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Emphasizing that quality is neither intangible nor immeasurable, Philip Crosby, in his book “Quality is Free”, maintained that quality is a strategic imperative that can be quantified and used to improve the bottom line.Quality has always been difficult to measure for most organizations, largely because there are several factors, which may or may not be linked to each other, that contribute to poor quality. Difficulty in tracking quality quite often translates into millions of dollars being lost every year. However, this Cost of Poor Quality (CoPQ) is not unsurmountable. An organization’s CoPQ can be reduced by identifying the different areas in which there are potential wastes, failures, and additional costs.CoPQ typically falls into four categories:internal failure costs,external failure costs,appraisal costs, andprevention costs.Additionally, an organization can face further costs like:cost of reputational loss,customer-dissatisfaction cost,possible loss of sales or revenue,possible legal redress,potential loss of market share,lower service level to customers/ consumers, etc.Ultimately, the costs of producing quality products or services, conducting quality improvements, and achieving quality goals have to be managed and measured carefully so that the long-term effects of quality on the organization is a desirable one.There are 9 strategies that can help you lower your cost of poor quality1. Clear Product and Process TraceabilityOne way to cut down your costs of poor quality is to improve the visibility into your product quality, as well as the processes involved in manufacturing and distributing your product. Without good traceability in products and processes, organizations are more susceptible to product delays, defects, and recalls, and process breaches. Additionally, ensuring clear product and process traceability helps you shorten the time to track down root causes and identify the stage at which the defect was caused.Organizations have adopted automated tools to gain visibility into the various stages of their internal and supplier’s processes, as well as to map all their processes to various stages of a product life cycle from production to delivery. You can view and access details on production location, time of production, warehouse, labelling and packaging, and delivery related information with readily available reports to have better insight.2. Closed-Loop Non Conformance and Corrective Action ProgramRemediating problems is one of the key aspects to curb costs of nonconformance arising from production deviations, errors in specifications, quality incidents, or customer complaints.Automating a closed-loop non conformance and corrective action plan can help you take immediate containment actions like production stop and sales or distribution stop, preventing product rework or recall and further costs. Industry-standard methodologies such as 8D, 5-Why, Ishikawa, FMEA, and more, can be adopted to identify root cause of a non-conformance based on respective business needs, Appropriate Corrective and Preventive Actions (CAPA) can be planned, implemented, and tracked until completion. Implementing proactive quality measures can help you keep you abreast of any gaps and ensuring a proper effectiveness check can be performed to ensure that the problem has been resolved.3. Systematic Preventive Maintenance ProceduresFollowing diligent preventive maintenance procedures can help you assess potential losses, estimate the frequency of failure and work towards minimizing it, with an optimal maintenance policy. Rather than spending time and money over maintenance of a facility, machine, transport vehicle, or equipment after a defect is noticed, many organizations are moving toward a proactive way to mitigate any lag due to break-down of machines during production. This helps avert loss or cost incurred due to delayed production or distribution.Automated tools can simplify the process of calculating metrics on the cost of maintenance for inventory owners and quality assurance teams, in addition to consolidating equipment and facility maintenance histories. This enables you to make precise improvements and reduce your cost of poor quality. Additionally, a centralized repository to store and organize all types of documents such as manuals, directives, etc. gives you access to data from across your organization to make timely and informed decisions.4. Periodic Internal Quality AuditInternal quality audit is important for organizations to keep a tab on non-conformities, if any, in products or processes. This helps you notice any loopholes in or deviations from quality requirements which can be mitigated from source at the earliest. When quality issues go unnoticed, your organization’s CoPQ can increase, and in the long run it can snowball into a disaster, affecting your bottom line.The best way to tackle this is to implement a quality audit solution that facilitates a federated approach to managing different types of internal quality audits such as factory audits, process audits, facility audits, and health & safety audits, which helps in boosting operational excellence and ensuring adherence to the industry standards of quality. It would also enable you to completely manage quality audit processes right from audit planning and scheduling, to audit execution and issue management.5. Seamless Change Management ProcessWhile an organization’s ability to handle change has been often criticized, successful change management depends on strong leadership and clear policies. With changes, come many risks and uncertainties. A well-defined and streamlined process will ensure that these changes are implemented successfully with minimal disruption and risk.Often a technology solution can provide you with the capabilities to manage changes in equipment, processes, as well as documents. You will be able to chart out your change management process from the initiation stage to tracking change requests, identifying its impact and risk on associated processes, and improving overall coordination among various departments affected by the change. You will have clear visibility into the whole process, including change history, and data on the changes made, their status, and departments or regions affected, along with associated costs.6. Aggregated Customer Complaints and Timely Return ManagementWhen it comes to customers, their satisfaction of your product is what will keep your organization growing and your bottom line rising. Ensuring that they are happy is often a tricky business. To stay on top of things, it is essential for you to keep track of all customer complaints, analyze them, and provide prompt remedial responses. There is a lot of learning an organization can take away from assessing the nature and frequency of the complaints they receive, and make decisions based on the actions taken for similar complaints in the past.An efficient complaints management tool should be able to help you analyze the complaint, mapping it to corresponding risks, policies, and even compliance activities. It will also provide you with the analytics and business intelligence you need to carry further investigations, notify relevant personal, and track remedial actions. Capturing and managing all the complaints from various sources will help organizations be aware of arising issues and implement corrective and preventive measures.7. Streamlined Supplier Quality ProgramSuppliers can generally affect your CoPQ by producing defective material and/or finished products. Any loopholes in a supplier’s process would have a direct effect on your organization’s brand and revenue. For organizations with a large supply chain network, the CoPQ of individual suppliers participating within a supply chain has a cumulative effect on the overall revenue of the organization. As a result, you would do well if you work proactively with your suppliers to reduce your CoPQ.Many organizations are also implementing supplier charge-backs (or cost recovery) process, wherein the supplier is charged for any additional costs incurred due to non-conforming components and materials, as well as late deliveries. An effective charge-back system can help you keep track of all the metrics related to your suppliers’ performance, along with ensuring business discipline and accountability throughout the supply chain.8. Effective Training For Employees and SuppliersMaintaining and nurturing the knowledge-base of employees and suppliers is one of the crucial elements of taking a step toward reducing your CoPQ. All personnel need to be up to speed with policies, SOPs, regulations, and other relevant quality metrics, so that violations are kept at bay. By providing periodic training sessions, tests, and awareness programs for your employees and suppliers, you can ensure all of the components of your business ecosystem are on the same page, moving toward achieving a unified objective.With an introduction of any new policy or guideline, a training management program can trigger notifications to appropriate stakeholders to complete relevant training courses and also provide a training guide. A streamlined training process helps reduce risks and non-compliance gaps. You can also test the effectiveness of your training program through tests and questionnaires, and any gaps can be bridged with additional training courses.9. Electronic Records and Documentation ManagementTo make sure that your employees and suppliers are up-to-date with relevant policies, contracts, SOWs, SOPs, guidelines, regulations, and other such documents, you need to be able to store them in a centralized location with applicable access rights.This may require you to leverage an integrated system to manage quality documents right from its inception to its communication and implementation, including the various versions that a document would go through. This helps employees and suppliers follow set processes and policies, reducing the likelihood of nonconformity, product defects, and rework costs. A system that can scale with your organization will allow you to support policy management at a local, regional, and organizational level.To reduce your CoPQ, you need to look at it from an overall organization perspective. Addressing quality issues in a holistic and proactive way helps you identify the areas of concern which may accrue to a high CoPQ. This approach not just aggregates all possible issues across the length and breadth of your processes, but it also helps define preventive measures and maps it to the end result. This enables you to quickly assess what is going right or wrong and what you can do about it, before it is too late.Ref: 9 Key Strategies To Minimize The Cost of Poor Quality.

Hold onto your hat because not only do two categories of American military warplanes (redundant designation) use machine guns like in World War Two, but there may be actual World War Two machine guns arming these birds.Transport and rescue helicopters sprout a variety of machine guns used by door gunners. There may be a few of the three million Browning .50 caliber heavy machine guns made during World War Two still in service.M2 Browning - WikipediaThe combat aircraft of World War Two had a variety of armaments ranging from unguided rockets, experimental guided missiles, cannon up to 75mm (there may have been bigger, I just haven’t seen them), “heavy machine guns” and rifle-caliber machine guns. At the beginning of the war the biplane was still in service. At the end of the war the jet had been born. Aircraft could be a balloon or a glider or the mighty B-29 bomber. There were even early, fragile, under-powered helicopters used during that war.The rifle-caliber machine gun was used in flexible mounts, mounted in rotating turrets (both manned and remote control), in wings, and could be fitted with interrupter mechanisms to allow firing through the propeller arc without hitting the propeller. Even back in 1935 with special aircraft machine guns firing 1200 rounds per minute or more (infantry machine guns fired a more sedate rate of from 300 rounds per minute to 600 rounds per minute—except for the Germans) one machine gun didn’t throw enough lead out to take down a “modern” fighter or bomber. The blistering speeds above 240 miles per hour and closing speeds of double that coupled with the very short range of the machine gun (about 500 feet for a number of reasons relating to ballistics and fire control) meant that there was a narrow window of a few seconds to put bullets on target—let me use three seconds or less. The enemy cheated—failed to cooperate—and would shoot back or violently jinx to throw off your aim or both. A single bullet hitting an airplane didn’t have enough punch to knock it out of the sky, and there was a lot of airplane that could be shot without doing more than make the crew chief (ground maintenance man) angry and the pilot soil his bleeding britches. When rifle caliber machine guns were used from the ground in the anti-aircraft role, they were for the morale of the ground troops and to make attacking pilots worry and spoil their bombing. Firing through the propeller arc slowed the machine guns’ rate of fire down but there were advantages of the pilot being able to reach those guns (in early aircraft including the Japanese Zero) to clear jams and accurate fire—the wing guns were usually adjusted to converge at a set distance so that the fire would be concentrated on a small area and create greater damage. The AT-6 Texan advanced trainer (SNJ in the US Navy) was initially fitted with a cowl gun firing through the propeller (later models had the gun moved to the port wing) and could mount a flexible machine gun in the rear cockpit. These guns and the ability to carry bombs were for air-to-air and air-to-ground gunnery training but North American Aviation also used this “combat capability” to sell the trainer to a Congress that wanted to buy only war planes. Even back then the US Congress had a disconnect with reality—trainers in large numbers were needed to produce skilled pilots in large numbers. There was a proposal to arm the small “escort carriers” with the SNJ trainer—it could carry a depth charge (barely) or small bombs and even with just a single rifle-caliber machine gun was threat enough to keep most hostile aircraft away from convoys—because way out at sea, float planes or long-range land planes were the major aviation threat absent enemy aircraft carriers; ample numbers of the maligned Grumman F4F Wildcat and its licensed copy, the FM family, along with the availability of the Avenger torpedo bomber made this unnecessary. Rifle caliber machine guns lacked range and punch but could pour out a lot of bullets in a short time—and they worked. These rifle caliber machine guns had the benefit of being mature hardware (the Maxim gun began production in the 1880s) and was relatively inexpensive—and didn’t weigh a lot. When Britain’s Royal Air Force developed its famed Hurricane and Spitfire fighters, an eight-gun wing-mounted battery of rifle-caliber machine guns firing at individual cyclic rates of 1200 rounds per minute (9600 rounds per minute total) was a temporary fix until the aircraft cannon could be made to work. I think that these guns were originally aimed to converge at 300 yards or 1000 feet—but could have been 500 yards. Getting on the bomber’s tail and hosing down the bomber was the original idea; airmen soon decided that was a waste of bullets and started training to aim for engines, for cockpits, and if they could figure out where the fuel tanks were they’d shoot that. A variety of ammunition was used in these aircraft machine guns: standard rifle ammunition (also called “ball” for reasons of tradition), armor piercing (to do more damage to engines and other tough parts of the airplane), incendiary ammunition (to set the aircraft on fire), and tracer ammunition—with a smokey trail or a bright burning compound to help point the guns at the enemy aircraft and adjust fire on to that aircraft. Ball was used to thicken aircraft machine gun fires because it was cheaper than the special ammo—the others were far more expensive; machine gun belts were loaded with alternate types of ammo. One tracer, one armor piercing, one incendiary and a pair of ball cartridges could be one load out. Note that the tracer helped aim the guns but every different type of bullet had slightly different exterior ballistics—they’d hit in different places. Tracers also could start fires, but weren’t as good at it as incendiary bullets—less filling in the tracer and it burned all the way to the target (tracer burnout with rifle caliber cartridges is typically between 800 and 1000 meters) but the heavier filling of the incendiary bullet only burned after hitting the target. Tracers lost weight on the way to the target and were not even as robust in construction as the ball round. Armor piercing bullets had a small hardened steel penetration core and this small penetrator had the weight of a chunk of dense (if softer) lead to help it along. Exploding rifle caliber bullets were possible but the small amount of explosive didn’t make it worthwhile. Pay attention because these types of ammunition will appear again.Can’t mention machine guns without mentioning the airplanes!Rifle caliber machine guns had a lot of issues but the hardware was mature, the guns WORKED, they were cheap, and they were available in large numbers. One problem with rifle caliber machine guns was that they had short range—and if you flew close enough to shoot at ground troops with your rifle caliber machine gun, those grunts could shoot at you with their rifles. One rifle firing isn’t much of a threat. Try 500 rifles blasting away into the air at you! This was a problem in Vietnam with the modified AC-47 “Puff the Magic Dragon” and its rifle-caliber mini-guns (electrically operated Gatling guns with rates of fire as high as 8000 bullets per gun per minute) and why the current AC-130 Spectre gunships have cannon ranging from 20mm to 105mm—keeps them out of rifle range.Between the two World Wars those Browning .50 Caliber machine guns (and the famed Norden bomb sight) were developed with US Navy funding. The Army Air Corps wanted NO competition to its strategic bomber program and limited fighter aviation to 500 pounds of machine guns and ammunition, no drop tanks (external fuel tanks to extend a fighter’s range, dropped prior to combat—if there’s warning and time enough), no bombs. The Navy was in a different world and wanted its war birds to be combat effective. The early machine guns were all big bore using black powder cartridges—until “small bore” (7mm, 8mm and calibers .30 and .303) smokeless powder cartridges replaced black powder cartridges in rifles. These small bore smokeless cartridges made the machine gun practical. During World War One, observation balloons were a nuisance—enemy observers were out of reach of your riflemen and those guys had field glasses and field telephones and could instantly tattle on you whenever you did anything—resulting in artillery shells dropping on your position. The answer was sending your new-fangled airplanes over to shoot those balloons out of the sky with their machine guns. Problem—a “ball” round from a rifle or a rifle caliber machine gun only makes small holes. In order to damage the balloon it has to be set on fire. The incendiary payload in a rifle bullet is small. For the dreaded Zeppelin bombers shooting rifle cartridges, even in large quantities, was like shooting an elephant with a BB gun. Even rifle caliber incendiary cartridges might not do the job. If there was some sort of cannon—but wait! Early machine guns had bigger bullets. The first smokeless powder cartridge, France’s 8x50mm rimmed Lebel, was based on the earlier 11x59mmR Gras black powder rifle cartridge. This older cartridge was loaded with smokeless powder and put in “modern” (for World War One) machine guns and given an effective incendiary bullet: 11×59mmR Gras - Wikipedia This was one of the roots of the heavy aircraft machine gun. Another was the use of big bore rifles firing high velocity cartridges to destroy fortifications such as the steel plates protecting snipers and machine gunners—and later used against tanks: Anti-tank rifle - Wikipedia At the end of the war, John Browning was tasked with combining the large caliber aircraft machine gun and the anti-tank rifle cartridge into one weapon useful for either aircraft mounting or anti-tank work from a tripod on the ground. We still have the Ma Deuce in service—Browning did it so well that nothing significantly better has shown up. The Navy funded development of the Browning .50 caliber aircraft machine gun and even made room for it in several models of biplane fighters, displacing one of the cowl-mounted .30 caliber machine guns firing through the propeller arc with a bigger .50 caliber. The smaller .30 did ranging (can I hit that thing from here—use the .30 first!) and the .50 had more punch—and out to 500 yards their trajectories were close enough for government work. The “advanced” Brewster Buffalo carrier-borne fighter (famous for being shot out of the skies over the Battle of Midway) carried one thirty caliber in the cowl plus a fifty caliber and two additional .50’s, one in each wing. The more advanced Wildcat started its career with two fifty caliber machine guns in each wing, later increased to three per wing (six guns total). The AN/M2 fired more slowly—a drawback until you remember that .50 caliber ammo is far bulkier and heavier than .30 caliber ammo—the rate of fire was about 800 rounds per minute compared to 1200 for the .30’s. The first P-40 Tomahawk fighters had two .50 caliber machine guns in the nose and a pair of rifle-caliber machine guns in each wing—the Flying Tiger export-model P-40B Lend-Leased to Britain was the machine that they won their spurs with. Moving from rifle caliber to heavy-caliber machine gun was much simpler than the next step.The exact point where a machine gun becomes an autocannon is an arbitrary point. There’s general agreement that .50 caliber (13mm or 12.7mm) machine guns are machine guns—and that 20mm caliber machine guns are automatic cannon. What of the 14.5mm used by the USSR in aircraft guns, as anti-aircraft guns and as anti-tank rifles? Even during World War One the automatic cannon was a desirable goal for aircraft armament but there were many strikes against that happening. First was technology—cannon are significantly larger and more difficult to make than machine guns. Second, cannon fire more slowly. Third, First World War aircraft had severe weight restrictions and couldn’t carry much. Between the wars everybody worked on automatic cannon—and fielded at least a few as anti-aircraft guns and to protect ships against those nasty little torpedo boats. The United States Army tried to field a 37mm aircraft automatic cannon but John Moses Browning had died in 1926 and wasn’t around to make that 37mm cannon work. He had created a prototype and fired it off outside the sleepy little village of Ogden, Utah, but when World War One ended all wars, there was no reason to waste time on that any more. The P-38 Lightning and the A-26 Intruder originally were supposed to mount the 37mm auto cannon. The US did attempt to make a 20mm aircraft automatic cannon but it wasn’t ready for prime time when World War Two ended—but there was an error reverse engineering a French cannon from metric to inch standards and it wasn’t until the US Navy committed funding and time to perfecting it that the 20mm replaced most .50 caliber aircraft guns in the Navy. The Army Air Force (and after it became the Air Force in 1947) just improved the AN/M2 .50 caliber aircraft machine gun, increasing its fire rate can calling it the AN/M3 .50 caliber—a decision that came back to haunt the Air Force in the skies over North Korea and while defending the Western Hemisphere from imaginary Russian bomber fleets. Over Korea at extreme altitudes the incendiaries didn’t set fire to MiG-15 fighters. Even though the six AN/M3 machine guns arming the F-86 Saber jet fighter could put out a combined cyclic fire rate of 7200 fifty caliber bullets per minute (120 bullets a second) and they had radar range finding and computer gunsights, the MiG-15 at high altitude might survive otherwise fatal doses of .50 caliber gunfire. The Navy with their 20mm cannon-armed fighters didn’t have the problem of a MiG-15 taking their best shot and escaping. As early as 1942 German and Japanese and Italian fighter pilots were frustrated when they’d shoot up British and American heavy bombers (the B-17 in the early days) and that plane would still make it home—rifle caliber machine guns were not effective. Heavy caliber machine guns (13mm) didn’t work too well. The Imperial Japanese Navy’s Zero had a pair of 20mm cannon mounted one per wing—but at first those guns had only 60 cannon shells each. Germany’s Bf109E had a pair of 7.9 machine guns in the cowl firing through the propeller and two 20mm cannon—which the British envied—but again there was only 60 shot drum magazines. British fighters tried a mix of 20mm cannon and either .303 machine guns or American .50 caliber machine gun—until they managed to develop a reliable belt-fed 20mm cannon. It took time. Because American airmen seldom encountered enemy counterparts of their B-24, because all the air threats they faced were enemy fighters, light bombers, or lightly constructed aircraft, the .50 caliber worked very well.Even 20mm cannon fire wasn’t destructive enough to down heavy bombers before the bombers could reach their target. The Germans resorted to bigger cannon—30mm, 37mm. 50mm, even 76mm. Finally they tried a series of free-flight rockets. By launching dozens of these rockets fused to go off in the middle of an American bomber formation from dozens of fighter aircraft, the hope was to get a more accurate “flak attack” on the formation and send the survivors packing. The protoype F-89 Scorpion all-weather jet interceptor began with four fifty caliber machine guns—because that’s what worked. The Scorpion was supposed to be armed with 20mm cannon but they weren’t working for the Air Force back then. Three solutions were tried with the Scorpion—launching a swarm of small free-flight (unguided) rockets, the Genie air-to-air atomic rocket, and early guided missiles.Northrop F-89 Scorpion - WikipediaThe increasing ineffectiveness and short range of even the autocannon resulted in a generation of US Navy and US Air Force fighter aircraft designed without an internal gun. The Air Force F-102 and F-106 interceptors didn’t carry guns—just rockets (2.75 inch rockets or that Genie) and guided missiles (mostly the Falcon and Nuclear Falcon). The Navy F4H Phantom II (later the F-4B Phantom II when a unified aircraft designation system was adopted) had only Sidewinder and Sparrow missiles as built. Over Vietnam, the need for an internal gun was forcefully demonstrated because missiles had a minimum distance—closer than this minimum distance and the guided missile just didn’t work. Think of the aircraft gun as a pistol—or if you will, a dagger—used only in close combat. I understand that the F-35 carries only 182 rounds of cannon ammo—enough for one short burst. Does a 25mm four-barrel cannon meet your “machine gun” definition? Air to air guided missile has a longer range and has a higher probability of hitting and destroying enemy aircraft, but sometimes the sniper needs a pistol to protect himself.

Okinawa: The Final Great Battle of World War III believe Okinawa was it lasted for three months. Here is the story from the Marine Corps Gazette.You are hereHomeMarine Corps GazetteGazette November 2012Okinawa: The Final Great Battle of World War IINovember 2012Okinawa: The Final Great Battle of World War IIAn American triumph through bloodshedVolume 96, Issue 11Author:SSgt Rudy R. Frame, Jr.Two Marines, Davis P. Hargraves with Thompson submachine gun and Gabriel Chavarria with BAR [Browning automatic rifle], of 2d Battalion, 1st Marines, advance on Wana Ridge on 18 May 1945.Official Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 123170View slideshowThe Battle of Okinawa started on 23 March 1945 with all major combat operations ending on 23 June 1945. The island of Okinawa is located approximately 350 miles south of mainland Japan. It is the largest island in the Ryukyu Island chain, the southernmost prefecture of the then-Japanese Empire. The strategic importance of this island cannot be overemphasized. In a time when an invasion of mainland Japan was necessary to end the war, Okinawa was an essential preparation ground and jumping-off point for the impending invasion. The island’s airfields were indispensable to the launching of bombers and long-range escorts for the preparatory bombing for the land invasion of mainland Japan. This battle involved the Japanese Army, minimal Japanese naval efforts (due to a lacking naval power), and the last of its airpower concentrated in mass kamikaze formations. The allied power consisted of a combined force that was largely American with some British naval support, along with the Joint Services of the U.S. Army, Marine Corps, and Navy.The Pacific campaign started 7 December 1941 after the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. The campaign crossed all over the Pacific. The Japanese initially had the upper hand in the air and on sea and land. After almost 4 years of naval, air, and land battles the tide had turned and by March 1945 the campaign had nearly reached its culminating point with American domination of the sea and air. It was now just Japanese territory that needed to be seized before the Japanese would admit defeat. The challenge faced by the American military was the Japanese willingness to fight to the bitter end, and that the island of Okinawa had been turned into a death trap for the American invasion force in order to display Japanese enthusiasm for the defense of its home territory. The American invasion force was led on the naval side by ADM Raymond Spruance of the 5th Fleet; the land assault force consisted of LTG Simon Bolivar Buckner’s 10th Army; the command of this invasion force was divided between MG John R. Hodge and MajGen Roy S. Geiger. The American forces were more than adequate to bring the island under Allied control. Fortunately for the Allies, there were no additional adversaries or a significant naval presence to threaten the invasion force that were not organic to the Japanese defense force; the Japanese had no allies in the region and the Nazi regime would fully collapse halfway through the battle leaving Japan to stand alone against the Allies. The Japanese garrison on Okinawa was led by GEN Mitsuru Ushijima with a force of nearly 130,000 men (from his 32d Army) in addition to a 20,000-man home guard to supplement his forces. The defense force was battle hardened, well prepared, and willing to fight to the death but they could not contend with the professional capability of battle hardened American troops who were supplemented by the almost limitless newly trained troops. The path to the Battle of Okinawa arose from a long and bloody path to get closer to the mainland of Japan and was the final stepping stone to an invasion.Map 1. The Pacific theater.1Okinawa is a subtropical island that stays hot and muggy year round with almost continual precipitation. The precipitation did not have an effect on either side’s weapons or equipment due to experience in maintaining the weapons and gear in such conditions. The effect of the precipitation on morale was dramatic for the American troops. In addition, the physical effects increased disease while decreasing operational efficiency by increasing the prevalence of mud preventing any sort of mechanized support. The terrain on Okinawa was covered in foliage and trees and was littered with hills, one of which reaches 505 meters at its highest point. The combination of these factors gave the advantage to the defender on this long island. The Japanese also used the coral and limestone as natural cover and concealment. The Japanese were able to create defensive lines that took away any good avenue of approach from the attacker by occupying every ridgeline on the southern portion of the island. The Japanese took advantage of all the island’s natural obstacles and enhanced them through the utilization of tunnels and fortified defensive positions. The dense foliage and well-constructed defensive positions (particularly in the southern end of the island) provided as advantageous cover and concealment as a defender could ask for.Map 2. Terrain map of the island of Okinawa. The notable features of the island are the scattered hills which allowed the Japanese to create defensive lines at each ridge forcing a bloody fight for every inch taken.2The strength and composition of the American landing force consisted of LTG Buckner’s 10th Army of some 180,000 men. The 10th Army included MajGen Geiger’s III Marine Amphibious Corps (1st, 2d, and 6th Divisions) and MG Hodge’s XXIV Army Corps (7th, 27th, 77th, and 96th Divisions). Moreover, the naval support consisted of more than 40 aircraft carriers and 18 battle ships (more than 14,000 ships in total) plus British support in addition to other landing craft and ships. The Japanese defenders’ land composition (the naval support was not even a factor) was formed into the 32d Army (Ryukyu Island chain defense force) comprised of four divisions (9th, 24th, 28th, and 62d on Sakishima) plus additional home guard units. The advantage in this battle was absolutely on the side of the Americans due to endless resources available to them in addition to a vast technological advantage in nearly all aspects. The American naval and air power was not only superior in numbers as the Japanese Zeros were no match for the more advanced American fighters and antiaircraft guns manned by experienced gunners on the American ships. Even with the addition of the Okha, a Japanese rocket-powered suicide missile launched from a bomber with a 2,650 pound warhead and formidable once released, the Americans quickly learned to shoot down the bombers prior to the Okha being released. Still the mass formations took their toll on the 5th Fleet starting on 6 April, sinking or badly damaging an average of one and a half ships per day. The land battle also gave the advantage to the Americans given their engineer, mechanized, medical, and all other kinds of logistical support, thereby sustaining the fighting power and longevity to the Americans. Additionally, technologically nearly all of the American equipment was superior and far more reliable; this included weapons ranging from small arms to howitzers and all the way to the 14-inch guns on the battleships.At this point in the war both the Americans and the Japanese had developed their command, control, and communications in ground warfare to the best level of efficiency they could. The Japanese were far more rudimentary with a simple, straightforward concept—to kill every single American fighter possible and hold the defensive line until it was utterly broken. This concept of defending, delaying, and withdrawing to another defensive line was a change in tactics for the Japanese. Typically the Japanese Army mounted a Banzai run once the defensive line could no longer hold, always resulting in large numbers of Japanese soldiers being torn apart by American machineguns, mortars, rifles, and an assortment of small arms. This tactical change was the brainchild of GEN Ushijima whose intent was to have his men live and hold out as long as possible in an effort to slow the American advance toward Japan. The decision as to when to withdraw to the next defensive line was made ultimately by GEN Ushijima, who received reports from his many officers along whichever one of the three defensive lines was being held at the time. GEN Ushijima held each line until its fate was sealed but there was still opportunity to tactically withdraw, set up in the defense, and start the process all over again. The elaborate communications network under the Shuri Castle where GEN Ushijima’s headquarters was located allowed him to make informed decisions as the castle was a highly defensible position at the center point of the middle Shuri defensive line. The naval contributions of the Japanese, which were almost nonexistent, were best exemplified by the Japanese Navy’s own suicide run from their final massive 70,000 ton battleship Yamato being destroyed when it was spotted on its way to Okinawa. The Yamato was loaded up with just enough fuel to get to the American fleet and ordered to fight to the death; its strategy was to beach itself near the Shuri line and decimate American troops already pinned down by the 100,000-strong defenders of the Shuri line while also taking advantage of any opportunity to sink American ships. Japanese air power was no longer intent on defeating the Americans in head-to-head battle but was instead depending upon its kamikazes. At this battle the first mass formations of kamikazes were utilized against the 5th Fleet.The American command, control, and communications were as efficient as they could be by 1945 after nearly 4 years of battling in the Pacific. The advancement of communications processes and independence within small units created a new level of efficiency on the battlefield. There were still command-level issues in appropriate decisionmaking but the majority of them were eliminated as all the commanders were already battle hardened; in addition, the small unit leaders largely made up for command and control failures by improvising and adapting to every obstacle. Units had developed a cohesive esprit de corps throughout all of the units in the American Services.The prebattle intelligence gathering for the Americans was sparse in attaining valuable collections because of the isolation of the Ryukyu Island chain. There was limited intelligence gathered from old Japanese newspapers as well as from Japanese prisoners of war from other battles in the Pacific. Aerial photographs did not yield an accurate picture of the Japanese defensive strategy. The aerial reconnaissance was hampered by continual cloud cover over the majority of the island. The clever concealment of the Shuri line, in addition to most of it being underground, prevented its elaborate nature from being discovered. Intelligence was clearly lacking given the presumption that 80 to 85 percent casualties were expected on the beachhead, when in reality there was almost no resistance. Intelligence was also unaware of the buildup of the 32d Army by Japanese troops from Burma. The Americans knew there would be a heavy defense force but the overall strength and where they came from was a mystery. Useful intelligence gathering and dissemination did not begin until contact with the Shuri line began. It was then that awareness of GEN Ushijima’s plan for a war of attrition began to develop and the intricate nature of the Japanese defensive lines discovered.Figure 1. Picture of the torturous terrain that had to be taken by the Americans.3The tactical doctrine of the American troops was well ingrained by this point in the war. The majority of both the Army and Marine Corps were experienced combat veterans and were well accustomed to Japanese warfighting tactics. The troops on Okinawa had already become experts in utilizing their combined arms assets in driving out the Japanese. The employment of mortars, grenades, satchel charges, other forms of explosives, and flamethrowers was commonplace and necessary to force the Japanese out of fighting positions. Though the American tactical employment was well indoctrinated there was an unexpected variable that the Americans faced: the evolution of the defensive tactics adopted by the GEN Ushijima’s forces. Typically the Japanese emphasized the importance of dying for the Emperor, but Ushijima put an additional responsibility on his men expanding beyond that. Ushijima had concentrated the bulk of his defenders out of range of Allied naval guns off the beaches and behind the strong Shuri line at the southern end of the island, postulating that holding out as long as possible was the most honorable and beneficial death to give for the Emperor. He wanted to slow the American advance as much as possible to allow the mainland Japanese force to shore up its defenses and prepare its people for a bloody battle all across Japan. Therefore Ushijima adopted a tactic of attrition, holding out as long as possible, taking advantage of the terrain, and showing the Americans how costly it would be to continue the campaign through a price paid in American lives.The minds of the American troops were tense and morale was low preceding the invasion as the estimates of casualties were very high—80 to 85 percent on the initial amphibious landing. The first week of the battle turned out to be more calming than the week leading up to the landing (largely due to the shelling the Marines and soldiers had to live with on the ships) and for the Marines in the north of the island, the slow tempo maintained for almost 3 weeks as the defenses in the north of the island were very light. This helped to increase the morale for a short period but the torrential rains throughout the battle and the impact of the Shuri line defenses quickly took their toll. More mental health issues arose from the Battle of Okinawa than any other battle in the Pacific during World War II. The constant bombardment from artillery and mortars coupled with the high casualty rates led to a great deal of men coming down with combat fatigue. Additionally the rains caused mud that prevented tanks from moving and tracks from pulling out the dead, forcing Marines (who pride themselves on burying their dead in a proper and honorable manner) to leave their comrades where they lay. This, coupled with thousands of bodies both friend and foe littering the entire island, created a scent you could nearly taste. Morale was dangerously low by the month of May and the state of discipline on a moral basis had a new low barometer for acceptable behavior. The ruthless atrocities by the Japanese throughout the war had already brought on an altered behavior (deemed so by traditional standards) by many Americans resulting in the desecration of Japanese remains, but the Japanese tactic of using the Okinawan people as human shields brought about a new aspect of terror and torment to the psychological capacity of the Americans.The Japanese Army on Okinawa was pulled largely from Burma. They were well trained and experienced troops with leaders who were fit to fight and both tactically and technically proficient in their profession. A drawback for the Japanese leaders was not having a large amount of latitude in their command; they lacked the authority to choose when and how to employ their units which hamstrung the Japanese throughout the war. This, however, did not restrict the Japanese from being successful in their southern Okinawa defenses as the concept was to employ their combined arms and overlapping fields of fire to tear apart the Americans. The planning for the defensive strategy was incredibly elaborate and the Japanese commanders knew it down to the smallest detail. The small unit leadership of the Japanese was effective in employing the tactics in which they had been trained; however, taking initiative and adapting to the situation had not been part of their repertoire, thus giving the leadership advantage to the Americans.The American leadership within all Services, from the lowest private through GEN Buckner and ADM Spruance, was of the most superb capability, proficient in all regards of their military profession. This strength of leadership was evident from the basic rifleman to the logistician to the tactician. The small unit leadership was exemplified in its superior performance and capability by the 24 Medals of Honor awarded for heroism during the Battle of Okinawa. The leadership in this battle was less dependent on tactical maneuvering and operational planning on a large scale and far more about small unit leaders facing utter chaos and destruction, leading from the front, and continuing to press on through hammering fire and mounting casualties. The objectives of the attacking Americans were relatively simple and always consisted of “take a hill and hold it.” This was consistent with the operational goals of taking the entire island but first each defensive line had to be eliminated. This was done with precision force focusing on specific objectives but still having to fight inch by inch, taking the hills that anchored the edges of the defensive lines, forcing the Japanese to withdraw.The bombardment of Okinawa commenced on 23 March and lasted until the morning of the land invasion (codenamed Operation Iceberg) on 1 April. The objectives were split between the Army and Marine Corps divisions. The MarDivs would take the northern three-quarters of the island while the Army divisions would take the more strategically significant southern quarter that held the island’s capital and the majority of the airfields. The landing on 1 April (Easter Sunday and April Fools’ Day) went almost completely unopposed as did the next several days. There was minimal resistance for the Marines who completed taking their objectives to the north on 20 April. The Marines faced only sporadic resistance during this period and spent most of their time and effort easing the concerns of the Okinawan citizens who were indoctrinated into the belief that the Americans would torture and murder them. Once the Marines had accomplished their mission, they moved south to assist the Army troops. By the morning of 6 April the Army had met the outer defensive Shuri line where the Japanese opened up on the Army troops with overwhelming fire power. By 24 April the outer defensive ring of the Shuri line had been taken after 18 days of hard fighting but this was the softest of the three defensive lines as the Americans would soon discover. As the first defensive ring was eliminated, the Japanese troops simply withdrew to the second defensive line which was the most heavily fortified and intricate. This line utilized every natural and manmade advantage that it could, incorporating them into an ingenious defensive strategy. The limestone and coral landscape was used as natural cover while every single weapon employed was mutually supported by other combined arms assets. Every ridge was honeycombed with defensive positions allowing the Japanese to always hold the high ground and employ relatively small numbers of infantryman, machinegunners, and mortarmen against a numerically far-superior adversary who had to move through ravines, across rivers, and up hills resulting in a dramatic advantage for the Japanese. However, the Americans did manage success against the Japanese defensive lines which prompted GEN Ushijima to go on the offensive.The Japanese major counteroffensive on 4 and 5 May was a dramatic failure resulting in more than 3,000 casualties and no ground gained. Though carefully planned, the Japanese did not acquire accurate intelligence identifying weak spots in the defensive line or locations of American command posts. This, coupled with inexperience in diverse types of offensive maneuvers outside of Banzai attacks (the Japanese attempted to assault multiple objectives in addition to an amphibious assault), led to the slaughter of Japanese soldiers, expediting the breaking of the Shuri line. As noted by a Marine, the environment that was lived and fought in was so atrocious, words could not accurately describe it. It required all of the senses to truly understand the horrors of the battle. There were piles of dead bodies at the bottom of every hill and if someone was to slip in the mud and fall down a hill, they were apt to reach the bottom vomiting. Said one Marine of the scene, “I saw more than one man lose his footing and slip and slide all the way to the bottom only to stand up horror-stricken as he watched in disbelief while fat maggots tumbled out of his muddy dungaree pockets, cartridge belt, legging lacings, and the like.”4Map 3. Japanese-planned counteroffensive.5The key to taking the second Shuri line was taking the anchoring positions on the west end at Sugar Loaf Hill (the Marines took Sugar Loaf and the other two hills creating a horseshoe held by the Japanese) and on the east at Conical Hill (which the Army took). The complex of Sugar Loaf Hill, Horseshoe Ridge, and Half Moon Hill was one of the most fiercely contested regions in the entire battle. With each hill covering the other two, the Japanese had connected the three hills with hidden galleries and set up interlocking fields of fire by machine gun and various types of artillery.6It took a week of back-and-forth fighting on Sugar Loaf Hill (and the other two hills that were next to it that created a death trap for troops moving up any of the three hills) with the Marines taking the summit more than 10 times. However, the casualties resulting from the attack and the subsequent counterattacks by the Japanese led to ownership of the hill changing many times with the Marines fully occupying and finally owning it on 18 May.Map 4. The last push for Sugar Loaf Hill by the 6th Marine Division.7Map 5. Typical defensive infrastructure of an Okinawan hill.8By 22 May the main Shuri line had been seemingly beaten and the Japanese began their withdrawal of the majority of its remaining 30,000 troops to the final defensive line on the southern tip of Okinawa. The defeat of this line forced GEN Ushijima to withdraw from his command post located more than 150 feet underneath the Shuri Castle (which was still protected by a Japanese rearguard whose purpose was to slow the American advance while the new defensive line was prepared). The heavily fortified command post bunker required eviction through the use of significant amounts of high explosives and flame throwers in order to expel the Japanese from their hiding places or killing them in place. The most gruesome method applied was to pour scalding hot oil down the elaborate tunnel system. The Marines were successful in breaking the Shuri line through intelligent preparation and utilizing clever offensive tactics prompted by the command.MajGen Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr., Commander of the 6th MarDiv, had warned his troops that the battle in southern Okinawa would be different from anything they had previously encountered in the Pacific. In a training order read twice by every platoon leader to his men, MajGen Shepherd described the enemy’s intelligent use of artillery, his ample supplies, his defensive line “which cannot be breached by simple frontal attack without heavy losses,” and his willingness to counterattack by every available means. MajGen Shepherd urged his commanders and troops to take advantage of cover and camouflage, to use maneuver in outflanking the Japanese rather than to try to “outslug” them, and to keep driving. “Your enemy can’t think as fast as you can and he is no match for a determined aggressive Marine who has confidence in himself and his weapon.”9With the Japanese defense forces isolating themselves for their final defense on the southern tip of the island, the Marines made the final amphibious assault of the war cutting behind the Japanese lines and clearing out the Japanese defensive positions with grenades and flame throwers. During this push to the southern tip of the island, the Marines and soldiers did what they could to tend to the Okinawan people. On 21 June the final contact for the Battle of Okinawa began. Instead of staying on the defensive, GEN Ushijima conducted one final offensive that, if successful, would have extended the battle further. Like most of the Japanese offensives on Okinawa, it was an utter failure. Though Ushijima made his troops aware of his respect for the honor they had given the Emperor by delaying the Americans for nearly 3 months, it was not enough. Ushijima wrote the following in a letter before committing ritual suicide on the 22 June:To my great regret we are no longer able to continue the fight. For this failure I tender deepest apologies to the Emperor and the people of the homeland. We will make one final charge to kill as many of the enemy as possible. I pray for the souls of men killed in battle and for the prosperity of the Imperial Family.10On 23 June all major combat operations ended on the island of Okinawa. Over the 3 month battle more than 8 million artillery and mortar rounds were fired, the equivalent of more than 1 round per second. For some, the silence after the battle was over was almost deafening. In total, more than 12,000 American servicemembers were killed and more than 38,000 wounded (many from combat fatigue) or missing. The Japanese military lost more than 110,000, but the greatest loss of life by the Okinawan people. Anywhere from 40,000 to 150,000 of the Okinawans perished during the battle. Even with all the carnage, it was at Okinawa that the largest number of Japanese soldiers were taken prisoner (more than 7,000—an unprecedented number).Map 6. American troop movement during the Battle of Okinawa.11The Battle of Okinawa had a dramatic effect not only on the Pacific campaign but on the nature of warfare to this day. The battles in the Pacific made evident to America that they could defeat the Japanese in any fight. The painful realization from information gained from Okinawa was the high price that would be paid for every inch of Japanese land the Americans took. The Japanese mainland defense force was more than 1 million strong. In addition, the Japanese possessed 8,000 aircraft and kamikaze pilots who were being trained every day. Even the civilian population was trained for combat with the invading Americans; suicide attacks by civilians were expected. The greatest effect Okinawa had on the Pacific campaign was to convince the recently seated President Harry S. Truman to take any avenue to end the war outside of sending an invasion force onto mainland Japan as, unfortunately, firebombing the country was not adequate to convince the Japanese to surrender. The concept of conceding was one the Japanese simply could not fathom; admitting defeat without being completely subdued by their adversary was unconscionable to the Japanese. This was all too apparent to President Truman who said, “I do not want another Okinawa from one end of Japan to the other.”12This sentiment is what lead to the approval of the atomic bomb Little Boy being dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August. Even with the resulting vast destruction, the Japanese were still not willing to concede. The war cabinet was divided even after Fat Man was dropped at Nagasaki on 9 August. It still took negotiating to determine the status of Japan’s surrender which unofficially took place on 14 August with a compromise that Emperor Hirohito could maintain his seat as emperor so long as he followed the orders and directions of the Supreme Allied Commander. This was carried out by GEN Douglas MacArthur who ostensibly ran Japan for the next 6 years after receiving the Japanese formal surrender from the Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu on the USS Missouri (BB 63) on 2 September 1945.