The Imperial Navy was so utterly defeated and out of resources that they were sending pilots on kamikaze missions to save fuel. Virtually all training had been suspended in the final months of the war because the Japanese had no access to oil. This is why their initial thrust in the war was south to the oil fields of the Dutch East Indies (the history of the Royal Dutch Shell facilities in the region is an incredible but largely untold story in WWII).
Depriving the Japanese of oil was an early and effective tactic of the American Navy in the Pacific. The Japanese made a faulty assumption that they could defend supply lines from the Southern Zone to the Japan. In many ways, this was the downfall of Japanese naval forces in WWII. The Japanese also didn't realize that the US and Britain had long since cracked their codes, both military and diplomatic, and even when the Germans told the Japanese their codes had been compromised, they refused to believe it!
Quoting from Daniel Yergin's The Prize:
> Of Japan's total wartime steel merchant shipping, some 86 percent was sunk during the conflict and another 9 percent so seriously damaged as to be out of action by the time the war ended.
The Allies were sinking Japanese oil tankers faster than the Japanese could build new ones!
Japanese defeat in WWII can't be assigned to any single cause, but the vastly superior supply chain of the US Navy in the Pacific and the enormous petroleum production capabilities of America is surely up there.
Depriving the Japanese of oil was an early and effective tactic of the American Navy in the Pacific. The Japanese made a faulty assumption that they could defend supply lines from the Southern Zone to the Japan. In many ways, this was the downfall of Japanese naval forces in WWII. The Japanese also didn't realize that the US and Britain had long since cracked their codes, both military and diplomatic, and even when the Germans told the Japanese their codes had been compromised, they refused to believe it!
Quoting from Daniel Yergin's The Prize:
> Of Japan's total wartime steel merchant shipping, some 86 percent was sunk during the conflict and another 9 percent so seriously damaged as to be out of action by the time the war ended.
The Allies were sinking Japanese oil tankers faster than the Japanese could build new ones!
Japanese defeat in WWII can't be assigned to any single cause, but the vastly superior supply chain of the US Navy in the Pacific and the enormous petroleum production capabilities of America is surely up there.