Oil and Japanese Strategy in the Solomons1
November 9, 2011
Introduction One of the most frequently-asked questions brought up for discussion by the readers of my website, and contributors to some of the World War II newsgroups I the read, has been (roughly paraphrased), hy the heck didn the Japanese send their battleships down to Guadalcanal and put Henderson Field out of business for good? It a good question. Additional Japanese capital ships clearly would have been useful in two ways:
Battleships could help establish naval dominance in the Guadalcanal area by providing a crucial superiority in surface firepower over Allied forces who did not (yet) have a comparable number of capital vessels available to them in the Pacific. Night surface actions were fairly common in the Solomons campaign . Japanese battleships, had they been present, clearly could have been decisive in a number of these surface confrontations.
Battleships also could provide the sort of heavy gunfire support necessary to neutralize Henderson field. Indeed, given the clear (if temporary) success registered after he Bombardment (as the US Marines referred to it) conducted by the Japanese battleships Haruna and Kongo against Henderson Field on the night of October 13-14, it is difficult to argue the point. The traditional answers to the question of Japanese capital unit commitments have been along two main lines. The first explanation, which I would term he conventional wisdom hinges on the potency of airpower. Battleships, so the argument goes, are impotent in the face of airpower. Further, one does not risk one battleships, unsupported, unless one has air superiority over the water in which they will be operating. Therefore, given the menace that Henderson Field aircraft posed during daylight hours, the Japanese would have been crazy to have risked their capital units in such a threat environment. The loss of the fast battleship Hiei to aircraft from Henderson Field merely punctuates the point. This answer is unsatisfying in several major respects. First, the Japanese eventually did risk their BBs in the waters off of Guadalcanal after they had become convinced of the necessity of doing so. Certainly they might have done the same in August or September had the need, or the opportunity for decisive action utilizing capital units, been as acutely perceived. Further, the loss of the Hiei on November 14th does not negate two key facts: First, Kongo and Haruna had practically flattened the airfield just a few weeks before, and nearly put it out of business. And second, with regards to Hiei loss, Henderson Field aircraft did nothing more than pick off a battleship that had been crippled the night before by US naval vessels. Without the sacrifice of Admiral Callaghan squadron, Hiei would not have been waiting around on the morning of the 14th to be sunk. Indeed, the stage had been set the night before for a repeat of he Bombardment which might well have left Henderson Field a smoking shambles again. Thus, while Henderson Field could confirm American naval victories, it could not create them. And without an American naval presence in the area, it stood in danger of neutralization , either through direct bombardment, or aircraft attrition. When viewed in this light, it is clear that the hreat environment cut both ways. While being nsinkable Henderson Field did have vulnerabilities, particularly to the large-caliber incendiary AA / bombardment shells (Type “San Shiki”) that all Japanese battleships carried. Thus, the onventional wisdom does not adequately explain why the Japanese failed to commit their main battle units (Yamato and Musashi in particular, but also the other slower BBs of the First Fleet, principally Nagato and Mutsu) when the campaign was younger, the threat environment much less dangerous, and the opportunity existed to destroy the fledgling American airfield and establish naval dominance in the area. At the very least, Japanese capital ships, if consistently employed earlier in the campaign, had the potential to keep Henderson Field in a near-permament state of degraded capability. This, in turn, would have made resupplying the Japanese forces on the island much easier to accomplish. A more plausible explanation for why Japan withheld its heavy battle units centers on the failure of its naval doctrine. The Imperial Navy was built around the concept of fighting a ecisive Battle against the US Navy, in which Japanese battleships featured prominently. And, put simply, Guadalcanal did not fit the Japanese Navy ental image of what the Decisive Battle was supposed to look like. Consequently, the Japanese refused to release the traditional arm of decision (the battleships of the First Fleet) for duty in the Solomons, because one does not risk capital vessels in support of objectives which are not thought to be strategically decisive. This second answer, which has been well-documented in the literature, is extremely persuasive. However, there are a number of inconsistencies with the octrinal explanation which are intriguing . Since the late 1800s, Japanese naval doctrine had been built around the cardinal principle that capital vessels were to withheld until such time as their presence was absolutely required in order to secure the strategic advantage. According to Japanese doctrine (as summarized by HP Willmott) “The [battle fleet] was husbanded most carefully. The cornerstone of Japanese strategy in both wars was to preserve the battle fleet and use it only if and when its commitment was unavoidable. In the Russo-Japanese war the battle fleet was committed en masse only against the last despairing effort of the [Russian] Baltic Fleet … This concept was the linchpin of Japanese strategy in the interwar period and it was what the Imperial Navy sought desperately in the period 1942-1944. The active role of the battle fleet was limited, the main effort at sea devolving on light and expendable forces operating in the forward areas. The task of these forces was either to contain or defeat the enemy, or to inflict disproportionately heavy losses if containment or defeat proved impossible. “However , even before the Guadalcanal campaign began, Japan had already demonstrated that it was willing to dissipate (some would say ritter away its trategic reserve (be they battleships or aircraft carriers) in pursuit of non-strategic objectives. For example , the commitment of carriers Zuikaku and Shokaku to the Port Moresby Operation (which precipitated the Battle of Coral Sea) critically dispersed the mass of Japan First Carrier Fleet (Kido Butai) before the Midway Operation, and did so in pursuit of objectives which were clearly not strategically vital. By the same token, the Midway Operation (which must go down in history as a paragon of disregard for the principles of both economy of force and critical mass) parceled out the IJN carriers and battleships into no fewer than three different groups (First Carrier Strike Force, Northern Force, and Main Body), only one of which was directly attacking a strategic objective, and all of which were mutually non-supportive. Thus, the argument that the IJN was attempting, per its doctrine, to preserve a ritical mass of battleships for some future ecisive Battle must contend with the fact that the IJN had already flouted its own doctrine on several occasions during the war. At which point, one may reasonably ask, “Well, then, why stop there? “Given the inability of the above arguments to completely explain the Japanese decision (or indecision) regarding their capital ship deployments in the Solomons, I would like to postulate the existence of an additional critical factor in the Japanese strategy-making process in mid-to late-1942. This factor contributed to a Japanese inability to perceive that Guadalcanal was, in fact, the ecisive Campaign of the Pacific War, and therefore worthy of commitment of their heavy units. This factor may not have been decisive in formulating Japanese strategy, but it retarded the Japanese ability to perceive the situation clearly, and led them to fatally withhold their capital units until it was too late for he heavies to affect the course of the campaign. This factor, I believe , was oil. What follows is an examination of the logistical factors operating against the Japanese in the Solomons, and their possible interaction (and interference) with Japanese strategy formulation. What I am attempting to do is build a round-up circumstantial case for the importance of oil in Japanese thinking during this critical time during the war. While I do not have access to Japanese documents explicitly naming petroleum as a factor in the Solomons, I believe the case presented will at least pass the test of ommon sense If I, an amateur historian, can build a relatively straight-forward logistical argument regarding the importance of oil in Solomons, then certainly members of the Imperial Naval Staff could (and did) do so as well. The results obtained, I believe , cannot help but have been the subject of discussion during the staff meetings at Rabaul, Truk, and Imperial Headquarters which decided strategy in the Solomons campaign. I am open to comments, and welcome any additional information on this topic my readers can share with me . Overview: Ships … Allright, before we can kick this exercise off, we need to examine how the Japanese Navy used its petroleum products. I am going to restrict my remarks largely to fuel oil (although I have developed some figures regarding aviation fuel usage as well). In any case, we need to understand how ships use fuel, and how that relates to the scope of naval activities that the Japanese could contemplate in the region. An examination of the available reference literature produces the following general picture of the rates at which Imperial Japanese Navy vessels consumed fuel. Some comments are in order here. First, ruising speed is roughly 15-16 knots. Second, bigger ships, in general, are more fuel efficient (ton for ton) than smaller ships. Third, older ships generally have less efficient propulsion plants, and therefore higher fuel usage ton-per-ton. The combination of these two factors may help explain why the battleships Ise and Hyuga, which displaced approximately 33,000 tons less at full load than Yamato and Musashi, apparently had higher hourly burn rates – 16 vs. 14 tons / hour at 16 knots. So, too, for that matter, did Nagato and Mutsu, which were the likeliest candidates for deployment to Guadalcanal in lieu of Yamato and her sister (Ise and Hyuga were being retrofitted to battleship / carriers during the Guadalcanal campaign, and Fuso and Yamashiro were too old and slow to be contemplated for deployment in such dangerous waters.) Third, it should be noted that fuel consumption is directly related to how well-maintained the ship power plant was, as well as the cleanness of her hull, and the quality of her fuel. Now let take a look at what happens when ships move away from cruising speed and maneuver at battle speed. Two examples illustrate the point. Battleship Yamato had power settings as follows: In other words, Yamato can cruise along comfortably on 20% power, but to operate at a decent battle speed she needs to be putting out at least 60% power. In actual combat operations, however, she would most likely operate at 100% power while steaming at a slightly lower speed (such as 26 knots) in order to retain a reserve for powering her weapons, fire-control systems, pumps and so on. Thus, any combat situation will likely increase Yamato fuel usage by a factor of five over cruising speed. And, as mentioned before, Yamato was a relatively efficient vessel as IJN ships go, because she was huge, relatively new, and (as the flagship of Combined Fleet ) presumably well-maintained. The ships that really feel the pain during combat operations are destroyers. For example, let look at typical Japanese fleet destroyer (in this case, a Hatsuharu-class DD), whose fuel load is 500 tons: That right , the destroyer fuel consumption increases by more than thirteen-fold at top speed! Destroyers powerplants aren optimized for cruising; they are built for high speed and quick maneuvering, and as a result they really guzzle the fuel. This is also why Tin Cans are forever topping off their tanks at any opportunity, because if a combat situation develops you don know when you l be able to gas up again, and destroyers can run out of gas in a hurry …. And Oil Next, let examine Japan situation with respect to petroleum production at this stage in the war. In the fourth quarter of 1942, Japanese oil production (which was almost entirely concentrated in her conquered territories, such as the Indies) was 1,194,000 tons. Of that, only 643,000 tons made it to Japan (which is where practically all the refineries were), the rest being either lost to attack, or consumed in the conquered territories. So roughly 214,000 tons of oil per month was making it to Japan. However , the Imperial Navy alone was consuming about 305,000 tons of heavy oil (in the form of fuel oil) per month by this stage in the war (Parillo, p. 237). Keep that figure in mind: 305,000 tons . Furthermore, by this time (October-November 1942) it must have been begining to become clear to the Japanese that the oilfields in Java and Sumatra were not going to be brought back into production at nearly the rate that pre-war estimates had counted on. The Dutch and their Allies had done a much more thorough job of demolition in the oilfields than the Japanese had hoped. This, coupled with the sinking of a transport filled with equipment and valuable refinery personnel, meant that Japanese efforts to get the production field back into production were doomed to be much slower than hoped by the Japanese military. The fact that the Imperial Navy had built up large stocks of petroleum before the was could not compensate for this sobering knowledge, especially given the high rate of fuel consumption thus far in the war. The week-long Battle of Midway alone had consumed more fuel than the Japanese Navy had ever used before in an entire year of peacetime operations (Willmott, “The Barrier and the Javelin”). With this in mind , let us examine what it took to fight effectively around Guadalcanal. Scenarios At this point, it appropriate to construct some scenarios illustrating Japanese petroleum consumption during the Solomons campaign. Scenario One: he Bombardment Redux On the night of October 13-14, the battleships Haruna and Kongo subjected Henderson Field to one of the most intense naval bombardments of the entire war. Without question, this was one of the more succesful naval forays the Japanese made into the waters of IronBottom Sound. When the Americans emerged the next morning , Henderson Field was wrecked, most of its aircraft destroyed, and much of the stock of aviation fuel gone up in smoke. Many Americans remember this as the most desperate phase of the entire battle. With Henderson temporarily out of action, the Marines could do little except watch helplessly as the Japanese landed troops further up the coast during the morning. Frantic searching managed to turn up enough fuel to get a few aircraft flying, but it seemed likely that the days were gone when Henderson Field could dominate the seas around Guadalcanal . The sense of American isolation at this time was quite acute, and had an immediate negative effect on American morale. But what was the cost to the Japanese in terms of their petroleum reserves? Let examine this operation from a logistical standpoint. To perform the mission, the Japanese brought the two battleships (Haruna and Kongo), a light cruiser (Isuzu), and nine destroyers down from Rabaul. From Rabaul to Guadalcanal is approximately 650 miles as the crow flies. For our purposes, we l call it 800 miles each way (to allow for geography, zig-zagging to avoid submarines, and so on). Japanese practice was to cruise down the Slot at normal cruising speed (call it 16 knots), and then dash in under cover of darkness. Thus, one might have a ission profile looking something like this: 650 miles at 16 knots, and then a 150 mile dash in the late afternoon into the combat area at a speed of 25 knots. This would be followed by an hour- long bombardment, or naval combat, and then a similar dash back out so as to be well away from Henderson Field by morning. In addition, we will add in the fuel needed to maneuver at high speed for an additional hour, which will replicate a submarine scare, air attack, or similar combat event as the force cruises down The Slot. Base fuel consumption for these vessels is as follows: For the purposes of our model (and throughout this essay) we will assume that fuel consumption will triple at 25 knots. In combat operations, fuel consumption will increase by a factor of five for the larger ships (cruisers and above), and by a factor of ten for destroyers. These are rough figures, but they serve to illustrate the point. When matched against the rofile of mission, fuel consumption looks as follows:
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