Mark Stille, Japanese Combined Fleet 1941-42 (Osprey, 2023)
When Japanese bombs fell on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, they revealed to an astonished world Japan’s naval supremacy in the Pacific. But a tide that came in fast, went out just as quickly when, within six months of that infamous day, the US Navy extracted its revenge at Midway. In this, the first of Osprey’s Fleet series, Mark Stille surveys the Imperial Japanese Navy in its prime.
Stille begins with the rapid rise of the Imperial Japanese Navy and its strategic considerations for a potential future war with the United States in the Pacific. At the heart of that lay the concept of winning a decisive battle based around capital ships, though Stille notes that this never happened in WWII. When war appeared inevitable, the Japanese opted for neutralising the US Navy. That meant a devastating blow at Pearl Harbor with the subsequent capture of Midway Island acting as a lure to bring the Americans into a decisive battle. Unfortunately for the Japanese, their plan backfired.
A survey of the major ships in the IJN follows, including their aircraft carriers, battleships, heavy and light cruisers, destroyers, and submarines. Stille then examines Japanese weaponry, including their far superior torpedoes, before moving onto how the IJN fought: their organisation, command and control, doctrine, intelligence and deception, logistics and facilities, and their shipbuilding capability that proved inadequate when competing with the industrial might of the United States. All that settled, Stille sets out to sea, considering the IJN in combat, including the Pearl Harbor raid and combined fleet operations in the South Pacific and Indian Ocean. But then came the defeats, first at Coral Sea then the disaster at Midway; the IJN’s superiority was over. Stille argues that the IJN was tactically better than their opponents but made crucial errors, the biggest of which was their failure to understand the all-encompassing nature of modern warfare for which they were ultimately unprepared.
Mark Stille has written an excellent introduction to the IJN in the early engagements of World War II. He covers all the bases in his descriptions of what this fleet was and how it worked, and his overall analysis will have you diving into his Further Reading list to find out more. Stille is ably supported by Osprey’s usual high quality colour illustrations. If you are looking for a starting point into understanding the Imperial Japanese Navy, Stille’s book will do the job and then some. For Osprey, this is an excellent opening volume for a promising new series
