Excerpt from Books of the Philippines Sea, book reviews by John D. Burtt.
Martin Stansfeld has written Japanese Carriers and Victory in the Pacific: The Yamamoto Option (Pen & Sword, 2021.) This book is part history, part supposition and part alternate history. His basic premise rests on the question, “what if the Japanese had built more carriers rather than super-battleships Yamato and Musashi,” something Yamamoto had championed pre-war. There are two significant facts that he makes regarding this supposition. First, Japan’s super battleships played nearly NO role in the war as fought. The main premise of both the US and Japan pre-war thought aimed for a “decisive” battle between battle lines – in that scenario, these 70,000-ton monsters would have been in their element. But the war as fought saw only two battleship-to-battleship duels (Second Guadalcanal and Surigao Strait) so the super battleships became nothing more that aircraft magnets or, as Stansfeld notes, command hotels.
The second fact is that after the carrier battles off Guadalcanal (Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz) and the Midway battle, the two main Japanese carriers, Shokaku and Zuikaku, pretty much stalemated the US in the Pacific for an entire year, until the US Essex-class carriers made with debut in late 1943. Had more Japanese fast carriers been built, the effects on the war would have been significant. He points out that the same slipways used to build the two super battleships could have been used in the same timeframe to build two large and three medium carriers. (page 97) That would have added 300 additional aircraft available by the time of Pearl Harbor.
Note: he doesn’t address the training requirements for that many additional pilots and crews.
He does address naval intelligence, pondering the question of whether the US or Britain would have noticed the increased carrier production. He dismisses the possibility citing the Japanese excellent record of hiding things
like the Long Lance torpedo and the super-battleships. He notes that US intelligence, and the open source Janes’s Fighting Ships, erroneously had Japan building “pocket battleships” through 1943.
As noted, Stansfeld writes some serious history on the treaty limits during the 1930s and how Japan, the US and Britain built their fleets up, which included Japan’s building of what is called their “Shadow Fleet” – some 17 hulls, built prewar that could be converted to combat ships in a fairly quick timeframe. Many of these were ultimately converted to light carriers, substantively reinforcing the Japanese naval air strength. He also discusses the pre-war diplomatic battles that pushed the Japanese into their southern option to take the resources they felt they needed to not only continue their empire but avoid total bankruptcy of their nation.
But for me the most interesting part of the book is his “alt-History” stemming from the supposition of building more carriers. Basically, he assumes that at the very least a larger carrier force would have stayed near Pearl Harbor and finished the job – namely destroy the oil tanks and possibly the two US carriers that were not in port that fateful morning. His more complete alternative has the larger carrier force bring the Japanese divisions used in the Philippines to invade Hawaii, forcing the US back 2,600 miles to the west coast. Leaving them little from which to springboard an assault across the Pacific except San Diego. He calculates that it would have been 1945 before the US had built enough Essex-class carriers to begin the march – which would have had to start with retaking Hawaii. A very interesting, logical and evocative possibility. He ends with the “mother of all carrier battles”, his expanded version of the Battle of the Philippines sea, pitting 34 Japanese large and light carriers, plus five battleship converts against 23 US and 6 British carriers off the Marianas.
Stansfeld’s book does have a couple caveats. First, his writing style is very…conversational, complete with digressions. It is a bit jarring at times. Second, although he references several books in his discussion, there isn’t a bibliography or endnotes in the book, making it harder to continue the investigation by readers. Finally, the two maps outlining the alternate history, which he continues into the Indian Ocean, are way too dark and small to be of use.
Despite the caveats, Stansfeld has penned a very intriguing alternative to the Pacific War and I recommend it to any Pacific War student.
