fouteman>>A very big mistake by the Japanese Command was that it recognized the threat posed by allied submarines too late. Allied submarines (especially the US submarines) sank more Japanese vessels (merchant and navy) than the surface fleet.
В.с.с.О.> Can you give us stats, about how much vessels was destroyed by US subs and surface ships?
I'll try
From
wikipedia: In World War II, the United States Navy used submarines heavily. Overall, 263 US submarines undertook war patrols,[2] claiming 1,392 ships and 5,583,400 tons during the war.[3][a] Submarines in the United States Navy were responsible for sinking 540,192 tons or 30% of the Japanese navy and 4,779,902 tons of shipping, or 54.6% of all Japanese shipping in the Pacific Theater.
Another article from
wikipedia:
During World War II, the U.S. Navy's submarine service suffered the highest casualty percentage of all the American armed forces, losing one in five submariners.[3] Some 16,000 submariners served during the war, of whom 375 officers and 3,131 enlisted men were killed.[4]
Fifty-two submarines of the United States Navy were lost during World War II.[5] Two – Dorado (SS-248) and Seawolf (SS-197) – were lost to friendly fire (though there is speculation that the Dorado may have struck a mine), at least three more – Tulibee, Tang, and Grunion – to defective torpedoes, and six to accident or grounding.[6]
Another eight submarines went missing while on patrol and are presumed to have been sunk by Japanese mines, as there were no recorded Japanese anti-submarine attacks in their patrol areas. The other thirty-three lost submarines are known to have been sunk by the Japanese.
From the
Combined Fleet website:
Bagnasco credits the Japanese submarine fleet with sinking 184 merchant ships of 907,000 GRT. This figure is far less than achieved by the Germans (2,840 ships of 14.3 million GRT), the Americans (1,079 ships of 4.65 million tons), and the British (493 ships of 1.52 million tons).
Conclusion: The US submarine department was only a minor part of the US Navy in numbers and persons. Compare the number of submarines deployed (263) to the number of surface vessels of similar tonnage or larger (= destroyer escorts, destroyers, cruisers, battleships & aircraft carriers) deployed by the US Navy in the Pacific during WW2, and you'll notice how important the contribution of the US submarines has been
You must also keep in mind the US submarine force wasn't the only submarine force operating in Asian waters against Japan. Between december 11th 1941 and december 12th 1941 Dutch submarine O-16 managed to sink or damage 5 Japanese troopships (total tonnage around 46450 tons) before she was sunk herself on december 15th 1941 (from this
wikipedia article)
PS: please ignore my message to open the translation in Notepad only, as it's a "problem" on my side. When opening the txt file in Wordpad I only see strange/funny characters, but this is because my computer is set (by default) to Latin script and not Cyrillic script, and Cyrillic script is your choice by default being Russian