Was plan Orange
The War Plan Orange was the American plan developed between the two world wars for a war with Japan .
After the end of the First World War , the American military leadership developed or updated plans for the event of a war between the United States and other powers according to the new power constellations created as a result of the First World War. This resulted in a series of war plans for possible wars with various opponents, which were given the names of colors, e.g. B. Green for Mexico , Black for Germany and Gold for France . Orange was the plan for war with Japan.
American planning
The War Plan Orange was born on the American side . In the event of war with Japan, the American garrisons in the Philippines and Guam were to defend themselves as best they could while the Atlantic fleet was moved to the Pacific. As soon as the Atlantic and Pacific fleets were united, the US Navy would march across the Pacific with its entire force to relieve Guam and the Philippines. After that, the fleet would head for Japan to block its ports. During these operations there would later be a decisive battle with the battleships of the Japanese fleet . Since the strength of the battleships USA: Japan was set at 5: 3 (15 American to 9 Japanese ships) in the Washington Fleet Treaty , the American strategists assumed that the US fleet would win the decisive battle because of its numerical superiority, provided that of American side would not make a major mistake. As a result of these considerations, the US Navy paid attention to the ability to travel long distances when building its ships. In order to maximize the assumed superiority in the decisive battle, great energies were put into the development of better fire control systems, range finders and grenades. Submarines were not included in the War Plan Orange because they were unable to pose a major threat to warships during World War I. Attacks by air forces were also not taken into account, as these were generally seen only as reconnaissance units in the mid-twenties, but not as a threat to larger warships. For this reason, among other things, from the mid / late thirties onwards, many military officials increasingly questioned the feasibility of the War Plan Orange, despite several revisions over time. However, a real alternative was never developed. In 1939 the color-coded war plans were officially withdrawn and replaced by the 5 rainbow plans, which primarily dealt with the emerging threat from the Axis powers . Plan Rainbow 5 , the new plan for war with Japan that was in effect when the United States entered the war in 1941, was practically just the updated version of the War Plan Orange .
Japanese counter plan
A counter-plan was developed on the part of Japan, which envisaged weakening the American fleet advancing across the Pacific before a decisive battle. Submarines should attack them all the way. As soon as the US fleet came into the operational range of the Japanese surface ships, it was to be attacked at night by Japanese destroyer units with torpedoes . Once the American fleet was sufficiently damaged by the repeated attacks, the Japanese fleet would attack them at a time of their choosing and defeat them in a major decisive battle. As a result of this plan, the Japanese focused on developing night combat tactics and their torpedo weapon. The consequence of this was the development of the excellent Long Lance torpedo , which was far superior to the torpedoes used by other naval forces in terms of range and explosive power. The Japanese fleet developed very good night vision devices , which allowed their ships to see better and further at night than the American ships. Even the radars used by the American fleet in the first years of the war did not come close to this performance. Japanese destroyers were the only destroyers in the world to be equipped with reserve torpedoes to reload the torpedo tubes, allowing them to carry out more than one torpedo attack without returning to their base. As better and better aircraft became available in the mid-1930s, the Japanese added air strikes to their plan. Bombers such as the Mitsubishi G4M were supposed to attack the US fleet from bases on the Marshall Islands in the hope of sinking smaller ships or reducing their combat power by hitting the battleships.
Actual start of the war
The possibility of opening the war by a Japanese surprise attack on the American Pacific Fleet, similar to the attack on Port Arthur at the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, was rejected by both sides because the fleet at its home base in San Diego was far beyond the operational range of the Japanese fleet . Only with the relocation of the Pacific Fleet to Pearl Harbor in 1940 did this become a real possibility. Surprise attacks on Manila or Wake were considered possible, but their impact on the overall situation was considered to be minor.
The attack on Pearl Harbor made the War Plan Orange impracticable because the American superiority in battleships on which it was based no longer existed. With the destruction of the British Force Z one day later , it also became clear that even with an intact fleet, the attempt to implement the plan for the US fleet would have ended in a catastrophe (the destruction of the fleet already on the march across the Pacific by Air strikes).
The strategies of both sides were based on the then prevailing teachings of the American Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan , according to which naval wars were decided by battles between fleets. Since, in Mahan's view, attacks on the enemy merchant fleet could not have a decisive effect on the war, the trade routes (opportunities to attack or protect the routes) were ignored when planning and aligning the fleets on both sides. The resulting lack of escort ships and preparations for an effective convoy system would prove disastrous for Japan when the Americans waged a massive submarine trade war against the Japanese trade routes during World War II .
literature
- Edward Miller: War Plan Orange: The US Strategy to Defeat Japan, 1897-1945. Naval Institute Press, 2013, ISBN 978-1-61251-146-7 .