Japanese Bomber Tactics (Navy) World War 2
The Japanese Navy used three anti-shipping tactics for their carrier-borne aircraft in World War 2, dive, torpedo and level bombing tactics. This video explains and visualizes the various attack patterns, combat procedures and weapon system.
Military History Visualized provides a series of short narrative and visual presentations like documentaries based on academic literature or sometimes primary sources. Videos are intended as introduction to military history, but also contain a lot of details for history buffs. Since the aim is to keep the episodes short and comprehensive some details are often cut.
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Evans, David C.; Peattie, Mark R.: Kaigun - Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy 1887-1941
Parshall, Janathan; Tully, Anthony: Shattered Sword. The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway
Smith, Peter C.: Aichi D3A1/2 Val
Francillon, Rene J.: Japanese Aircraft of the Pacific War
Tagaya, Osamu: The Imperial Japanese Air Forces, In: Higham & Harris: Why Air Forces Fail
www.combinedfleet.com/torps.htm
www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNJAP...
JICPOA Weekly Intelligence 20 Oct 1944, Japanese Aerial Tactics against ship Targets
ww2data.blogspot.co.at/2016/02...
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Song: Ethan Meixsell - Demilitarized Zone
3:14 the High Explosive Bomb should be : 242 kg (532 lbs) (type 98 No. 25). thx +Benedikt Geierhofer
Military History Visualized please do a video on carrier escort tactics and formations in the pacific and maybe in the Atlantic, really enjoy your videos keep up the good work👏👌🖒
242 kg = 532,40 lbs I thought you were Deutsch. lol.....
he is austrian.
With Japanese carrier-borne aircraft tactics being so sophisticated and ahead of their time, how come they were taking so many losses? I mean, was it just combination of US AA tactics, poor protection of Japanese aircraft? Wouldn't it make the tactics rather crappy, rather quickly?
Some was bad luck and unprofessionalism as at Midway. Some was due to the very poor protection of the aircraft. Japanese aircraft at this time had no armor plate or self-sealing fuel tanks---whihc were critical in minimizing the volume of the fuel tanks and thus the amount of fuel vapors. Self sealing tanks work like a deflating balloon. As fuel is drawn out the collapse. Finally, US anti-aircraft was much better than Japanese. US carriers had integral AAA batteries which were continuously improved. The Japanese relied more on cruisers and destroyers for AAA. Also, they were late in installing radar on their ships and never had a good system in palce to use it.
the advancement of the visual quality of your videos is truly impressive.
I'm surprised by the level of sophistication of their strike groups. Sure, during training and on paper you might want to fly formations like that, but in actual combat with the chaos that ensues, I find it amazing that they managed to hit their targets while maintaining these formations. One more reason why the US sailors were scared of the Japanese navy at least in the first part of the war in Pacific.
g0lanu I would think that the launch order is a result of tactical planning. It wouldn't be too hard to follow a list of planes to launch. What would be scary is friking kamikaze bombers, talk about patriotism. America got nothing on that level of patriotism.
Sidetracking a bit, but can't help myself: it's a good thing that it doesn't have that level of fanaticism, it's probably one of the main reasons they and their other allies actually won. Seriously, think about it for a sec. The fact that such an option does not even exist makes leaders look for solutions that maximise survivability. On the longterm, which side do you think has better chances of pulling through, that which maximises pragmatism and survivability or that which is willing to sacrifice its people for ideological reasons alone? Militaristic cultures die out, live by the sword, die by the sword.
You do have a point g0lanu, but take in consideration how feasible compared to other weapons were kamikaze tactics at the time, given how much of an advantage it had. It just required a pragmatic mind which you mentioned to actually send it to use. I remember that I have once read about a project to turn german flying bombs into manned flying bombs. There even were people willing to join the units and train for flying these things, but the german staff refused since it was considered wrong to make people go to waste like this. If this project would succeed the accuracy of these attacks could rise dramatically with only one person lost per single flying bomb attack, while any other attack runs the risk of wasting the flying bomb, bombers missing their targets and plenty more people killed during the bombing raid. Japaneese had their own Ohka manned flying anti-ship bombs which would prove successful as a kamikaze weapon if it had a good fighter protection, there could have even been more cases of such as DD Hugh Hadley's fate.
That's not patriotism. That's suicidal fanaticism. In the end it did nothing for the continuance of Imperial Japan.
hoppes9 It absolutely did. The problem with japan was their isolation and lack of strategic resources as well as limited population and land. They weren't as well industrialized and their research was weaker. If they had more manufacturing capabilities, they could have made a semi automatic rifle and with a better training program, they could have won fights against the us easy peasy. A lot of things were stacked against japan, to attribute their defeat to bad soldiers or tactics would be wrong. In fact, it's admirable they lasted as long as
As a recently retired vet and an ardent student in military history. I can say your videos are spot on. Keep em coming!
thank you!
@Provocateur really man? comparing a soldier (i assume) to a terrorist?
@@steelbaron6343 Why not?
I love the videos you make and its always nice listening to the hard reasurch you put into them. I am a japanese person and I really like learning more about how ww2 japan was fighting and i admire how my greatgrandparants generation, tried to fight a huge enemy and seemed to succied in the earlier part of the war. I have about 20-25 relitives who fought in the pacific war on the Japanese side, one of them was a torpedo pilot who fought from pear harver to Battle of Cape enggano when he died, along with his carrier Zuikaku. He may have died in the war but he left a diary which my family still has, its a fairly open minded diary, starting with we should not attack pear harver and once I saw the admirals face I undersood our code was broken. showing that he was not just a simple minded pilot which i still hold proud of, he fought a losing war but he was a man with a mind to win. He flew a Kate and a Jill until he died. I cant say for sure but one thing I noticed, he mentioned that he attacked an american battleship and scorded a direct hit during one battle in late october of 1942, and if my memory servers correct, that means that he hit a torpedo on the USS South Dakoda. battleships rarely were hit by japanese torpedo planes after peral haver, and no i am not counting the battle in Malaya. and thats a cool thing to notice. ^-^ Sorry for writting some ranbals ^^" all i wanna say is, love the video.
Great comments Friend 711, may God bless you and your family - I lost three uncles in WW II (two in Europe) and one in the Pacific, a Naval Officer, who's ship was sunk and who ended up in captivity - he survived the war but committed suicide later on, never having adjusted to his ordeal. Only one uncle survived and had a "normal" life after WW II. I am glad the war is over, that one at least. Ciao, L (US Navy Veteran)
Interesting. I'm from the U.S. which has a population more than double that of Japan and I have 0 relatives who fought in WWII. Whereas you are from a smaller country and thus have more relatives who fought. My paternal grandfather fought in the Korean war and as far as I know, he's the only veteran I'm related to. I imagine that in China, with a population of 1.4 billion people, it's really easy to find millions of people who have no relatives at all who fought in any war.
@@davidhoffman6980 probably, that is an interesting point of view.
Thanks for your comment, it’s hard finding Japanese people willing to talk about the past. My grandparents generation fought in Germany with the 442rct/100th, and MIS operatives through the Korean War. A couple of my grandmothers sisters even married marines after the war who were involved with the attacks on Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Before we even knew they were in the war, as little kids we were scared to death of that generation. They never liked to talk about their experiences, lots of things never put in history books... There’s only a couple of them left and they’re almost 100 years old, make sure that diary is preserved because it’s something that’s not often shared
Wow I love your perspective. How’s Japan 🇯🇵 these days?
you are by far the the best military content creator on youtube, keep it up!
Robin Kristiansen Yeah absolutely! But his pronounciation is not that good
Couldn't agree more
The best part is probably that he makes his sources clear. Almost no other history channel on youtube does this. It makes the videos more acedemic and not just entertainment. It also lets you trust him a lot more because we know that he is basing his content on concrete work by actual historians. Not just what he remembers.
Right up there with ForgottenWeapons/InRange in my book.
being that hes Austrian(or German), i feel we can let it slide as English is most likely not his primary language, but i prefer to watch his videos over some of the others on youtube, the level of depth and quality he puts into his videos is amazing and it keeps me coming back.
step 1: tie bandana
Step 3: fly and crash for emperor in enemy ships
@Liam Conway that’s Step 3. Step 2 is drink sake.
Yorktown only had 5 of her 9 boilers operational because she was hit badly at the Battle of Coral Sea just weeks before and there was no time to properly repair them before the Battle of Midway. As a result her speed was reduced (probably by about 7 knots which is a lot in naval terms). As such she was sluggish and hard to maneuver. Also the torpedo attacks on Yorktown followed 3 bomb hits she received in an earlier dive bomber attack which knocked out 4 more boilers. Yorktown's "captain of engineering", an officer named Delaney, worked no small miracle in getting those 4 boilers back on line prior to the torpedo attack. *An interesting note: The first wave was led by Lt. Tomonaga Joichi who is considered to be one of Japan's best air commanders. His flight was pounced on by American Wildcats fighters and his plane was personally attacked by none other than that Lt. Cdr. Jimmy Thach (inventor of the Thach Weave maneuver). You literally had the commanding officers of the Japanese and American air groups in mono-y-mono combat with each other. Thach later noted that despite filling Tomonoga's plane (a B5N2 Kate) with bullet holes, Tomonaga stayed the course and released his torpedo before a wing separated and he (and his crew) crashed to their deaths. The torpedoes of the first wave of Japanese bombers missed Yorktown due to captain Buckmaster's excellent ship handling but with only five of nine boilers working the carrier was just too sluggish to avoid the the larger second wave of Japanese torpedo bombers led by Lt. Hashimoto (who survived the war). One torpedo managed to hit Yorktown but it was enough. She was dead in the water and listing badly. **It must be noted that these aerial bombs and the torpedo DID NOT SINK YORKTOWN! She was torpedoed again a day and a half later by the Japanese submarine I-168. That is the one that finished her off. It also sank the destroyer Hammond that was lashed beside her to provide electricity for the pumps.
I love this story! Thank you. It really gives a sense of a mighty clash between two excellent forces.
Here's an important aspect of the the Battle of Midway that tends to get forgotten. From Wiki, "After the Yorktown was lost, Buckmaster was promoted to Rear Admiral and named the first Chief of Naval Air primary Training (NAPTC). NAPTC headquarters were located at the naval Air Training Station, Fairfax Airport, Kansas City, Kansas. Dixie Kiefer, his Executive Officer on Yorktown was promoted to Captain and became Buckmaster's Chief of Staff. Under Buckmaster's direction the Navy's first formal Flight Training Manuals were printed in two versions: "No.1 C.A.A.-W.T.S. ELEMENTARY" and "No. 2 PRIMARY". Both versions were printed by LA RUE in Kansas City (20,000 Sept 1943). The period from early 1942 through 1944 saw a rapid expansion of the navy's flight training operations ending in 1944 with the formation of the Naval Air Training Command at Naval Air Station Pensacola under the command of Rear Admiral George D. Murray, USN." Meanwhile Captain Yanagimoto of the Soryu and both Admiral Yamaguchi and Captain Kaku of the Hiryu elected to go down with their ships rather than continue the fight against the Americans. It's hard to win a war when your finest officers are killing themselves.
Correct. I might add that Buckmaster's future boss (Capt. Murray) was the skipper of the Enterprise at Midway. Aviation is a small world, naval aviation is even smaller.
Yes. The Americans were very unlucky to lose the Yorktown, and except for the submarine attack she might have been saved. That would have been an even more horrific loss of face for the Japanese - four fleet carriers to none, and an extra US fleet carrier available later in the war. Worse still, if Yorktown had made it home, she might in her near-terminal state have received a full rebuild and modernisation and been even more of a threat when she eventually emerged. Of course the real loss was not just the Japanese carriers but their experienced air groups as well. I know that after the British Ark Royal was sunk, there were severe criticisms of the way her damage control was managed, and David K Brown covered these in his book "Nelson to Vanguard". Do you know if there are similar criticisms for Yorktown?
Lt Tomonaga's plane had broken one of the tanks during the attack of Midway Island the day earlier. That mean the attack on Yorktown is a one way mission to him and his crew.
can you do a video on the classes of ships. I understand, but it is one of the most common question I get when talking warships.
you mean for ww2 or in general? I was thinking about doing such a video, but I am quite curious what you want to see/hear.
Military History Visualized I feel WW2 wold give people the jist of what each classes are
i like to refer to the "classic age of Naval warfare" from 1895-1945" Naval warfare from the 1600-1940 primarily revolved around Naval gun fire, from 1600-1860 Wooden sailing ships were the norm, then from 1860-1885 you had a "transformation" era as ships developed armored hulls and steam powered engines But the basic tenets of the Age of sail based gun ships vs Steal and steam based gun ships remain the same: very large "ships of the line" or "battleships" that were expensive and produced in smaller numbers in comparisoin to smaller "frigates" or "cruisers" like in the age of sail lesser warships could not hope to engage a Battleship in open combat from the late 1890- to WW2 Naval tactics and ship design were developed rapidity but basic tactics remained the same. With the Rise of the Aircraft carrier surface combat ships became increasingly mainly used in the support role. but because the limits of Aircraft technology and the rarity and value of carriers meant surface battles happened often in the early stages of the war. After the end of WW2 Naval doctrine shifted permanent into the age of Aircraft, Missiles, electronic warfare, decoys and "shoot down" tactics
I would be happy to help out with the basic WWII ship classes. It also ties heavily into the interwar naval treaties.
Sam George +
I was hoping to see a reference to the first massive attack on Darwin, Australia on 19 February 1942 where a high proportion of the attacking Japanese naval aircraft were level bombing B5N Kates. Amongst the many 'firsts' of the attack was the combination of air and ground based naval aircraft (G3M Nell and G4M Betty in the follow up attack of the carrier launched raiders).
Not the only time a torpedo bombers are used as level bombers, USN used TBF/M Avengers as Level Bombers as well during airstrikes on Phillipines, Formosa and Volcano islands(Iwo Jima, Chichi Jima etc) and many other times
" Shattered Sword " is a fantastic read. great book, lots of revelations and myth busting about the battle of midway and the pacific war in general.
I think your animations are getting better and more complex. Great work as usual!
I really love the extensive dynamic visualisation. Keep up the good work!
You have one of the BEST channels in all KZhead, love learning history with your videos!
I love these videos and the effort you have put into making them better shows, this is the best-looking one yet keep it up!
Having a bit of a MHV video marathon! Superb work....and USS Yorktown CV-5 is a huge favourite of mine!
Ohh!!! I always get excited when you release new naval and aviation videos! Thank you for this one!
You should have been a consultant for Gary Grigsby games. Every single Pacific Theater video you've produced helps me immensely with my War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition gameplay. I always learn something new with each video. Thank you so much for doing what you do.
omg you play War in the Pacific: Admirals Edition, this thing is HUGE, never played only played Uncommon Valor a few years ago, which covered just a small part of the area, but the Order of Battle of War in the Pacific is just fucking insane. Thank you!
Your video on logistics was one of the biggest helps I've had. And yes, WitP:AE is insanely massive.
I've been playing WitP:AE for about seven years now and I can honestly say that it's been, by far, the best investment for a game in my entire life. I can't recommend it enough, especially if you're a dedicated student of history, such as you are.
though the game looks awesome in scale, it leans on the same stupid computer calculation principle of "no matter what you put up against the computer, if a date says you have to die, you gonna die". Example; early on I concentrated my millions of chinese troops in two HUGE armies marching them off to a couple of small japanese coast invasions (not having much air support)...factor 15 to 1. Morale still in virgin state . Result: both chinese armees obliterated within 2 days. As if melted snow in the sun. Ditto the flying tiger sqdrn in Burma..always made certain it faced less jap opposition...then one day: all shot away (against obsolete jap planes of a handfull at a time). That's when I knew it was a f.u. game. Totally not "realistic".
How the bloody hell are you even playing WitP? The thing is so massive and the tutorials are either bad or nonexistent!
Videos like this are are not only highly informative, they are fun to watch. Keep p the good work!
These videos of you are so detailed and well made. You clearly put in a lot of time to do research
Excellent as always! And I am so happy you have taken an interest in the Pacific war, because I will probably never get around to directly studying it myself :p
Another useful analysis from MHV (and friend). Thanks for posting!
Thanks you so much for this! I've been fascinated by WW2 Japanese aerial combat since I started playing IL-2 Sturmovik years ago!
this is very informative. it's just in time because I just started grinding the Japanese line in War Thunder.
Hey I just discovered this channel under a week ago. Thank you for including the Feet with the Meters.
realy effective video on carrier squadrons
Really enjoy your channel! Keep it up!
nice, keep up the good work!
You Are Way Underrated.
Excellent video. Thanks!
I have a new favorite video haha great work man
That was well done. Have you done a skip bombing video?
thank you, not yet.
Thx for the video!
Wow! Yet another great and concise video!
Great video as usual!
thanks for this video
Good upload 👍
I really really like your videos.
Coordination + Training / Poorly Prepared + Ill equipped = six months Learning math with Military History Visualized.
Love your channel My favorite!!!!
Checked his channel and found this was uploaded 2 seconds ago! :D
saem
you think this was a coincidence? ;)
it was a tactic to get your ass to sub. And he sunk both your ass's. lol (and mine months ago) lol
Ah, the B5N... Such an amazing aircraft to fly. It is a joy, very manouverable and soothing...
Very interesting!!! Great video!
Well done 👍
Hi good video, nice animation. 1. For level bombers, it is not surprising that the best success was against the ships at Pearl Harbor - they were anchored and motionless. Striking a moving fleet is a lot harder. Consider the B-17. While best known for its use in Europe it was widely used in the Pacific where it flew from Midway, and Guadalcanal. It was helpful as a long range recon plane and did contribute some, but was not as effective against moving ships as dive bomber and torpedo planes. 2. Kaigun is an excellent book - very academic however but still great.
I love these videos
Another quick note. The Japanese lost every plane from every carrier of Kido Butai (the "mobile force" which had the 4 fleet carriers). After Hiryu was sunk on the afternoon of the 4th, the remaining planes aloft had no place to land. Midway was still in American hands and the closest IJN carrier was over 300 miles away with the actual main body (where Admiral Yamamoto was commanding from aboard the IJN Yamato) The last IJN plane, a zero fighter, gently ditched in the wake of a Japanese destroyer and the pilot was recovered (as were they all),
What happened to the pilots?
They were picked up by destroyers. The normal procedure was for a destroyer to make a wake trail for the planes to ditch in and the loop back and pick them up. Given the Zeroes low landing speed the wheels up ditchings went very well.
Dude do more air-force related videos. They are awesome
3:14 Is that a error in the description? Both are Type 99 No 25?
damn yes, thank you.
the second should be 242 kg (532 lbs) (type 98 No. 25)
I like your new animations
Good job
It seems like levelbombing attacks against shipping was in general mostly inefficient in ww2, except when the ships were stationary in harbour.
You're right about that. Even at Pearl Harbor, where ships were at anchor, only 15 percent of bombs dropped actually hit their targets, and half of the bombs that hit failed in various ways, e.g. disintegrating in the air, duds, and inability to penetrate armored decks. Ultimately only four bombs out of the 49 released were considered successful in the attack.
@@artmoss6889 - I've long thought that the attack at Pearl was in many ways a failure due to the lack of catastrophic damage to most US battleships. Having another 40 or so torpedo planes may have allowed them to put torpedoes into the Tennessee and Maryland, making their return to service dates 1944 along with West Virginia and California
the level bombing in pearl harbor was intended to get ships that were docked in between the island and other ships, where a torpedo couldn't get them and a standard dive bomb was too small to do anything.
As a very late comment, when talking about the formation in torpedo runs and why the middle group would stay straight on. I would say it only makes sense. My understanding is that torpedo's had most effectiveness when striking a vessel at a 90° angle. So by having them approach in this way, no matter which way the target turns, at least two of the strike groups will end up in approach abeam the ship. One more thing I would guess has to do with the defensive fire from the ship. Most anti-aircraft armaments are arranged laterally along the superstructure. By approaching the bow of the ship, you're limiting the number of installations that can target you, and even more so, you're splitting that number for as long as possible amongst your strike groups.
In the fist transition where he fighters moved into a row. Did you do that entirely in PowerPoint?
The Battle of Santa Cruz Islands (25-27 Oct 1942) was the last carrier engagement where the Japanese Navy was able to launch coordinated offensive carrier operations, after this point the Japanese Navy was basically on the defensive. It was at this engagement that the U.S.N. lost the USS Hornet (CV-8). The USS Wasp (CV-7) had been sunk on 14 Sep 1942 while the USS Saratoga (CV-3) had been torpedoed by a Japanese submarine at the end of September and would be in the yard until the middle of December 1942. The USS Enterprise (CV-6) was damaged at the battle and was out of operation for a several weeks. The Japanese has several carrier including Junyo and Zuikaku, but the Japanese chose to withdraw and rethink their plans. In February 1943 the first USMC F4U-1 Corsairs become operational at Guadalcanal and in March 1943 the USS Essex (CV-9) with the F6F Hellcat arrives at Pearl harbor and in April the Japanese pull all the air divisions from the carriers and assign them to shore stations to bolster island defense while carriers are refitted. The Japanese Naval Air service never recovers from this disastrous move.
Plaese make a video about Aircraft Fighters Tactics in WW2!
Very well thought out with deep research, just like always. Maybe you could try talking on the Japanese expansion into Southeast Asia?
wow the quality of this video is even higher than your standard, and your standard is really high!
This'll be useful when IL-2 Battle of Midway comes out. ;) Saving for later.
super, very interesting!
Very interesting explanation of IJN aerial anti-ship doctrine and tactics. Can you produce a video that covers Luftwaffe Ju-87G anti-tank tactics and overall effectiveness with some focus of Hans-Ulrich Rudel?
Fantastic video. I have, as a table-top wargamer, tried to mount massed, balanced and co-ordinated air strikes against task groups under way and let me say one thing: It is EXTREMELY difficult to get torpedo bombers into position for a perfect strike! Obtaining the ideal angle is difficult in itself, but getting two or more flights into position to attack simultaneously is an absolute art, and one which I never fully mastered. Furthermore, coordinating torpedo attacks with dive-bombing attacks, so as to divide the defender's AA fire and reduce its effect is devilishly difficult. It requires a lot of loitering on the part of many flights of bombers whilst others try to deploy for their attack runs.Now, despite the high speed of bombers vs ships (a five/six-fold speed advantage, which sounds huge, but isn't really), it's not as simply as just flying in circles while you wait, because the target is constantly changing position relative to loiterers. Essentially, what happens is that loitering bombers standing off are performing a big circuit and getting OUT OF POSITION instead of hovering in the correct position. Or, they may be turning back on themselves and ranging further away from the target (the alternative being to stray into flak range), which means that their run-in times out differently to the perfect plan, thus staggering the attacks quite seriously. And remember, all of this loitering is subject to molestation by defending fighters! The result is a massive furball with far more casualties inflicted before actually making the attack runs than are suffered by AA fire. Or, the only other alternative, simply getting each flight to attack when in a half-decent position. this typically results in maybe half-a-dozen aircraft going in during a 72-second attack phase (in game terms, of course) and being subject to all the flak's attention. Torpedo bombers suffer hideously during this kind of 'unravelled' attack, forcing release at longer ranges. In the space of one minute, a warship (even a carrier) can execute a smart turn to comb the tracks, much reducing the efficiency of a three-plane spread. Actually, that's probably the reason for the three-direction attack; the head-on group's weapons are there to ensure that at least one weapon is still running at the target fro a beam angle if the ship suddenly turns to comb one of the flank attacks. Even so, due to the difficulties inherent in getting multiple flights to attack together, as an air controller one needs to be a master chess player to get all the pieces in play at the right moment, so that, whatever your enemy does there's another attack set up and ready to go. Having tried in the peace and quiet of a front room, i have an enormous amount of respect for those officers riding in the middle seat of a Kate who had to direct all of this in real time, with flak and fighters swirling around him. A much under-appreciated 'Really Difficult Job of World War Two'.
And the Japanese did it without radios! They used hand signals or aircraft maneuvers to communicate plane to plane.
The torpedo run that you mentioned is called an 'anvil attack'. This is to prevent the ship from dodging all torpedos regardless of which direction they turned into to evade attack.
How about a video on war industries of world wars?
Interesting info on the dive bomber attacks basically doing what I think is more a glide bombing at shallower angle before a terminal dive from 1500 ft. The Midway historical accounts talk about a US Marine dive bomber squadron from Midway that due to limited training and experience attacked in a glide bomber fashion and got savaged by the Zero CAP.
Hi could you make a video about the last offensives of the 1st WW, the Battle of the Bulge, th soviet sommer offensive of 1944 or the Korean War? I think at least the first topic is often overlooked. Thank you for your awesome content.
With the former, how much they actually believed or hoped the allies would join them against the Soviets and if this was a big underlying reason for such a foolhardy attack.
skinny55772 Which one are you talking about?
i have a question why didnt the nations used like mid-air exploding smokes rockets like you shoot a missile and it explodes and create a screen for planes to dive bomb or torpedo bomb
Could we see a video on bomber interceptors for Germany and Japan? It's a very riveting topic.
In Guadalcanal both sides begun to realize that torpedo bombers were useless in dense AA fire. Dive bombers were the only effective way to deliver punches
The B5N was the primary ship-killing aircraft of the Imperial Japanese Navy. No American carrier hit by torpedoes survived any of the carrier battles of 1942.
Japanese employed level bombing attacks against Hornet (last attack of the day to stop further losses), naval units in Port Darwin plus in Opertion C (Sri Lanka/India) Raiding Operation. I also vaguely remember Ryujo's Kate unsuccessfully bombed Exeter too but its Vals hit USS Pope. Bound to be other instances, even when the CarDiv 1 & 2 airgroups were landed at Rabaul in 1943/4 and in the Philippines in 1944
Yeah! I missed the rock at the end! \m/
What seems to be forgotten by the commenters is that at the battle of Midway, the US had not benefited from industrial production at that point. They were actually hugely outnumbered by the IJN in that battle. The victory was a direct result of intelligence and a botched torpedo attack which had the fighter shield at low level when the dive bombers attacked, basically leaving the IJN with their pants down....
How would the IJN compare to the RN in 1940? Assuming the UK is actually in a position to concentrate its navy in the pacific ocean. I think a comparison of the two major naval powers, at the start of the war, would be intresting.
good question, started inquiry about source situation. I know that the British had actually pretty good night fighting capabilities and there was almost a clash in the Indian Ocean if I am not mistaken.
yeah the british did actually locate the japanese, but there was no fight there (well the british had terrible experiences with the japanese by now :) :malaya campaign and the loss of the prince of wales was quite disastrous)
Do you mean like, historically how did they stack up? Or do you mean, if, for example, every RN ship were in the Pacific facing off against every IJN ship (or a similar scenario)? The below is information gleaned from Wikipedia pages and my own knowledge, so I believe it to be at least 75% accurate. All the examples I may use are ships/planes/etc that were in use by December 31st, 1940, for the sake of fairness. If it's the latter I don't know. The Japanese had the better heavy cruisers, by far, out-classing pretty much everyone's CAs until mid-late war US CAs took to the seas. But then, the RN never really focused on CAs in the first place. In terms of light cruisers, the Royal Navy wins, hands down. I think their BBs were largely on par with each other, considering Japan used the RN as a sort of cheat-sheet. I think the RN had more of them though, so it may tip in their favour. In terms of carriers... by 1940 the IJN had 1 more than the RN (14 v. 13), and either carried roughly equal numbers of aircraft (about 30), or far more than their RN counterparts. By 1940 the RN had a couple carriers that could carry about 54 planes while the IJN had at least six that could carry between 60 and 90 (Akagi, Kaga, Hiryuu, Souryuu, Shoukaku, and Zuikaku) planes. Their carrier planes were also far better - The Japanese had pretty much entirely monoplane compliments in the forms of the A5M "Claude", A6M "Zero", D3A "Val", and B5N "Kate". The Fleet Air Arm however was still employing heavy usage of wooden and some aluminum biplanes as carrier craft (can't really blame them - shorter takeoff distances), with some monoplanes that, at least according to Wikipedia, were removed from front line service shortly after their introduction due to under-performing. They did have some help from the US in the forms of F2F Buffalos and F4F Wildcats and the Martin Maryland as a medium bomber, but by 1940 they were either outdated or out-classed by its contemporary opposition. In terms of destroyers... well. The RN and the IJN had wildly different doctrines in mind when designing their destroyers. The IJN preferred to use them as oversized torpedo boats while the RN used them as fleet escorts and ASW hunter killers. The more modern IJN destroyers with turrets had a lower rate of fire than the RN counterparts due to a flaw in the turret design necessitating the gun be returned to neutral elevation for loading, but they all had better torpedoes. RN detection equipment (RADAR/SONAR) was better, but the IJN destroyers fired heavier shells both for AP and HE. Based on the latest destroyers of each navy by 1940, L and M class for the RN and Kagerou class for the IJN, the L/M were faster by about 0.5kts, but the Kagerou was about 10% heavier, was about 20ft longer, and had a smaller beam. The Kagerou also had a more powerful power plant at 52,000shp vs. the L/M class with 48,000shp. In pure numbers, the number of destroyers both navies had by 1940 roughly equals out, though about half of the IJN destroyers were build in the early 20s, and a vast majority of the RN destroyers were 30s designs. I'm not too familiar with their submarines, on either side, so I can't really comment on those. In conclusion, just from what I've gathered, the RN has the better artillery capital ships (or at least more of them) and escort ships, but the IJN wins out in carriers, carrier planes, and mainline ships.
Lt. Voss Huh, what you said was roughly in line with my perception as to ship types and focus and I did indeed mean how they would stack up historically. An all out naval fight with complete fleets would be an... odd thing if both sides managed to somehow pull that off. I appreciate your detailed answer as this is a field I have little knowledge in, especially in regards to the IJN. It isn't clear to me however how doctrine, economic situation and overall strategy would impact the balance of power. From what you are saying it would seem like Japan has a clear advantage miltary speaking when taking the importance of carriers into account. The RN might have much more staying power relative to Japan due to the difference in economic output..
Yeah, looking back on it now I should have known you weren't really asking about an all in fight between the two navies. The UK definitely had the edge over Japan in terms of economy/resources, if only because they had almost quite literally half of the planet to pick from. If nothing else, the Royal Navy would win a war of attrition as the Japanese spent all their resources. For their doctrine... at the time they were a big proponent of going all out in a battle, only pulling out if chances of victory were slim. This probably contributed to many of their ships being lost. In terms of strategy the Japanese had some of the finest cruiser captains in the world, along with the best carrier pilots, especially in 1940 when they were still at full strength. But to be fair I don't know too much about British captains in 1940, so my knowledge here is a little one sided. But then I think the Japanese would win if only because the British are a bunch of deaf/blind klutzes who fail to find two giant honking great battleships 20 miles from their coast... in broad daylight... twice... /joke
you know im all about the kamekazi ;)
The Japanese Naval fleet crews may have been well trained (at the beginning of the war) with an excellent torpedo for its time, but there were many deficiencies in the training of sailors which came back to haunt them at the Battle of Midway; the damage control on board ships were distinctly below par (compared to, for example, the Americans). Carriers have an additional incendiary/explosive source called aviation fuel which made fire suppression training and equipment upon this type of ship even more important. Furthermore, as the war progressed, the Japanese were running out of veteran pilots, with no early overall strategy being countenanced to replace veteran pilots with well trained crews. This is partly why the IJN and Japanese army implemented the suicide Kamikaze tactic towards the end of the Pacific war.
For your reference , a 小隊(shoutai) is a platoon and a 中隊(chutai) is a company in the army.
i all ways hear about how effective the German anti air craft guns were for example over the u boat pens in France but how effective was the allied anti air craft guns for example in London or Malta
Very interesting presentation. From what I learned from Lundstrom's book, "The First Team: Carrier Air Combat from Pearl Harbor to Midway", the Japanese also had more effective explosives. So you can't simply compare 250kg of TNT from a Japanese bomb to a US bomb. The Japanese bombs were better. However, the steep diving tactic of the US Navy allowed for more accuracy and a harder target to shoot down.
thank you, I ordered that book a few days ago, but it ships for the States, so it will take a few weeks. Didn't know about the explosives, I knew that the Allies introduced Amatol(?) or something later on, which was as far as I know far better, but never really looked into that, could be interesting to see if there was also a shift in the "explosive" effectiveness from Axis advantage to Allied advantage over the war.
Love your work! Another very important development was not just the radar, but the knowledge on how to use it best. The US Navy had observers in England and they learned how the British used RADAR to vector fighters and how to stack air patrols so as to maximize combat efficiency. Also, if you read the specs, the F4F supposedly had a range of 770 miles with drop tanks, but the combat reality was far different. The combat radius was only about 200 miles! US carriers could carry about 90 planes, but early war there were not enough Wildcats to go around, so RADAR made a big difference. Later, leading up to Guadalcanal (another book), the USN developed "Hayrake" which enabled a few Wildcats to home in on a signal broadcrast by aircraft carriers so they wouldn't get lost in the featureless Pacific, although it never mentioned if the Japanese could trace such a signal. I highly recommend another book, "Dauntless Helldivers: A Dive-Bomber Pilot's Epic Story of the Carrier Battles" by Dr. Harold L. Buell. That book is an eyewtiness account of dive bombing from Coral Sea through the Guadalcanal area battles. It should be made into a movie! If you ever come to the US, you should visit the Hornet in Oakland, CA. You could spend ALL day on that ship touring the various historical events and aircraft. From WW2-Space Program.
Hello is there any possibility of there maybe being a railway gun video?
OH, YESSSSS
Ironically, the air war in Pacific proves the old adage the "Good strategy and bad tactics are the longest, most painful way to victory. Good tactics and bad strategy is just a lot of noise before defeat." At the outset of war, while Japanese Navy had the finely honed carrier division operational doctrine (not without flaws though - the operations were helped by air group being an integral part of carrier, which improved efficiency, but also meant that a carrier that took major losses cannot just get a new air group and sail on like it was done with Yorktown after Coral Sea)... But strategic thinking was still focused on decisive clash of battleships. Carriers were treated as a disposable part of cruiser force (even Pearl strike was expected to take 50% losses and lose at least one carrier for stated goal of sinkingo ne battleship). Moreover focus on attack meant carriers sailed mostly "unescoted" - the only ship nearby was plane guard destroyer, battleships, cruisers and most of destroyers were miles away to give space for maneuvers. Compare effect of Japanese AAA at Midway (estimated two US and one Japanese plane shot down) vs. the slaughter Yorktown's escorts inflicted thanks to the close ring formation. US, on the other hand, saw before war that carriers were the decisive units and new fast battleships were builůt specifically to cooperate with them and escort them. On the other hand the US doctrine was "every carrier on its own" - even if in the same task force, Yorktown and Lexington or Hornet and Enterprise launched separate strikes. On the other hand defensive measures were great and sinking Lexington and Hornet in each case meant losing a carrier division as combat unit on Japanese side- even if carriers were not sunk, their air groups were totally wrecked (Coral Sea was as costly as Midway in air crews, Santa Cruz saw loss of 148 IJN aircrew members) so the carriers were out of combat for a considerable time as well.
lmao, i actually subbed to this guy after an argument we had in the comment section... im glad i di
do video a submarine tactic
No doubt the Japanese had a superb torpedo, the best in the world at the time, and highly trained pilots flying a very good airplane in the B-5N Kate. The U.S. never really matched the IJN in the torpedo attack arena. The U.S. Navy did the majority of their damage and ship sinking with dive bombing. The SBD Dauntless was the best dive bomber of the war and packed a serious wallop. Definitely carried the biggest payload until the Curtis Helldiver, which wasn't nearly as effective. Thanks for the video my friend, good stuff indeed.👍 👍
werent some of the fighter aircraft fitted with rockets as well to assist with destroying aa
Have you made any american revolution videos?
4:50 battle of midmi? :p
It would have been one hell of a time to be fighting in that war as a carrier pilot. Japanese naval and aviation technology was amazing. Their liquid oxygen fueled torpedoes, their night-fighting abilities, their submarines, etc, all extremely impressive. They lacked radar and their weak code signals hurt them badly though. This simply didn't have the numbers to match us in an all-out war. The U.S. had a far-greater population base to draw upon for manpower.
Could you please make a video on the differences in the use of multiple rocket launchers by Americans, Nazis and Soviets? Also, a video on literal underground warfare would be nice (tunnels&co in Vietnam, Lebanon and Syria).
#1 Not dropping the bomb, but instead breaking the lever that pulls up
Speaking of Japanese Air tactics. Recently watched this Interview kzhead.info/sun/ZqyYac2KbqysgKM/bejne.html with a Japanese Ace from ww2 he simply said that our planes were built for stunt flying not War. And that planes built for war simply arrived to late for them. He also survived the Hiroshima nuke he was in the air when it was dropped hes plane was hit by the shock-wave. Really great interview especially the end :c Pt 2 was absolutely the best part of the series highly recommended it to anyone interested in ww2
You go in and it goes boom when you inside. That's what they taught me.
If you are looking for ideas for videos, I suggest covering the different design philosophies regarding aircraft carriers of the British, American, and Japanese navies.
Imo Japanese had the best Torpedo bomber tactics and armaments, their anvil attack and their superior torpedo
Can you male a similar video for the other Axis powers, and for the Allies?
The A6M Zero and maybe the other Japanese carrier bombers had either really crappy radios or no radios at all so it was impossible to communicate and only hand signals and visual communication was used this greatly hurt the Japanese when they needed to coordinate fighters in the defense of capital ships
tHeWasTeDYouTh the IJN not prefer to use radio than their IJA counterpart
Yes, Japanese had better bombing tactics, but that was only a small part of the pie... USA had far better damage control, their carriers were better built to sustain damage, they had better Dive Bomber aircraft (which resulted to be the main striking plane against enemy ships) and their fighters were harder to shoot down. When faced at Coral Sea, the japanese had a tactical (but somehow pirric) victory, but when Midway came, USA had figured out japanese code therefore IJN plans, they also had way more and far better search planes put into the task of finding the IJN CV force, and while AA was "kind of" equal for both sides (by 1942 prior to 40mm implementation by Allies)... Zero's couldn't shake of the Wildcats to defend their CVs from the Dauntless Dive Bomber devastating strike who took 3 carriers in 6 minutes, and the last one in the next wave, and they couldn't shake them because they didn't had that many Zeros to begin with. CV plane loadout for IJN was 1/3 fighters 1/3 DB and 1/3 TB, while USNavy had 50% fighters, 30% DB and 20% TB, a configuration more oriented to air supremacy, unlike the "general purpose" IJN loadout. Despite those really heavy losses the carrier striking force kept being somehow "dangerous" as the Battle of Santa Cruz proved, but despite introducing better airplanes for the Marianas battle, IJN couldn't replace skilled pilots at the rate they where being lost, and to make things worst, US Navy improved a lot their AA guns, FCS on their ships and even had better planes if compared to the new models Japan introduced... so therefore they faced the worst disaster posible at the Marianas Turkey Shot and after that their carriers where basically empty of pilots and they where only used as decoys at Cape Engano
in warthunder you pretty much have to do a kamikaze dive to get a big ship kill
Initially, Japanese doctrine of launching aircraft was way superior to American doctrine. Each carrier contributed one of its attack units (VB or VTB) and then some number of escort fighters. This made it easier to coordinating air strikes from multiple carriers. By contrast, American flights from different carriers-both torpedo and dive-bombing-operated independently of each other, Instead of assembling for a coordinated strike. However, Japanese commitment to deliver a massed air attack also had a downside. It's heavily time-consuming process where all Japanese carriers were committed to preparations for one big strike. This deprived the Mobile Force of the flexibility it needed to respond to unexpected changes. it was this weakness that gave American bombers an opportunity to attack Japanese carriers as they wasted their valuable times in preparation of a massed air attack.