There were four instances in the Pacific War when the IJN might have turned the tide and at least delayed the seeming inevitable. Had Admiral Nagumo ordered a 2nd strike at Pearl Harbor he might have rendered the American base inoperable. Instead he ran. At Midway, a strike with the 63 aircraft available to him might have lessened the catastrophe. In those early days, carrier borne strikes upon enemy carriers were always successful. With the American strikes already on the way, there was nothing Nagumo could have done to protect Akagi, Kaga and Soryu; they were doomed. But the early launch surely could have sunk one enemy carrier and perhaps two, leaving him with Hiryu and the soon to arrive Zuikaku to carry on. Instead he dithered and saw his fleet destroyed. At Savo Island Admiral Mikawa turned away at the decisive moment. He feared an air attack that never came. The entire Solomons campaign was in his hands and he let it slip away. The fourth instance was at Leyte Gulf.
Fast Carriers
As the United States 5th Fleet approached Japanese home waters they began to encounter the vast armada of war planes assembled by the Imperial Army for the final defense. There was the redoubtable Kawasaki Ki-61 Tony and the Nakajima Ki-43 Oscar. So too was the Nakajima Ki-44 Tojo as the American signal corps maintained a sense of humor throughout. All these Army planes had the same flight characteristics as the Zero with the same defects; lack of armor and self-sealing tanks sacrificed for range and speed. The Army had a bomber the Americans had yet to encounter, the Mitsubishi Ki-21 Sally; once Jane but that was Doug’s wife’s name and so it had to go. Sally was a bit faster than Betty with more defensive armament. But like Betty, a flying gas tank with no armor or self-sealing tanks. When American 6th Army prepared to land at Leyte, the Japanese Army launched a series of large-scale air attacks with 200 bombers against American Task Force 38. Attached to 3rd Fleet, it was the most powerful flotilla ever assembled. TF38 included 17 fast carriers, 6 fast battleships, 13 anti-aircraft cruisers, 58 destroyers, and over 1,000 aircraft. Among them were five Atlanta class light cruisers with eight dual 5-inch/38 caliber gun mounts that could fire over 17,600 pounds of radar directed proximity fused anti-aircraft shells per minute! The American aircraft carrier personnel were now as skilled as the early flight crews of the 1st Air Fleet. In those days the attack had primacy and was indefatigable. Now, no conventional air attack could break through American defenses. The Army’s attack lost 80 aircraft or 40% losses. The returning pilots however were ecstatic. They claimed to have sunk 11 American carriers and 5 battleships. There was jubilation in Tokyo. The Emperor was beside himself and composed a poem.
The Imperial Navy’s dilemma
Admiral Soemu Toyoda was now commander of the Japanese Combined Fleet. He was at least competent and an improvement over Yamamoto and Nagumo. Admiral Mineichi Koga had replaced Yamamoto whom the Americans ambushed in April 1943. Koga was, unfortunately for Japan, unable to end the suicidal use of destroyers as transports. He died in March 1944 when his heavily armed Kawanishi H8K Emily, the best flying boat in the world, crashed in a storm. Toyoda was then named commander and he had the good sense to make Jisaburō Ozawa the 3rd Fleet commander that comprised the naval air arm. He then had more good sense not to accept Ozawa’s resignation after the debacle in the Philippine Sea when the naval air arm was routed. It’s not like nobody saw this coming. Kōichi Kido, Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, was Emperor Hirohito’s closest advisor. Before Pearl Harbor he advised Hirohito that the Army’s ambition to invade and annex the Dutch East Indies for its oil was an over-reaction to the American embargo. Already bogged down in China, he suggested there were other ways to secure oil and husband resources short of world war. He correctly assessed that the embargo might not work. Royal Dutch Shell was an independent mega-oil corporation. They operated independent of state control (still do). They sell oil to the highest bidder. Like the misbegotten attempt to cripple Mussolini’s Italy with an oil embargo in 1935, this one probably wouldn’t function very well either. He argued that it was 3,500 miles from Indonesia to Japan through passageways of constricted waters that are typically haunted by submarines. He predicted that tankers might become easy prey in a war with America that would surely ensue. He was right about everything and by October 1944, Japan had lost more than 50% of its already limited merchant and oil-tanker fleet. Admiral Toyoda now knew he had to fight the Imperial Navy’s final battle for the Philippines; for were it to fall, Japan would no longer have access to either Indonesia’s nor Borneo’s oil. The Imperial Navy would have to give up deep water naval operations entirely and conduct costal defense only in home waters. Thus the Imperial Navy would have to be prepared to sacrifice the entire striking power of the fleet to defend the Philippines and destroy the American landings at Leyte.
Toyoda commits the naval air arm reserves
The Admiral didn’t entirely believe the Army’s exaggerated reports but suspected that at least some USN carriers were lost. He couldn’t know it, but the Army’s attack hadn’t sunk a single enemy ship. Nevertheless he had to go all in. The naval air arm reserves were committed. These were the men who could take off from, and land, on moving aircraft carriers. This is still the most difficult feat in all of aviation. Finding and training the fellows who can do this isn’t easy. Toyoda also committed 100 bombers of the Tkōgeki Butai. This was la crème de la crème, the T-Air Attack Force with radar equipped Betty’s and the new radar guided Army Mitsubishi Ki-67 Peggy bombers of Sentai 98. Armed with torpedoes, the T-Attack Force specialized in night attacks at zero altitude. They lost 42 planes and got one hit on the cruiser USS Canberra that damaged her. Of the 400 naval aviators, 300 of them were lost with no hits on American ships recorded. Admiral Shigeru Fukudome:
Our fighters were nothing but so many eggs thrown at the stone wall of the indomitable enemy formations.
Admiral Ozawa’s 3rd Fleet now had only 100 pilots to man the four aircraft carriers left to him. It included three light carriers plus the esteemed Zuikaku and two hybrid and makeshift half battleships with tiny flight decks. Those two ships, Ise and Hyūga were useless as attack carriers and would have been better left as battleships. Their attempted conversion only shows how desperate Japan was. As the seaplane tenders they turned out to be, they would have been much better assigned to Center Force that had no air support whatsoever. With no viable attack formations left to it, Japanese 3rd Fleet was a decoy. As it was, Japan no longer had a naval air arm and the final battle would be fought with surface formations.