In the race, the Type 95 took Second Place while the Stuart was next to last.

Darren #22: And besides that, the Type 95 would come with a 250,000 Yen rebate or 0% financing.

I came to know of The Battle of Kohima when it became my duty to learn the tune “Heroes of Kohima”

It is the first tune of the three provided.

The link also provides a number of videos related to the battle.

http://www.mtraks.com/artist/kohima/

Enjoy

heyyoukids

The IJA was extremely parsimonious in allocating troops to the Pacific theater, which they in general viewed as an IJN concern. For 1941-late 42, the Japanese Army wanted to have lots of troops available in Manchuria in case the “persimmon ripened,” as they put it, in Germany’s war with Russia, so that in the event of Soviet collapse, the Japanese could grab part of Siberia. There was a big build up from late 1940 on which did not reach its peak till 1942.

The army allotted only 12 or so division equivalents, plus supports (out of the 51 it had in late 41) to overrunning the “southern areas” — Philippines, Dutch East Indies, Malaya and other points of interest in South East Asia, and the army was extremely reluctant to part with more. (Reading about the early campaigns, one is left amazed at the relative paucity of Japanese forces successfully used to seize such vast spaces — shows how unprepared the allies were for war).

Later, the IJA vetoed a number of IJN proposals that involved bigger troop committments (e.g. invasion of Ceylon — the troops went to Burma instead, which did interest the Army b/c of the war in China; as well as vetoing any efforts towards an invasion of Australia). Australia was, for shipping reasons, a fantasy anyway, as was Hawaii, but they also turned down bigger efforts in the South Pacific in 1942 that might have borne fruit, and they didn’t fortify their conquests as much as they should have.

The Army and Navy had the worst of relations, and generally lied to each other about progress on the several fronts — the Navy, for example, did not tell the Army the details of Midway. They governed planning not by orders issued by a combined staff, but by “Central Agreements” which were negotiated like international treaties. They ran separate military production programs and effectively fought two different wars.

By the time the Army was more interested in releasing troops to the Pacific, the war was a good way to being lost, and, thanks to multiple demands and the US submarine campaign, it was increasingly hard to find the shipping to move the troops, let alone supply them. Lots of troops were ultimately taken out of Manchuria — some went to the Pacific (Iwo, Okinawa, Philippines, Mariana Islands got most late war), some to China — the IJA launched a huge offensive there in 1944, somewhat because of the B-29 raids from the Chinese fields, as an earlier commenter pointed out, but also because the Chinese were an enemy that could be gotten to without swimming.

Alvin D. Coox’s Nomonhan is pretty good on Japan’s plans in Manchuria, and his book with Saburo Hayashi, Kogun — sets out the IJA’s view of the war.

I read “The War of the World” by Niall Ferguson and was impressed with the fact that the US never faced more than a third of the Japanese Army, the majority were bogged down in China throughout the entire US-Japan conflict. Probably has something to do with the paucity of land in the particular sphere of conflict — China can hold a lot of people. The Pacific Ocean can hold vastly more, but infantry is pretty ineffective in the water.

It lacked the oil for the Guadalcanal strategy it id follow:

See:

http://www.combinedfleet.com/guadoil1.htm

Next, let’s examine Japan’s situation with respect to petroleum production at this stage in the war. In the fourth quarter of 1942, Japanese oil production (which was almost entirely concentrated in her conquered territories, such as the Indies) was 1,194,000 tons. Of that, only 643,000 tons made it to Japan (which is where practically all the refineries were), the rest being either lost to attack, or consumed in the conquered territories. So roughly 214,000 tons of oil per month was making it to Japan. However, the Imperial Navy alone was consuming about 305,000 tons of heavy oil (in the form of fuel oil) per month by this stage in the war (Parillo, p. 237). Keep that figure in mind: 305,000 tons.

Furthermore, by this time (October-November 1942) it must have been begining to become clear to the Japanese that the oilfields in Java and Sumatra were not going to be brought back into production at nearly the rate that pre-war estimates had counted on. The Dutch and their Allies had done a much more thorough job of demolition in the oilfields than the Japanese had hoped. This, coupled with the sinking of a transport filled with equipment and valuable refinery personnel, meant that Japanese efforts to get the production field back into production were doomed to be much slower than hoped by the Japanese military. The fact that the Imperial Navy had built up large stocks of petroleum before the was could not compensate for this sobering knowledge, especially given the high rate of fuel consumption thus far in the war. The week-long Battle of Midway alone had consumed more fuel than the Japanese Navy had ever used before in an entire year of peacetime operations (Willmott, “The Barrier and the Javelin”). With this in mind, let us examine what it took to fight effectively around Guadalcanal.