landed, respotted, and launched immediately, simply to train pilots. Other "aircraft" could be painted on the foreward deck to give the new pilots a sense of the gravity of missing the wires, but I wouldn't even use a barrier. The young pilot either hooks, or he touches and goes. If more than one aircraft were landed at once it increases the risks of an accident considerably and to no point. So even if it were sunk, our losses would be extremely marginal. This isn't really a "carrier" in any real sense, just a flight deck in the middle of the bay. That said, it should suffice to qualify pilots in carrier landings and take offs. Any other pilots would be aboard the carrier as a floating classroom. Everyone should spend some time watching before they do. And possibly after as well.

Even a group of barges and a towboat might suffice. Yes, any ships we remove from their duty would either need to be replaced or that duty neglected, but in such a large empire, and with recent territorial acquisitions in China and Indochina, surely we can find two ferries or a few barges and some towboats that wouldn't be missed too badly. Take them from the French if you wish.

But this is not in lieu of training pilots at sea. It's simply a method to give many pilots carrier qualifications in a safer environment. Once those pilots have their carrier qualification they would of course need to be seasoned, and an ASW/escort command would be a good place for such a thing, but the most promising pilots could probably be seasoned with front line units of the fleet. I would advise keeping ASW/escort as a separate command. Fleet replacements could be drawn from the best carrier qualified pilots in all commands.

To be more specific, I would retain or create the following commands:

I. Naval Planning
-A. Naval War College
II. Naval Intelligence
III. Naval Operations
-A. Combined Fleet
--1. First Air Fleet (carrier based)
--2. primary carrier strike forces (Dai ichi and dai ni kido butai)
---a. organic escorts and auxiliaries for repair and replenishment
--3. supporting surface fleet or fleets (Nagato, Mutsu, Yamato, Musashi and additional destroyer flotillas and cruiser squadrons)
---a. organic escorts and auxiliaries
--4. submarine scouting force
-B. Local Fleets
--1. land based air fleets
--2. area and reserve fleets (possibly a third carrier strike force)
-C. Personel
--1. training
---a. Eta Jima (officer training)
---b. flight training
----1. flight qualification
----2. advanced flight training
----3. carrier qualification
---c. basic training
--2. recruiting
--3. retention and assignment
-C. Transport and supply
--1. convoy and convoy support
--2. ASW/escort
---a. escort carriers and supporting air groups
--3. amphibious assault
---a. assault transports
---b. Naval Landing brigades
---c. sappers and combat engineering
---d. battleships Fuso, Yamashiro, Ise, and Hyuga, and such cruisers and escorts as are deemed necessary
-D. Bases
--1. shore construction
--2. individual base commands, including constituent facilities
-E. Support
--1. ordnance
--2. acquisitions
--3. design

Naval Planning should be part of a joint command with an army planning command in order to create

This isn't an exhaustive list, and it is intended only as a consideration that might be useful to Admirals Takao, Rikinaga, Karonada, and Michinaza as they consider reorganization. But in it you can see the way that pilots might flow through the system. A flight cadet would enter through either basic training or Eta Jima. If accepted he would be given basic flight training. Those who pass advanced flight training could be deployed to a land based air fleet or sent for carrier qualification. Carrier qualification would draw on the best of those from both training and the land based air fleets. The best of those who pass this qualification could be sent directly to combined fleet. The remainder could be sent to ASW/escort command or a carrier in a local fleet (should we have one at the time.) Again, replacements for the first air fleet can be drawn from the best carrier qualified pilots and crews in any other command. The best officers from first air fleet should be rotated out periodically to the training command.

Maybe this will help in reorganizing our assets for our coming conflict.

Sincerely,
Noka Shijin

 

Well, "freebird" asked some questions that have raised the ire of our Honorable Prime Minister, so I will take this time to answer them.

In truth, the Japanese came to this conclusion much earlier than their American counterparts. They found out, to their detriment, that the bomber might always get through, but the losses would be unacceptable. The Japanese bombers began taking heavy losses to defending Chinese fighters, in particular, the G3M "Nell" bomber, because it's long range often prevented fighter escort to the target and back. The range of the "Claude" was to short and the A6M Zero was not operational yet. So, they took the early design of the G4M "Betty" and converted it into the G6M1 to act as a long-range bomber escort by providing it with more guns and armor(Similar to the much later American concept for the YB-40 "Flying Fortress" gunship). However, it proved a failure for much the same reason, once the bombers dropped their bombload, the now empty bombers simply were to fast for the G6M1 to keep up. Thus the 30 G6M1 was converted to perform transport duties, since it would be too impractical to convert them to bombers.

It was not that the Japanese saw submarine anti-commerce warfare as "dishonorable", quite the contrary. They saw it as a viable tactic, just not against the United States. The major reason that anti-commerce warfare was not considered a viable option for their "short war", was because the United States was, for the most part, "self-sufficient", and that anti-commerce warfare would have no meaningful effect on her. In short, using her submarines against American merchants would be ineffectual to the outcome of the "short" war for which the Japanese were planning, and that her submarines would be put to better use in sinking American warships.

Yes, the Japanese, a few more than most, were aware of the danger that submarines posed to the Empire's merchant fleet. Commander Oi Atsushi was an intelligence officer who studied the effects of submarine warfare of the British Isles and their attempts to counter the submarine threat. He would attempt to raise the alarm about the threat that submarines posed to Japan, however, he lacked the influence necessary to move the subject forward. Commander Oi would continue in his efforts to find a sympathetic ear, but his warnings would only be heeded after it was too late for them to matter. In October, 1940, the Imperial Japanese Navy carried out an exercise to see how vulnerable the Japanese home islands shipping corridors were: the result was 133 Japanese merchants declared "sunk" by submarine in just 5 days. Unfortunately, the lesson the Japanese took to heart from this exercise was that submarines were vulnerable to radio-direction finding. Still, while the Japanese military was convinced of their ASW infallibility, the civilians were much less so. In the summer of 1941, the Cabinet Planning Board warned of the dire effect a submarine war could have on the Japanese merchant marine and that losses would very well exceed Japan's ability to replace lost bottoms. Every time they brought the matter before up to Admiral Nagano Osami, the matter was either "glossed over" or was quickly dropped under the pretext of national security.

Still, the majority of the IJN remained focused on the "attack" and that their successes on the battlefield would translate into a strong defense.

The Japanese saw the need for a better AT/AA gun, however, the Japanese needed many things, and it was a matter of priority. Most, if not all AA guns, as well as several artillery pieces, were capable of firing AP projectiles. Given that, a new AT gun was not given a high priority until much later in the war.

All nations placed an inordinately high value on bombers as anti-shipping weapons. However, with a few exceptions, the bombers failed to live up to expectations. Further, the IJN planned to use their floatplanes to cover landing operations, that is one of the reasons why the Japanese were heavy with floatplane tenders.

 

1) Shinano's hull was 45% complete when construction was suspended. She was completed, structurally, up to the lower deck and had her major machinery installed. Anyone have any data on her conversion costs. My thinking was that you have a 72,000t hull taking up building space that could be used to build other more useful ships.
2) I was afraid they were too light in displcement for conversion to carriers which seems to require 10,000-15,000t range displacement. These 5 are really marginally useful ships, Symphonic Poet may have the answer in converting them to AA ships 5500t should be sufficient for a useful ship (US Atlanta Class CL's displaced around 6000t). If not should we look at converting them to some type of ASW leader? 5500t should be enough displacement to pack a lot of ASW weaponry on and could be used as a flagship for the destroyers and smaller escort types in a convoy screen.
3) The Shokaku's were the most survivable type as MikeBatzel noted and Symphonic Poet touched upon.
4) If we do #2 we don't need this.
5) Belasar wrote:

Actually Mr. Prime Minister as completed she had 4x6.1" triple turrets one fore, one aft and one each port and starboard amidships.



This is her original configuration. That's a lot of displacement and a lot of deck space that could be used to mount additional 5" or 3.9" AA guns and a lot of 40mm mounts. (Historically she got a heavier AA suite and lost the midships 6.1" turrets IIRC, in a 1944 refit. We will not have and will not need Yamato and Musashi for our initial operations. We could go ahead now and do the refit and have them in an extra months or so time, since Musashi is still completing fitting out it will probably only minimally effect her availability date. When they emerge they will be much more useful ships.

 

Converting the Japanese light cruisers into effective "training" carriers, is probably an impossibility. The light cruisers tended to be fairly narrow(40-48 feet) in beam, so placing a fairly wide deck on them may effect their sea-keeping ability considerably, thus they could only be used during the "calmest" of seas. Not to mention that the "flight deck" would have to be kept fairly low, lest there be an adverse effect to the meta-centric height. Further, since the pilots are still essentially "students", having them practice on such a narrow restrictive flight deck may lead to far more accidents than would be prudent.

Certainly, their are better hulls available for conversion into training carriers.

 

Why not rotate pilots between the Hosho and the smaller carriers ant land bases so we have a pool of trained carrier pilots. SInce so much of our flying is over water they will have all the training they need except landing on a carrier