Comments by "" (@VersusARCH) on "Drachinifel" channel.

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  24. I disagree with your assessment of the Japanese aircraft carrying submarines. Firstly they were extremely useful as scouts. Note that many of the successess the German auxilliary cruisers had were due to their scout planes leading them to prey, also FW-200 guided wolfpacks - Japanese B class submarines could deploy scout planes anywhere. It was the advent of radar that made them more vulnerable and also somewhat decreased their usefullness, but still, a scoulplane can scout beyond the horizon. The fact that their impact was not that great should be seen within the fact that the entire Japanese submarine force was not particularly successful overall in spite of some notable individual successess against warships. It was more down to weaker intelligence (with exception of the first few months of the Pacific War), failings in Japanese submarine doctrine of use and, as the war progressed increased strain on Japanese submarine force to be employed to supplied the cut-off garrissons, bypassed by the Americans in their island hopping campaign (made possible by their gain of sea and air superiority as they thoroughly out-produced and out-trained Japan). Also I'd argue the concept of submarine aircraft carrier is pretty much alive today - every missile submarine is a descendant of the concept that marries two major WW2 era developments: modern missiles (courtesy of several countries but most notably Germany with their V2) with the submarine hangars (courtesy of several countries, but the Japanese developed it the furthest). Add another major WW2 invention - the nuclear weapons and you have a nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarine.
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  26. 1:02:50 By 1944 the Japanese were on the strategic defense. Their airpower, both land and carrier based was not sufficient to support large amphibious offensives the likes of which they were conducting in 1941-42 (and back then it was against weak opposition - by 1944. US has filled the Pacific with combat units). Besides they got the resources they wanted in the Dutch East Indies and all they needed to do to win the war is to beat the Chinese while repelling Allied counterattacks. The Japanese were not SEEKING a decisive naval battle. Kantai Kessen assumed a war with US - which now was the case - and in such a war such a battle would be coming to Japan anyway and the doctrine was looking for ways to offset the US superiority. One thing that seems to slip off of minds of people is that WAR IS NOT A LONG-TERM SUSTAINABLE STATE OF AFFAIRS FOR ANY COUNTRY! It is a huge burden on economy, production is focused on war materiel which, unless it conquers something, results in 0 return for the investment immediately (and in case of a loss the return is less and less long term - depending on how bad the loss was - and even a victory can return a net loss on investment). Meanwhile population growth decreases, treasury gets drained, mortality and inflation rises, productivity in many if not most spheres falls (many of the farmers and workers are at the front not producing...), trade and exports decrease... And the neutral powers, potential rivals are often making a ton of cash selling necessities to war parties at inflated prices. Think of a country at war as a man running. Running a 100 m dash at 41 km/h would be akin total war, but it can only be done for a a few minutes (akin a few years of war). A man running a marathon is akin USA in Vietnam - limited war commitment. The man can run for a couple of hours just as the country can sustain a limited war for up to a few decades, but the marathon runner still needs to stop and rest after those few hours of running. In the end a man can go farther by walking (peacetime) than by running in one go. But certain situations necessitate running. So war is a kind of a race. The invader chooses when the race starts, so it is usually better prepared, but also usually runs on an uphill track since he needs to be stronger to succeed and his supply lines are by default longer. The attacker therefore needs to concentrate his forces on sea, air and land in such a way to achieve the necessary advantage. In addition US is stronger economically overall. Kantai Kessen doctrine has correctly recognized both and was looking for a way to turn the tables. In effect it says "If we fight US or UK, they'll come at us in consecutive big concentrated fleet efforts that outgun us. Let's see how we can defeat those the way we had to defeat the Russian fleets in the Yellow Sea and Tsushima". There is no big difference in DOCTRINE between the Japanese attack on Midway and the US attack on the Marianas. Both seek to capture a strategically significant objective with a concentrated fleet action (as the most rational way) and there were hopes that a decisive blow could be struck against the enemy's fleet if it appeared (see the contemporary criticism of Spruance after the Philippine Sea for not pursuing the Japanese). It was just the US and Japanese TACTICAL dispositions that were different as they were shaped by the technology available to each at the time (the Japanese had no radar at the time hence they spread their destroyers around to provide early warning - the US later kinda did the same even with radar - posting forward the radar pickets - to provide earlier warning). A doctrine postulates how you use your forces once the war starts. It may influence the decision, but certainly not decisively, on whether a country will start a war with a given country or not.
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  36. During the 1st Balkan War, after the Serbian army took what is now North Macedonia from the Ottomans it decided to take its allotted (per prewar allied agreements) Ottoman north of Albania. Due to poor roads and railroad network there it decided to do so with a shipborne invasion, chartering the necesary ships from the Greek government with a rate of 1000 dinars per ship per day to take its troops from the as of recently Greek port of Salonika (which was close to where its troops that took North Macedonia were) to Albanian ports and supply them thereafter. The profit-minded Greeks, naturally picked the ships on the small side for the task and it went on. Meanwhile the Ottoman navy, bottled down in the Dardanelles by the Greek naval blockade decided to send their fast protected cruiser Hamidiye to run the blockade and raid the Greek sea lanes, hoping to lure the Giorgios Avereroff to chase her which would in turn enable the main Ottoman fleet to defeat the Hydras and the rest of the Greek fleet and to break the blockade, but the Greek naval command initially decided not to send anything after Hamidiye. However, after Hamidiye managed to catch a group of unprotected Greek ships offloading Serbian troops in the Albanian port of San Giovani di Medua and sink and damage several causing more than 150 Serbian dead (and it would have been worse had two Serbian artillery NCOs not set up their mountain guns on the deck of their Greek transport ship Trifimia and fired back, prompting Hamidiye to open the range and lose accuracy), the Serbian high command and government complained bitterly to the Greeks about the lack of naval escort. The Greeks then detatched the Psara (which was too slow to catch Hamidiye) and 3 destroyers to escort the subsequent Serbian troop convoys which it performed successfully.
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  45.  @dennisweidner288  Distracting the US with light carriers is exactly what the Japanese tried in the next carrier battle - The Eastern Solomons but again the result was a defeat due to lack of radar. Had they had radar they could have detected the US airstrike heading for Ryujo and got from that the locatioon of the US carriers early and launced a strike at them while no US strike would be heading for the main Japanese force. But since they did not have radar they had to wait for a scout plane to find the US fleet so the opposing main carrier fleets exchanged simultaneous airstrikes at each other with the Japanese coming off worse due to mistakes and bad luck. The reason Hiryu was able to counterrattack at Midway in the first place was because it was 10 miles away from Akagi Kaga and Soryu as they were being bombed so she escaped destruction at that time. So actually you have a vindication of division of forces at a tactical level there rather than detraction. Japanese ships were deficient in AAA. Much of their AAA (25mm) was fairly light and its effective range (1 km) was such that it was good only for self defense of the ship rather than defense of other ships. They had some 40 mm pom poms before the war but they concluded 25 mm suited them better and got rid of them replacing them with 25 mms while adding more of the latter (and kept adding as the war progressed)... Supposedly dual purpose main guns of their destroyers (with the exception of the Akizukis) did not have the elevation and rate of fire to be really effective. Also there was no VT fuze back then - instead each large celibre AAA shell had to be set manually after how much time to burst based on eye-gauged estimate of the target's distance, speed and heading while the ship is rolling in the sea. Yeah, good luck hitting two squadrons of dive bombers that just burst through the clouds with that... A few more AAA batteries, even if the ships were tightly packed would have hardly made any difference. But they would have lowered the Kido Butai's top speed (adding Yamato - by 1 knot, older BBs more, with exception of two remaining Kongos which would have made sense) making it easier to find and more difficult to retire if need be.
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  47.  @dennisweidner288  Yes. What you are talking about is true grand strategic consideration which takes into account perceived balance of power worldwide. Kantai kessen was an operational doctrine based on percieved operational doctrine of the enemy (notably plan Orange) and designed to give Japan the best operational and tactical chance to respond to it successfully. But the outcomes of the wars depend on many things other than tactical and operational doctrines. If you look at it, kantai kessen was not wrong at all... Most of the decisive US island hopping thrusts in the pacific were done with massed surface seapower and could only be effectively parried with massed surface seapower which Japan tried an the Philippine Sea and Leyte. And in both cases, in spite of them being terrible defeats it is generally recognized that doctrinally, the Japanese operational plans were sound, possibly the best available and and, superior to US plans in the same battles as ultimately implemented. The reasons for defeats lie elsewhere. Even the earlier battles such as Midway and to a lesser degree Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz involved concentration of nearly all first rate striking power of both sides in one place (sorry, battleships, you are outpaced and outranged by this point by carrier airstrikes) which is no surprise. Japan, at least in the first year of the war often fared quite well in smaller battles where the enemy managed to mass his fleet only partially or locally (Force Z, Java Sea, even Coral Sea a to an extent) which allowed Japan to concentrate enough forces to outnumber them decisively or fight under their own terms (ironically using tactics developped for the kantai kessen) - dealing with them was less of a problem than with full fleet actions. Kantai kessen essentially says: when they come, they will mostly come in full force (rather than peacmeal) since that will give them the best chance to achieve their objective. They will outnumber us due to treaties and our industrial disadvantage. Now this is how we best deal with this and defeat them... Kantai kessen does not decide whether or when Japan declares war on the US but is a plan prepared in case war is already declared. It does not contain plans for Japanese war economy, just acknowledges the current reality. It reeally gets too much misplaced hate.
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