Quote:
Originally Posted by JoeCorrado
I think that a more accurate guesstimate of shipping traffic for Japan would be to basically mirror that of England during the war. I would expect that the two countries had similar requirements and capabilities; each being island nations dependent upon shipping to fill their wartime needs. Japan may actually have exceeded the shipping capacity of England in the early years of the war.
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Although Japan and Britain were both island nations, they went in diametrically opposed directions in regards to their shipping.
In 1939, Britain's merchant fleet was the largest in the world, with 33 per cent of the total tonnage. Japan had the third largest merchant fleet in 1939 numerically (not in tonnage) . It was barely adequate to their needs.
When war broke out, the British merchant fleet was put under the control of the Ministry of Shipping, later part of the Ministry of War Transport. The Ministry decided which ships would go where and what they would carry, making merchant shipping effectively another arm of the state. Control of Japanese shipping was divided among the Army, Navy and the Transportation and Munitions Departments, who often weren’t working off the same sheet of music.
Japan needed 7 million tons of shipping just to manage its pre-war 1939 economy and sustain its Army deployments in China. On 7 December 1941, Japan's access to shipping immediately dropped by 3 million tons when foreign merchant ships ceased to be available. However, Japan was able to make up the deficit somewhat by trimming it's civilian needs and capturing some Allied cargo ships during their initial phase of conquest. However, that only put off looming problems. Britain, on the other hand, saw it's merchant fleet size swell when the cargo ships of nations defeated by Germany gave their services to the Allies. Norway, with the fourth largest merchant fleet in the world at the time was a nice addition in particular.