War Plan Orange (commonly known as Plan Orange or just Orange) was a series of United States Joint Army and Navy Board war plans for dealing with a possible war with Imperial Japan in the years between the First and Second World Wars. It failed to foresee the significance of the technological changes to naval warfare, including the submarine, air support and aircraft carriers, and although the Battle of Midway was important, and the US Navy did "island-hop" to regain lost territory, there was no culminating "showdown" battle as anticipated by Plan Orange.

Development

thumb|[[Raymond P. Rodgers, circa 1911.|alt=A portrait of United States Navy Rear Admiral Raymond P. Rodgers in a naval uniform]]

Informal studies as early as 1906 covered a number of possibilities, from basing at Gibraltar or Singapore, an idea revived by the British before World War II, to "a quick trans-Atlantic dash" to the Pacific. The plan eventually adopted was conceived by Rear Admiral Raymond P. Rodgers in 1911.

  • 19 Dec 1919: Strategy of the Pacific (JB 325, Serial 28)
  • 7 Jul 1923: Estimate of the Situation, Orange (JB 325, Serial 207)
  • 15 Aug 1924: Joint Basic War Plan - Orange (JB 325, Serial 228)
  • 10 Jan 1929: Revision of Joint Army and Navy Basic War Plan Orange (JB 325, Serial 280)
  • 20 Jun 1934: Inadequacy of Present Military and Naval Forces Philippine Area to Carry Out Assigned Missions in Event of an ORANGE War (JB 325, Serial 533)
  • 8 May 1935: Revision of Joint Army and Navy Basic War Plan - Orange (JB 325, Serial 546)
  • 19 May 1935: Revision of Joint Army and Navy Basic War Plan - Orange (JB 325, Serial 570)
  • 14 Oct 1936: Revision of Joint Orange Estimate of the Situation (JB 325, Serial 589)
  • 9 Dec 1936: Changes in Joint Basic War Plan Orange (JB 325, Serial 594)
  • 19 Feb 1938: Joint Army and Navy Basic War Plan Orange (1938) (JB 325, Serials 617 & 618)

The plan was formally adopted by the Joint Army and Navy Board beginning in 1924. Predating the Rainbow plans, which presumed the assistance of allies, Orange assumed that the United States would fight Japan alone.

Strategy

As originally conceived, it anticipated a blockade of the Philippines and other U.S. outposts in the western Pacific. They were expected to hold out on their own, while the Pacific Fleet marshaled its strength at bases in California and Hawaii and guarded against attacks on the Panama Canal.

After mobilization (the ships maintained only half of their crews in peacetime), the fleet would sail to the western Pacific to relieve American forces in Guam and the Philippines. Afterwards, the fleet would sail north for a decisive battle against the Imperial Japanese Navy's Combined Fleet, and then blockade the Japanese home islands.

The strategy was in keeping with the theory of Alfred Thayer Mahan, a doctrine to which every major navy subscribed before World War II, in which wars would be decided by engagements between opposing surface fleets, as they had been for over 300 years.

Following the 1933 Operations IV Wargame, which resulted in defeat for a hypothetical blue fleet meant to symbolize a US Philippine relief force, War Plan Orange was revised to account for a more steady, methodical advance in order to take Japanese strongpoints in the Marshall Islands. This was done in accordance to observations that both stretched logistical capacity in the "through ticket to the Philippines" strategy, and inability to repair damaged vessels, allowed Japan to gain command of the sea via the neutralization of the US battle line force.

Despite this, the strategy followed by the U.S. in the Pacific War differed little from Rodgers' concept from 1911: a leapfrog campaign to conquer the Marshalls and Carolines (held by Japan before the war), liberation of the Philippines, and blockade.

The Imperial Japanese Navy, obsessed with the "decisive battle" doctrine, ignored the vital need for defense against submarines. The German and American submarine campaigns against their opponents' merchant shipping demonstrated the need for an anti-submarine warfare strategy. While the Allies took extensive measures to combat the threat of German U-boats, the Japanese failed to effectively counter the American submarines, which ultimately choked Japan's industrial production and paralyzed her navy.

Japan also notably failed to institute an anti-commerce campaign where systematic use of commerce raiders could have made Allied operations much more complex and conquering and holding Japanese-held islands more difficult.

American war planners failed to appreciate that technological advances in submarines and naval aviation had made Mahan's doctrine obsolete and did not anticipate a preemptive strike from the Japanese. In particular, they did not yet know either that aircraft would be able to effectively sink battleships, or that Japan might put the American battleship force (the Battle Line) out of action at a stroke, which actually happened at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

American plans changed after this attack. Even after major Japanese defeats like Midway, once the effectiveness of aircraft carriers was known, the Americans favored a methodical "island-hopping" advance, never going far beyond land-based air cover. Meanwhile, a blockade was imposed from the very beginning of the war, with the first American submarine, , arriving off Japan on about 31 December 1941.

A number of requirements grew out of Orange, including the specification for a fleet submarine with high speed, long range, and heavy torpedo armament. These coalesced in the submarine in 1932. In August 1941, this was rejected and the US returned to the . The demand for submarines of this size also drove the development of the notoriously problematic Mark 14 torpedo, and its equally notorious Mark VI exploder, under the guidance of Commander Ralph W. Christie. The Navy also spent "several hundred thousand dollars" to develop powerful, compact diesel engines, among them the troublesome Hooven-Owens-Rentschler, which proved useful for railroads.