As the war in the Pacific develops, the United States takes the fight to Japan itself – by crippling its economy, destroying its industry, and crushing civilian morale. To do this, American submarines and heavy bombers wage campaigns beneath the sea and above the clouds.

And even 80 years later, there’s a fierce debate about which of these campaigns did more to bring Japan to its knees – perhaps even more than the atomic bombs. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Japan has stronger naval forces than the US in the Pacific, with 10 aircraft carriers to three American, and more battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and submarines.

The vast distances of the Pacific theatre mean those naval forces are decisive. Japan hopes to destroy US fleets as they enter its defensive zone, while securing important forward islands for airfields and lookouts. Pre-war US doctrine stressed preserving Pacific and Asian forces by joining other allied fleets in the region.

With the dominant Japanese surface fleet, only US submarines can operate within the Japanese defensive zone. The US Pacific Fleet, based at Pearl Harbor, cancels plans to send submarines to Europe in favour of the Pacific. Most US submarines are older S-types, but new Tambor class submarines are arriving. These are arguably the most comfortable submarines of any nation, including air conditioning and generous quarters, making them ideal for long-range patrols lasting up to eight weeks.

US submarines operate individually, relying on the skill and aggression of skippers. But few captains have such qualities in 1942, partly due to a conservative doctrine emphasising scouting. Mechanical issues with American torpedoes, especially the Mark 14, also mean many attacks fail, as one Japanese officer recalls: “[The torpedo] seemed to pass along the hull, scraping the keel and continued on the other side, emitting great clouds of bubbles before finally sinking to port.” (Toll 256) US submarines conduct 350 war patrols in 1942,

including coastal defence, blockading, minelaying, transporting intelligence agents, reconnaissance, and delivering supplies. US submarines prioritise intercepting Japanese warships over merchant ships. Results are not good. Although US submarines sink 180 ships totalling 725,000 tons, new shipbuilding means Japan only suffers an insignificant net loss of 89,000 tons. Of 15 attacks on Japanese capital ships, submarines sink just 2.

The only mission with reasonable success is merchant raiding in the East China Sea and Formosa Strait, where Japanese merchant ships gather. Although accounting for 15% of US submarine patrols, they produce 45% of sinkings. As an island nation with limited natural resources, Japan is vulnerable to economic blockade, and imports most their oil, coal, iron, bauxite, tin, lead, and zinc. However, by late 1942, Japan’s imports are stable.

For these meagre results, the US loses only three submarines to enemy action, while Japan loses 23. Things change in 1943. US submarine commanders encourage more aggression from their skippers. There is now more focus on economic warfare instead of so-called “port watching”. US rear admiral Charles Lockwood takes command of Pacific Fleet submarines in January 1943, and he brings change.

He wants more aggression and praises captains who respond, like Dudley “Mush” Morton. After a disappointing 1942, Morton takes over command of the USS Wahoo. He revives the frustrated crew’s morale and emphasizes they’ll conduct dangerous missions that will bring results. Junior officer George Grider recalls: “Mush… was built like a bear, and as playful as a cub… The crew loved him… Whether he was in the control room, swapping tall tales… or wandering restlessly about in his skivvies… he was as relaxed as a baby… constantly joking, laughing, or planning outrageous

exploits against the enemy.” (Blair 381) Morton adopts a new tactic of allowing his executive officer to operate the periscope; a task usually reserved for the skipper. This allows Morton to maintain better control over the broader situation and set up follow up attacks. In his first patrol, Morton’s Wahoo torpedoes a destroyer in Wewak harbor and intercepts a freighter convoy, torpedoing all four vessels, including a troop transport.

Morton then orders the deck guns to open fire on the Japanese troops in the water. He later claims troops in lifeboats fired at the surfaced Wahoo, but also said this: “[…] the army bombards strategic areas and the air corps uses area-bombing so the ground forces can advance. Both bring civilian casualties.

Now without other casualties, I will prevent these soldiers from getting ashore, for every one who does can mean an American life.” (Conquering Tide 273) Many of those in the water, however, are Indian POWs. Submarine commanders never criticise or punish Morton’s controversial decision – instead Lockwood calls him a “One Man Wolfpack” and the US media celebrates him.

The Wahoo patrol is said to give the wider submarine force newfound aggression, and makes it clear bold commanders will earn rewards. In 1943, US submarines sink 335 ships for 1.5 million tons, double the 1942 result for the same number of patrols. Although ship conversions increase Japanese oil tanker tonnage, net non-tanker tonnage losses are 1.1 million.

As a result, the import of important raw materials dropped from 19.4 million tons to 16.4 million, which further limits Japanese shipbuilding. Submarine sinkings of major Japanese warships, however, are still rare – with only one light carrier sunk. Meanwhile, more aggressive US tactics and improved Japanese countermeasures result in the loss of 15 submarines, including Wahoo, which the Japanese sink with the loss of all hands.

The success is also due to better torpedoes. After much resistance, the Bureau of Ordnance accepts fault and finally fixes the Mark 14 by September 1943. Experience, better torpedoes, and new bases on US-captured Pacific islands allow submarines to have an even more successful 1944. US submarines sink 603 ships totaling 2.7 million tons.

Although tanker tonnage still increases, it’s a net loss of over 2 million tons. For the first time, Japanese merchant tonnage drops below 2 million, the minimum to maintain Japan’s economy. Imports drop from 16.4 million tons to 10 million. US submarines also enjoy more success against warships as the Japanese navy is increasingly confined, sinking one battleship, seven aircraft carriers, and around 46 others.

In fact, the Japanese never develop a coherent strategy against the US submarine campaign, partly because their naval doctrine focused nearly exclusively on decisive battles between surface fleets – they didn’t even systematically adopt merchant convoys. By December 1944, Japanese merchant ships stick to coastal areas or harbors.

US carrier-based aircraft largely eliminate the remaining Japanese merchant ships. By 1945, US submarines return to more passive duties for lack of targets. One important task for American subs is supporting a new strategic bombing campaign of Japan, by rescuing downed pilots and providing weather forecasting. In early 1945, Japan’s continued economic destruction will come from the air.

Early in the war, US bombers are limited by geography, with Japan out of range from land-based airfields. On April 18, 1942, the US launches its first bombing raid of Japan in the Doolittle Raid. Modified B-25 bombers take off from aircraft carriers roughly 1,000 kilometres from Japan, bomb Tokyo, and then land in friendly China.

The raid causes little damage and is not part of a long-term campaign. High aircraft losses, Japanese reprisals in China, and the Japanese execution of captured crew dissuade future attacks. In late 1943, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff authorise Operation Matterhorn.

B-29 Superfortresses – long-range high-altitude bombers – will attack Japan from bases in China. But Japan’s industrial heartland is still out of range. Plus, supplies must be flown over the Himalayas, which limits bomb loads and maintenance, and Japanese forces in China threaten the airbases. Furthermore, the B-29 bomber has problems. It’s larger and more complex than other bombers with engines prone to fires, resulting in high mission abort rates and accidents.

Major General Curtis Le May of XX Bomber Command later remarks: “B-29s had as many bugs as the entomological department of the Smithsonian Institution.” (Crane 170) Matterhorn’s results are disappointing. By November, XX Bomber Command has only flown five missions against Japan and Matterhorn is deemphasised due to expense and the Japanese capture of Chinese airbases.

Another factor is that in July 1944, US forces capture the Mariana Islands. They are in B-29 range of Tokyo and take over as the primary strategic bombing base. But early results still aren’t good. General Haywood Hansell of XXI Bomber Command uses high-altitude precision methods with high explosives.

The long distance, light bomb loads, high abort rate, and poor high-altitude weather conditions over Japan limit effectiveness. General Le May argues against the precision bombing methods, claiming Japanese industry is too dispersed among residential areas to accurately hit. He suggests low-altitude area-bombing with incendiary bombs. US studies highlight Japanese cities’ vulnerability to fire: “Large sections of the great Japanese cities are built of flimsy and highly flammable materials.

The earthquake disaster of 1924 bears witness to the fearful destruction that may be inflicted by incendiary bombs.” (Crane 168) Le May experimented with area bombing targeting in Europe, but the method was not widely adopted. But Pacific US bomber commanders are more independent. By December, XX Bomber Command’s B-29s consolidate in the Marianas, and Le May replaces Hansell as commander.

Le May improves bomber infrastructure and maintenance programs. US army air force commander General Henry ‘Hap’ Arnold orders him to continue daylight precision bombing and results remain poor. Some commanders resist low-level firebombing, including Arnold and Secretary of War Henry Stimson.

Some resistance is for operational reasons, as Japanese anti-aircraft fire threatens low-level raids. Other concerns are ethical, as fire-bombing deliberately targets civilians. But historians and contemporaries notice a different public attitude to targeting Japanese civilians compared to Germans. Racism plays a role, as does the legacy of Pearl Harbor and Japanese atrocities.

Many Americans also view Japanese civilians as more willing and eager participants in the war effort than their German counterparts. One air commander in Europe wrote: “Like every American who flies to Europe for combat duty, I regret my failure to get the desired crack at the Jap. I failed to possess any real enmity towards Jerry and sensed a certain repulsion to European bombings where non-combatant Axis life might be involved.

” (Crane 97) [US Air Force Commander] Commanders’ attitudes shift in early 1945, especially as Germany’s defeat appears imminent. Many believe Japan will soon surrender, and commanders want bombers to visibly contribute to victory. Firebombing supporters argue it ultimately saves lives by ending the war sooner, or that the method of killing is irrelevant: “From the practical standpoint of the soldiers out in the field it doesn’t make any difference how you slay the enemy. Everybody worries about their own losses… But to worry about the morality of

what we were going – Nuts. A soldier has to fight. We fought. If we accomplished the job in any given battle without exterminating too many of our own folks, we considered that we’d had a pretty good day.” (Crane 161) In February 1945, Le May’s bombers experiment with high-level fire-bombing raids.

Again, B-29s suffer from mechanical issues and poor accuracy due to high-altitude winds. Le May shifts to low-level night raids to reduce engine stress and take advantage of Japan’s lack of night fighters. Crews remove defensive guns to reduce weight and increase bomb loads. On March 9, Le May tests the new methods over Tokyo with Operating Meetinghouse.

B-29s target six industrial areas in densely populated residential districts as Le May argues Japanese homes function as cottage industries. 279 B-29s bomb the city with incendiaries, triggering a firestorm. Fire, heat, smoke, boiling canals, and melted glass kill thousands, as others suffocate in shelters. Meetinghouse kills between 84-100,000 Japanese, destroys 40 square km and renders a million homeless.

Sixth grader Kazuyo Funato recalls: “The wind and flames became terrific. We were in Hell. All the houses were burning, debris raining down on us. It was horrible. Sparks flew everywhere. Electric wires sparked and toppled. Mother, with my little brother on her back, had her feet swept out from under her by the wind and she rolled away.

Father jumped after her. ‘Are you all right?’ he screamed. Yoshiaki shouted, ‘Dad!’ I don’t know if his intention was to rescue Father or to stay with him, but they all disappeared instantly into the flames and black smoke.” (Toll Twilight 549) Soon afterwards similar raids target other cities, including Nagoya, Osaka, and Kobe. Japanese air defence is minimal.

In July 1945, Lieutenant General Carl Spaatz arrives from Europe to command the new United States Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific. A critic of area bombing, he shifts targeting to pre-invasion targets, such as railways and ammunition plants, although fire-bombing raids continue. However, he will soon have a new weapon – the atomic bomb.

The dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9 contribute to the Japanese surrender announcement of August 15, which came with the condition of retaining the Emperor. The US informally agrees to this, frustrating Lockwood: “Why we ever acceded to [the terms] I will never understand, for certainly in the opinion of everyone I talked to among the fighting forces, [Hirohito] had earned a place right alongside Hitler and Mussolini.” (Blair 871) Some officers in both the conventional bomber

and submarine forces are frustrated with the circumstances of Japanese surrender. The novel nature of the atomic bombs looks likely to overshadow their contributions, or suggests Japan surrendered because of the atomic bombings alone. This issue has since been widely debated, with one opinion arguing Japan was on the verge of surrender before to the atomic bombings.

Which branch of the military deserves credit for this is a topic of further debate. Proponents of conventional bombing argue the massive destruction wrought by firebombing had a decisive impact on the war economy from early 1945. Casualty estimates vary, but a 1947 survey claims fire-bombing kills 900,000.

More recent estimates place the figure around 3-400,000 killed. Bombing also makes 8.5 million homeless, around 30% of the urban population, as bombers destroy 465 square km in 66 cities. The 1946 US Bombing Survey Group claims physical damage to plants significantly reduced industrial production of key war materials. Furthermore, bombing encouraged a dispersal of industry reducing its efficiency while even intact factories were affected by worker absenteeism, disintegrated supply systems, and transport overburdened with fleeing civilians. Lost production labour hours doubled from 1944 to July

1945 despite the total labour force increasing. This destruction was also achieved with relatively low US casualty rates. 2800 B-29 crew died in the Pacific campaign, the majority in non-combat incidents. Mechanical improvements meant by July 1945, only 0.4% of bomber crews become casualties. By comparison, of the 16,000 US submariners who went on combat patrols, 3500 were killed – 22%.

Others highlight the psychological effect of B-29 bombings, which were highly visible to Japanese leaders and civilians. After the war, several Japanese leaders like Premier Kantaro Suzuki claim firebombing is decisive in forcing them to accept defeat: “It seemed to me unavoidable that in the long run Japan would be almost destroyed by air attack so that merely on the basis of the B-29’s alone I was convinced that Japan should sue for peace…

I myself, on the basis of the B-29 raids, felt that the cause was hopeless.” (Hallion in Cox 112) Others argue the morale-dampening effects of strategic bombing have been exaggerated, and there were no mass public demands for surrender in Japan or Germany. The Bombing Survey accepts B-29 raids influenced some, but not all Japanese leaders.

Even so, it concludes conventional bombing alone probably could have compelled Japanese surrender by November 1945. But others argue Japan’s economy was in ruins even before the conventional bombing campaign started, thanks largely to American submarines. Although post-war surveys drastically reduce US submariners wartime claims, submarines still sink a total of 4.7 million tons of merchant shipping, 60% of the total.

Of the 122,000 Japanese merchant marine personnel in 1941, submarines claim to kill or incapacitate 69,000. More than 2300 ships are sunk, including nearly all over 1000 tons. Even if Japanese merchantmen survive a sinking, they are still at risk from follow-up attack by other forces. Yoshio Otsu survived a sinking only be attacked by US aircraft: “Seeing no one on board, they strafed those in the water.

The swine! Not satisfied with sinking the ship, they must kill those swimming in the sea! Was this being done by human beings? We were utterly helpless.” (Hastings 266) The result of merchantmen sinkings and casualties, some argue, is the collapse of the import-dependent Japanese war economy. Stockpiled resources allowed some war production to remain steady until 1944, but by late 1944 there was a significant shortage of iron ore, oil, and fuel.

By December, oil import to southern Japan ceases and steel production collapses. Iron ore from China, which originally furnished 90% of Japanese demand, drops from an average 203,000 tons per month in early 1944 to 37,000 tons in December. The lack of essential raw materials means that although war production continues, fuel shortages disrupt critical phases of production.

Some argue these declines start before the strategic air campaign got seriously underway. 75% of Japanese tonnage is sunk before January 1945 and many bombed factories were already far underproducing due to material shortages. One aircraft plant in Ota dropped from 300 airframes a month to 100 before it is first bombed in February 1945.

The Economic Division’s report states: “The Japanese economy was in effect drying up at the roots from six months to a year before the period of intensive air attack and ultimate collapse.” (Gentile 64) Lockwood highlights this contribution is made with a comparatively tiny amount of people, around 50,000 or 1.6% of navy personnel.

Submarines largely act independently and didn’t rely heavily on other supporting arms. Meanwhile, B-29s require significant logistics and islands in range of Japan. The battles of Saipan and Iwo Jima, which killed up to 68,000 US and Japanese troops and civilians, are largely to secure airfields and support B-29 bombing raids. Even the US Bombing Survey accepts the war against merchantmen was the most decisive factor in the economic war against Japan, and that submarines contributed most sinkings.

However, B-29s also sink merchantmen, especially from early 1945. B-29s lay 12,000 mines in coastal areas, closing 19 of 22 repair yards and sinking or damaging beyond repair 283 ships – or 60% of sinkings between March and August 1945. Unable to use coastal shipping routes, merchantmen stay in harbor or make longer, dangerous journeys.

The US Bombing survey argues the B-29 mining campaign alone could have crippled the Japanese economy, although it accepts this would have taken longer. Ultimately, supporters of conventional bombing argue it was the more visible nature of firebombing raids, and the subsequent psychological impact which made it decisive. Supporters of submarines argue that they also had a psychological impact on the Japanese population by impacting food, 20% of which came from overseas.

The threat of near starvation conditions, they argue, was more influential on Japanese civilians and leaders than the destruction of urban areas. B-29 planners also devised plans to hit Japanese rice farms and fisheries with biological weapons, although this was ultimately rejected. There’s no consensus in the debate, and both submariner and bomber commanders have a vested interest in promoting their contributions.

They know after Japanese surrender the US needs to demobilize. As expensive arms, submarines and strategic bombers are on the cutting block. This is especially true when the US develops Japan into a regional ally. And the US Army Air Force is also eager to become an independent branch after the war. Ultimately, the B-29 won this post-war competition.

Tensions with the Soviet Union and threats in Europe mean strategic bombers remain vitally important, and the US Air Force becomes independent in 1947. Although it is the B-29’s atomic weapon capabilities, rather than conventional bombing, which is central to US strategy. The navy mothballs many US submarines after the war, though the development of nuclear submarines from 1950 also saw the branch develop as a vital part of US Cold War defence policy.

In early 1945 US forces also converged on the Philippines where they had been defeated in 1942. Many prisoners of war languished in POW camps like Cabanutan. On 30 January 1945 US Ranger and Filippino guerrillas freed more than 500 prisoners in one of the most daring raids of the Pacific War.

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The Lifetime membership allows us to invest in more original content and improve the platform for everyone. One third of your Lifetime membership will also support us at Real Time History directly. Again, that’s nebulat.tv/realtimehistory for a great deal that also supports this channel. To learn more about the Second World War on the Pacific, check out our previous videos on Saipan, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, or the Battle of Manila.

As usual you can find all the sources for this video in the description below. If you are watching this video on Patreon or Nebula, thank you so much for the support, we couldn’t do it without you. I am Jesse Alexander and this is a production of Real Time History, the only history channel that as many bugs as the entomological department of the Berlin Museum of Natural History.

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