People always say that the IJA and IJN were both inferior in weaponry and technology. Yet...

People always say that the IJA and IJN were both inferior in weaponry and technology. Yet, how were they able to beat the Allies so easily in the beginning if the former is true?

What was their secret

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Imphal
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kohima
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma_Campaign
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendell_Fertig
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The rice?

>how were they able to beat the Allies so easily in the beginning
They weren't. It took the IJA almost an entire year to beat a bunch of starving flips using outdated hand-me-down weapons. They actually got BTFO by 500 marines (300 of them pogs) at Wake, so they had to return with 2 fleet carriers. In fact, despite having an edge in numbers, heavy weapons, air and naval support, Japan's only smooth success was at Malay peninsula and Dutch East Indies.

The United States did not catch up in their navy until the middle to end of the war. In the beginning of the war, Japan had the best navy rivaling Great Britain's. Towards the middle and end, the United States' navy surpassed both.

>The United States did not catch up in their navy until the middle to end of the war
This is the dumbest thing I heard on Veeky Forums.

They didn't, they could only beat jungle gooks armed with what was practically sticks. They completely fell apart when faced with an industrialized western power like the U.S.

Complacency of the colonial powers, and sheer balls on the part of the Japs.

>Jungle gooks
>The sovereign powers of Asia in the early twentieth century.

There's no need to be THIS much of a reactionary anti-weeb.

Superior bushwhack short range infiltration tactics, the allies would set up a defence line around a road or village and the nips would either walk through the jungle and flank it or land a small force a few kms behind and attack from there

>People still think the axis were in any way an equal opponent capable of dealing with anything besides tiny neighbour countries or illeterate chinks/ivans

The allies gave them so much credit becauseit made their victories more glorious and their defeats more excusable, basically the Rommel myth on a bigger scale.

In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success.

It kinds worked like this:

-the Japanese could not win a war against the USA
-therefore everyone assumed they would win in any fight against Japan
-therefore everyone assumed they didn't have to seriously prepare

As it turned out, they were right; Japan couldn't win. In fact, many thought it was so obvious they couldn't win that they would never even try. Again, this was true; the problem was that their complacency caused them to be caught off guard initially when the Japanese did the absolutely batshit insane by actually attacking despite being a terrible idea.

Indeed, the Allies' ineptitude at responding to attacks by an arguably inferior enemy convinced the Japanese they were doing everything correctly, which ended up expediting their own downfall when they ran into opposition that wasn't incompetent.

>suffers 1 catastrophic defeat and 1 strategic defeat in the first six months

George Soros literally funded anti-Japanese movements in Asia during WWII so they were pre-occupied trying to put down the Soros funded rebellions during the later part of the war.

The Allies feared the Samurai warrior

Jap manlets couldn't even beat unindustrialized slavshits, they're the most overrated force in the war by far.

>taking over understaffed, undersupplied colonial regions in the middle of nowhere counts as "beating the Allies easily"

Well, is a strategic "error" those regions be under supplied.

The arisaka is a fine rifle.

Better than the Kar98k but worse than the Mosin-Nagant

They are all the same.

Yeah Britain totally should've left the British isles undefended so they can defend Singapore.

Soviet industry in 1939 was vastly larger than Japanese industry

If the Brits were smart they wouldn't have to defend the British isles in the first place, I mean what is this the 16th century?

Get your shit together Britteeth. Wars on the Continent are SO Napoleonic era!

>Soviet industry in 1939 was vastly larger than Japanese industry
USSR war-potential was about 4 times that of Japan. I'll leave it for you to debate whether being 4 times larger could be described as "vastly larger" in any meaningful sense of the word "vastly."

The underpowered Nambu round sort of limits it, it's also inferior to the .303 jungle carbine or M1 in rate of fire

If mechanization and logistics are any indication, then yes, the Soviets at that point were industrialized.

>Yet, how were they able to beat the Allies so easily in the beginning
Because literally everywhere they took on was under-equipped backwater garrisons. And even then, they struggled the minute the Allies were able to able to devote any resources to fighting them.

They were hopelessly behind in nearly every aspect of military technology - they were still seriously using balloons for artillery spotting in 1939, for example - and it's honestly a miracle they made it as far as they did. The fact that the Allies generally reserved the best equipment for the West and only sent what wasn't needed anywhere else to the Pacific should show how unthreatening the Japanese really were.

You're only half-right, the Japanese did excel against colonial troops because they were largely under equipped and unprepared for a major conflict in the region. However despite the Allied campaign in the theater and their technological superiority, the Japanese still gave them hell and that's because despite Japanese doctrines being outdated their shock and infiltration tactics was perfect for the underdeveloped jungle regions of Southeast Asia.

They spent all their resources in the Navy

Any defensive war is gonna be blody for the attackers since ww1. They have to come to you and through traps what ever the fuck is waiting to ass rape them.

France falling so quickly is pretty impressive, though France was still nothing compared to the United States even back then.

>six
So literally long enough for them to send an adequate fleet to defend their territories.

>to twelve months
Woah there, don't be so optimistic.

This is what weeaboos actually believe.
Shameful mate, do better.

They should have invaded Hawaii after Pearl harbor. It would have show America who's boss

Not an argument

>People always say that the IJA and IJN were both inferior in weaponry and technology.
The IJA, yes.
The IJN, not so much. Japanese warships aside from light cruisers were quite good at the beginning of the war. Their DDs and carrier groups in particular were excellent, and far superior to any other nation.
However, they simply didn't have enough resources to replenish their losses in ships and trained pilots. And they were massively outnumbered and outgunned.

>Japanese warships aside from light cruisers were quite good at the beginning of the war.

I wouldn't call the situation of Japanese capital ships at start of the WW2 that good; they had 2 good battleships (Nagato&Mutsu) and 4 decently modernized battlecruisers available but outside of those their capital ships were either shit (Ises and Fusos) or still under construction (Hotel&Palace).

The Japanese plan was utterly retarded from the beginning, they attacked British territory while Britain was far too preoccupied in Europe and Africa to do anything about it and then they sneak attacked America in some sort of dumb hope that they'd be too weak to fight back and they'd sue for peace.

Only a dumb Nip would think the US would just roll over and let themselves get fucked in the ass. The entirety of the Japanese war effort was just one giant suicide attack that lasted 4 years.

Japan attacked places that they knew were unprepared and relatively weak.

Veeky Forums likes to laugh at British troops surrendering in huge numbers in Singapore but they didn't really have a choice. Even if they did win the Battle of Singapore, where were they going to get supplies and reinforcements from? The Japs would just come back later and kill them all.

When the Japs tried to push through into India (a place where Britain actually did fortify and prepare for) they got absolutely wrecked and got chased through Burma while getting slaughtered.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Imphal
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kohima
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma_Campaign

France had the most modern army in the world in 1939

They never achieved pacification of the Flips. Several cells of guerillas were a thorn in the side of the Japs throughout the war. Making them commit tens of thousands of troops at times to try and sweep the Flips (and American led groups by people like Wendell Fertig) out of the jungle/mountains. It never happened, and they were able to pass on ship positions throughout the war in the Pacific as well as complete raids against Jap positions in all over the islands.

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendell_Fertig

If they had won Midway the Pacific war would have gone to the japs

If they won Midway they would have been crushed by new Essex class carriers.

No.

It's often exaggerated. The IJA was perfectly serviceable by early war standards (but they never really advanced beyond that) and the IJN was the second most advanced navy on Earth, mostly due to their carrier doctrine.

>The IJA was perfectly serviceable by early war standards
Not really. Khalkhin Gol showed just how outclassed the IJA was against any real foe. They were still using fucking balloons for spotting.

This is because the Filps were 100% committed to resistance. The Japanese got some good PR in places like Indonesia and Vietnam because, despite their brutality, they did promise some measure of independence for the people there, and said people absolutely hated their European conquerors. Meanwhile the Filipinos had already been given autonomy by the USA and were scheduled for independence in five years (which went ahead as planned after the war), so they never really bought Japan's propaganda.

Khalkin Gol featured the greenest garrison division of the IJA (literally, just formed a few months before) plus some attached support units fighting three times their number in the best of the Soviet army and still destroying several times more armored vehicles than they actually brought.

Early war IJA > early war British army in pretty much every objective metric. And that's probably the fairest comparison considering they're both island naval powers.

Did the Japs actually commit things like the St. Stephen's College Massacre?

Also, is anyone red-pilled about Korea's involvement in the IJA? According to BR Myers the whole notion of Koreans systematically resisting Japanese rule is complete bullshit pseudohistory, the vast majority of the population were willing collaborators hence the huge number of Korean auxilliaries in the IJA and large numbers of Koreans on trial during the Tokyo Trials.

Them being outnumbered was the result of the IJA's failings. The Soviets were operating from a railhead a four day drive away, while the IJA had a railhead half a day away. Despite that, the Soviets were able to assemble more men and materiel than the IJA *and* keep them supplied far better. The artillery duel portion of the battle shows how outclassed they really were:
>Soviets have more pieces
>Soviet pieces are more modern than the WW1-vintage Japanese pieces
>Soviets manage to sustain more intense barrages for longer periods than IJA
>barrage increases in intensity as the battle goes on while IJA runs out of ammo

As for armor, that's hardly a fair comparison. Soviet armored losses were due to the fact that they actually employed it during the battle and some unfortunate incidents - like the decision to send armor unsupported by infantry to stop the river crossing. And if we're going to get onto the topic of armor, how about we talk about that failed armored assault where two tank regiments and a regiment of infantry, engineers, and artillery were unable to dislodge a handful of armored cars and riflemen.

Logistics were never Japan's strong point.

That's not a fair comparison. Stalin personally insisted that the entire Far East's truck pool be put at Zhukov's disposal to give him all the supplies he needed to field the largest force possible, and he also possessed 1/3 of the entire Far Eastern Front's armor. By contrast, the Japanese force there was only semi-sanctioned to begin with, and large scale reinforcements were avoided for fear of provoking a conflict.

The Soviets couldn't sustain that rate for their entire army. Even in better-off terrain. In Barbarossa, for example, the vast majority of Soviet divisions were completely static with no significant motorized transport elements, which is the reason the Germans were able to overwhelm them so easy.
>And if we're going to get onto the topic of armor, how about we talk about that failed armored assault where two tank regiments and a regiment of infantry, engineers, and artillery were unable to dislodge a handful of armored cars and riflemen.
That failed because Zhukov, perceiving the threat, launched a counterattack with 450 tanks and armored cars to Japan's 73 tanks. And the Soviets suffered three times the armor losses in that attack was the Japanese did.

>Japan's junta convince themselves, then he'll see just how enormously bloody and costly an official War (with a capital W) with Japan would be. After all, to this day the Americans haven't shut up about how many people they lost in the Great War.

What did they mean by this?

>Logistics were never Japan's strong point.
so... moderns war were never Japan's strong point

No, the Japanese predictions about America were correct but it was a gamble that was 50/50. The American public didn't and does not have the stomach for a prolonged bloody war, fact of the matter is towards the end of the war despite only being 4 years of participation, the American public was exhausted and ready for peace.

The armored counterattack was on a different sector of the front than the Japanese armored attack. Both sides had bridgeheads across the river and both sides sent armor to dislodge the other guy's bridgehead.

>The American public didn't and does not have the stomach for a prolonged bloody war,
I guess that must be why America left Vietnam so quickly and has not been fighting in Afghanistan for longer than Veeky Forums has been a thing.

Both extremely unpopular conflicts carried on by the federal government against the will of the American public, however since MSM is completely in bed with the feds they provide enough bread & circus to distract the public from actual news.

The circus act that goes on right now was much harder to pull off in the 40's because the war economy and rationing effected society from the top down.

>The Allies feared the Samurai wa-

Ding ding ding, this

>Grandpa tell me about the ubermensch volkssturm you fought in Berlin again

i like how manage to shit on basically everyone that fought the war while the US was still in quietly jerking off in the corner.

Burma was pretty even in losses

Teaboo

But still tiny compared to the would-be superpowers or the Commonwealth.

America was a Bitch

I fucking hate Japs. They bombed by city and killed my relatives.

What city would that be?

Darwin.

Was not expecting an Australian to be honest.

IJN
They wanted to be fastest.
To achieve this speed, they had practically wooden ships and no fire crews.
Inferior is right IMHO

>want to be the fastest
>russians, french, and even fucking swedes had faster boats than they had

What did Tojos mean by this?

>What did Tojos mean by this?
まあブラが心配するのもしょうがないよな。弱くはないんだけどね

Japan made the same mistake Germany did in WWII. They assumed that strong countries attacking weak countries was the natural order. From their perspective, if countries like America and Britain were stronger than Germany and Japan, they would already be attacking Germany and Japan. The fact that weren't must mean they were weaker and therefore Germany and Japan could safely attack them.

Another huge mistake Japan made was something you alluded to - Japan failed to understand logistics. What did the Japanese make their primary target at Pearl Harbor? The battleships and cruisers. But as you pointed out, they ignored the repair facilities and fuel depots. Destroying those would have paralyzed the fleet just as much as sinking the ships would. But the Japanese could never see things like that.

They saw wars like they were jousting events - the two forces would attack each other face to face and the stronger fighter would win. It was not just an honor thing - they had no problem attacking an unprepared opponent as they did at Pearl Harbor. But they became too focused on their enemy's offensive capabilities - they would attack those capabilities without ever considering whether it was possible to go around them instead.

Americans, on the other hand, understood how to fight indirectly. They would send submarines out to sink supply ships rather than hunt for battleships. They would cut off and bypass military bases rather than attack them. Their planes would bomb factories rather than fight other planes.

>But as you pointed out, they ignored the repair facilities and fuel depots.
Pseud detected. CVP are not strategic bombers. It was well beyond their capabilities to strike meaningfully at these facilities, especially since the oil stored at Pearl Harbor, while vast in an absolute scale, represented roughly a day's worth of American production and would quickly and near effortlessly be replaced, probably in a week or so.

>Their planes would bomb factories rather than fight other planes.
The Japanese had some 30,000 combat plane losses over the war. The vast, vast majority of these were shot down in combat with American planes.

>France had the most modern army in the world in 1939

I don't think so

>US
>semi-automatic rifles as standard issue
>man-portable radios,
>plane/plane-production lines that weren't bottlenecked by propeller-lathing

etc, etc..

though french tanks were better than what most of the US army was equipped with in 1939.

the US took a bunch of casualties for the relatively short time we were in ww1.

though I imagine that was in large part due to the spanish influenza.

but basically it re-enforced several nativist and isolationist sentiments within the US, and there was a bunch of famous authors in the lost-generation who wrote anti-war literature, which were widely published.

The Japanese basically misinterpreted this to mean the US didn't have the balls for a sustained war where there were heavy casualties in a short period of time..

>re-enforced

nigga its reinforced.

oops..
>fucking spelling.

Suprise, dogged defense, and methamphetamine fueled patriotism.

>TFW Japan was the good guy all along.
"With the help of Japan, China, and Manchukuo, the world can be in peace."

Japanese steel

How good was it compare to gaijin steel

Superior, folded billions time so that the Imperial warships would be able to cleave through their gaijin counterparts like they're made from butter. Zeros wings were sharp like katana and Japanese pilots took advantage of this by cutting through enemy planes with their wings and later turning their planes into manned anti-ship darts.

The important question is what did they do to Japanese Americans if they were caught.

>REMOVE WHITEY!
*Attacks China.*

What are the odds that the United States would have declared war on Japan to defend Dutch and English colonial possessions?

Why did they even bother trying to conquer China if they already had the mineral rich areas in the north?

Long story short, Japan's military strategy was simply "lets grab everything around us and attack everyone around us".

Case in point.

...

Not an argument

>sovereign

you have it backwards.

US basically brought the Brits and the Dutch into a defensive pact in early 1941. Britain and the Dutch sanctioned Japan only under American pressure. I think you misunderstand the political situation in 1941 if you think US was not using the Dutch and British colonial possessions as bait to go to war with Japan.

>be Asian power
>have your army and navy in Asia
>overrun colonial garrisons of powers based in Europe (and currently waging wars there) or the Americas (but only briefly 'til they get their shit together)

The Malay campaign was a stroke of genius. The rest not so much. As many have said they had quite a time with Wake and the Philippines. They could have never have defeated the western powers, even if they weren't in China. They were economically inferior, their equipment was inferior in most respects and their battlefield doctrines were terrible.

Yamato and Musashi were also a waste as they were little more than Mahanian dreamships that had no place in a carrier's playground.

Mahan's ideas can be carried out equally well by carriers as well as battleships.

I suppose so, but regardless the superheavy battleship was a good way to waste time, resources and manpower during WW2

Singapore was purely down to classic British arrogance + incompetence over any clever tactic on the part of the IJA.

Brit commander literally forbade any defensive structures because it's "bad for morale."