Talk:Joint Army–Navy Assessment Committee

Article launched
This article is launched. There is comparatively little information available, either in print or online, about JANAC. Any additional contributions will be greatly appreciated.Marcd30319 (talk) 20:02, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Bravo! Thank you for this. I've been hoping somebody'll fill this red link for months. (Now I've got to reread Blair again & find his criticisms on attributing losses to the wrong boats... *sigh* Work, work, work. work, work, work...)  TREKphiler   hit me ♠  08:53, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your kind words.Marcd30319 (talk) 10:42, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

O'Kane assertion that JANAC replaced by Patrol Reports
All- Tang's O'Kane, p 472 of the 1989 edition of Clear the Bridge, asserts "In 1980 this portion of the JANAC report was officially replaced by the credits in the patrol reports." Anybody know more about this? What official method did that? Of interest, all of the USS Tang (SS-306) results are the patrol scores. Thanks JMOprof (talk) 18:11, 16 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't know. A DTIC bibliography, http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA423241, points to "JANAC Submarine Credits Revised,” Submarine Review 44-46 January 2000; see http://aimm.museum/NSL-Submarine-Review-2000-2004.asp for TOC. I cannot search http://www.navalsubleague.com/NSL/subreview.aspx Glrx (talk) 22:34, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Glrx - I'm a member of the Submarine League. They kindly sent me a copy of the January 2000 article. These are the first three paragraphs: JANAC SUBMARINE CREDITS REVISED

(The Submarine Review Staff)

The official tally of sinkings credited to each U.S. submarine in World War II appears in an appendix to Japanese Naval and Merchant Shipping Losses During World War II by All Causes published by The Joint Army-Navy Assessment Committee (JANAC) in February 1947. This list was repeated verbatim by Theodore Roscoe in his monumental and semi-official work United States Submarine Operations in World War II (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute, 1949). Since then the JANAC assessments have been cited in most books and articles dealing with the submarine war.

Researchers have known for many years that the JANAC list was incomplete because of certain inherent limitations. It counted only regular Japanese warships and merchant ships of 500 or more gross tons, thus ignoring the smaller merchant-type ships that were taken into the Navy as converted gunboats, minesweepers, submarine chasers, picket boats, and various types of auxiliaries. It also excluded German and other non-Japanese ships that were sunk by our submarines. Then, as new information came to light after the war's end, errors began to be revealed. Nevertheless, the Navy has never seen fit to revise or reopen the JANAC assessments.[emphasis added]

Ten years ago Commander John D. Alden, USN(Ret) produced an interim compendium of data on submarine attacks based on material from recognized sources available up to that time. (U.S. Submarine Attacks During World War II, Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute, 1989). Since then a flood of new information has been released with the declassification of formerly top-secret intelligence material including the famous ULTRA radio messages intercepted and decrypted during the war. Also in recent years Japanese researchers have published a wealth of data from their own archival sources. Printed in the Japanese language, these books and articles have been inaccessible to most U.S. students of the submarine campaign. Thanks to a British researcher who provided material translated from many Japanese publications, hundreds of additional cases have been revised or amplified. So, in my opinion, O'Kane's 1980 JANAC revision isn't known of to the experts. Further conclusions are unkind. The rest of the Sub League article gives some detail to "143 U.S. submarines for which Commander Alden believes that the JANAC credits need to be revised of seriously questioned. About 130 ships should be added to, and about 60 subtracted from, those attributed to submarines by JANAC." JMOprof (talk) 17:11, 28 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for digging this up. I know that takes work.
 * I can see a slightly different take on O'Kane's comments. The JANAC report stands (despite questioning). O'Kane's comments may be that the submarine force questioned JANAC's findings and it (or some higher authority) decided to substitute the endorsed patrol reports for its (possibly private) statistics (for example, what a sub skipper can claim for "official" sinkings). In other words, the sub part of JANAC wasn't replaced, but it was no longer viewed as the best authority.
 * In any event, the article you obtained would be a RS that JANAC's sub findings remained unchanged until at least January 2000.
 * Glrx (talk) 18:35, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Seems fair. So I went and ordered Alden's book:
 * Where Blair was organized by patrol, and Roscoe by submarine, Alden is by attack. I'll start with the top subs in sinking and in tonnage, and the top skippers, but I doubt I'll ever get it all into my spreadsheet.  Alden does look to be the modern authority. JMOprof (talk) 14:29, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Where Blair was organized by patrol, and Roscoe by submarine, Alden is by attack. I'll start with the top subs in sinking and in tonnage, and the top skippers, but I doubt I'll ever get it all into my spreadsheet.  Alden does look to be the modern authority. JMOprof (talk) 14:29, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

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