Warplanes would venture forth from island airfields to attack the fleet while submarines lurking in the waters nearby torpedoed warships that came within reach. Japan would seize Pacific islands as forward bases to mount pinprick attacks against the U.S. IJN strategists envisioned reprising and improving upon this approach during a U.S.-Japan naval war. Enfeebled by an epic 18,000-mile voyage through the Atlantic and Indian oceans and the China seas, the Baltic Fleet arrived on the scene of action-only to be met and smashed by a freshly refitted IJN Combined Fleet prowling near its home ports. Late in 1904, the Russian tsar had dispatched his Baltic Fleet to the Far East in a bid to revivify St. Japanese officers applied the Tsushima Strait template to a new foe. Wait, strike piecemeal, then strike hard. west coast or Hawaii to reply to an attack on the Philippines.Īs Professor Sadao Asada observes, they alighted on the concept of “interceptive operations.” The basic idea went something like this: “let the far enemy come to you, do things to weaken him on his way, and then trounce him when he arrives at your door.” Pacific Fleet, on the assumption the fleet would steam westward from the U.S.
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Recognizing that, Japanese strategists set about planning how to overcome the U.S. Forces stationed there could conceivably thwart Japanese regional supremacy. The United States had ensconced itself in the Far East after occupying the Philippine Islands in 1898. Navy constituted the only remaining barrier to complete Japanese mastery. Tokyo had vanquished China’s and Russia’s navies by then-and made itself master of the Western Pacific. Victories at the Battle of the Yellow Sea (August 1904) and the Battle of the Yellow Sea (May 1905) confirmed it. “As far as known to myself,” he recalled, “more of my works have been done into Japanese than into any other one tongue.” It seemed the IJN had been an attentive student. None-not seafaring Americans, Britons or Germans-had paid “closer or more interested attention to the general subject.” In fact, Mahan credited the Japanese triumph over the Russian Navy during the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) to IJN mariners’ study of his works. He related having carried on “pleasant correspondence with several Japanese officials and translators” with regard to nautical exploits. In fact, America’s “ evangelist of sea power” described the Japanese as his most ardent readers. Japanese strategists had long been avid consumers of Mahan’s writings, chiefly his masterwork The Influence of Sea Power, 1660-1783 (1890).
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