Reddit reviews Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887-1941

> The planning and execution of the attack on Pearl was rooted deeply in the Japanese doctrine of the decisive battle. The objective of IJN battle plans throughout the war was to bring their enemy into a single large battle and defeat them in one blow.

This is a key point. For more on it, I recommend Kaigun and the combinedfleet.com website.

Well, the obvious immediate go-to would be Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887-1941, which is pretty much exactly what you're looking for.

In addition to describing the design philosophies driving Japanese naval architecture during their buildup to the Second World War, it also describes the evolution of the strategy, tactics, organization, culture, and technology developed by the Imperial Japanese Navy.

The book also has a fairly broad chronological focus, encompassing the entire era between the foundation of the IJN and the opening battles of the Pacific War.

It's considered one of the more prominent Western works on the topic in recent years. It's also fairly engagingly written, so I'd recommend you check it out.

If you're interested in naval air power's development by Japan, I'd also check out Sunburst, by one of the same authors, as well as the acclaimed Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway by Parshall and Tully, which both provide in-depth analysis of Japanese carrier doctrine and tactics. The latter book is particularly groundbreaking in the Western scholarship of the battle for overturning several longstanding myths surrounding Midway.

EDIT: Fun fact - Kaigun is the only reason why I know who the heck Emile Bertin was :)

Excellent analysis. I've been reading Kaigun and it goes into depth on this. You can attribute this primarily to Japan's complicated range and targeting scheme. Funnily enough, Japan's system was pretty terrible, so all the effort had been for naught.

There is also the fantastic Kaigun, which is a complete history of the IJN and how it developed its tactics, technology, strategy, organization, everything from day one until the end. Amazing book

>: Did the Japanese ever study how they'd get the raw materials from the captured islands back to Japan? It is my recollection that the Japanese merchant fleet was ill suited to transport significant quantities of oil even before the war began. I am less sure about the Japanese ability to transport large quantities of other materials.

I've read extensively about the IJN and IJA, and by and large, they did not. the Japanese military in general was incredibly bad at logistics and combat support.

> nothing suggests the US public would support a declaration of war on Japan.

I tend to feel the same way, but the Japanese military leadership did not. Perhaps they did not understand the degree to which american leadership was constrained by public opinion.

>With that said, I still think the mistake was attacking Pearl Harbor.

The mistake was going to war with the US, period. The japanese were not a first rate power in the 1930s. they had benefited for years from their geographic isolation and lack of local opposition, which gave them delusions of grandeur, but they were third rate at best. When the best of the Japanese army got absolutely pasted by second rate russian divisions, this should have been a huge wakeup call to japanese leadership. Instead, it was used by the navy as a justification for making war on the US and UK simultaneously.

>the Japanese would have surely cut off China's supply lines and forced the Chinese to surrender or agree to an advantageous peace treaty



Unlikely. resistance by Mao and Chang would have continued, if perhaps much more weakly. China was simply too large for japan to control, a bottomless pit capable of swallowing endless numbers of japanese soldiers and, perhaps more importantly, supplies that they could not spare.

>Japan could have improved upon the Zero fairly easy if its vulnerabilities were discovered - at the very least the generational changes such as a supercharger, pilot armor, self sealing tanks, and larger ammo capacities could have been implemented

Again, not very likely. It is important to remember that while japanese progress at modernization was very impressive, they were no where near the level of the west. My favorite story to demonstrate this is the zero. when it was first built, it was arguably the most advanced plane in the world, but the first prototypes were carried from the factory to the airfield in wooden, horse drawn, hay carts. Japanese industrial development was very shallow, and concentrated in a few frontline areas, with an overall capacity only about that of Italy. the zero was such a lightweight plane because of the inability of japanese industry to build engines of sufficient power density and reliability for heavier planes.

On a more philosophical level, the Japanese were unlikely to discover the weaknesses in their strategy because they would have been spending most of their effort fighting the the chinese and colonial garrisons. Their enormous weaknesses in mechanization and, for lack of a better term, weight, would not have been made apparent battling enemies who were even more industrially deficient than they were. Meanwhile, the US would still have been building big, heavy planes capable of surviving over germany.

>Everything in Hawaii had to be shipped from the United States.

this cuts two ways. the US had a considerably easier time, and much more capacity, for delivering supplies to Hawaii than the Japanese could ever have for delivering ordinance. And in the eastern pacific, there are no islands for bases for subs, planes, etc. to raid those supply lines

>they could have repeatedly sortied 8-10 carriers worth of aircraft on Hawaii's military installations, rendering it unusable for a long period of time.

repeatedly only in the sense of months apart, which would give the US more than enough time for the US to pour far more into Hawaii than the Japanese could ever hope to bring against it. As for invading the islands, it was almost a complete impossibility. The Pearl Harbor operation really represented the limit of japanese logistical capabilities. They did not have the manpower or amphibious transport to mount an invasion on the scale needed to take islands with so many american troops (tens of thousands even before the war). And given the japanese deficiencies in material, artillery, etc, I cannot imagine them storming beaches marine style without truly enormous casualties.

Anyhow, don't mean to be rude, you were asking good questions, I just happen to have read a lot about this particular topic. If you are interested, I would recomend Kaigun and its companion book Sunburst as the single best resource on the IJN. They are masterful books.

edit: several points for clarity.

This is probably the best book to start with. This is also good.

You would like this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Kaigun-Strategy-Technology-Imperial-1887-1941/dp/159114244X