Survey of Japanese Seacoast Artillery

Dataview Publishing has released a re-print of another interesting post-World War Two research document. This title was published in October 1945, a little over two months after the Japanese surrender. A team of five US Army Air Force officers were tasked to survey the defenses of the Japanese homeland. Their findings were classified Confidential and placed into this report, which was eventually declassified and sat in an archive somewhere before Dataview Publishing found it.

What this report reveals is a rather sophisticated defense system that was initially established during the Russo-Japanese portion of World War I. An array of gun batteries of rather impressive caliber were located around the Japanese islands and the southern Korean peninsula. This report shows the command and control, armament, staffing and disposition of these various homeland defense batteries that not only included heavy gun batteries, but were overlayed with sophisticated acoustic detection systems, mines, and as the threat of Allied invasion loomed, anything that could shoot.

The coverage of this informative title is presented as follows:.

1. General
2. Personnel
3. Organization
4. Training
5. Materiel
6. Technique
7. Tactical Employment

The title retains the original illustrations and photos of the team's findings.

To put this into perspective, the Allied invasion of Normandy was preceded by heavy aerial bombardment of the German coastal artillery positions rendering most of them combat ineffective and the surviving positions offered relatively little resistance and were quickly dispatched. An invasion of the Japanese homeland given the significantly better firepower and protection of the Japanese guns, plus their mines and their use of Kamikaze attacks from the air would have been VERY costly in men and ships.

This title is a nice reprint of an interesting topic and will be useful to aviation historians that want to get the proper perspective on the technologies and the state of the art in the context of the period. What industry accomplished during the war was nothing short of amazing.

This title is available directly from the publisher at Dataview Publications (www.dataviewbooks.com).

My sincere thanks to Dataview Publications for this review sample!