Infantry tactics doctrine: an overview

[hisashi]

During Meiji Restoration and civil wars related to this event, each Daimyo retained armed force of their own. Manuals from various European armies, especially infantry ones, was translated into Japanese.

Accepting French military mission to Japan (1872–80), IJA prepared translated French drill manuals. The last version of translated French infantry drill manual was 1884 version, used in Japan from 1887.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_mi ... 2%80%9380)

On the other hand, Japan changed army system from static, defensive formation to expedition-worthy field army. In 1884 Japan asked German government to send a professor to IJA war college, and Von Moltke selected Meckel. In 1891 IJA prepared new infantry drill manual, a translation of 1888 Prussian manual.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakob_Meckel

After Russo-Japanese War, in 1906 a draft for new infantry drill manual was up and published. Considerable private publication was available for soldiers, especially those volunteered for professionals. In 1909 new infantry drill was fixed. Change was rather minor.

New manual did not mention machine guns. In 1907 歩兵機関銃操典草案 (A draft for infantry machine gun drill manual) was prepared and issued, along with 機関銃射撃教範草案 (A draft for machine gun shooting manual) in 1908.

We Japanese military buff share an image that IJA was strongly impressed of terrible effect from Russian MGs, but I cannot find IJA's reaction to enemy MGs in their doctrine.

IJA and IJN sent many officers to Europe during WWI. Moreover, in Tsingtao, IJA successfully defeated German fort. The latter showed in principle IJA could execute modern trench/fortress war, if they had only to form a number of special force. But observers in Europe were overwhelmed by the massive scale of deployment and consumption in material. It took a few decades to introduce modern firepower into ordinary IJA troops, and it was never completed.

Some of IJA observers later published a military history of WWI (European theater), 世界大戦ノ戦術的観察 (tactical observations on the great war) in 1924. In that, authors noticed at first French LMGs stayed behind on assault for rapid advance after an enemy position was taken, repelling German counterattack. Seeing the success of German stosstruppen tactics, in Sep 1916 French army revised their instruction to add their LMGs into the first echeron of assault.

Readers might be interested in an example of infantry tactics manual those day. Here is a British version.

http://www.army.gov.au/~/media/Files/Ou ... 917_UK.pdf

Thoughts were at large the same for French army. They also placed one LMG for a half-platoon and let them form a few specialized section, such as a hand-grenade section.

Japanese observers called that tactics as 戦闘群戦法. 戦闘群 (battle group) became a translation for German kampfgruppe, but for IJA officers subdividing infantries into several task groups was a new idea.

Now they learned that. But IJA did not have any LMG, and budget. After Russo-Japanese war IJA demanded more divisions even in peacetime, but politicians did not allow that. In 1925, at last a compromise was made. New minister of the army Ugaki Kazushige agreed to abolish four divisions in exchange for budgets renewing their weapon. Already IJA began to issue Type 11 LMG in 1923, and in 1928 new infantry drill manual came into effect. In formations of the day, a platoon had four rifle squads and two LMG squads.

A LMG squad consisted of a leader and 7 men. A gunner and two ammo feeders, the rest seemed spare, and they had their own rifle to support the gunner team.

In this system, it was up to the platoon leader, usually an officer, being allowed a freedom of formation. When six squads are placed as 2 rows and 3 columns, two rows should be distant at 100 meter. Keeping dispersion against artillery fire, platoon leader was expected to grip all his men and instruct the formation. In this period, LMGs did not participate in the assault and instead provided support fire.

LMG was NOT evaluated as the main fire power of the platoon. We could be reminded that type 11 LMG was a failure-prone weapon easily getting jammed by mud. IJA could not maintain unified NCO training program and delegeted that task to training (short course) unit under each army HQ. So they might hesitate to allow squad/half-platoon leaders free initiative.

In 1931 type 11 LMG gained war experience in Mukden Incident. IJA was impressed with type 11 LMG's frequent jamming trouble and the excellence of Czechoslovakian ZB-26 LMG. They began the development of a new LMG, completed in 1938 as type 96 LMG.

Revised infantry drill manual (draft in 1937, effective in 1940) read,

120.Squad leader shall take any chance to let his squad advance, or to occupy position unlooked-for by the enemy, for example at the moment the enemy collapsed, or when enemy automatic weapon stopped, and shall make efforts to surprise.

Squad leader's initiative was at last allowed. On the other hand,

122.Shooting shall be done at first by LMG, if necessary adding snipers (in this context, sniper meant a few sharpshooters named in the squad), or in some situation by only snipers. When approaching the enemy and you need more firepower, add any others.
When increasing firepower if you use too many rifles, note that it hinders our heavy weapons' firing, and might cause unnecessary loss before assault.

LMG became the center of firepower. In this manual it was assumed that all squad had its LMG, 3 men team.

[Wellgunde]

Thank you Hisashi for this very detailed and informative account of the development of infantry tactics doctrine in the IJA.

[hisashi]

Thank you Wellgunde. For us writing in English is something of coding cypher, so cheering and any light conversation are 'heavy' task and we tend to minimize our word.

As infantry drill manual, IJA prepared similar documents for artillery, engineer and so on. I add some manuals for all services-in-arm.

野外要務令 (yagai yomurei, draft in 1889, effective in 1891) seemed a translation from German Felddienstordnung, under the influence of Meckel. It was renamed with revision in 1923 as 陣中要務令(jinchu yomurei). 野外 and 陣中 both meant 'in the field'.

On the other hand, IJA prepared a brand-new document for all services-in-arm. The upper half of 戦闘綱要 (sento koyo=Abstruct for combat, draft in 1926, effective in 1929) was a relatively brief, straight instructions for leaders and soldiers in each combat sitiations. The lower half, added in 1929 version, was a thorough instruction for combined-arm battle in division-sized formation.

IJA noticed those two documents have many redundancies. So they combined them into one manual, 作戦要務令 (sakusen yomurei, effective in 1938). Jinchu yomurei became part I, sento koyo as part II. IJA added part III newly for back-line service principles, such as transportations and supplies.

Part IV of sakusen yomurei was classified. In part IV they instructed on attack to fortifications, crossing broad river, swampy and jungle terrain, gas warfare and landing.

[Wellgunde]

Choshu leader Yamagata Aritomo is often called in the West the father of the IJA. He had an interesting career: commander in the restoration wars, Konoe commander, Vice Minister then Minister of the Army, Chief of the General Staff, and later Prime Minister (twice) and member of the Genro. Was he the driving force behind the push for the development of doctrine? Or was it perhaps Yamagata protégé Katsura Taro who spent eight years in Germany studying the German military system. Was Choshu domination of the early army a good thing or a bad thing?

[Eugen Pinak]

Few notes after reading 1940 Infantry Field Manual.
1. Tactical guidances are rather vague and no drawings of combat situations are provided. I think, it's done intentionally to ensure commanders won't use them, as templates. Surprisingly there are also no drawings even for basic drill postures, etc. - only for various parade march alignments etc.
2. A lot of space devoted to the information about handling weapons: not firing, not maintaining - just handling, packing and unpacking them. Also there are rather detailed regulations for regimental signal unit. On the other hand, there is not a single word about regimental cavalry unit. So manual is clustered with lot of info, totally unrelated to unit tactics.
3. Contrary to popular belief, manual describes infantry work with supporting arms, including tanks. In agreement with popular belief, manual tells very little about ammunition supply and almost nothing about other supply and evacuation.
4. There is no "banzai-charge" mentality in the manual. Importance of offensive spirit and other martial virtues are stressed in the introduction, but there are no attempts to squeeze "spirit" in the unit tactics per ce.
5. Manual has nothing about marching, meeting engagements, recon, intelligence, ambushes, protection, camps and so on. Where they described in another manual???

[mjbhjbh]

Thank you Hisashi for your efforts to translate the documents and for your enormous knowledge. I'm interested in IJA and IJN, but in my contry - south korea - there isnt any study about Imperial Japanese or only ridiculous rumors are spread. So i'm glad to find this priceless information, and I am most grateful to you.