Very interesting post up at Larry Person's Battleswarm Blog

 

World War II In The Pacific: Logistics 1, Spirit 0

“91%. That’s how many Japanese carrier crew members were dead by August 1945. Not casualties, dead. For every 100 men who served on Japanese carriers, nine survived the war.”

“The Imperial Navy started with 10 fleet carriers. They ended with zero.”

“The Japanese started war with the best carrier pilots in the world. Each one had over 800 hours of flight training. By 1944, new pilots got less than 50 hours. Why? Because Japan made a fatal decision. They never rotated experienced pilots home to train replacements. Every veteran stayed in combat until they died. And they all died.”

“Here’s the brutal arithmetic. At Midway, Japan lost four carriers and 322 aircraft. But here’s what destroyed them. They lost 110 veteran pilots. Each one had over two years of training. Japan produced 200 new pilots per month. America produced 2,500.”

“The carriers themselves were death traps by design. Japanese damage control doctrine was offensive spirit overcomes material weakness. They literally didn’t train damage control.”

“American carriers had firefighting schools. Japanese carriers had buckets.”

“When the Taiho was hit by one torpedo, the crew didn’t know to turn off ventilation. Aviation fuel vapors spread through the ship. Six hours later, one spark turned the entire carrier into a 27,000 ton bomb.”

“After losing four carriers at Midway, Japan had six fleet carriers left. In the next two years, they built seven more. America built 90.”

“Japan launched one new carrier in 1944. America launched 19.”

Japanese POWs saw what Japan was up against. Instead of being tortured to death as their commanders had led them to believe, their captors provided them with more food than Japanese officers ate.

“He held a tray loaded with more food than his entire squadron had shared in three days. Fried chicken, mashed potatoes swimming in butter, green beans, white bread, apple pie, and a glass of cold milk.”

“The American sailor behind the serving line, irritated by the delay, gestured impatiently at the ice cream station. You want chocolate or vanilla? The question made no sense. Ice cream didn’t exist on warships. Ice cream required refrigeration that combat vessels couldn’t spare. Yet here, on America’s most battle hardened carrier, enemy prisoners were being offered a choice of frozen desserts.”

“That moment his understanding of the war, of America, of everything began to crumble. Across the Pacific War, approximately 35,000 Japanese military personnel would experience American naval captivity and witness abundance that shattered everything they believed about their enemy’s weakness.”

“They discovered carriers where enlisted sailors ate better than Japanese admirals, where machinery produced fresh water from seawater in unlimited quantities.”

“These encounters with American naval logistics would demolish the spiritual foundations of Japanese military ideology more thoroughly than any defeat in battle.”

“While Japanese sailors subsisted on rice balls and pickled vegetables, American crews consumed 4,100 calories daily of varied fresh foods.

“While Japanese carriers hand-pumped aviation fuel, American ships automated everything.”

“Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, mastermind of Pearl Harbor, who later became a Christian minister in America, documented his 1945 rescue experience aboard the USS Missouri.” They gave him coffee with cream and sugar and apologized for being out of donuts “while Japanese forces were eating leather belts.”

“Japanese prisoners watched American damage control parties, exhausted from fighting fires and flooding, receive ice cream sundaes as battle rations. The cognitive dissonance was overwhelming. Their nation, fighting for its existence, couldn’t provide basic nutrition to forces. The enemy, supposedly decadent and weak, gave ice cream to sailors during combat.”

“The laundry facilities stunned Japanese prisoners accustomed to washing clothes in seawater. American carriers had industrial washing machines, dryers, and pressing equipment. Enlisted sailors received clean uniforms twice weekly.”

“The evaporators on USS Enterprise could produce 140,000 gallons of fresh water daily. More than the entire Japanese carrier force could produce combined.”

The takeaway: Logistics wins wars.