How America Drained Japan's Fuel — And Japan Never Recovered

In the spring of 1944, a Japanese oil tanker called the Taiyo Maru was somewhere in the South China Sea when a torpedo struck her below the waterline... In the spring of 1944, a Japanese oil tanker called the Taiyo Maru was somewhere in the South China Sea when a torpedo struck her below the waterline. She went down in under twelve minutes. Every barrel of the 10,000 tons of crude oil she was carrying went to the bottom with her. She was one of more than forty tankers the United States Navy's submarine force would send to the ocean floor that single year. This is the story of how American submarines strangled Japan's oil supply — and how a defective torpedo nearly cost the United States eighteen months of the most decisive campaign of the Pacific war. From the Naval Research Laboratory where Robert Morris Page first demonstrated pulse radar in 1936, to the Bureau of Ordnance's catastrophic resistance to acknowledging the Mark 14 torpedo's failures, to Admiral Lockwood's live firing tests on the cliffs of Kahoolawe — this video traces the complete story of the Pacific submarine campaign: how it was fought, who fought it, what it cost, and why it decided the outcome of the war before most people knew it was happening. By 1944, American submarines had destroyed so much of Japan's tanker fleet that the volume of oil reaching the home islands had fallen to less than a third of the minimum the navy required to sustain normal fleet operations. The Japanese fleet sortied for the Battle of Leyte Gulf with fuel reserves its own staff calculated as insufficient for a return voyage. The carriers that fought at the Philippine Sea arrived with aviation fuel loads that shaped — and limited — every attack profile their pilots could fly. A fleet that cannot fuel its ships cannot move those ships. A navy that cannot move has already lost. 00:00 — Japan's Oil Problem Begins 02:00 — American Submarines Go Silent 04:00 — The Mark 14 Torpedo Failure 06:30 — 18 Months of Defective Weapons 09:00 — Admiral Lockwood's Live Fire Test 11:00 — Japan's Tanker Fleet Disappears 13:00 — Battle of Leyte Gulf — No Fuel 14:30 — A Navy That Cannot Move Has Already Lost