Aircraft Industry during the Pacific War

Abstract

Japan put all of her energies into increasing aircraft output during the latter half of the Pacific War. The demand for aircraft was in exess of the productive capacity, so the government mobilized equipment, materials, labor to the aircraft industry as much as posible. In this sense the aircraft industry is an important focus for the analysis of the national mobilization in Japan. The military authorities planned an urgent aircraft production program for 1944 during the summer of 1943 with priority given to the High Command demands. In this plan they expected 3 times as much output as 1943 at the cost of reductions in many other weapons. The Musashino Plant of Nakajima Aircraft Company, Ltd., one of the biggest aircraft maker in Japan, expanded its facilities rapidly. But on the other hand, lack of coordination of equipments and dilution proceeded unduly. The Musashino Plant had priority for materials, machines, labor, electricity, etc.. Trading on this merits the plant tightened the combinations between subcontract, cooperative and allied factories. But the high productivity was not accomplished owing to a shortage of high efficiency machines and technical experts. For all that the extream mobilization of labor, the priority production of materials and machines for aircraft, the nationwide recovery and the distribution concentration yielded much increase in aircraft production. There was no consideration for the cooperation of the overall economy anymore. Therefore the selfgoverned distribution system by the Control Asociations which developed during the war time, began to collapse.