Silent Victory - tactics discussion

[nikimcbee]

We were really lucky that the Japanese (in the early war) didn't take undersea warfare seriously.

[Torplexed]

Originally Posted by nikimcbee

We were really lucky that the Japanese (in the early war) didn't take undersea warfare seriously.

You could make the case that we lulled them into a false sense of security.

At the war's beginning the Japanese had no overall shipping protection organization nor any standard communication plan or escort doctrine. Escorts were on the bottom of the priority list for building. However, for the first two years due to poor US torpedoes and lack of submarine numbers this system seem to work in their eyes. Once the torpedo defects were ironed out and US submarines began showing up deep behind enemy lines in increasing numbers it came at a bad time for the Japanese, who were still trying to make up for losses suffered at Midway and in the Solomons. The mass-produced purpose built escorts which Japan finally starting rolling out in 1943-44 were too little and too late to stem the tide and were often poorly built due to lack of proper resources and shipyard space. For example the hulls of the Kaikoban Type Cs were of a very simple design having neither sheer or camber to simplify building, and some had to be modified to burn coal. And forget radar, there weren't enough sets or qualified technicians to go around.

[Bilge_Rat]

I think that was partly an issue of Japanese doctrine or culture. The Japanese did not spend a lot of time on "defensive" issues, like ship damage control or air-sea rescue. That was part of the reason why they did not setup a proper convoy organisation until late 43.

[nikimcbee]

Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat

I think that was partly an issue of Japanese doctrine or culture. The Japanese did not spend a lot of time on "defensive" issues, like ship damage control or air-sea rescue. That was part of the reason why they did not setup a proper convoy organisation until late 43.

You can thank Alfred Mahan for a good portion of this. It just amazes my how rigid they were to clinging to their naval doctrine. They don't adapt for anything.

[Torplexed]

Originally Posted by nikimcbee

You can thank Alfred Mahan for a good portion of this. It just amazes my how rigid they were to clinging to their naval doctrine. They don't adapt for anything.

Karl von Clausewitz's famous maxim that "No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy," probably never had a less enthusiastic audience than the Imperial Navy or the Japanese military as a whole. The Japanese were not prepared almost to the bitter end to admit that had made a mistake. Throughout the war, the Japanese preferred sticking with a plan, even a bad plan than to question one. In their military ethos, dying in the act of undertaking hopeless orders was seen as preferable and far more honorable than exercising initiative and defying higher authority. When they succeeded they scored highly by determination. When they failed they paid heavily for a lack of flexibility.

[nikimcbee]

A good example of how the US adapted and learned from the past was the "unrestricted submarine warfare" change in tactics.

Post WWI, everybody was outlawing the use of unrestricted submarine warfare, but the second the US was attacked, we dropped that law/rule. Atleast somebody in the naval college had paid attention to what Germany was almost able to achive with u-boats. The Japanese were married to the "subs-as-fleet-support" strategy.

[Bilge_Rat]

Originally Posted by nikimcbee

A good example of how the US adapted and learned from the past was the "unrestricted submarine warfare" change in tactics.

Post WWI, everybody was outlawing the use of unrestricted submarine warfare, but the second the US was attacked, we dropped that law/rule. Atleast somebody in the naval college had paid attention to what Germany was almost able to achive with u-boats. The Japanese were married to the "subs-as-fleet-support" strategy.

An interesting bit of trivia is that the skipper of the first boat to make a patrol to Japan in dec. 41, Joe Grenfell in USS Gudgeon, carried a written order personally signed by his commander to carry out unrestricted submarine warfare. They were worried that they could technically be tried as pirates if they were captured by the Japanese.

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by Torplexed

Karl von Clausewitz's famous maxim that "No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy,"

I always thought that was from Helmuth von Moltke.

Anyway it was some old dead guy with von in his name.

[Rockin Robbins]

You have to factor in the achievement there: The US won our submarine war and the Germans lost theirs. I think that was not due to the quality of the brass, but to the quality of the submariners themselves. Who ever heard of an American sub coming to the surface to scuttle, largely undamaged? Happened so much with the U-Boats that Admiral Daniel Gallery actually planned on it when setting up to capture the U-505. In the event it worked out just as planned. The U-Boat was pounded a bit and came up to scuttle. Gallery pounced and had himself a trophy.

But I really believe that the largest reason the Americans succeeded and the Germans failed was one of strategy, not tactics. In the Atlantic, U-Boats were not an appropriate weapon because they could not attain victory in any event. British supplies came in on neutral shipping. Sinking the neutral shipping guaranteed they wouldn't be neutral any more. Wonder what side they would come in on?

As the enemy became stronger as more and more neutral nations were pushed into the war by the U-Boats, the end of that story was pretty obvious. Had the money and men wasted on U-Boats been used to other purposes, at least Germany could have fought longer and had more success.

Japan, however, brought all supplies to Japan on Japanese bottoms. We were already at war with Japan. There was no downside to sinking the supplies. In that case, we actually were denying them what they needed to fight more effectively and the submarines were an important part of the eventual victory there. In the Pacific, submarines were an appropriate weapon which could contribute to the overall war effort.

Regardless of the better American submarines and perhaps better sub commanders as a whole, those differences were small. The strategic situation, to which the Germans were entirely blind, trumped everything and guaranteed German defeat.

[Armistead]

I disagree RR, don't think Uboats failed so much on strategy as they did technology and not given enough resources. I think had they gotten the support they needed from Hitler, who knows, certainly it was a waste for Germany to build BB's, CA's, etc...


The biggest failure was Germany didn't figure out we could read their code.

Anyway, no matter what they did, it would be a matter of time nonetheless.

[Dread Knot]

Originally Posted by Armistead

I disagree RR, don't think Uboats failed so much on strategy as they did technology and not given enough resources. I think had they gotten the support they needed from Hitler, who knows, certainly it was a waste for Germany to build BB's, CA's, etc...

I tend to agree with RR. If Pearl Harbor hadn't abruptly brought the US into the war, then eventually the U-Boats would have as they did previously in World War One. The USN and Kriegsmarine were already trading heavy blows in the fall of 1941. The indiscriminate sinking of ships just brought the Reich more enemies when it already had more than it could handle.

One wonders if the resources poured into U-Boats and the German Navy as a whole might have been better spent on a few extra armored divisions on the Eastern Front where the land war was really decided. The Germans were basically outnumbered from the opening day on the invasion of the Soviet Union and eventually Russian quantity caught up with German quality.

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by Armistead

I disagree RR, don't think Uboats failed so much on strategy as they did technology and not given enough resources. I think had they gotten the support they needed from Hitler, who knows, certainly it was a waste for Germany to build BB's, CA's, etc...


The biggest failure was Germany didn't figure out we could read their code.

Anyway, no matter what they did, it would be a matter of time nonetheless.

That would be an arguable point except that there WERE no more resources. Almost from the beginning of the war the Germans were playing a zero sum game. Adding resources here meant taking them from there.

Had they put twice as many resources in the submarines it would have made no difference. They sank less than 1% of total cross-Atlantic shipping. Making that 2% would have changed what? Then what results? No tanks for Rommel? No, something had to give and it should have been U-Boats.

Donitz and Raeder didn't give a hoot about plans for winning a war. All they were concerned with was expanding their particular realms to the largest extent possible. They continually pressured for a larger navy in spite of the fact that a navy only made sense from a coastal defense standpoint.

Without control of air and water surface somewhere, the U-Boats were doomed. A plurality were sunk before they had downed even a single target. An appalling number were sunk before firing a single torpedo in anger.

Of course, we are reasoning here and World War II was not the product of reason. It was the product of a raving madman without the capacity for rational thought. All he had was irrational desires.

[Armistead]

I think it was a bad failure not to put more Uboats at sea. We have to remember that the so called "Happy Times" where Uboats did great damage lasted to basically 43, with Churchill stating that his greatest fear was Uboats. The problem was even during this period where Uboats did great damage, they never had more than 30 boats at sea, the entire North Atlantic, imagine if they had say 100 or more what they could've done, certainly more than Rommel. The other key of course was having France to port out of. Had Hitler put the resources into Uboats early, who knows the amount of damage that could've been done, with no more than 30 boats on patrol at one time Germany almost sunk Britian.

No, Germany was failed to lose in the end when they declared against America, that was the big mistake.

[WernherVonTrapp]

In the beginning, the Germans didn't need to put more U-Boats to sea. They were sinking record numbers of vessels right off the American coast during 1942:

"America's first year in the war ended with the loss of 1,027 Allied ships to U-boat action. This was more than half of all the ships lost by all the Allies in the U-boat war, in all areas, all through the war years from 1939 to 1945."
-The Tenth Fleet pg.60

"The Strategic Situation in 1942:
This was a phenomenal and unprecedented episode in the whole history of warfare-a major and potentially decisive victory being scored by a tiny force of submarines...
...Doenitz's U-boats wrought havoc, not merely with the material strength of the Allies during this crucial period of their build-up, but indeed with their whole planning and the grand strategy of the war."
-The Tenth Fleet pg.61-62

"December, 1941, brought the crisis to a head in the U-boat arm. It came abruptly and dramatically in the wake of the first indubitable defeat of the U-boats: in a convoy battle west of Gibralter three British ships were sunk, but five U-boats were lost. Five more U-boats were sunk in other operations in waters around the Azores. Only twice before had Doenitz lost five boats in a single month and never ten in a thirty-day period. For the first time, defeatism swept the U-boat Command. Doenitz's staff openly voiced the opinion, and in no uncertain terms, that the U-boats had had it and were no longer capable of combatting the reinforced convoys."
-The Tenth Fleet pg.63