Chapter 727: The Tragedy of the Japanese Navy

Sato heard Nagumo Chuichi’s question and turned his head. His face was filled with frustration and unwillingness. He had been determined to avenge his subordinates, but in the end, he had almost lost his own life. The war was no longer what he had known. In those days, sitting in the cockpit of a Zero fighter, he could feel an immense confidence. Now, every time he remembered the images of being chased in circles by the American air force, he felt a dull ache in his wounds—both the ones in his heart and the one on his arm.

The Zero fighter was no longer the invincible presence it once was. Most American pilots now knew how to use three-dimensional maneuvers to shake off a Zero’s pursuit. No matter how brave he was, he could not change the inherent disadvantages of his aircraft. In the sky, he felt as if he were dancing in shackles.

Thinking of this, he slowly spoke to Nagumo Chuichi in a hoarse voice, “Your Excellency, Admiral, the performance of our fighters has been completely figured out by the Americans. Their evasive maneuvers are despairing. I do not believe these new recruits can accomplish what the veterans who died could not.”

At this moment, he no longer feared things like superior officers. A man who has been through a life-or-death test often sees things very simply. In their eyes, there are only two options: survival or death. Nagumo Chuichi sighed. He also knew that these precious new pilots would not be very effective, but he really had no other decent forces to use.

“If we could lure the U.S. Navy within the combat radius of our land-based air arm, is it possible to turn the tide of the battle?” Nagumo Chuichi muttered to himself. But he knew better than anyone that this was just a ridiculous method to comfort the frontline soldiers and to delude themselves.

The Great Japanese Empire, like the United States, did not have an independent air force. In their organization, there was only an army and a navy. These two services, which could not stand the sight of each other, each had their own air arms. In terms of training intensity and consistent reputation, the overall strength of the Japanese Naval Air Force was superior to that of the Army Air Arm. This, from another perspective, revealed a terrifying piece of information: if the Naval Air Force couldn’t handle the Americans, the Army Air Arm couldn’t either.

Moreover, the Japanese Army and Navy Air Arms could basically be considered the air forces of two different countries. Their production systems and personnel training systems were completely different. In terms of aircraft, their models were different, their parts were different, their factories were different, and even their research and development were separate. In terms of pilot quality, a few months ago the Naval Air Force was superior to the Army Air Arm, but now, it could really be said that they were six of one and half a dozen of the other. However, because the army pilots only knew how to navigate by terrain and often got lost, while the naval pilots could use a sextant to determine their position, only God knew how effective the Army Air Arm could be when performing maritime missions.

The current situation was that the pilots of the Japanese Naval Air Force were being lost at a relatively fast rate. The battles of this period had forced the Japanese Army Air Arm, which originally did not participate in maritime combat, to be transferred to the island to fight. But these army pilots could basically only fight defensive battles on the island and bomb ground targets. Because there were no reference points on the sea, they could not carry out long-range support missions. Moreover, their training did not include bombing moving targets, so their effectiveness against moving targets at sea was also very limited.

Such a cobbled-together force could only be considered better than nothing. To expect it to create any miracles was a bit too much to ask. Nagumo Chuichi and Yamamoto Isoroku had held several operational meetings, but they had all come to nothing because there were no good solutions. What made them even more uneasy was that the U.S. Navy was slow to counter-attack. It seemed the Americans were waiting for their powerful industrial production system to fully awaken.

By fighting this way, the Americans had very cleverly hit the Japanese Navy’s soft underbelly. The Japanese Navy’s mood was now very conflicted. They both hoped the Americans would counter-attack later, to give them time to train more pilots, and hoped the Americans would act sooner, to prevent them from producing more weapons and equipment.

However, the Americans were playing it safe. Nimitz had clearly grasped Japan’s greatest fear. He was not in a hurry to seek a decisive battle with the Japanese Navy but was instead biding his time in the waters of Hawaii, waiting for his new fleet to join the order of battle. At that time, the United States would have more than seven aircraft carriers, and the Japanese would lose their absolute advantage in carrier fleets. At that point, the Americans would launch a full-scale counter-offensive in the Pacific, and the Japanese army would be hard-pressed to cope.

Unlike the difficulty of replacing Japanese naval pilots after they were lost, the pilots lost by the U.S. Navy could be quickly replaced. The vast industrial system of the United States had created a large reserve of civilian pilots. In wartime, these people could be quickly converted into a basic fighter force. Moreover, the survival rate of American pilots was much higher than that of their Japanese counterparts.

“Is there no way to switch to a different type of fighter?” Sato suddenly asked Nagumo Chuichi, who had already walked a few steps away. “Your Excellency, Admiral, the performance of our fighters has been completely figured out by the Americans. If we continue to fight like this, no matter how many excellent pilots we have, we won’t be able to withstand such rapid attrition! Can’t our technical department come up with a new generation of fighter?”

“We really… can’t,” Jiro Horikoshi, the aircraft designer far away in the Japanese homeland, lamented to a subordinate who had raised the same question. “Under normal circumstances, we should be able to modify the Zero fighter, change its flight performance, and cope with the current situation. But the design of the Zero has no room for improvement. If we were to force a change, it would be the same as redesigning a new fighter from scratch.”

“Then let’s just design a new fighter!” an assistant said, clenching his fists. But he regretted his words as soon as he had said them. As a technician who had participated in aircraft design, he knew just how difficult it was to design a new plane from scratch.

Moreover, it wasn’t that Jiro Horikoshi and the others hadn’t tried. In fact, a wooden model of a new type of fighter had already been made and was being tested for its air resistance. This fighter had a similar shape to the Zero, but it was larger and faster. It used a new type of engine and could reach an astonishing speed of 600 kilometers per hour, even exceeding that to a terrifying limit of 650.

But what was despairing was that the new engine was still in the laboratory, and its failures were difficult to control to a low level. Even if it were to be equipped by force, whether it could achieve the expected effect was still an unknown. And the service date for this fighter was set for June 1939, which meant it would be at least five months before it could enter service. During this time, Japan could only rely on the Zero fighter, whose secrets had been leaked by Akado, to fight against the ever-stronger U.S. Air Force.

“We don’t have time,” Nagumo Chuichi said, turning his head to look at the despairing Sato, his tone somewhat dejected. “By the time we have a new fighter, the Americans will have more than ten aircraft carriers. What will we use then to defend the territory for His Majesty the Emperor? So, Sato-kun, cast aside any illusions of surviving on mere luck. We can only fight. For the future of the Great Japanese Empire, we will fight to the last moment!”

Not far away, on an army airfield, two army fighters were slowly taking off. They had been ordered to patrol the nearby waters. Yamamoto Isoroku was standing at the edge of this airfield at this moment. He watched the two planes with the Rising Sun insignia slowly fly into the sky, an indescribable feeling in his heart.

On the deck of an aircraft carrier, he had countless times sent off those familiar pilots in the same way. But time and again, these pilots had never flown back. They had died in a foreign land, without even leaving their bodies for their families back home. And as the supreme commander of these men, Yamamoto felt that it was he who had sent these pilots to their deaths. Therefore, he had recently become taciturn and morose.

As a general of the Japanese Navy, Yamamoto Isoroku, like many famous Japanese naval commanders, adhered to the command principles passed down from the British Empire. From its very bones, the Japanese Navy had been learning from the world’s strongest maritime power, the British Empire. Therefore, Yamamoto and almost all Japanese commanders adhered to the Nelsonian battle spirit of “engage the enemy on sight.” But this kind of arrogant thinking only felt right when spoken by the British Empire, which had dominated the oceans for 100 years. Because at least before 1937, the British Empire still had money, ships, and men. But for the Japanese Navy, which had adopted this principle, to play this game with the U.S. Navy was to court death. Japan’s production capacity was no match for the United States, and this disadvantage was even more pronounced in a high-level service branch like the navy. But the Naval Air Force had always been about engaging the enemy on sight. There was no time to accumulate their precious pilots.

One really couldn’t blame the commanders of the Japanese Navy for being idiots. Because by learning from the British Navy, they had defeated the Qing Dynasty’s Beiyang Fleet and the Russians’ Far East Fleet. Now that this tried-and-true spirit of fearlessness was not working so well, in the minds of ordinary people, the inevitable thought was that the soldiers were not brave enough, not that there was something wrong with this fundamental, bedrock tactic.

But Yamamoto was no ordinary player. He himself had already realized that the navy’s tactic of trading blow for blow in a war of attrition was definitely a problem. He now wanted to change this tactic, to use the islands of Southeast Asia to fight a naval guerrilla war with the Americans and wear down their maritime power.

The problem now was that no matter how many schemes Yamamoto Isoroku had, the American Nimitz would simply not come out to fight. The big trap Yamamoto had dug for Nimitz in Southeast Asia was useless if the prey, the U.S. Navy, did not fall for it. So at least for now, the Japanese Navy was in a tragic situation.

Published: 2025-09-22T03:37:21.000+00:00
Last Edited: 2026-03-15T18:37:47.000+00:00
URL: https://www.patreon.com/caleredhair/posts/mtr-c727-tragedy-139443899

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