ALLIED SUPERIORITY

New Zealand Herald, Volume 81, Issue 25051, 15 November 1944, Page 3

ALLIED SUPERIORITY

SUBMARINE WARFARE WHAT IT MEANS TO JAPAN The astonishing success of Allied submarines against Japanese shipping is one of the deciding factors of the war; it is also having a great effect on Japan's present and post-war economy, states the Atlantic Monthly. We have been sinking irreplaceable tonnage and irreplaceable materials in almost every part of Japan's waters, while our own extended supply lines have been virtually free from attack. Here is one aspect of the war in which Japan's technological inferiority is clearly visible. Both submarine and anti-submarine warfare are highly complex technical operations. Wo have shown ourselves tne masters of one in the Pacific and of the other in the Atlantic. Guile, daring and seamanship still play their par ; t,t3ut physics—radar, asdic and the phenomenal devices of both offensive and defensive undersea warfare that have been developed, and about which we have been told so little —have given us a new dimension in which to operate. Japan has been unable to counter our submarine fleet without the scientific resources that would enable her to evolve, produce and man efficiently the detection instruments we have found so valuable. Modern war depends greatly on the quick production in great quantity of complex instruments. This demands uniformity ol : materials for mass machining and tools, and workmen capable of high-precision operations. These require a technological maturity Japan does not possess —a fatal weakness in days when a faulty vacuum tube may mean a lost ship. We have conquered the menace of the submarine by a combination of physics and the massive fleet of convoy and patrol craft, the destroyer escort and carrier escort team, and the long-range patrol plane. Japan cannot build the great fleet of convoy craft that her extended network of waterways requires. Meanwhile Japan is losing ships at a rate far beyond her replacement capacity. This loss of tonnage is not only a grave impairment of her military potential; it does permanent damage to one of her major peacetime resources. Tho highly-developed Japanese merchant marine was a source of Japanese national pride and national wealth. In 1939 Japan's merchant fleet of almost six million tons was the third largest in the world, much of it new, fast tonnage that brought large commercial returns.