Where Were the Jap Planes?

There were signs of victory -- U.S. victory -- in the reports from bombed Japan. They were signs that Japan's air strength is waning. In Japan and elsewhere, there were even signs that Japan never did have the kind of air strength which she must have for final victory.

Not Enough "Zeros?" If the U.S., in daylight, lost only nine of 60 planes -- as the Japs once reported -- something was seriously wrong with Japan's air defenses. If the U.S. raiders lost only two or three -- as the Japs first reported -- Japan has no air defenses to speak of. Whatever the true figure, Tokyo evidently had few fighters at home to shield herself.

This indication bore out one of the most significant trends of the Pacific war. Japan seems to be running out of her best fighters, the Navy "Zeros," which must be the spearheads of her defense against air attack. Last week the A.V.G.'s Brigadier General Claire Chennault reported from Burma that his U.S. fighter-pilots had destroyed more than 200 Jap pursuits. The Zeros are fast-climbing, highly maneuverable, highly powered (1,675-h.p.) single-seaters. And even the Zeros, despite their superior maneuverability, have been no match for the faster, Allison-engined P-40s and their superior U.S. pilots. Lieut. General George H. Brett, the United Nations air commander in Australia, reported that United Nations airmen were destroying six Jap planes for every Allied plane lost in that area.

Can Japan Keep It Up? When Japan began her Pacific march, she had perhaps 5,000 combat planes of all types, ages, conditions. She had no "Japanese Air Force"; she had two air services, completely integrated in the Army and Navy. Enthusiasts like Major Alexander de Seversky (see p. 52) would say in fact that Japan had no real air power; like the U.S., she had only air auxiliaries.

Some 2,500 of Japan's planes were "first-line" combat craft, and many of these 2,500 were technically inferior to corresponding U.S. and British types. The other 2,500 were mostly slow, ancient, underpowered, underarmed crates, some of which did not even have retractable landing gear (see cut). Furthermore, Japan has had very heavy losses -- some 1,100 planes, undoubtedly including a high proportion of her best.

Nevertheless, Japan today probably has more planes -- in over-all total -- than she had in December. Reason: high though Jap losses have been to date, they are still slightly less than Japan's probable rate of aircraft production. Last autumn she was reportedly building about 300 combat planes per month, was aiming at 600 per month by the end of this year. But overall totals, even over-all replacements, are not what count in the kind of war Japan faces. What counts is whether her production is geared to replace the types which she is losing, as fast as she is losing them -- and she is losing fighters, may be losing even her best bombers, at a rate higher than any she probably expected.

How Did They Do It? The Japanese had more than enough planes for the first stages of their war. In the entire Pacific area the Allies probably had fewer than 1,500 combat planes, and these were widely dispersed, in small batches. Concentrating one at a time on their chosen fronts, the Japanese always had more at any given point than the Allies had.

Geography and planning gave the Japs this local superiority. If the Japanese front was fantastically wide and Jap supply lines long, the U.S. and British lines, from supply sources to the battle areas, were infinitely longer. Moreover, if the Jap fronts stretched far from home, they were nevertheless fairly close to each other. Result: the Japs could switch squadrons back & forth from one front to another, from Malaya to Java, from Java to Burma, and could usually base them near their next objective. Old crates could be used where opposition in the air was inconsiderable or nonexistent. Until last week, one such place was Japan itself.

Added to this local preponderance was the enormous value of the Japs' carrier forces. At the war's start, they had at least 20 carriers (one or two have been sunk). Nine were flying decks for land-type planes, eleven were seaplane carriers of limited capacity. Most were small: in six U.S. carriers, the Navy put about as many planes as the Jap had in all 20. But these small carriers gave the Japanese a highly mobile force, designed to concentrate quickly at the points where local superiority meant everything.

Now the air balance is shifting. Brigadier General Royce and his U.S. bombing raiders were attacked by very few Jap planes over the Philippines. Over New Guinea and Australia, the United Nations have aerial superiority for the present, and there are other signs that the Burma front and the Bay of Bengal (see p. 20) are about all that Japan's air services can handle at one time. Japan's air superiority in the Bay of Bengal is the smallest she has yet had in any important area.

The air raids on Japan, and the threat of more to come, were bound to affect Japan's strategy of local superiority. Now the Japs will have to keep more of their fighters at home. Even more important, the Jap air services have been geared to offensive war. Whenever and wherever they have had to go on the defensive, against anything like effective attackers, they have dismally failed.

Increasingly, from now on, Japan is going to be on the air defensive.

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