Hindsight

Hindsight inevitably suggests that in some respects air power might have been differently or better employed.

Prior to the European mar, we underestimated the predominant role that air power was to play and allocated to it too small a share of even the inadequate resources then available to the Army and Navy. At the outbreak of the Pacific war our deficiency was particularly great in modern land-based fighters and in carriers. One thousand planes in the Philippines, at least equal in performance to the best then available to the Japanese, including types effective against shipping, well-manned, equipped and supplied, and dispersed on some 50 airfields, would have seriously impeded the original Japanese advance if knowledge of their existence had not entirely dissuaded the Japanese from making the attempt. The loss of relatively antiquated battleships at Pearl Harbor had little effect on the Navy's combat capabilities at that time, while the addition of a few carriers would have enormously increased its capabilities. Larger overall appropriations to the armed forces, beginning at the time of Japanese occupation of Manchuria when the threat to peace in the Far East became evident, might have made war unnecessary and would have paid for itself many times over in reduced casualties and expenditures had war still been unavoidable.

Upon entering the war, we were deficient not only in numbers, but in quality of many of our aircraft types. We were forced thereafter into hasty and costly modification and technical development programs to raise the performance of our aircraft to acceptable standards. These programs could have been conducted more efficiently and economically during prewar years.

In the actual conduct of the war we more quickly grasped the strategic revolution brought about by the capabilities of air power than did the Japanese. By the end of 1943 we had achieved through combat and the augmentation of our forces, such clear cut superiority over the Japanese in all elements of air power that eventual victory was assured.

In exploiting this superiority greater economy of effort was possible. The structure of our prewar military organization provided no means, short of the President, for integrating our armed forces. Under the pressure of war the Joint Chiefs of Staff was the most decisive mechanism then possible to fill this gap. Each of its members had in effect the power of veto and the required unanimity was produced by compromise. It proved impossible to agree on an overall commander for the Pacific as a whole. Our military and economic strength, however, made it possible to plan and execute a dual line of advance across the Pacific and to mount an air attack of sufficient weight to induce unconditional surrender concurrently with the preparation of a full scale invasion.

Capture of the Gilbert Islands produced limited strategic results. Attacks on Rabaul and other bypassed positions were continued longer and in greater volume than required. The effectiveness of high-level attack in softening up prepared defenses and in sinking maneuvering ships was overestimated. Prior to the occupation of the Marianas, B-29s could have been more effectively used in coordination with submarines for search, low-level attacks and mining in accelerating the destruction of Japanese shipping, or in destroying oil and metal plants in the southern areas, than in striking the Japanese "Inner Zone" from China bases.

In the final assault on the Japanese home islands we were handicapped by a lack of prewar economic intelligence. Greater economy of effort could have been attained, and much duplicative effort avoided, by extending and accelerating the strangulation of the Japanese economy already taking place as a result of prior attacks on shipping. This could have been done by an earlier commencement of the aerial mining program, concentration of carrier plane attacks in the last months of the war on Japan's remaining merchant shipping rather than on her already immobilized Warships, and a coordinated B-29 and carrier attack on Japan's vulnerable railroad system beginning in April 1945.

We underestimated the ability of our air attack on Japan's home islands, coupled as it was with blockade and previous military defeats, to achieve unconditional surrender without invasion. By July 1945, the weight of our air attack had as yet reached only a fraction of its planned proportion, Japan's industrial potential had been fatally reduced, her civilian population had lost its confidence in victory and was approaching the limit of its endurance, and her leaders, convinced of the inevitability of defeat, were preparing to accept surrender. The only remaining problem was the timing and terms of that surrender.

Having entered the war inadequately prepared, we continued all-out mobilization of all resources to bring ever increasing pressure on Japan, beyond the time when this was still reasonably required.