Was it possible for the IJN to replace aircraft and pilot losses?

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Admiral Beez

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Oct 21, 2019
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Like with any nation's combat sorties nearly every time the IJN carriers put aircraft into the air a number did not come back. This must be expected and planned for.

At Pearl Habour the IJN sent out 353 aircraft and lost 29 (8.2%) of them. At the April 1942 Indian Ocean Raid the IJN lost 18 aircraft, 5% of their total 350 CAG. These small numbers should be easy for even the smallest procurement system to replace. At Coral Sea, the IJN lost approx. 85 aircraft, 61% of their total 139 CAG. This must have come as a shock, but still, 85 aircraft and aircrew should be easy enough to replace. But apparently it wasn't, since the perfectly operational aircraft carrier Shōkaku had to stay in port during the Battle of Midway (where 100% of the IJN's carrier aircraft were lost) for lack of aircraft or aircrew.

What was the state of the IJN's aircrew and aircraft procurement process? Looking here at A6M production it looks like there should been enough fighters at least to replace the losses up to and including Coral Sea. From Pearl Harbour to the end of May 1942 there were 461 A6Ms produced, far more than those lost. If it's not (yet) an aircraft production shortage, it must be a shortage of aircrew and/or mechanics/handlers. Was it possible to expedite personnel training and onboarding? We've all likely read that Japanese fighter pilots were intensively (and likely expensively) screened and trained over a long period, with the goal of creating samurai-like experts. I expect the splashout or failure rate was high, with potentially qualified pilots being tossed from the program - another potential waste and bottleneck. But the IJNAS has had time to observe the British method that won the Battle of Britain, where men with little training were thrown into the air in high performance Spitfires and Hurricanes to learn (or perish) on the job.

Was it possible for the IJN to replace aircraft and pilot losses?
 
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Japan could replace the losses in aircraft far more easily than pilots, as you stated. I also wondered how long it took them to realize their trying might have been too exclusive. There was some bit of info from somewhere on IJN pilot trainees being dismissed for petty infractions, not even aviation related. That jibed with Saburo Sakai's book, Samauri.
Considering how tough it was to be admitted for training it seems a waste to dismiss those trainees for minor violations.
 
It does seem dumbly ill-conceived. It's carrier pilots, not an exclusive country club. I would have opened up enrollment eligibility to the entire IJN officer corps and every Japanese male who can pass the physical exam and has any demonstrated academic ability, especially mathematics (our Zero pilots still need to be keen navigators). Just think how many potential pilots, navigators and aircraft mechanics were wasted on suicidal bansai charges in the jungles of Guadalcanal.
 
Regarding Japanese plans:
they planned for a short war. They would give the Americans and British a couple of bloody defeats, who then in turn would sue for peace. It was the last part the Americans didn't play along with, rather rude I would say. Anyway, such a plan did not require a big pipeline to replace ever mounting losses. And my impression is, the Japanese never really changed their plans, they believed their own propaganda to some extend, that the later allied victories had come at a horrible price to the Americans, that the Americans had lost several capital ships and thousands or even tens-of-thousands of sailors in major battles. They recognized that the allies were winning, but they seemed to be bleeding pretty hard, so surely, any day now, any battle, must be the point where the US public opinion would not accept the mounting casualties and force their government to sue for peace.

Regarding the Zuikaku and Shokaku, I believe I once read that the Shokaku was undamaged but had lost too much of its air wing, while the Zuikaku had retained most of its air wing but was damaged, but the Japanese admiralty was too inflexible to simply reassign an air group to another carrier, though maybe someone could confirm or contradict this?
 

That was at Coral Sea where Zuikaku was left operational but bereft of aircraft while Shokaku was damaged but most planes survived. IJN did not transfer Shokaku pilots to Zuikaku because, in their doctrine, the air units were organic components of the carriers -- as opposed to the American policy of putting planes anywhere they could fly off from.
 
Thumpalumpacus said:
IJN did not transfer Shokaku pilots to Zuikaku because, in their doctrine, the air units were organic components of the carriers -- as opposed to the American policy of putting planes anywhere they could fly off from.
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What could be the possibly conceived advantage of the IJN system? If the entire CAG and its mechanics and handlers move over from one carrier to another the fighting ability of the squadrons shouldn't change a bit. Especially if the ship's internal spaces and external layouts are identical.

If one of your carriers is disabled what were its pilots already in the air supposed to do? Ditch? Surely you want them to fly to the nearest carrier, refuel/rearm and be prepared to operate from that carrier going forward? At Midway, did the counterstrike from Hiryū, the sole surviving IJN carrier include any of the now orphaned pilots aloft from Sōryū, Kaga, and Akagi? If not, this seems like such a stupid omission.

Why Japan, why? Your decisions make no sense.
 
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Admiral Beez said:
If one of your carriers is disabled what were its pilots already in the air supposed to do? Ditch? Surely you want them to fly to the nearest carrier, refuel/rearm and be prepared to operate from that carrier going forward?
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I believe the Japanese pilots did land on other carriers than their original ones if necessary,a s did the Americans. The difference, as I understand it, is that the Americans would reassign an airgroup (pilots, planes and support personnel I would assume) to another carrier if useful, while to the Japanese, the pilots and support personnel of the aircraft were part of the ship crew and stuck with it. Carrier operations were rather new then, and having such a large part of the ship not being tied to the ship is probably somewhat unique.
 
US practice developed during 1944 as the US Third/Fifth Fleet increased it's tempo of operations. Policy was to form a complete airgroup, work it up ashore, allocate it to a carrier and roughly six months later replace it in its entirety. Only rarely was a whole air group moved from one carrier to another. When it did happen it was with a relatively fresh air group that was on a carrier that got damaged.

Odd aircraft landing on the wrong carrier was not an infrequent event, usually brought about by lack of fuel or bad weather (parent carrier hidden in a rain squall for example). The biggest case was probably the night recovery after the Battle of the Philippine Sea. Usually just a case of refuelling them and sending them back to their parent ship. Integrating the odd pilot into existing flight teams wasn't the preferred option, unless formally reassigned to fill a pilot shortage.
 
I think it might be useful to look at this issue from another perspective. The quick answer to the question, as others have answered, was to adopt the US model of flexible air groups on carriers and to reduce the stringent demands for pilot training. But I think what you're trying to get at is why they did not make these changes. The answer to that question is culture. Some people have pointed out that air groups were viewed as organic parts of a carrier and were not sent to other carriers because they did not "belong" on another carrier. They were not viewed as interchangeable parts, but more like a piece of your body. As for pilot training, the emphasis on only accepting excellent pilots, and rejecting those that did not meet these high standards was also something not easily altered because of Japanese culture. There has been much written, and refuted, about the influence of bushido (warrior's code) and samurai mythology on Japanese military culture, and I believe how Japan selected their pilots bears a strong correlation to the warrior mythos in Japanese history. I think these were ingrained cultural traits that could not be changed or altered easily even in the face of the realities of WWII. Culture is not always reasonable or rational, and it resists change.
 
Yes, it's culture.
IJN's culture was still based on the Russo-Japanese War and they regarded aircraft as an accessory of the fleet.
IJA's culture was updated by Nomonhan and they regarded aircraft as an independent air force, which made operation more flexible than IJN.
 

Yeah, it beats me. Now, Shokaku's surviving planes did land aboard Zuikaku so far as I've read, and may have even participated in one more strike; and I'm pretty certain the same happened at Midway when KdB orphans landed aboard Hiryu and subsequently struck Yorktown. I.E., in combat, there was more flexibility, but in organizational structure, the IJN was reluctant to do this at least in the early part of the war. No doubt I'm not entirely accurate so you might want to await a better-informed poster; but this is what I more or less know.

But you're right in my mind, that tying down specific aircraft to specific carriers is an inefficient way of handling things, so long as the crews are familiar with the a/c types involved.
 

Good discussion.
Yes, and the Japanese culture went well beyond initial selection. Around 1940 the USAAF started a shift to a "mass production" view of pilots, but no other air force did the same. I researched this mainly for Luftwaffe and US, but Japan appears to have been similar to Germany. Pilots were warriors who learned through a long apprenticeship. This approach could not scale up fast (you need lots of teachers per trainee, but teachers have to have experience already), and until 1944 they stuck with that model. The US in contrast shifted from an apprenticeship model to what I call "Standard Procedure Flying" (Read the Friendly Manual, and follow the checklist) which allowed a much higher ratio of trainees per instructor per year. The US Navy was similar to USAAF although it did not push the new paradigm as hard.
 
Excellent points! I think that your statement "Standard Procedure Flying" (Read the Friendly Manual, and follow the checklist)" would apply more towards the primary and intermediate portions of flight training where you are trying to "program" trainees into picking up "good" habits like following SOPs, following flight manuals and IMO most importantly following a checklist before they move into more advanced stuff like formation flying and combat training. I think the "warrior culture" instilled in Japanese and to some degree Luftwaffe pilots eventually degraded performance potential as this political/ cultural "brainwashing" during flight training had an effect on tactics. I think Luftwaffe pilots eventually left the political programming behind as they entered combat and adjusted accordingly, but not so much the Japanese, and it showed as the war progressed.

A good portion of my civilian flight instructors were former military pilots (who were also IPs) and following procedure, the flight manual and checklists were the continual emphasis whether it was basic VFR flight or flying high performance aircraft. In retrospect I believe I was well trained.
 

Definitely true that Standard Procedure Flying was more important at early stages of training. In fact, even US fighter pilots moved away from emphasizing it once they got overseas. Heavy bomber pilots were the only ones who emphasized it during combat, due partly to the requirements of massive formations. Luftwaffe pilots, however, could not adopt it later in the war because it did not yet exist outside the US. Their first introduction was in the 1950s when some former German WW2 pilots were sent to the US to learn to fly jets. .

An anecdote about Johan Steinhoff's training in the US:

I wish I had comparable information about Japan, but did not have time (or language skills) to do comparable research.
 
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