Would Japan have been better off giving up Guadalcanal early?

[Conslaw]

When Japan lost the Battle of Midway in June 1942, Japan went from a superiority in aircraft carriers to a slight disadvantage. (The USN promptly added Saratoga and Wasp to the Enterprise and Hornet.) Nevertheless, Japan kept up construction work on a new airfield on Guadalcanal, and the island was still garrisoned mostly with construction troops. In essence, in Guadalcanal Japan created a target too juicy to resist.

My thinking is that by creating the juicy target, and not fortifying it enough to stop or even delay an American invasion, Japan created a battleground where it was constantly at a disadvantage. Setting aside the political issues regarding giving up ground, would Japan have been better off letting the US have Guadalcanal, and setting up a defensive position further up the Solomon Islands chain, closer to its base at Rabaul? The upsides to Japan would be a shorter journey for ships and planes from Japanese bases. An obvious downside would be that, with Guadalcanal undefended, there was nothing to stop the US from turning it into a major base more quickly than what historically occurred.

 

[Peter Gunn]

Oh man, I'll happily weigh in on this later, meeting an old buddy for lunch but you've touched on a near and dear one for me. I'll be looking forward to others' thoughts and will chime in later with my own. It's a very good question you've posed.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

I believe they would have been better off cutting their losses after the disjointed attempt on Henderson Field failed.

It would have saved many soldiers for fighting either further up the chain, or elsewhere.

Developing the airfields in the central Solomons earlier would probably have garnered better results. That would have addressed the issue of long missions taking a toll on both pilots and planes, and would probably have given better air cover for the naval mission of bombarding and neutralizing the airfield.

I'm no general, but "reinforce victory and starve defeat" always seemed pretty wise to me. The Japanese committed the error of piecemeal attempts in preference to mass-concentration.

 

[GrauGeist]

Japan needed Guadalcanal, as their other bases nearby would have been (and were) exposed to Allied strikes.
*if* (and this is a huge IF) the IJA and IJN would have supported each other, then the Allied hold on would have been tenuous at best. Add to that, a greatly improved operational strategy by IJN surface elements was needed.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Japan needed Guadalcanal, as their other bases nearby would have been (and were) exposed to Allied strikes.
*if* (and this is a huge IF) the IJA and IJN would have supported each other, then the Allied hold on would have been tenuous at best. Add to that, a greatly improved operational strategy by IJN surface elements was needed.

Of course the other, hypothetical bases would have been exposed. But they would have been less exposed than Guadalcanal in Aug 42, I think, being closer to Rabaul, and that at a time when the Allies had much less presence (42 vs 43) in the area. Build those bases, New Georgia, Bouganville, before advancing, is my thinking.

It's the old joke: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. I don't disagree that Guadalcanal was a good objective, I just think the Japanese needed a better support network in the region to make it happen.

I'd be interested in reading your suggestions for improved IJN operational concepts, if you're so inclined.

 

[The Basket]

The Guadalcanal campaign goes under the shoulda woulda coulda variety.

So the right idea but wrong everything else. So yes Japan had to gain from occupied Guadalcanal but not the way it was done.

 

[K5083]

OR, to look at it another way, how clever of the allies to give up the Philippines, Malaya, Singapore and the East Indies in order to give Japan an insoluble defensive problem when the US giant woke up the Arsenal of Democracy.

Japan was bound to lose. The 'turning point' was Pearl Harbour. What-ifs just change the route to the inevitable conclusion.

 

[yosimitesam]

I believe that the Japanese 'disdain' for Allied fighting power and skill contributed greatly, at least in the beginning, to the piecemeal nature of their counteroffensive. It had taken much less effort than originally thought for them to crush the western powers in the south-pacific, south-asia area. The 'victory disease' (which Japanese officers described after the war) had overtaken the Japanese militaries to such an extent that an attitude of 'it won't take much to roust them from Guadalcanal' had permeated the upper ranks as well as the lower ranks. (re: Ichiki decides to attack without waiting for his whole regiment to be landed.) Underestimating one's enemies is dangerous in warfare and the Japanese leadership should have known better. It wasn't until the beginning of October '42 that the Japanese leadership finally realized the allies were going to fight seriously for the island and stronger and more serious plans for recapturing it were finally started. By that time we were too well dug in and had better logistics in place for them to throw us out without a massive effort.

 

[swampyankee]

Japan was over-stretched before they attacked the US, Commonwealth, French Indo-China, and the Netherlands East Indies, spending something like 30% of its GDP on its armed forces. Leaving aside the strategic failures of the people running the country, the military leadership, especially that of the IJN, virtually completely ignored the major issue of sea control, an especially critical concern for an island country both reliant on imported raw materials and food and supporting a major land army on the nearby huge continent. The IJN's near-complete lack of planning for both defensive and offensive trade warfare is completely incomprehensible, especially for a navy which had the RN as its professional godfather.

 

[special ed]

I lost a paperback book written by a Japanese General officer who was against the occupation of the various islands scattered in outward perimeter around Japan but had wanted a closer in to Japan perimeter more heavily fortified. It was a good read with many quotes and foot notes. Unfortunately I was only half way through and can't remember title or author.

 

[Conslaw]

I lost a paperback book written by a Japanese General officer who was against the occupation of the various islands scattered in outward perimeter around Japan but had wanted a closer in to Japan perimeter more heavily fortified. It was a good read with many quotes and foot notes. Unfortunately I was only half way through and can't remember title or author.

I had also read many in the IJA favored that strategy as well, but it also was fatally flawed. Let's say Japan stops at Truk in the Central Pacific, Rabaul in the South East. That puts Truk on the front lines. The US could have B-24s in the Marshall Islands bombing Truk by late 1942, early 1943. The US could have taken the Marianas in late 1943 and never would have had to base B-29s in China at all.

Like in the movie "War Games", the only winning strategy for Japan was to not play at all.

 

[swampyankee]

I had also read many in the IJA favored that strategy as well, but it also was fatally flawed. Let's say Japan stops at Truk in the Central Pacific, Rabaul in the South East. That puts Truk on the front lines. The US could have B-24s in the Marshall Islands bombing Truk by late 1942, early 1943. The US could have taken the Marianas in late 1943 and never would have had to base B-29s in China at all.

Like in the movie "War Games", the only winning strategy for Japan was to not play at all.

Of course, the people running Japan thought they had some mystical (and mythical) military genius that made them unbeatable by the effete democracies. They forgot two things: artillery and machine guns beat gallantry in the long run, every time and the countries they had just started a war with had the capability to build a hell of a lot more of those infernal machines of war.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

I believe that the Japanese 'disdain' for Allied fighting power and skill contributed greatly, at least in the beginning, to the piecemeal nature of their counteroffensive. It had taken much less effort than originally thought for them to crush the western powers in the south-pacific, south-asia area. The 'victory disease' (which Japanese officers described after the war) had overtaken the Japanese militaries to such an extent that an attitude of 'it won't take much to roust them from Guadalcanal' had permeated the upper ranks as well as the lower ranks. (re: Ichiki decides to attack without waiting for his whole regiment to be landed.) Underestimating one's enemies is dangerous in warfare and the Japanese leadership should have known better. It wasn't until the beginning of October '42 that the Japanese leadership finally realized the allies were going to fight seriously for the island and stronger and more serious plans for recapturing it were finally started. By that time we were too well dug in and had better logistics in place for them to throw us out without a massive effort.

You've said a good piece here. Something you didn't mention is the relative value of intel on each side. I think the Japanese seriously underestimated the simple number of American troops on the island for the first three months of the campaign. I don't know why that might be the case. It may be a case of what I describe as "piecemeal" the Japanese considered sufficient given what they thought at the time.

In that sense, I'm probably guilty of hindsight; but the fact is that the Japanese seem to have had a poor idea of what they were up against for far too long.

I think the Americans knew they were going in piecemeal; after all, one nickname for Cactus was "Operation Shoestring". Meanwhile, Ichiki was writing in his diary about enjoying the fruit of victory ... the night before his command was destroyed and he took his own life.

Those contrasting views seem to me to provide some insight into the fighting minds of the opponents.

 

[Greg Boeser]

The Japanese' Great Southern Offensive reads like an enormous smash and grab. Cause as much mayhem before the cops show up. Although it looks like the Japanese swept all before it, in reality friction greatly hindered the Japanese expansion. First, The USN carriers missed the invite to the party at Pearl. This meant that the threat of US carrier intervention hung over every action the Japanese took from that point on. Then, Wake Island refused to roll over. This meant that the ships damaged in the first attempt had to be repaired and further resources, Soryu, Hiryu, plus additional surface ships and landing troops had to be diverted for the second attempt. We now know that the Malayan campaign was much closer than was known at the time. The Philippines campaign also dragged on longer than the Japanese expected. These were huge losses for the Allies, but each day they held out was another day closer to eventual victory for the Allies. The Japanese timetable for the occupation of New Guinea, critical to isolate Australia, was thrown back at least a month by the USN carrier raid on the landing forces at Lea and Salamaua. When the Japanese finally moved against Port Moresby, the USN carriers were waiting and Australia's security was assured. Each island the Japanese occupied became just another drain on their already stretched lines of communication. Think how fast the Pacific War could have been resolved had the US not expended 85 percent of its resources on the Germany First strategy.
Wake Island, which cost the Japanese over 500 killed to take, was even costlier to hold, with over 2000 of the garrison dying from air attacks and starvation over the course of the next 3 1/2 years. I find it ironic that many of the bombs rained down on the Japanese occupiers in 1944 and 45 came from US aircraft flying from the very airfields which had been home to the initial Japanese attackers

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

I find it ironic that many of the bombs rained down on the Japanese occupiers in 1944 and 45 came from US aircraft flying from the very airfields which had been home to the initial Japanese attackers

First, I gotta say I love your "smash-and-grab" language, it really sums it up neatly.

But replying directly to the above, we should remember that many of those bombs -- and shells, there were some of them too -- were tossed by units working up to combat utility using Wake as a live-fire ground.

Holding that island with no offensive utility and limited defensive utility was pretty much pointless. The occupiers in essence became target-practice by 1944; fresh air groups and naval units could work up under combat conditions without any worry of a larger battle erupting.

 

[Greg Boeser]

So, in a perverse way, FDR's decision to fortify the island lured the Japanese into a trap. Not the trap he had envisioned, but a trap nonetheless.
Like Guadalcanal, a base that could not be adequately or economically supported.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

So, in a perverse way, FDR's decision to fortify the island lured the Japanese into a trap. Not the trap he had envisioned, but a trap nonetheless.
Like Guadalcanal, a base that could not be adequately or economically supported.

Their eyes were definitely larger than their stomachs. I don't think the trap was a result of any action -- witting or not -- of FDR's, but rather that (as you point out) it was quite distant from supply; and as the USN perfected running supply and established other forward bases, Wake was rendered nugatory.

There's a quote I read from a German officer in WWI about the stifled Allied invasion of Salonika -- "We had the world's largest PoW camp". The Japanese occupation of Wake, though of much smaller scale, has the same ring to it to my ears.

 

[Peter Gunn]

Lot's of good stuff here guys.

My few thoughts are that once the Japanese started expanding south, they pretty much painted themselves into the corner of having to go as far as Guadalcanal. It was the dagger that could have been an extreme threat to the supply line between the U.S. and Australia, allowing that route unchecked access is not really an option.

I agree, the way the Japanese went about pursuing the Guadalcanal campaign was folly at best, disdain for American fighting ability at its worst. Even after Midway they were still convinced the USN was still too cowed to actually come out and fight, the arrogance if baffling.

As far as "Germany First", your average American pretty much would rather see Japan humbled, reasons: Pearl Harbor, Bataan Death March etc.

In fact, at the end of 1942, U.S. fielded 25% more combat troops to the Pacific than to England and North Africa, 464,000 to 378,000 (Neptune's Inferno, J.D.Hornfischer Pg. 383)

In Hornfischer's book he makes an interesting case that the "Germany First" strategy existed mostly in the minds of the politicians given that both the Army and the Navy were pushing a Pacific agenda. I'm not sure I agree and he doesn't give any deployment data to back up that assumption but I'm not sure that the US was sending 85% of everything vs Germany. If so for my own curiosity I'd like to see the data to support that as I always assumed that most of production when to the ETO/MTO first.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

I'm not sure I agree and he doesn't give any deployment data to back up that assumption but I'm not sure that the US was sending 85% of everything vs Germany. If so for my own curiosity I'd like to see the data to support that as I always assumed that most of production when to the ETO/MTO first.

I think in 1942 it's possible the Pacific Theater took more resources, but remember as well that one reason Cactus was done on such slender resources was that the buildup for Torch was sucking up a lot of troops, planes, and cargo ships.

 

[Shinpachi]

When Japan lost the Battle of Midway in June 1942, Japan went from a superiority in aircraft carriers to a slight disadvantage. (The USN promptly added Saratoga and Wasp to the Enterprise and Hornet.) Nevertheless, Japan kept up construction work on a new airfield on Guadalcanal, and the island was still garrisoned mostly with construction troops. In essence, in Guadalcanal Japan created a target too juicy to resist.

My thinking is that by creating the juicy target, and not fortifying it enough to stop or even delay an American invasion, Japan created a battleground where it was constantly at a disadvantage. Setting aside the political issues regarding giving up ground, would Japan have been better off letting the US have Guadalcanal, and setting up a defensive position further up the Solomon Islands chain, closer to its base at Rabaul? The upsides to Japan would be a shorter journey for ships and planes from Japanese bases. An obvious downside would be that, with Guadalcanal undefended, there was nothing to stop the US from turning it into a major base more quickly than what historically occurred.

Japan gave up the battle in Guadalcanal by the end of 1942 when it had been turned out that IJN was unable to supply the food and ammunition as they promised to IJA. Positive offensive which was taken place throughout January 1943 was camouflage to prepare for the evacuation planned in early February. I don't necessarily think it was late when IJA was cheated by IJN.