Figures Can Lie

Vice Admiral Richard S. Edwards said last week: "Our Navy is now strongly outnumbered in [the Solomons area]. People must realize that the Japanese Navy is now the second largest in the world because of Britain's heavy losses."

This statement and others like it were not the shockers that they would have been a few months ago. People had begun to understand that simple figures on U.S. and enemy naval losses, no matter how well-intentioned, could lie about the actual relative naval strengths of the Pacific war. The misconception usually had been on the side of U.S. preponderance.

The news from the Solomons (see p. 27), including the now obvious fact that the Japs had more warships around Guadalcanal than the U.S. had, hammered the lesson home. It was easier, now, to see that reports of Japanese carrier losses in the Coral Sea and at Midway may have been "accurate in themselves, but that the Japs' total carrier strength had been underestimated. Even the statement by Expert Hanson W. Baldwin (see p. 67) that the Haruna probably had not been sunk was no longer much of a jolt. Laymen could turn a clearer eye upon tabulations indicating that the Japs, to date, had lost perhaps a third of their known (and probably underestimated) cruiser strength, nearly one-third of their destroyers, six of their carriers, some 75 warships, while the U.S. had lost only 58 in the Pacific. Present Pacific naval strength:

Carriers. The loss of four U.S. carriers in the Coral Sea, at Midway and the Solomons reduced the total known carrier force of the Navy to three, plus some converted merchantmen which are of limited combat value. Atlantic requirements and unreported, but always possible damage to remaining carriers may at any time reduce the U.S. Pacific strength to two, one--or zero. Even allowing for reported damage to Jap carriers last week (see p. 27), Japan may have a two-or three-to-one margin--although most of her carriers are somewhat smaller.

The most important fact of all: Japan unquestionably knows that this margin is bound to be short-lived, that if she is to take full advantage of it she will have to do so very soon. A Navy spokesman last week said that 13 U.S. carriers are under construction. The launching of four new ones (Essex, Independence, Princeton and Lexington) has been announced, and they should soon be going into service. Some time next year Japan may well face a U.S. carrier increase of one or more per month. In the meantime the U.S. must do what it can to redress the unfavorable carrier balance with land-based aircraft from forward bases like Guadalcanal.

Cruisers and destroyers are now a critical U.S. category. In actual numbers, the U.S. probably has the edge in destroyers and is somewhere near even in cruiser strength. But the Atlantic fleet, stripped and stripped though it has been, still requires an important proportion of the available total. The long convoy lines of the Pacific suck up more. Result: the Navy is hard put to find enough cruisers and destroyers for task-force duty, screening carriers and battleships, raiding enemy concentrations. That is one reason why the loss of the Astoria, Vincennes and Quincy was serious, why the U.S. showed to no better advantage in the Solomons waters, why the Army air blows at Rabaul and Buin-Faisi area were intensified last week (see p. 27).

Battleships, still academic vessels to most laymen, are by no means so to the Navy, and the full story of recent action in the Pacific may well raise civilian respect for the dreadnought. U.S. losses at Pearl Harbor have been more than replaced, and the Navy's heavy battle line in the Pacific is now more formidable than it ever was. But the shortage of carriers, cruisers and destroyers to accompany the battleships limits their effectiveness in task-force war. To what extent the U.S. battle line can compensate for other weaknesses, when & if the Japs invite a naval showdown, only battle will tell.

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