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So I just finished the second book in Ian W. Toll's Pacific War Trilogy: Conquering Tide. This book begins with the battle for Guadalcanal, which takes up a third of the book and culminates in the disastrous (for the Japanese) battle of the Philippine Sea. I liked this one even more than Pacific Crucible, because it filled in many of the gaps that I saw in that book (submarine war, army/navy conflict), although the series continues to be very Navy and American-centric. This is not a problem for me as I'm trying to read this series to help me understand my country's history and don't mind reading another book to learn about ANZAC, Burma, and China. More thoughts listed in roughly chronological order below.
Submarines were absolutely vital for the American effort in the Pacific, and were responsible for sinking something like 60% of the enemy tonnage throughout the course of the war. My favorite chapter in the book was one in which we followed the submarine crew of the Wahoo and its crazy Skipper "Mush" Morton throughout most of 1943. Unlike the Allies in the Atlantic, the Japanese didn't really give much of an effort in developing anti-submarine tactics, because of the "low prestige" of the job, nor did they really ramp up their own submarine attacks on American shipping. This seems like a huge oversight.
Guadalcanal seems like it absolutely fucking sucked for everyone. Swampy malarial jungle, poor supply situation, and constant aerial bombardments meant neither the Japanese nor the Americans got much rest when they weren't fighting.
American strategy at Guadalcanal seemed extremely smart to me: contest the islands just enough to continuously bleed Japanese air and sea power from bases further up the Solomons/Bismarks (mainly Rabaul). Kind of like the original plan for Verdun.
Japanese leadership in general seemed extremely bad. A lot of decisions seemed to be made for ego-stroking reasons, rather than around any kind of grand strategy to win the war. Of course if Japan had had competent leadership, it never would have bombed Pearl Harbor, or even invaded China in the first place, but even so, there were many things that the Japanese leadership could have done to improve their performance in the war. More careful shepherding of human resources, above all pilots, more extensive aviation training programs, strategic giving up of territory, better cooperation between the army and navy all would have turned many of Japan's most catastrophic losses into victories, or at least less bloody retreats. The two worst examples of this were lack of pilot rotations, meaning almost all experienced pilots were killed in 1942-early 1943, and the army's repeated use of Banzai tactics against US marines. It's not the 19th century anymore folks! In contrast the US leadership, especially Nimitz, seemed to me to be extremely high caliber. Maybe this was because the US military actually had some oversight from the civilian government so incompetents and fanatics could be removed?
Ideas like Elan, Warrior Spirit, and Bushido seem to be total bullshit in modern war. Time and time again Japanese troops and pilots make extremely brave and daring calls, but these aren't enough to overcome, and sometimes reinforce tactical stupidity. In contrast, the Americans are much more on a bell curve of bravery, but win the day because of better leadership and equipment. Of course the war was ultimately decided by American material might, but early in the book around Guadalcanal, Americans won engagements that they shouldn't have on paper because of far superior leadership and planning, despite maybe lower overall "quality" in the enlisted men.
At the same time, American tolerance for causalities is super low. In the first island hopping campaign in the Marshalls, Toll makes a big deal about Americans losing ~2k dead taking Tarawa. Casualties are similarly low for much of the rest of the action of the book, including on Saipan and Guam. Even on Iwo Jima and Okinawa had only about 12k dead each. Compared to the Eastern Front, WW1, or even the Civil War, these are pathetic numbers that the media made a storm about. I don't mean to take these deaths lightly, but proportionally this is nothing. This attitude has only gotten worse (Vietnam, Iraq, Afganistan, current Iran war), and I think it makes it increasingly difficult to accomplish our geopolitical goals.
Battle of the Philippine Sea (the biggest carrier battle ever apparently) was kind of sad and anticlimactic. The Japanese pilots were so undertrained that they were shot out of the sky like turkeys by American aces. Earlier in the war, better pilots might have taken down quite a bit of the American Navy.
Complete and utter failure of Japanese intelligence and reconnaissance. The amount of times I read the words "surprisingly, the American fleet arrived undetected" was shocking, and indicates a lack of investment in code-breaking and reconnaissance by the Japanese leadership. Of course some of this was luck, but if something happens almost every time, it's not luck.
These casualties aren't really low, they are just lower compared to the totalitarian regimes the western Allies were pitted against (and allied with). Looking only at the dead is misleading too, especially when comparing with fighting elsewhere, as both non-combat and psychiatric casualties among American forces were much higher in the Pacific than elsewhere.
The other factor is that America had entered the war with a deliberate strategy to center its industrial might rather than its population wealth. They chose the 90 division army rather than the 200 division army. The American economy that was able to produce endless amounts of Liberty ships, aircraft carriers, tanks, munitions, fuel, food, etc. was made conscious with a deliberate decision to run as close to the wire as possible with the manpower put into the field. With Europe being the primary focus almost right until the war's conclusion there, the Pacific theater commanders did not have an endless supply of bodies to throw into operations against the Japanese.
Sort of.
Through [Lend-Lease], the US sent the 2026 equivalent of almost $700bn to allies, mostly USSR and Great Britain. To the USSR alone;
And, from a logistical standpoint;
link
The heuristic I've seen is that the U.S. provided the equipment for something like 50 to as much as 100 "divisions" of the Soviet Army. The quibbles here are on doctrinal definitions vs reality of divisional sizes and readiness. I think that's all besides the point. Lend-Lease was a colossal operation and did represent the shifting of national resources away from our own armed forces. The 90 divisions weren't a result of a short fall of men or material, but a deliberate policy move.
Here's the official U.S. Army history on "The 90 Division Gamble" -- link
Arguing over division size and our ability to equipment them isn't a nerdy armchair general exercise. The American way of war since WW2 has been to simply overwhelm the opposing force with MORE of everything. Through the 50s and 60s, there was real fear that we might not be able to do this toe-to-toe with the Russians in Europe. We never got to that point. The largest conflict we did engage in at that time, Vietnam, resulted in American forces losing precisely zero engagements over about a company sized magnitude. Even the Tet Offensive was, militarily, a pretty handy defeat. The problem, of course, is policy and politics.
The United States loves to fight with one hand behind it's back for a whole host of shitty political reasons. A lot of it can be grouped under the umbrella term "optics" -- screaming babies, women and children running away from a burning village / town / city, our own soldiers coming back maimed or shellshocked. War is ugly and bad and Washington has developed the idea that it can be "managed" with policy to make it less and ugly and bad and, somehow, also just as "effective" (whatever that means).
Another culprit is the relationship between Civilian and Military leadership. "No" isn't a word you use with a superior in the military and that culture translates over to how they (Military leadership) "work" with Congress. There's a lot of pants-on-head retarded requests from Congress and even the President - "Can we do this with half as many troops? Or, wait, what about special operations ONLY? No planes. No artillery. Just secret ninjas!" And very few senior military leaders have the elan to dissuade the policy maker or executive on the other side of the table from his or her harebrained plan. Having worked with a few retired generals / admirals in my GovCon days, many of them say that being a general in today's military is a colossal let down. You aren't actually training, equipping, and commanding a division (or ship, or air wing), you're lobbying about budgets and base renaming bullshit in D.C. much of the time.
There is some interesting historical foreshadowing of this. Famous, General Marshall was in D.C. for most of World War 2 despite being, perhaps, more qualified that many (most?) of the field commanders in Europe / Africa. The problem was he was too valuable in terms of political ability to have him away for any large length of time.
All of this ties to the discussion of "warrior spirit" here. Outside of infantry and special operations units, I would content it doesn't exist in the U.S. military and hasn't in quite some time. We run a managerial military and it's the best in the world because we just have so. much. more of everything. Remember the old joke; after the U.S. Air Force, who has the second largest air force in the world? The. U.S. Army. The third? The U.S. Navy. The fourth? The Marines (I don't know if this last one is true anymore). But, like many "managerial" things, much of military decision making has been captured in a consensus-driven, consultant-corporateese style thinking.
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