World War II in the Pacific was a fight to seize and defend airfields. The Japanese made gaining and maintaining control of the air as much a requirement in their basic war strategy as they did the destruction of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. But as Commander Masatake Okumiya charged, ‘The Pacific War was started by men who did not understand the sea, and fought by men who did not understand the air.’ He might well have added that the war was planned by men who did not understand industry, manpower and logistics.

To say that the Japanese army and navy did not cooperate on aerial matters would be a serious understatement. ‘They hated each other,’ Lt. Cmdr. Masataka Chihaya recalled, ‘[they] almost fought. Exchange of secrets and experiences, the common use of airplanes and other instruments, could not even be thought of.’

Japan, although seemingly advanced in aerial tactics, entered the war with a narrow aerial doctrine, insufficient numbers of aircraft and those of generally poor design (excluding the Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero, of course), too few aircrews and inadequate logistics for a war of attrition. Neither its army nor its naval air arm was prepared for the duration, violence or sophistication of the war to come. Even its short-lived lead in aerial tactics collapsed once the Guadalcanal campaign began.

Completely aside from having an industrial base able to produce enough aircraft, a nation’s air force needs to be balanced between aircraft, combat and maintenance crews, and air bases. If Japan was to seize an empire, its airfield builders would have to accompany the fighting forces every step of the way. Absent such construction units, the air force would have to use captured bases.

Army air forces were doctrinally anachronistic. Air units were subordinate to ground force commanders, not independent entities on a footing equal to ground and naval commanders. Japan’s army had developed its air forces for continental warfare with the Soviets. Naval air, on the other hand, was tied to operations of the Combined Fleet, with naval officers, rather than air officers, making major air decisions.

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto had given some thought to a land-based air war, stating in 1936 that naval operations in the next war would consist of capturing an island, building an airfield and using that base to gain control over the surrounding waters. His ideas, however, did not take hold. The Japanese studied and trained hard at aerial tactics, but they failed to develop the airfield construction techniques and equipment, as well as the units, necessary to build air bases, maintenance, supply and dispersal facilities.

Japan launched its December 1941 attacks from well-

developed bases. During the southern advance, the navy’s 22nd Air Flotilla supported the attack into Malaya from three airfields in and around Saigon. Units were at full strength in aircraft and crews. Plentiful quantities of fuel and spare parts were available. The aircraft received excellent maintenance. Zeroes, for example, underwent a thorough overhaul every 150 hours of flight. As Japanese forces moved south, air units occupied, repaired and exploited captured enemy bases. Real problems developed, however, when those units reached undeveloped territories. Getting fuel, food and materiel to those bases determined whether the aircraft flew. Whether a base had been captured or built, however, it was nearly useless if seaborne supplies could not reach it.

Mechanical complexity, battle damage and environmental stresses meant that maintenance was key to an aircraft’s availability, its performance and whether the crew survived. Considering Japan’s stressed economy, it should have been intolerable in terms of production and transportation to accept the loss of equipment that could have been repaired. Amazingly, the Japanese tolerated those losses.

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Although a nucleus of well-trained army and navy maintenance men and armorers followed their aircraft south, maintenance units lagged behind during the early advances and were too few even when they caught up with the flying units. The army responded by sending forward individual maintenance units to plug gaps in maintenance coverage. The navy reduced support of homeland air bases to a minimum, so as to reinforce forward bases. Because service personnel arrived late or were too few, maintenance — and even the building of quarters and other facilities — fell to the aircrews themselves. Those tasks sapped the energy of men whose principal duty was flying.

The more mobile a maintenance unit is, the less it can do without heavy equipment. The better a unit is at fixing things, however, the harder it may be to get where it needs to go. The Japanese were chronically short of shipping. Moving heavy maintenance units forward was always a problem. Unloading heavy equipment in locations where there were no piers, docks and roadways made air base maintenance all that much more difficult.

The army’s piecemeal commitment of aviation maintenance units was due to the original absence of any strategic plans to put large army forces into the Southwest Pacific. Rising air losses in the Solomons, however, led the navy to request that the army bring in aircraft. But without a clear long-range plan or doctrine of what to do, no one could arrange the necessary logistical support.

Depots where engines could be changed and major repairs made were few and scattered. The Fourth Air Army’s heavy equipment for engine changes and major structural repair on New Guinea, for instance, was poor. Periodic inspections, repairs, overhauls and even routine servicing fell off because of maintenance shortfalls. The Japanese had to abandon many aircraft during advances or retreats that easily could have been repaired at rear areas. Poor repair also denied them the opportunity to use worn-out aircraft in a training role.

Aviation fuel in New Guinea was of poor quality and resulted in engine problems. The army’s main aircraft repair base at Halmahera, 1,000 miles from the front lines, never functioned adequately because it lacked equipment and mechanics. High humidity and rains corroded metal parts and wires. Electrical equipment grew fungus. Lubricating oils evaporated or ran off equipment. Allied bombings killed skilled mechanics and delayed aircraft maintenance. Ground crews suffered attrition from out-of-control aircraft, spinning propellers and from working around heavy objects.

Because the army and navy did not cooperate, army aircraft on New Guinea had to fly 1,500 miles to Manila for engine changes even though the navy had major maintenance assets as close as Rabaul. Even at Rabaul, aircraft maintenance was so limited that of 60 fighters and 40 bombers that might be on hand, only a mix of 30 typically could fly on a given date.

During the advance southward, Japanese pilots fought from unimproved airstrips, most of them small and unpaved. Although Japanese aircraft generally were lighter than Western counterparts and not so much in need of paved strips, occupying enemy airfields was never easy. Gasoline trucks were scarce and could be found at only a few of the large fields. Ground crews ordinarily had to refuel aircraft with hand pumps and barrels — a tedious process that slowed aircraft turnaround and consumed manpower. Even Rabaul’s aircraft were refueled from 200-liter drums rather than from gasoline trucks.

When the Japanese navy flew its first nine fighters into the Philippine airport of Legaspi in December 1941, two of them were totally wrecked upon landing. The army flew two squadrons of Nakajima Ki-27s onto recently captured Singora Field in Malaya, and wrecked nine aircraft on the poor ground. When 27 Zeroes of the Tainan Kokutai (air group) flew into Tarakan Field — one of the worst in the East Indies — on Borneo in January 1942, two aircraft overshot the runway and were demolished. Slippery mud at that field made simple takeoffs and landings dangerous.

Half the aircraft of the 23rd Air Flotilla lost in the first three months of the war were casualties of crackups on bad runways — partially due to weak landing gear and poor brakes, but mainly from bad terrain. Another 30 percent of the flotilla’s aircraft wore out and had to be scrapped. Only 18 of the 88 aircraft it wrote off went down in combat.

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