Word: jap
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Nevertheless, Japan today probably has more planes - in over-all total - than she had in December. Reason: high though Jap losses have been to date, they are still slightly less than Japan's probable rate of aircraft production. Last autumn she was reportedly building about 300 combat planes per month, was aiming at 600 per month by the end of this year. But overall totals, even over-all replacements, are not what count in the kind of war Japan faces. What counts is whether her production is geared to replace the types which she is losing, as fast...
Geography and planning gave the Japs this local superiority. If the Japanese front was fantastically wide and Jap supply lines long, the U.S. and British lines, from supply sources to the battle areas, were infinitely longer. Moreover, if the Jap fronts stretched far from home, they were nevertheless fairly close to each other. Result: the Japs could switch squadrons back & forth from one front to another, from Malaya to Java, from Java to Burma, and could usually base them near their next objective. Old crates could be used where opposition in the air was inconsiderable or nonexistent. Until last week...
Added to this local preponderance was the enormous value of the Japs' carrier forces. At the war's start, they had at least 20 carriers (one or two have been sunk). Nine were flying decks for land-type planes, eleven were seaplane carriers of limited capacity. Most were small: in six U.S. carriers, the Navy put about as many planes as the Jap had in all 20. But these small carriers gave the Japanese a highly mobile force, designed to concentrate quickly at the points where local superiority meant everything...
...balance is shifting. Brigadier General Royce and his U.S. bombing raiders were attacked by very few Jap planes over the Philippines. Over New Guinea and Australia, the United Nations have aerial superiority for the present, and there are other signs that the Burma front and the Bay of Bengal (see p. 20) are about all that Japan's air services can handle at one time. Japan's air superiority in the Bay of Bengal is the smallest she has yet had in any important area...
...raids on Japan, and the threat of more to come, were bound to affect Japan's strategy of local superiority. Now the Japs will have to keep more of their fighters at home. Even more important, the Jap air services have been geared to offensive war. Whenever and wherever they have had to go on the defensive, against anything like effective attackers, they have dismally failed...