World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF THE SEAS: Death of a Fleet

The Imperial Japanese Navy was dead. Of the world’s third largest fleet, which once had ranked close behind those of the U.S. and Britain, there was nothing left on the surface but a few battered hulks, almost beyond repair, plus perhaps a division of three cruisers and two or three squadrons of destroyers; below the surface, a few score life-size submarines and two or three times as many midgets —enough to be a nuisance.

Gone was the battle line which had dominated the Pacific in the first months after Pearl Harbor. The manner of its passing revealed the inherent weakness of Japan’s imperial aspirations; Japan’s sea lords, with all their bombast, had never dared commit the battle fleet as a unit in a bold strike for strategic mastery.

Behind their braggadocio there had always been the grudging realization that their country could not afford true sea power; its industrial potential was so low that they could not, in emergency, build a new fleet almost overnight, as the U.S. had after Pearl Harbor. Theirs had been a strategy of poverty and picayune improvisation.

There Comes a Tide. The Japanese admirals had missed their great chance: that “tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on to fortune” had come on Dec. 7, 1941. In a brilliant, if treacherous, imitation of the U.S. Navy’s carrier striking-force technique, they had broken the back of the battle line on which (by standards then prevailing) U.S. command of the east and central Pacific depended. If the Japanese had returned the next day with three divisions of assault troops, supported by air groups from all their carriers (about ten) and gunfire from all their battleships (ten or twelve) they might well have captured Oahu, keystone in the Alaska-Hawaii-Panama defense arch. If so, they would have won that war; the U.S. would have had to start all over.

Having seized upon the carrier striking-force concept, the Japanese became infatuated with it, extended it until they were imprisoned within their own task-force psychology.* The method worked well in the southern seas, when any Jap task force was certain to be stronger than any Allied task force. It failed partially in the Coral Sea (where the Japanese first lost a carrier, the Shoho); it failed utterly at Midway.

At that turning point in the Pacific war, the full carrier-and-battleship fleet of Japan might have won. But the task force sent by the pennywise, pound-foolish admirals was defeated by a U.S. task force which, though inferior in quantity, was superior in quality. The enemy lost the pride of his carrier fleet: the big Kaga and Akagi, the smaller Hiryu and Soryu.

The Voyage of Their Life. Undeservedly, the Japanese had one more chance on better than even terms. It was in the bloody, long-drawn struggle for Guadalcanal. The Allies were reduced to two carriers and two modern battleships; the enemy had at least four times this strength. But on the night of Nov. 12-13, he sent a boy-sized task force to do a man’s job; two nights later he repeated the error. In those engagements, the ancient battleships Hiei and Kirisima plunged into Iron-Bottom Bay.

The Japanese admirals learned something from their defeats, and spent a year & a half repairing, rebuilding and strengthening their battle line. Their next chance to use it was on less than even terms. U.S. shipyards had far outstripped Japan’s. The fleet pitted against Admiral Raymond A. Spruance in the Philippine Sea had orders to use a compromise tactic (shuttling planes between carriers and land bases) to avoid risking its ships (TIME, July 3, 1944). The enemy got what he should have expected: the big carriers Hitaka, Taiho, Syokaku (and possibly a fourth) went down.

The battle which followed the invasion of Leyte was the payoff. The Mutu had disappeared, but every Jap battleship remaining was committed. There were nine, and three (Huso, Yamasiro and Musashi) were sunk, others damaged. The carriers fared worse; of four committed, all (Zuikaku, Zuiho, Titose, Tiyoda) went down before Vice Admiral Mitscher’s Task Force 58.

In Shallows and in Miseries. Smashed so that they needed months for repair, the enemy’s surviving capital ships scurried to harbor. The battleship Kongo vanished, may have sunk en route; an Otaka-class carrier was bagged by a U.S. submarine in the fall of 1944. The 45,000-ton Yamato was blown to bits by carrier aircraft after a foolish sortie in the East China Sea last April.

Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz’ communiqués of the last fortnight told how the remaining ships had been done to death at bases on the Inland Sea. The Haruna (once reported sunk by Captain Colin Kelly), was bombed, burned and beached (see cut); the Nagato’s superstructure was blasted; the Ise and Hyuga (converted monstrosities, half-battleship, half-carrier) were shattered and settled in the shallows.

The true carriers fared as badly: the Amagi and Katsuragi, though afloat, were burned-out hulks; so were the unfinished Aso and an unidentified flattop. Even the old training carrier Hosyo took her share of bombs from Vice Admiral John S. McCain’s fliers and supporting Army airmen. Cruisers and destroyers were sunk or damaged right & left.

The Japanese Navy had died miserably in the lairs to which it had retired. The pattern of its death was in keeping with the pattern of its life. For all their occasional flashes of brilliance, the Japanese had never really understood sea power.

* Jap task forces, like those used by the U.S. early in the war, were built around two or three capital ships. They bore no resemblance to U.S. Task Forces 38 and 58, which are really great fleets.