The Ingenuity of Imperial Japanese Aircraft Carriers
Why was the Imperial Japanese Navy so successful in adopting the new technology of aircraft carriers in the 1920s and 1930s?
In 1919 the Hiryū, originally intended as a tanker, had its name and purpose remodeled. Three years later, the new-fangled warship Hōshō, or ‘Flying Phoenix’, splashed down at the naval dockyard in Yokosuka, Japan. Designated as Kobubokan, or ‘Aircraft Depot Ship’, the Hōshō was the first vessel in the world to be completed which had been built from the outset, keel up, as an aircraft carrier.[1]’[2] At just under 8,000 tons displacement and with a flight deck of only 168 meters, it was not a particularly pretty vessel. It was instead a small, awkward-looking carrier, able to carry approximately twenty aircraft.[3] From a rudimentary fitted island-type bridge on the starboard side of the flight deck, the ship was manned and flight operations controlled. Forward of the island, the flight deck itself was inclined downwards. Small elevators forward and aft led down to a narrow hanger deck, bringing aircraft to and from the flight deck. As the first of its kind, the Hōshō was ultimately a Frankenstein-like experiment; she was used primarily for practicing launching and recovering aircraft. Repeated testing, likewise, made clear certain impracticalities in its defining features. Because the island superstructure, its mast, and the three stacks behind it reduced the distance of the flight deck—and, to some extent, the pilot’s visibility—they were all either rearranged or moved entirely. Now a flush-deck carrier, the positioning of the boiler uptakes also proved troublesome. Even in their horizontal position, the three stacks caused stack gas and smoke to drift across the path of flight operations, and in 1934 they were permanently fixed at a downward angle over the ship’s side. Additionally, the ship’s inadequate arresting gear—which had contributed to several landing incidents—was replaced by a system of transverse cables across the deck.[4] These innovations improved the ship, although its role remained auxiliary in the Imperial Japanese Navy. [5]
Despite her inadequacies and size, the Hōshō proved to be an invaluable laboratory for future carrier design, construction, and flight operations in the Imperial Japanese Navy. More than that, though, the example of the trial-and-error Hōshō received is a microcosm of the IJN’s greater success at adopting, implementing, and constructing continuously improved aircraft carriers in the interwar period. Indeed, the Hōshō was the first tentative step in this process—it was the critical beginning. During the First World War, the future roles of naval aviation had been exhibited on occasion, but they were limited to spotting, reconnaissance, and anti-submarine patrol. The overarching promise of aircraft was the ability to project naval power beyond the range of shipborne weapons, impelling the development of naval-air arms amongst major powers. Yet none of the trials naval aviation encountered in WWI had proved decisive, and this new arm’s future lay purely in the realm of speculation, not experience. Early naval aircraft were small, fragile, and capable of only short-range missions. In order to implement fruitful and effective naval aviation war-machines, aircraft needed to be effective as well. Hence, there was little reason to shake the faith of naval establishments that the primacy of big-gun battleships would not be undermined by this upstart. By 1935, however, as high-performance aircraft began to enter service, attitudes shifted.[6] On the eve of war, the Imperial Japanese Navy would deploy ten carriers and 500 naval aircraft, more than any other competitor. These carriers and aircraft, moreover, would prove to be the most decisive and significant units in the Pacific theatre against the US.[7] In the lead up to the Second World War, the IJN was comparatively successful at adopting the new technology of aircraft carriers for three reasons: external influences, internal capabilities, and because their strategy required it. With the Hōshō, they began early, soon learning and assimilating from advanced naval nations, using their own industrial and bureaucratic capabilities to ‘copy, improve, and innovate.’[8] As the utility of the aircraft carrier became more apparent as naval aviation advanced, doctrine and strategy followed. As such, the essay will break down into three parts, with the first providing context to the beginnings of the IJN.
External Limitations and Assimilation
Since Commodore Matthew Perry’s intrusion onto Japanese shores in 1853, Japan began an active campaign to build a strong navy: one that could outface any further foreigners who might impose themselves on their long-established isolation and threaten disruption to their peculiar social order. As such, Japan’s rise to a naval power was, in the words of John Keegan, “a deliberate act of political will.”[9] As Abe Masashiro, chief counsellor to the emperor wrote:
Everyone has pointed out that we are without a navy and that our coasts are undefended. Meanwhile the Americans will be here next year. Our policy shall be to evade any answer to their request [to open the country to foreign trade] while at the same time maintaining a peaceful demeanour. It may be, however, that they will have to recourse to violence. For that contingency we must be prepared unless the country suffer disgrace. Therefore, every possible effort will be made to prepare the country for defence.[10]
Unlike China, who sought further introversion upon encountering the phenomenon of Western technological superiority, Japan chose action, immediately procuring a steamship from the Dutch—although this solution would only be temporary. Indeed, decision-makers in Japan realized that if it were not to ‘suffer disgrace’ at the hands of the West, it would need to build a capable, advanced fleet on its own. During the Meiji Restoration, British naval officers were brought to Japan to teach the next generation of naval officers, and British-built ships were equipped and adapted in Japanese ports.[11] Apparent from the very onset of Japan’s naval ambitions, then, was a strategy of assimilation and adoption. When the time came to test this increasingly large fleet in 1904 against Russia, Japan disposed of the Far Eastern Fleet in short order. Indeed, the later battle in the Straits of Tsushima would become the Japanese Trafalgar, cementing, as it had done for the British, Japanese naval might.[12]
From 1905 onwards, Japan’s actual and potential naval power grew year by year. Following the end of WWI and a period of reliance on capital ships and aggressive imperial expansion, Japan was the third largest navy, behind Britain and the United States, the latter of which had become progressively antagonistic.[13] Japan had sought to follow an ‘eight-eight’ programme during this period: to construct eight battleships and eight battle-cruisers as the core of a modern fleet. The Kaigunsho (Japanese Admiralty), aspired to have Japan dominate the western Pacific.[14] While steps towards naval aviation and carriers in the early 1920s were tentative, however, the ambitious naval growth in capital ships was soon to be curtailed by the Washington Treaty of 1921-22. Seeking to relieve growing tensions in East Asia and prevent another war, the naval conference proposed naval disarmament.[15] Signed in 1922, it established a tonnage ratio of 10-10-6 for the capital ships of the US, Great Britain and Japan respectively, whilst also assigning smaller tonnages to France and Italy. The same ratio was set for aircraft carriers as well, with around 135,000 tons for Great Britain and the US, and 81,000 for Japan. Moreover, it limited any new carrier to 23,000 tons, with a provision that, if total carrier tonnage were not thereby exceeded, nations would be permitted two more carriers of no more than 33,000 tons each, or obtain them by converting existing or partially built capital ships that might have been otherwise scrapped or scuttled by the treaty.[16]
Despite aiming to disarm, the treaty itself did not have a direct detrimental effect on carrier construction for any participants. In reality, it had quite the opposite effect, since it was a question of building up to, rather than down to, an agreed limit.[17] It was under this provision that the Japanese produced two more fleet carriers: the Akagi and the Kaga, built from a battle cruiser and a battleship respectively. But, although the two ships could carry over 120 planes between them (increasing IJN offensive capabilities and offering new strategic and tactical possibilities), their initial design contained features that “demonstrated continued uncertainties about the function of carriers and an underestimation of the rapidity of change in both technology and the tactics of naval aviation.”[18] Indeed, during the 1920s, Japan was of ‘two minds’ about the strategic implications of aviation. On the one hand, Japan, like European powers, outwardly exaggerated the current and potential capabilities of air weapons, drawing upon lessons and experience from WWI in which Imperial Navy seaplanes carried by merchant vessels besieged the German naval base at Tsingtao in 1914.[19] On the other, the potential aerial bombardment threat posed to the homeland forced Japanese political and military leadership to fear the consequences of foreign technological advancement and in some instances request restraint in aerial build-up.[20]
Nevertheless, the Japanese navy was not sluggish to grasp the significance of new aviation technology; its first pilots had taken to the air only a few years after pioneering innovators in the West. Moreover, as mentioned above, technical advancement in planes would necessitate a naval element to carry them. Spurred on by the advancement of American and British naval air technology which threatened to leave Japan a distant third place naval power and chagrinned at the rapid improvement of the Japanese military—made possible by the arrival of a French air mission in 1919—IJN leadership, following the recommendations of the Ōzeki report, decided in 1920 to once again seek assistance from the British navy. Having aided Japan in the past, the British were sympathetic, but more so they were incentivized by the potential market and clouded by pervasive racial stereotypes that disregarded the possibility of native design. According to the RAF, Japan was the most advanced nonwestern state, “with a genius for copying rather than originality.” Despite reservations in allowing unrestricted access to British know-how, they concluded that Japan could possibly duplicate, but not improve, whatever aviation equipment and intelligence they might graciously grant. Indeed, in March 1920, the first post-war RAF assessment of Japanese air capabilities surreptitiously informed the Committee of Imperial Defence that: “The Japanese are not apt pilots probably for the same reason that keeps them indifferent horsemen.”[21]
The next year the British government sent an unofficial civil aviation mission to Japan headed by Sir William Sempill, a former officer in the RAF with experience in design and testing of WWI Royal Navy aircraft. Arriving at the Kasumigaura Naval Air Station in 1921, the mission was made up of twenty-seven pilots and engineers from several British aircraft firms, as well as over a hundred aircraft of twenty different models. This kind of access to the latest innovations in aerial weapons and equipment—machine guns, bombs, torpedoes, cameras, and communications gear—as well as the planes themselves, was invaluable, providing inspiration for several original Japanese aircraft. By the time the mission had left, the Japanese had a reasonable grasp on the latest aviation technology, paving the way for the aircraft carrier.[22]’[23]
Whilst the Washington Treaty had spurred the building of aircraft carriers, the treaty’s effect on capital ships caused much discontent among certain ranks of the Kaigunsho, who at the time saw little value in carriers.[24] By 1930, when a new conference met in London, the Japanese, however, with great foot-dragging, accepted further limitations on its warship construction in relation to the British and American navies, critically in the cruiser category. Now shorn of cruiser strength—which had previously compensated for the Washington Treaty’s limitations—the Japanese counteracted these deficiencies by turning to airpower.[25] While external limitations and assimilation sparked the initial phase of experimental carriers and aviation advancement, Japanese bureaucratic management and industrial capabilities allowed for and expanded the ability to innovate newer and better aircraft and aircraft carriers, from which new doctrine and strategy was formed as well.
Internal Industrial/Firm and Bureaucratic Capabilities
The Sempill Mission was not the only source of foreign air technology imported by Japan in the interwar years, nor was the navy the sole recipient. Up until the 1920s, naval aviation in Japan had either relied on engines and airframes manufactured in Japan under foreign license arrangements, or the wholesale purchase of such parts from foreign manufacturers. In fact, the aircraft built for the Hōshō was aided by Herbert Smith, formerly chief designer of Sopwith Aviation. Japan’s strategy was consistent, both at the level of the firm and of the nation: “technology imported from Western countries was internalized and made Japanese.” [26] Eventually, however, these relationships began generating a pervasive concern about dependence on foreign technology. While such Western technological assistance began to work to Japan’s advantage, private Japanese firms also began scrambling for participation as the business became increasingly lucrative. This impetus was only amplified after the Washington Treaty, following which naval strategists declared ‘Technology First’ (gijutsu daiichi shugi). As Richard Samuels notes in his book Rich Nation, Strong Army:
…for the first time the aircraft industry became an object of industrial policy. From the beginning, the Navy's air strategy had been subordinated to surface ships. With the naval limitations, however, the use of carrier-borne aircraft became more attractive.[27]
According to one account, when Hōshō was launched, Navy doctrine formally shifted from ‘Capital Ship First’ to ‘Carrier Aircraft Centrism’. While this is an overstatement, naval aircraft were certainly differentiated to include fighters, carrier bombers, reconnaissance planes, and attack aircraft.[28]
As politics turned towards domestic innovation, both the military and the navy held prototype competitions for design contracts amongst Japanese firms, although competition for naval aircraft contracts was even keener; more companies vied for roughly the same number of orders.[29] In order to keep up, established industrial and commercial enterprises began building research and testing facilities accompanied by water tanks and wind tunnels to study lift and drag. Companies like Mitsubishi, Nakajima, Aichi and Kawanishi eventually became the dominant Navy contractors. Import substitution projects given to Japanese shipyards included improving upon foreign technologies in the fields of hull and artillery design, electrical equipment manufacturing and lighting, metallurgical capability, and turbine and condenser efficiency. Moreover, the IJN pressed the Kawasaki and Mitsubishi shipyards to integrate domestically produced boiler systems and diesel engines into ships.[30] The need to indigenize remained pressing, and as international politics became unfavorable in 1930s due to Japan’s invasion of Manchuria, access to foreign designs became a luxury Japan could not afford.[31] Under this competitive environment and governmental arrangement, Japan produced some of the world’s best reconnaissance aircraft, carrier fighters, and carrier bombers. For its part in the process, the IJN continued to design and manufacture certain aircraft types for which it believed it should lead, whilst also using its limited testing facilities to modify and refashion prototypes. Thus, while the navy took on the research role, private enterprise did the heavy lifting in production.[32]
Of course, such increase in scale and complexity in naval aviation required administrative reorganization. Consequently, in 1927 the navy formed the Naval Aviation Department, located in Tokyo. Although the organization was directly responsible to the navy minister, it remained outside the ministry itself. In addition to overseeing the development of all things integral to naval aviation (engines, frames, equipment), it was also given charge of training, except for air combat. The creation of the NAD was critically important to the progress of the IJN and aircraft carriers for two reasons. The first was that it centralised previously disparate branches of naval aviation (split between various stations around the country) under one central administration, which crucially had one budget authority. This resulted in a navy-wide interest in aviation and carriers. For example, in 1930, Navy fleet exercises emphasized the ability of carrier forces to attack defended targets on land. Second, it ensured the full force of Japan’s response to the London Conference was behind naval aviation.[33] Another important supplement to bureaucratic efficiency was the introduction of the Naval Air Arsenal at Yokosuka Naval Base, which brought together, for the first time, all work concerning aircraft design, flight testing and prototypes not under contract by private firms.[34]
Compared to their old friends the British, the Japanese benefited immensely from an administrative system that had never defined a separate, independent air force. Because of this, they could devote a higher proportion of their air effort to maritime matters.[35] As Geoffrey Till argues in his tri-nation analysis, unlike the former, the Japanese and the Americans enjoyed a system that allowed “enthusiastic innovators a high degree of autonomy.” This effectively kept such innovators on board whilst also providing a wide range of options for decision makers. In addition, it allowed naval thinkers time and scope for independent reflection and gave opportunities for support to inventors who knew the right people in right places.[36]
In summation, Japanese technical advances were not fortuitous; they were the result of a conscious analysis of the ideas, responses, and innovative technology within the IJN, as well as within major manufacturers and private firms like Mitsubishi. Ship and aircraft designers received and assessed data from maneuvers and combat through the Naval Aviation Department, and the department had the appropriate centralised power to compel these designers—and the industrial manufacturers producing the war-machines—to develop certain advances it knew were necessary.[37] Doctrinally, however, the IJN was took some time to wholeheartedly accept aircraft carrier and aviation utility.
Doctrine, Mahanian Strategy and Geography
While the Japanese war-industry continued innovating aviation, it may seem that this essay has spent scant time delving into the naval aspect of carrier technology and Japan’s eventual success in adopting it. This is for three reasons. Firstly, the function of the aircraft carrier relied on the rapid development of aircraft technology; the two were intimately intertwined. Conception and utility of carriers was constantly shifting as the weight and speed of aircraft increased, changing what was required for take-off from the flight deck. Secondly, as well as continuously amending and keeping pace with advancements in flight operations by lengthening flight decks, changing aircraft control centers and maximizing hangars and maintenance facilities, designers also had to confront problems of propulsion, seakeeping, hull structure, crew accommodation, and compatibility with shore facilities.[38] Of course, they also needed to keep the carriers they were building under 23,000 tons to remain within the Washington Treaty’s limitations (although the loophole was used).[39] Finally, with all the ambiguity surrounding these said factors of aircraft carrier design came uncertainty about the function of the carrier and its place in battle. Would they require heavy armour and guns to provide defense against cruisers and destroyers? Or would advancements in flight eventually solve such issues? Given these numerous concerns, it is not surprising that design, as well as doctrine, improved incrementally and was a matter of trial and error. Indeed, many of the first warships, like the Hōshō, the Akagi, and the Kaga all contained certain features that proved impractical by the mid-1930s.[40]
Doctrine, like ship design, would not reach a cohesive purpose until closer to the war: practical results of the newfangled carriers needed to present themselves first. When Hōshō was launched, scant thought was given to its offensive potential due to its size and slow speed, and hence no doctrine was formed. In 1928, however, when the first carrier division was formed with three carriers, the role of carriers in fleet arrangement and engagement began in earnest. Because aircraft in 1928 still had relatively short range, though, the navy high command viewed carriers as support vessels—not the main battle force or offensive weapons. Thus, in the early 1930s, Japan still had no single, unified doctrine or clear vision as to the role of air power in naval war.[41]
With each increase in the range and power of carrier aircraft fueled by Japan’s private industry and the IJN doctrine found purpose. The carrier’s most salient characteristic came to be seen as its ability to reach targets out of range to surface vessels. Airmen and gunnery staffs soon became convinced in the concept of preemptive strike on an enemy’s carriers using carrier planes to immediately achieve air and sea superiority in the vicinity of battle. By mid-decade and the adjunct of the dive-bomber, complete Mahanian-like destruction of the enemy’s carrier force became the focus of Japan’s carrier strategy, in turn shifting the utility of aircraft carriers away from the defensive towards the offensive.[42] Carrier doctrine changed to meet Japanese strategy. As one of the most influential Japanese naval airmen, General Minoru Genda retrospectively remarks:
The continued increase of air technology brought with it the idea that mastery of the air would be crucial to the outcome of any naval battle. This increasing appreciation of the potency of the air arm suggested that the destruction of enemy aircraft carriers should have first priority with our own carrier-based aircraft. Beginning around 1935 our naval air force trained extensively with this conception in mind. The importance of the carrier relative to the battleship increased in the thinking of the Imperial Navy until both occupied an approximately equal position.[43]
As the aircraft carrier appeared more salient, Genda notes that the Japanese also moved from a traditional strategy of decisive battle, to a ‘diminution Operation’, in which Japanese submarines, destroyers and aeroplanes would conduct surprise attacks on the enemy to bring parity before the decisive battle.[44] As Japanese historian Sadao Asada has contended, Japan’s naval strategy has always had a distinctly Mahanian ‘stamp’, which he lays out in his book, From Mahan to Pearl Harbor.[45]’[46] Since 1907, moreover, Japan rightly concluded that the US would be its main contender for control of the seas. Moreover, they relied on Mahanian ideals to shape their strategy should war break out.[47] Mahan was certainly kept in mind just as general naval strategy and doctrine for aircraft carriers began to directly merge. Whilst airmen and naval officers alike argued over the correct tactical formations for the growing might of carriers, it is apparent that once strategy and doctrine fused, the new technology had effectively reached the forefront of naval planning. Strategy now required successful implementation and production of such machinery, and the combination of diminution operations and surprise attack using aircraft carriers triggered a ‘revolution’ in naval warfare at Pearl Harbour.[48]
It is pertinent here, following discussion of Mahan’s influence, to address his first precondition to sea power: geographic positioning.[49] With the advantage of retrospect, geography also beckoned the successful implementation of aircraft carriers. As Yoshihara and Holmes have noted, “Japan’s maritime posture…has always been and will always be intimately linked to geography.” The concept of maritime power will always be inseparably linked to the best means of attaining it. The utility of new naval technologies is to exploit time and space at sea to your advantage.[50] The Pacific Ocean, and indeed the Asian theatre as a whole, was particularly suitable to the operation of carriers. Although few in either the Japanese or US navies could predict they would become such an effective weapons system two decades later, by World War I’s end it was evident that controlling this vast maritime theatre via naval aviation could provide users with particular strategic advantages. Controlling a long island chain within vicinity of the East Asian coast, stretching from the Kuril Islands to Tawian (as well as recently obtained ex-German Micronesia), Japan was well set to become a major beneficiary of this development. Carriers could (and did) provide Japan with a practical, economic way of defending its vast maritime empire. They not only functioned as mobile airfields to safeguard vast, often underdeveloped, areas in the Pacific, but also aid land operations on the Asian continent. Lacking naval air bases in the Northeast Asia region, Great Britain and the US also saw the potential of carriers as a means of maintaining aerial dominance, and with it control of the seas.[51]
In 1936, Japan withdrew from the Washington Treaty and the second London Conference, signaling the resumption and escalation of the naval race with the US—which, as American Historian Stephen Pelz wrote, beckoned “the race to Pearl Harbour.”[52] The end of the treaty era allowed Japan to build ships of all classes, and, importantly, aircraft carriers of unprecedented size and performance. Accordingly, five years before the onset of the Pacific war, the navy added the Shōkaku and Zuikaku—the finest carriers Japan ever built. In performance and capability, these ships exceeded all American carriers until the Essex class emerged during the war. According to Mark Peattie, these two ships were so valuable that their availability informed the decision to attack Pearl Harbor, and their absence from Midway “may well have proved the margin of defeat for the Japanese navy.”[53]
In 1937, Japan plunged itself into war against China, employing their carrier fleet to full effect and gleaning lessons about tactical carrier arrangement. It was this experience that helped mould a prepare pilots and seamen.[54] While this essay has focused on why the IJN was able to integrate carriers so fruitfully, it will briefly entertain how effective these ships and planes really were. Although the IJN had successfully implemented carriers, they had also built combat aircraft and trained pilots that generally outperformed their American counterparts. Moreover, on paper, the Japanese carrier forces were superior to the US or Great Britain’s. Their advantage lay also in their effective wielding of carrier forces into an operational unit: the First Air Fleet. Contrasted with the US Navy’s ad hoc organization, in December 1941, Japan held the advantage and sat primed to deliver a ‘thunderbolt’.[55]
Conclusions
This essay begins with the first Japanese aircraft carrier, Hōshō, and it is fitting that it should end with it as well. Present at Pearl Harbour and placed in a secondary role at Midway, she provided modest air protection, scouting and anti-submarine support for the Main Body, surviving with only minor damage from air attacks.[56] In essence, she performed all the tasks required of an early aircraft carrier. Next to her revised younger sisters on the water, however, she must have appeared timeworn and obsolete. Yet Hōshō needn’t be so jealous—she was the spark that lit the speculative fire of Japanese investigation into a new, revolutionary type of naval warfare. Her initial build, the revisions made, and the remarkable capability gap between her newer brethren demonstrates the innovation the IJN successfully adopted.
Ultimately, due to a variety of external and internal factors, the Imperial Japanese Navy was efficacious at adopting aircraft carriers in the 1920s and 30s. Treaties limiting construction that helped promote carriers, the Japanese assimilation tactic of ‘copy, improve, innovate’, domestic industrial aid, flexible administrative organization, and the intertwining of doctrine, strategy and geography, all had a part to play. Significant as well was the interplay between aircraft carrier doctrine and aviation advancement, both of which informed the other, incrementally shaping the war machines used in the Pacific. Critically, Japan’s success hinged on what Mahan labelled national character and ‘number following the sea.’ In response to initial naval threats, Japan consciously chose to keep pace with its Western naval peers, providing “staying power, reserve force, and 'leadership in mechanical arts'” to complement their maritime greatness.[57] It began its uncertain carrier approach the earliest, learning by trial and error over time. Because their bureaucracy and strategy allowed it, and having war experience with China, their navy effectively implemented the new technology. How prepared they were in using it, however, is another story for another essay. Yet, perhaps this story lends itself to useful lessons concerning contemporary and future naval competition again in Asia with the Peoples Republic of China—now the world’s largest naval force competing with the United States for control of the seas.[58]
Bibliography
Alexander, Jeff. “Nikon and the Sponsorship of Japan's Optical Industry by the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1917-1945.” Japanese Studies, vol. 22, no. 1, (2002): 19–33., https://doi.org/10.1080/103713902201436723.
Asada, Sadao. From Mahan to Pearl Harbor: The Imperial Japanese Navy and the United States. Naval Institute Press, 2012.
Asada, Sadao. “The Revolt against the Washington Treaty: The Imperial Japanese Navy and Naval Limitation, 1921-1927.” Naval War College Review 46, no. 3 (1993): 82–97. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44637473.
Baker, Arthur Davidson. “Japanese Naval Construction 1915-1945: An Introductory Essay.” Warship International 24, no. 1 (1987): 45–68. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44889097.
Evans, David C., and Mark R. Peattie. Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887-1941. Naval Institute Press, 2012.
Ferris, John. “A British ‘Unofficial’ Aviation Mission and Japanese Naval Developments, 1919–1929.” Journal of Strategic Studies, vol. 5, no. 3, (1982): 416–439, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402398208437125.
Genda, Minoru. “TACTICAL PLANNING IN THE IMPERIAL JAPANESE NAVY.” Naval War College Review 22, no. 2 (1969): 45–50. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44641120.
Hendrix, Jerry. “RETREAT FROM RANGE: The Rise and Fall of Carrier Aviation.” Center for a New American Security, 2015. http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep06403.
Hirama, Yôichi. “Japanese Naval Preparations for World War II.” Naval War College Review 44, no. 2 (1991): 63–81. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44638027.
Hone, Thomas C., and Mark D. Mandeles. “Interwar Innovation in Three Navies: U.S. Navy, Royal Navy, Imperial Japanese Navy.” Naval War College Review 40, no. 2 (1987): 63–83. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44636824.
Hone, Thomas C. “Replacing Battleships With Aircraft Carriers in the Pacific in World War II.” Naval War College Review 66, no. 1 (2013): 56–76. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26397352.
Howe, Christopher. The Origins of Japanese Trade Supremacy: Development and Technology in Asia from 1540 to the Pacific War, London, Hurst, 1996.
Inton, Christopher. “China's Vast Fleet Is Tipping the Balance against U.S. in the Pacific.” Reuters, Special Report, 30 Apr. 2019, https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/china-army-navy/.
Masanori, Itō, and Roger Pineau. The End of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Jove, New York, 1986.
Jentschura, Hansgeorg, et al. Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy 1869 - 1945. Arms and Armour, 1999.
Keegan, John, Battle at Sea: From Man-of-War to Submarine. Pimlico, 2004.
Kitagawa, Keizo, Agustín Guimerá, Andrew Lambert, Benjamin Darnell, Carla Rahn Phillips, Duncan Redford, Evan Wilson, et al. “Naval Intellectualism and the Imperial Japanese Navy.” Chapter. In Strategy and the Sea: Essays in Honour of John B. Hattendorf, edited by N.A.M. Rodger, 226–35. Boydell & Brewer, 2016.
Kowner, Rotem. “Passing the Baton: World War II's Asian Theater and the Coming of Age of the Aircraft Carrier.” Association for Asian Studies, 17 June 2020,
https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/passing-the-baton-world-war-iis-asian-theater-and-the-coming-of-age-of-the-aircraft-carrier/.
MacDonald, Scot. Evolution of Aircraft Carriers. Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, 1964.
Mahan, A. T. The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783. Cambridge Library Collection - Naval and Military History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511783289.
O'Brien, P. How the War Was Won: Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II (Cambridge Military Histories). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, doi:10.1017/CBO9781139045605
Peattie, Mark R. Sunburst: The Rise of the Japanese Naval Air Power, 1909-1941. Naval Institute Press, 2007.
Pelz, Stephen E. Race to Pearl Harbor: The Failure of the Second London Naval Conference and the Onset of World War II. Harvard University Press, 1975.
Polmar, Norman, et al. Aircraft Carriers: A History of Carrier Aviation and Its Influence on World Events. Potomac Books, 2008.
Samuels, Richard J. Rich Nation, Strong Army: National Security and the Technological Transformation of Japan. Cornell University Press, 1996.
Sprance, Willaim R. “The Russo-Japanese War: The Emergence Of Japanese Imperial Power.” Journal of Military and Strategic Studies, vol. 6, no. 3, (2004): 1–24.
Till, Geoffrey. “Adopting the Aircraft Carrier: The British, American, and Japanese Case Studies.” Chapter. In Military Innovation in the Interwar Period, edited by Williamson R. Murray and Allan R. Millett, 191–226. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511601019.006.
Watts, Anthony John, and Brian G. Gordon. The Imperial Japanese Navy. Doubleday & Company Inc., 1971.
Yoshihara, Toshi, and James R. Holmes. “Japanese Maritime Thought: If Not Mahan, Who?” Naval War College Review, vol. 59, no. 3, 2006, https://doi.org/10.21236/ada520373.
Footnotes
[1] Anthony Watts and Brian Gordon. The Imperial Japanese Navy. Doubleday & Company Inc., 1971: 169.
[2] Hansgeorg Jentschura, et al., Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy 1869 - 1945. Arms and Armour, 1999: 41.
[3] Yôichi Hirama, “Japanese Naval Preparations for World War II.” Naval War College Review 44, no. 2 (1991): 69.
[4] Norman, Polmar, et al. Aircraft Carriers: A History of Carrier Aviation and Its Influence on World Events. Potomac Books, 2008: 33-35.
[5] Mark Peattie, Sunburst: The Rise of the Japanese Naval Air Power, 1909-1941. Naval Institute Press, 2007: 52-54.
[6] David Evans and Mark Peattie. Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887-1941. Naval Institute Press, 2012: 299-300.
[7] John Keegan, Battle at Sea: From Man-of-War to Submarine. Pimlico, 2004: 161.
[8] Christopher Howe, The Origins of Japanese Trade Supremacy: Development and Technology in Asia from 1540 to the Pacific War, London, Hurst, 1996: 284.
[9] Keegan, 162.
[10] Ibid., 163.
[11] Arthur Baker “Japanese Naval Construction 1915-1945: An Introductory Essay.” Warship International 24, no. 1 (1987): 48.
[12] Willaim Sprance, “The Russo-Japanese War: The Emergence Of Japanese Imperial Power.” Journal of Military and Strategic Studies, vol. 6, no. 3, (2004): 1–24.
[13] Hirama, “Japanese Naval Preparations for World War II.” 66.
[14] John Ferris, “A British ‘Unofficial’ Aviation Mission and Japanese Naval Developments, 1919–1929.” Journal of Strategic Studies, vol. 5, no. 3, (1982): 416.
[15] Phillips O’Brien, How the War Was Won: Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II (Cambridge Military Histories). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015: 108.
[16] Scot MacDonald, Evolution of Aircraft Carriers. Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, 1964: 39.
[17] Geoffrey Till, “Adopting the Aircraft Carrier: The British, American, and Japanese Case Studies.” Chapter. In Military Innovation in the Interwar Period, Williamson Murray, Allan Millett, 199.
[18] Sunburst, 54.
[19] Thomas Hone and Mark Mandeles. “Interwar Innovation in Three Navies: U.S. Navy, Royal Navy, Imperial Japanese Navy.” Naval War College Review 40, no. 2 (1987): 69.
[20]Kaigun, 301.
[21] Ferris, 422.
[22] Ibid., 421-439.
[23] Kaigun, 302.
[24] Sadao Asada, “The Revolt against the Washington Treaty: The Imperial Japanese Navy and Naval Limitation, 1921-1927.” Naval War College Review 46, no. 3 (1993): 94-96.
[25] Sunburst, 26-28.
[26] Richard Samuels, Rich Nation, Strong Army: National Security and the Technological Transformation of Japan. Cornell University Press, 1996: 112-3.
[27] Ibid., 113.
[28] Ibid., 114.
[29] Ibid., 114.
[30] Jeff Alexander, “Nikon and the Sponsorship of Japan's Optical Industry by the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1917-1945.” Japanese Studies, vol. 22, no. 1, (2002): 19–20.
[31] Samuels, Rich Nation, Strong Army, 115.
[32] Kaigun, 304.
[33] Hone and Mandeles. “Interwar Innovation in Three Navies: U.S. Navy, Royal Navy, Imperial Japanese Navy,” 70.
[34] Kaigun, 303-4.
[35] Till, “Adopting the Aircraft Carrier: The British, American, and Japanese Case Studies,” 203.
[36] Ibid., 226.
[37] Hone and Mandeles. “Interwar Innovation in Three Navies,” 71.
[38] Kaigun, 313-14.
[39] MacDonald, Evolution of Aircraft Carriers, 40-41.
[40] Kaigun, 313-15.
[41] Sunburst, 72-75.
[42] Ibid., 73.
[43] Minoru Genda, “Tactical Planning in the Imperial Japanese Navy.” Naval War College Review 22, no. 2 (1969): 46.
[44] Ibid., 46.
[45] Asada, “The Revolt against the Washington Treaty,” 84.
[46] Sadao Asada, From Mahan to Pearl Harbor: The Imperial Japanese Navy and the United States. Naval Institute Press, 2012.
[47] “The Revolt against the Washington Treaty,” 83.
[48] From Mahan to Pearl Harbor, (page unavailable since found in Google E-books).
[49] Alfred Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783, 28.
[50] Toshi Yoshihara and James Holmes. “Japanese Maritime Thought: If Not Mahan, Who?” Naval War College Review, vol. 59, no. 3, (2006): 24.
[51] Rotem Kowner, “Passing the Baton: World War II's Asian Theater and the Coming of Age of the Aircraft Carrier.” Association for Asian Studies, 17 June 2020.
[52] Stephen Pelz, Race to Pearl Harbor: The Failure of the Second London Naval Conference and the Onset of World War II. Harvard University Press, 1975.
[53] Kaigun, 318-19.
[54] Ibid., 347-9.
[55] Ibid., 350-2.
[56] Itō Masanori, and Roger Pineau. The End of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Jove, New York, 1986: 38.
[57] Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 39-42.
[58] Inton, Christopher. “China's Vast Fleet Is Tipping the Balance against U.S. in the Pacific.” Reuters, 2019.
