Kaigun by Evans

Ref: Evans (2012). Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy. Naval Institute Press.

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Summary

A History of the Pacific Theater of WWII.
By launching a surprise attack on the US Pacific Fleet, seen by Americans as "infamous," the navy created a political, psychological, and ultimately, strategic climate in the US that made an unlimited war- a fight to the finish- inevitable.

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Oil
- For the Japanese navy, the fuel problem had now reached a level at which the establishment of some sort of future hegemony over SE Asia- economic or political- seemed worth such a confrontation.
- The Navy is consuming 400 tons of oil an hour.-Admiral Nagano.

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Japanese Strategy: Wait and React Strategy that evolved in three stages.
- Searching Operations: Seek out and annihilate the lesser American naval forces.
- Attrition Operations: Attriting a westward-moving American main battle force coming to assist.
- Decisive encounter: Create the conditions necessary for a favorable decisive encounter in which the American Force would be crushed and forced to negotiate.

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Modern warfare requires that the conduct of military operations be coordinated with foreign policy, political developments, and economic realities, whereas Japanese military concerns were often considered in isolation.

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At war's end, Japan had only 1.5 million tons of merchant shipping left from a prewar total of 6.4 million tons, and much of this remainder lay damaged or blockaded in Japanese ports.
The destruction of the merchant marine seriously degraded nearly every aspect of the navy's ability to remain an effective fighting force, not to mention the crippling effect it had on the ability of the nation as a whole to carry on the war.

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Task Force: built around a Carrier Group that had a combined strength of hundreds of Aircraft, surface ships in close support, and a revolutionary system of mobile supply bases that overcame distance and logistic difficulties.

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