Hi.
It is a less known fact that the japanese army had a large naval branch, too. It consisted of special landing craft motherships, transport and supply vessels, landing craft in various sizes, armed landing support ships, speedboats and even escort aircraft carriers and transport submarines. IJA employed up to 300000 soldiers for naval duties and managed up to 30 % of the japanese merchant ships during the war.
The first sino-japanese war 1894/95 showed that an island army like the japanese army depends heavily on shipping. This includes troops, material, supply and reinforcements. As the IJN was (at this time) small and mainly built for high sea duties it could provide only limited support.
In the mid-twenties the decision was made to build up am army naval branch. As IJN had no infantry elements at this time one of the main purposes of the army naval branch had to be amphibious landings and supply of the landed forces.
Due to the poor finances after the large earthquake in 1923 it took more than 10 years to develop and buy the needed landing craft and support ships.
In 1935 the world´s first special purpose landing craft mothership Shinshu Maru was commissioned. It couild carry several landing craft and landing support craft. During the innitial stage of the 2. sino-japanese war 1937/38 Shinshu Maru played a major role by supporting several amphibious landings along the eastern chinese shores.
Due to the raised funds IJA was able to lay down several more landing craft motherships in the late 1930th. Two of them were even designed to carry several aircraft which should be launched ashore to support the landing forces and to provide a minimal air cover.
During the innitial stage of the Pacific War they support several landings in Malaya, Philippines, Netherlands East India (today Indonesia), Borneo, various pacific islands and Burma.
As the tide of war changes in 1942 the japanese supply lines became more and more attacked by allied aircraft and submarines. The ship losses reached a dangerous level in 1943 and IJN wasn´t able to provide the necessary cover. So IJA decided to convert the landing craft motherships equipped with aircraft handling facilities to anti-sunbmarine escort carriers and to convert some merchant ships to escort aircraft carriers. Due to the lack of raw material the conversions took a lot of time and some were even not finished in August 1945.
In 1944 the foreward supply lines were almost cut-off by allied submarinnes and aircraft. So IJA started to built small fast transport craft and unarmed transport submarines to provide at least minimal support for foreward island garrisons.
In the following weeks I will add some short descriptions of the army crafts and vessels to this article.
Yours
tom!
