Here is another post for my class. It's pretty lengthy, I suppose, but here it is:
This is a subject that I have thought quite a bit about as well. Starting in 1994 when I bought the U-boot simulation “Aces of the Deep,†I have been fascinated by submarines of all nations. (For those who are interested, Silent Hunter III and IV are about as good a sub-sim as you can get for the German and American side respectively!) The fact that were I am stationed in North Carolina there are 3 dive-able U-boots (352, 701, and 85) only fuels this fascination.
Although it could be argued that the Germans and Japanese we reluctant partners, ample evidence points to sharing of technologies as well as Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) in differing aspects of warfare. It would therefore seem unlikely that the Japanese were unaware of the mission behind the German U-boot fleet: sink the Allied merchant fleet. The Germans had also been warring with Britain for over two years by the time Japan entered the fray in late 1941.
Was it that they did learn the lessons of the Germans and British during World War I that led to their ineffective anti-submarine (ASW) campaign? It was during that conflict that the submarine graduated from one of those new technologies (perhaps not new, per se, but technology had finally caught up to Bushnell’s innovative notion), discounted by the “big gun†admirals, to a major threat to the survival of whole countries. One could argue that because the Germans did not pursue a u-boat campaign in the Far East, the Japanese did not obtain first-hand experience in the damage that unrestricted submarine warfare can do to nation dependant on maritime re-supply. Had the Germans had the resources to pursue an aggressive u-boat war in the Pacific during the Great War, the Japanese may have given more thought to the damage that could be (and was) inflicted upon them in a larger conflict. The British and Americans learned this, of course, during WWI – and then promptly forgot it at the opening stages of WWII. The British, on the receiving end of the u-bootsmen’s “Happy Times†in 1939, recovered quickly and convoys were arranged and merchants armed. Stupidly, it would seem, the Americans afforded the Germans a “Second Happy Time†in late ’41 and early ’42 when unescorted merchants slowly plodded the Atlantic seaboard, silhouetted by the lights of coastal cities. They quickly adjusted procedures as well, but not before allowing several U-boot skippers to earn their Knight’s Cross. The Japanese, on the other hand, never seemed to have learned that lesson and allowed their country and their Pacific Rim garrisons to be starved by the US navy’s sub fleet. Given the first rate quality of Japanese destroyers, organizing convoys and escorting them would have increased the amount of cargo that arrived in Japan without a doubt. Getting into port may have been an issue in the latter parts of the war, however, as I recently learned. In the April/ May 2008 Issue of “World War II†magazine there is an article about “Operation Starvation†which was the methodical mining by B-29 of Japanese sea channels around the home islands.
That is not to say the Japanese did not attempt to protect their merchant shipping. Nor do I suggest that the anti-submarine efforts of the Japanese were not effective. Theodore Roscoe writes in his 1949 study “Submarine Operations†that as the Japanese territory began to be compressed, convoys became larger and the attending escorts more determined and experienced. LtCmdr Eugene B. “Lucky†Fluckey, commander of the remarkable USS Barb described the Japanese defenses on one of his patrols thusly, “Anti-submarine measures were a bit terrific. Briefly these consisted of 73 enemy plane contacts, 5 bombings, 141 depth charges labeled Barb, assorted depth charges and bombs aimed at submarines in general, gunfire from a Chidori which illuminated us, and torpedoes from the Chidori or from Redfish.†To counter this, the USN began grouping subs into wolf packs. Perhaps small compared the German ideal rudels, these 3 – 4 submarine groups succeeded where the Germans did not. They did this, in part, due to the same reason why the ASW efforts in the Atlantic did so well – the Allies were reading the Axis communiqués nearly at will. The fact that by beginning of 1945, the convoy routes had been shrunk to a very few would attest to the fact that the Japanese efforts at ASW amounted to too little, to late.
A secondary question is why the Japanese submarine campaign did so poorly. Was it, perhaps, the Japanese dedication to Bushido that led to Japanese turning from the offensive capabilities of the submarine? In the introduction to the book “Sunk: The Story of the Japanese Submarine Fleet, 1941-1945†by Machitsura Hashimoto (1954), Commander Edward L. Beach writes that the failure of the midget subs in Pearl Harbor had lead to a great loss of face to the submarine fleet. This is especially true in light of the amazing devastation wrought at the hands of the aircraft used during the mission. Although Japanese submarines accounted for some of the largest US ships lost during the war, their contribution was minimal. Capital ships also tended to be the primary target of their submarines unlike the Germans in the Atlantic and American in the Pacific whose objective was the sinking of merchant ships. With the rate of US warship production and the effectiveness of USN escorts, this was hardly going to make a significant contribution to the Japanese naval campaign.