Skyros
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Joined: 9/29/2000
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I found this at:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom//archive/index.php/t-109413.html
Seems to be along the lines of the conversation we are having.
joea04-06-2007, 12:33 PM
Great thread here: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=110840
Links here:
http://groups.msn.com/HistoryWarPolitics1775/navalhistory.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=41339&LastModified=4675538329078913248
Japanese ASW Efforts
In their overall war plan, the Imperial Japanese Navy strategists overlooked the U.S. submarine fleet. In the 1930s, as the new fleet-type submarines were replacing the older S-boats, Japanese Foreign Minister Shidehara declared, "The number of submarines possessed by the United States is of no concern to the Japanese inasmuch as Japan can never be attacked by American submarines." His view appears to have been shared by the IJN's leaders, who failed to see that an island is a body of land completely surrounded by a submarine's favorite element. Their underestimation of the submarine is a strategic error difficult to comprehend. In World War I, Japan's naval observers had seen the U-boat blockade bring England to the verge of defeat. Again, in 1940, the undersea fleet of Nazi Germany all but sank the UK. The similarity of Japan's insular position to that of the British Isles is apparent on any map. Certainly the U.S. Navy was aware of the analogy.
By the beginning of 1943, the U.S. submarine force knew just about what to expect in the way of Japanese antisubmarine measures. The Japanese Grand Escort Fleet, organized convoying, and aircraft equipped with radar and a magnetic airborne submarine detector were still in the future. However, the basic ingredients of the Japanese antisubmarine effort were in the pot.
Japanese ineptitude in this field of undersea warfare was, of course, recognized by the submariners and exploited. The war was not many weeks old before the Americans realized "those guys up there" were setting their depth charges too shallow, breaking off their ASW attacks too soon, and indulging in heady optimism concerning the results. Japanese airmen were not the only wishful thinkers. Imperial Navy men aboard destroyers, gunboats, sub-chasers and escort vessels frequently secured and sailed away in a glow of triumph entirely unjustified by the facts. A cheerful battle report always made good reading at Headquarters and enabled Tokyo Rose to broadcast an auspicious list of U.S. submarine obituaries. Many an embattled submarine owed its deliverance to Japanese presumption. And more than one submarine skipper could have quoted Mark Twain's, "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."
Although the Japanese antisubmarine effort was haphazard and, at times, almost lackadaisical, it managed to exact a punishing toll. Inferior though they were in many respects, the component ASW forces constituted a menace that meant trouble whenever encountered. The heavily armed destroyer, the ugly Chidori "pinger," the lethal mine and zooming plane, could be as deadly as lightning which strikes at random but kills when it hits.
While the Japanese did not have American sonar they did have their own echo-ranging system, and it was accurate to 3,000 meters. Additionally, the hydrophones were able to obtain a bearing at 5,000 meters. In 1942 the standard Japanese depth-charges were three hundred and fifty pounders (160 kilograms). These depth charges were built to explode at not over two hundred and fifty feet and they were not powerful enough to do great damage unless the attacking vessel achieved very nearly a direct hit.
Depsite its early inefficiency, as 1943 began the antisubmarine patrols of the Japanese Navy were becoming more effective. As the Americans were improving its air and surface search radars, the Japanese countered with devices that could detect radar emissions. In other words, the radar became a beam for the Japanese antisubmarine patrols. Progressively, as the Japanese patrols became more effective they were more aggressive.
Also, as 1943 began, the Japanese were developing radar. It was not yet installed on ships, but it was coming. They were adept, however, at the use of radio detection finders. The submarine that came to the surface and made a long transmission to Pearl Harbor might find that it had raised a nest of hornets. The Japanese had another device not duplicated in the United States, the jikitanchiki, a magnetic detector used by Japanese aircraft. It sensed the presence of a large metal object below the surface of the sea, so that low-flying pilots could sometimes find and track a sub that was submerged. However, at this stage of the war, the major Japanese ASW weapon was the sonar system. The Japanses sonar was technically superior and their employment of the echo-ranging techniques excellent. Also, as the war continued, more Japanese merchant ships were armed with deck guns that were a constant threat to any submarine trying to attack on the surface.
Most important at this stage of the war was the increase in Japanese production of antisubmarine vessels. The most effective of these were the kaibokans. These vessels were small, under 1,000 tons. At first the Americans thought they were only coastal frieghters, but they carried highly trained ASW crews and three hundred depth charges.
Still, the Japanese were so short of antisubmarine vessels that escorts were unavailable for most runs. The exception in the early months of 1943 was the shipping between the Dutch East Indies, Singapore, and Japan. Ships coming from that area brought rice, rubber, tin, and oil, all vital to the Japanese war effort. From the beginning, these convoys were protected by warships. Early in 1943, most other shipping had to depend almost entirely on locally supplied patrols and on air patrols. Supposedly, any alert would bring air protection to Japanese ships under attack, but in fact the air force protection didn't work very well. The Japanese had also begun to sow mines in the open waters, and as the war progressed these offered more danger to the submarines than the ASW devices.
In mid-1943, for the first time, sinkings by U.S. submarines went up to a rate of more than a million tons per year. The Japanese had counted on the sinking rate to come down as they won the war. The Imperial Japanese Navy began to concentrate more on antisubmarine warfare and asked its shipyards to produce more ASW vessels. But the Japanese production machine was already feeling the pinch of replacement. The Combined Fleet asked for carriers to replace the five lost in battle. Destroyers were needed to replace those lost in the continuing South Pacific battles. Admiral Yamamoto was dead, but his dire prediction was becoming fact: skill, courage, and determination notwithstanding, the Japanese were starting to fail beneath the heavy weight of American war production.
Still, in the month of September, the first of the new antisubmarine vessels were being delivered. Brash souls in high places were comforting themselves with the knowledge that the American submarine torpedoes were faulty and often did not explode — just at the time when the torpedo problems were being fixed and the rate of sinkings was about to jump.
In the closing weeks of 1943, Japanese ASW efforts were growing more effective. The IJN did have one superior weapon: the remarkably efficient radio-detection system. Admiral Lockwood, Commander Submarines Pacific, was quite rightly concerned about the enemy ability to locate a submarine by its radio transmissions.
As 1944 began, Japan employed the first of its new hunter-killer teams of ASW vessels. A convoy taking troops to the Marianas was attacked by the submarine Trout. The sub sank one transport and damaged another. Then three Japanese destroyers began a combined attack on the Trout and sank her. The experience was an indication of the changing nature of the submarine war in the Pacific: the American submarines were growing more aggressive and skilled in their task, but so were the Japanese ASW vessels.
In the meantime, Admiral King responded to the increased Japanese antisubmarine patrol and escort services with a new directive to the submarine fleet to concentrate on destroyers and escort craft rather than carriers and battleships. It was a reflection of the success of the Japanese efforts.
A real struggle was developing between the submarines and the escorts in the middle of 1944, one that transcended the usual. The Japanese were constantly devoting more resources to antisubmarine warfare. The number and size of the Japanese minefields were increasing, and the IJN was learning more about the American submarines. One source of information, unsuspected by the Americans, was the talk-between-ships carried on by the wolfpacks and by sub skippers who happened to encounter a friendly boat at sea. The Japanese antisubmarine command scoured their universities and business firms and put together and intelligence team of experts in American vernacular speech; they also secured a good deal of information about submarine operations by monitoring voice broadcasts.
In mid-1944, the American campaign against Japanese merchant shipping emerged as a major factor in slowing the ability ot the Imperial forces to prosecute the war. So many ships were sunk in the East China Sea and the waters of the East Indies that war production was affected. To meet the threat the Japanese were constantly improving their ASW methods. One major change was the gathering of the Grand Escort Force under the direct control of the Combinded Fleet. Much of the strength of the escort force was located at the southern Formosa port of Takao, which gave access to the Formosa and Luzon straits, the two greatest danger spots.
The Japanese used their aircraft to sweep an area thirty miles ahead of a convoy. If enemy submarines were encountered the planes sent word to the escorts or to one of the four auxiliary carriers assigned to the force. They made many attacks on U.S. subs in the next few months and operated under the misapprehension that they were sinking submarines at a rate of several each month — but actually they were not. In fact, the increased number of American submarines in the area continued to score often in spite of the Japanese vigilance.
The loss of the Harder, which had sunk a good many Japanese destroyers, gives a glimpse of the growing effectiveness of the enemy's ASW efforts. On August 24, the Hake saw two ships emerge from Dasol Bay. These ships were a kaibokan and the other the former American four-stack destroyer Stewart, which had been captured after it was damaged and put into drydock in Java. The Japanese had rebuilt the Stewart and renamed her Patrol Boat No. 102.
The Hake went deep to evade. The two patrol vessels, joind by an airplane, were on their way to search for the submarine that had sunk the destroyer Asakaze earlier that day. The plane diverted the Harder by dropping a depth bomb, forcing the sub to dive. Then Patrol Boat No. 102 moved in. The old destroyer had been turned into an effective antisubmarine vessel. She had 72 depth charges: 220-pound charges effective to a radius of 150 feet. She began dropping them in patterns of six charges as she ran across the spot where sonar reported that the Harder was lurking. The first set of charges exploded at 150 feet, the second at 180, the third at 270, the fourth at 360, and the fifth at 450. After the fifth run, oil began coming to the surface, followed by wood splinters and large pieces of cork. The old destroyer stayed in the area and made a sounding. It seemed that the sub had sunk in 900 feet of water. As they remained in the area other bits of debris came to the surface and the crew knew that they had killed the sub for sure.
But time was against the Japanese as American forces began to close the ring around Home Islands. The vigorous struggle between the subs and the escorts would continue, even as the squeeze on Japan tightened. So desperate was the Japanese need for oil that they began sending many escorts with single tankers from the oil fields all the way to Tokyo Bay. On October 30, south of Kyushu, the Trigger torpedoed a ten-thousand ton tanker; it didn't sink. Later that day the Salmon caught up with the same tanker and attacked — even though it was protected by four kaibokans. The sub sank the tanker and was then attacked by the escort vessels. They damaged her so severely that she had to surface to avoid sinking. The Salmon spotted a single escort and charged in with guns blazing, and then ducked into a convenient rain squall and escaped. The sub made it back to base in the Marianas, but she was damaged so badly that she never went out on another war patrol.
As 1945 began, more U.S. submarines were at sea, but they were sinking fewer ships, and the vessels they did attack were much smaller. The campaign against the Japanese marine had been so effective that the Americans were running out of targets. Lucky was the skipper who found a two- or three-thousand-ton frieghter in his path. Most of them were already on the bottom.
But the Americans were also becoming aware of an enormous improvement in Japanese ASW techniques. An improved radar was the answer, in systems used by planes and escort ships. As deadly as this improvement was, it was too little, too late for the Empire of Japan.
[Sources: Pig Boats: The True Story of the Fighting Submariners of World War II by Theodore Roscoe (US. Naval Institute: Annapolis, MD, 1949) and Submarines At War by Edwin P. Hoyt (Stein and Day: New York, 1983).]
Thanks to member DanielMcintyre. :up:
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