Operation Starvation
Operation Starvation | |||||
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Part of the B-29 dropping sea mines over Japanese home waters | |||||
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Belligerents | |||||
United States | Empire of Japan | ||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||
Chester Nimitz | Koshirō Oikawa | ||||
Casualties and losses | |||||
15 aircraft lost[1][page needed] | 670 ships sunk or damaged, totaling 1,250,000+ tons |
Operation Starvation was a naval mining operation conducted in World War II by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) to disrupt Japanese shipping.
Operation
The mission was initiated at the insistence of Admiral
LeMay assigned one group of about 160 aircraft of the
Beginning on 27 March 1,000 parachute-retarded
Eventually most of the major ports and straits of Japan were repeatedly mined, severely disrupting Japanese logistics and troop movements for the remainder of the war with 35 of 47 essential convoy routes having to be abandoned. For instance, shipping through Kobe declined by 85%, from 320,000 tons in March to only 44,000 tons in July.[4] Operation Starvation sank more ship tonnage in the last six months of the war than the efforts of all other sources combined. The Twentieth Air Force flew 1,529 sorties and laid 12,135 mines in 26 fields on 46 separate missions. Mining demanded only 5.7% of the XXI Bomber Command's total sorties, and only 15 B-29s were lost in the effort. In return, mines sank or damaged 670 ships totaling more than 1,250,000 tons.[2]
Aftermath
After the war, the commander of Japan's mine sweeping operations noted that he thought this mining campaign could have directly led to the defeat of Japan on its own had it begun earlier. Similar conclusions were reached by American analysts who reported in July 1946 in the Strategic Bombing Survey that it would have been more efficient to combine the United States' effective anti-shipping submarine effort with land- and carrier-based air power to strike harder against merchant shipping and begin a more extensive aerial mining campaign earlier in the war. This would have starved Japan, forcing an earlier end to the war.[5]
See also
References
- ^ Mason, Capt (USN) Gerald A. (February 2002). "Operation Starvation" (PDF). Air War College. Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 January 2017. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
- ^ a b c d e Caldwell, Hamlin A., Jr., "Air Force Maritime Missions", United States Naval Institute Proceedings, October 1978, p. 33.
- ^ a b Caldwell, Hamlin A., Jr., "Air Force Maritime Missions", United States Naval Institute Proceedings, October 1978, p. 34.
- ISBN 0-02-930360-5, citing Craven, Wesley F.; Cate, James L. (eds.), The Pacific: Matterhorn to Nagasaki, June 1944 to August 1945, Vol. V of The Army Air Forces in World War II, University of Chicago Press, pp. 662–73.
- ^ United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Summary Report (Pacific War). July 1, 1946
External links
- Mines Away!, by Major John S. Chilstrom, USAF, 1992 (PDF) (via archive.org)