Sustaining the Carrier War: The Deployment of U.S. Naval Air Power to the Pacific
With Stan Fisher
Part of Pacific Week on WW2TV
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDG3XyxGI5lBcHjC26rSZPFaMKmPO7_qJ
More WW2TV content about New Guinea and the Solomon Islands
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDG3XyxGI5lBUZXX50eTgj9_tvuhBfHqz
Battles at Sea and Naval History on WW2TV
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDG3XyxGI5lB69ZxTyS-NjLpjtGQiDLS2
If you like this video please consider leaving us a thank you donation. To the right of the up and down thumbs and share button is the heart shaped Thanks button – it helps us to keep on producing content.
The ability of the United States Navy to fight and win a protracted war in the Pacific was not solely the result of technology, tactics, or leadership. Naval aviation maintenance played a major role in the U.S. victory over Japan in the second World War. The naval war against Japan did not achieve sustained success until enough aircraft technicians were available to support the high tempo of aviation operations that fast carrier task force doctrine demanded. When the United States realized war was imminent and ordered a drastic increase in the size of its aviation fleet, the Navy was forced to reconsider its earlier practices and develop new policies in maintenance, supply, and technical training. Not only did a shortage of technicians plague the Navy, but the scarcity of aviation supply and repair facilities in the Pacific soon caused panic in Washington. While the surface Navy’s modernization of at-sea replenishment was beneficial, it did not solve the problems of sustaining war-time aircraft readiness levels sufficient to a winning a naval air war.
In today’s show Stan Fisher will outline the drastic institutional changes that accompanied an increase in aviation maintenance personnel from fewer than 10,000 to nearly 250,000 bluejackets, the complete restructuring of the naval aviation technical educational system, and the development of a highly skilled labor force.
Stan Fisher, a commander in the U.S. Navy, is an assistant professor of naval and American history at the United States Naval Academy. Before transitioning to classroom, he accumulated over 2,500 flight hours as a Navy pilot, mainly in SH-60B & MH-60R Seahawk helicopters. He earned a commission through the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps in 1997 and has multiple deployments on frigates, cruisers, and aircraft carriers.
Buy the book:
UK https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sustaining-Carrier-War-Deployment-Pacific/dp/1682478475
USA https://bookshop.org/a/21029/9781682478479
USA https://www.usni.org/press/books/sustaining-carrier-war
You can become a YouTube Member and support us here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUC1nmJGHmiKtlkpA6SJMeA
You can become a Patron here https://www.patreon.com/WW2TV
Please click subscribe for updates
Social Media links –
https://twitter.com/WW2TV
https://www.facebook.com/WW2TV
https://www.instagram.com/ww2tv/
WW2TV Bookshop – where you can purchase copies of books featured in my YouTube shows. Any book listed here comes with the personal recommendation of Paul Woodadge, the host of WW2TV. For full disclosure, if you do buy a book through a link from this page WW2TV will earn a commission.
UK – https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/WW2TV
USA – https://bookshop.org/shop/WW2TV
source
Great return! A book I've got to get my hands on. This is hardcore stuff!
Interesting story. Hope you had a great holiday in the sun!
A lifetime of Industrial equipment maintenance for a Fortune 500 company I too am very interested in the Maintenance side, and as Woody said by war's end it was the largest navy in the world, Preventable Maintenance scheduling fighting against the constant need for Battle repair, already Mind-Blown Preventative maintenance fails at the Industrial level, some process ceases until repaired, P.M.'s fails in a war setting gets people killed
Thanks, Woody. This was a wonderful show. Great to be back in the saddle.
Hope you had a good holiday/vacation. Cracking good show as they say. Throwing partially damaged planes overboard, wish they had kept more of these planes for naval museums, air shows, etc. for us to marvel at!
The massive increase in personnel assigned to the Essex class demonstrate the need for freshwater tankers to support the fleet.
In the book The fast carriers Clark Reynolds talks about the abundant flow of letters and messages (formal and informal) between the fleet and the bureaus in DC. Many of the senior officers in various roles knew each other well from before the war and maintained a robust communication between themselves.
Watching various films from the 2nd half of the Pacific war you see a definite change in maintenance attitudes, by this time if you had a dead aircraft on the flight-deck more and more there was no decision needed, it was immediately shoved over the side and the aircraft replaced where early on more of an attempt was made to salvage it.
A spear-point is only as good as its shaft.
My mother taught me that if you find a good mechanic, you better take good care of him! And that's true!
Fantastic show, I'm one of those logistics geeks, partially because my dad flew C47s in the South Pacific and was part of that long tail. I learned so much and when I realize how many more aspects of logistics were of equal or greater magnitude, and how organized it had to be, I'm just gobsmacked.
As a former aircraft maintainer, I am appreciative of a presentation highlighting the story of how it was accomplished in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific. I would also remind us that there was also a demand for these maintainers both back in the States as well as in the Atlantic as well. I come from a line of aircraft technicians that began with my paternal grandfather in the 1930s, an aviation machinist mate who worked on the bi-plane scout planes off the USS Pensacola of the old "China Fleet" that extended to the 1960s and 1970s with my father and uncle that were both involved with U.S. naval aviation. Both of my brothers and myself were aircraft maintainers as a result of their example and influence. This presentation is a tribute to what it actually takes to enable an aviation force to accomplish its mission.
First class show! I love how you cover the underrated logistics field. Bravo
Welcome back from your holiday.
Great guest and topic; my catnip, especially from the 1-hour mark onwards.
I came across the US Seabees Museum the other day and it has a channel. It posted several WWII-era propaganda films made for the home front. Though a bit corny, the films They Came to an Island: Seabee operations during WWII and Seabees: the Navy's Fighting Constructionmen present thoroughly the myriad of activities needed to convert a Pacific island into an airbase. Both run more than 30 minutes, and the first I mentioned is the better film of the two.
Someone mentioned potable water. The Seabees both constructed water distillation plants on the islands and drilled for fresh water. In addition, the USN had four water-distillation ships in the Pacific – the AW auxiliary ships. Using Kleinschmidt vapour-compression they could produce up to 120,000 gallons per day; one gallon of fuel was consumed to produce 175 gallons of water. A problem in the tropics was this water fouled easily.
Howdy folks. Lots of appreciation here for the vital role of mechanics and other technicians needed to keep airplanes flying. Interesting look at USN’s efforts to stay up on that as the carriers proliferated.
Great Topic and Guest. Highlight the important of the logistic tail and training establishments need to fight a modern war especially over the distances in the pacific
6:30 dont they have crew cheifs in the Navy?
As a recovering technical writer, it’s really great to learn more about how they standardized and streamlined training, best practices, etc.
Great episode!
Fascinating show, and I remember in the mid 1980's reading a 1,000+ page book on the US involvement in the Pacific War and it had 2 to 3 chapters on the logistical nightmare and herculean efforts by the USN and US Army engineers and support troops to just keep it going. I was amazed at just how much went into to keeping the frontline units supplied and at peak combat effectiveness. What you covered today was not in that book or any other I have read. More, I mean much, much more research needs to be done on just what actually was needed to keep the PTO, India/Burma, the Mediterranean, and the ETO running as well as it did. Phenomenal stuff.
Just a point that I would like to flag up for (Ramal) there in the talk bar about how the Royal navy would learn from the USN ..
hmm not quite ..
Royal navy had steel decked carriers ,US had wooden,(Check out a book by Will Iredale The Kamikaze hunters),and how one US officer observed how the wreck of a Jap plane was just brushed off the deck ..
Will was also a guest on with Paul during a previous talk .
Your F4 corsair ,that the US marines wouldn't fly because it bounced all over the shop.
Brit fleet air arm sorted that out .
How good would it be Paul to bring on a Japanese viewpoint on the pacific conflict ..
Although being aware of just how difficult that may be ..giving the Japanese modern tuition on the topic ,and if there is a Japanese historian let alone a view point .
SB2-C was nicknamed the SON OF A BITCH SECOND CLASS ..
Still need to do a Pacific submarine show. They pretty much took the Japanese merchant marine out of action. Great stuff as always.
250,000 aircraft technicians!!! That, amongst other things, taught those Axis types not to shit on our doorstep.
At least we could learn under adversity.
Caught this on a rerun today.This is a brilliant topic, I have been waiting for something like this for a while as an ex seagoing electrical engineer, I found this fascinating, thank you Stan and Paul, and welcome back Woody
We Aircraft Electrical Technicians can be the difference for 100% FMC air wings.
C130, C141, C17, Kc135, HH3 in the military, then as a civilian on 767,747 and 777.
Pilots of fighters and dive bombers get the glory.
We haul trasn and bodies.
How was vacation?
This episode was so fascinating; you'd have to work on one of these things in order to even consider half of what was involved. I enjoyed that immensely.
My three hobbies that have thus far remained the same throughout my life were all established within me between the ages of 7 and 9. I wasn't quite 7 the first time I noticed what my father was watching on tv, American football, and it was love at first site. I was able to read at that time but hadn't yet started with chapter books. I was about 8 when I first found the coffee table books on dad's bookshelf. There was one about the Apollo program that I read countless times with fascination and another that I suspect was withheld for a bit because of the content, it was about the carrier war in the Pacific. I still remember thinking how cool those massive ships were, and you mean they carried airplanes, and the other side had them too, and did they ever have a battle? What!!?? They had battles, well what happened!! I still feel that way today. The book glossed over just how incredible a feat it was that the Japanese accomplished, sailing across the Pacific in secret and hitting Pearl Harbor with massive coordinated raids, organisation that took us until late 1943 to equal. I can still be impressed by that while relishing that fact that we got vengeance in spades.
Anyhow, those three topics, American football and sports in general, the Apollo program, and the carrier war which later led me to the bigger topic of WW2, have been with me throughout my life. I've loved them all since long before I noticed women and they've never broken my heart (well, of course sports have many times, and the fate of the Enterprise, but you know what I mean). Thank God dad wasn't into ballet or opera.
In all that time I've never given much thought to how the men who prepared the amazing aircraft were chosen, trained, and did their crucial work. Thank you for this talk.
USAF non combat losses were roughly equal to non combat losses throughout WW2. I think this was true across the board RAF, FAA,
Luftwaffe etc. The number of non combat losses at the end of the war for aren’t excessive or surprising for carrier operations.
"Logistics wins wars"! GREAT ep.!
Another fascinating presentation, showing both the picture and going into a lot of detas well. I am definitely one of the viewers who got hooked onto the logistics saga by this amazing channel. Thank you both and best greetings, Peter
Of course, if I remember correctly the Torpedo Bombers were using the Mark 13, a different torpedo than the Mark 14.
Logistics, logistics, logistics. Thanks for the talk. 👍
Fascinating discussion!
Correct the combat aircraft of the day were not designed like modern air frames to last several thousands of hours and decades. The probabilty of getting lost to combat was too high to warrant such expensive durable quality. It's cheaper to disassemble for parts or just get a newly manufactured unit.