Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942

by Ian W. Toll

  In his memoirs, Churchill recalled that Hopkins said to him: “Don’t be in a hurry to turn down the proposal the President is going to make to you before you know who is the man we have in mind.” Marshall then nominated a British general, Field Marshal Sir Archibald P. Wavell, as the first supreme Allied commander of “ABDACOM,” an acronym denoting the “American-British-Dutch-Australian Command.” The ABDACOM theater would embrace Burma, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, western New Guinea, the northwest quadrant of Australia, and the Philippines, including all the adjacent seas. Wavell would command all forces “afloat, ashore, and in the air.”

  Churchill recalled, “I was complimented by the choice of a British commander, but it seemed to me that the theatre in which he would act would soon be overrun and the forces which would be placed at his disposal would be destroyed by the Japanese onslaught.” The prime minister revealed himself as a dyed-in-the-wool navalist by declaring that he would rather see British ships commanded by an American admiral than by a British general. He counterproposed that Admiral Thomas Hart, commander of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, should retain command of all ABDA naval forces and merely “conform” to the plans and polices of Field Marshal Wavell. The Americans rejected that as ambiguous. King himself took up a pen and rewrote the order to specify that naval forces would fall under Wavell’s command.

  Churchill’s resistance broke down under the combined heavy pressure of Roosevelt, Marshall, and Hopkins, particularly when King’s obstinate backing was thrown on the scale. The British leader might have hoped he could count on Admiral King to oppose the idea of putting his ships under the command of a foreign general—but King, once he had made up his mind, supported Wavell unequivocally. Churchill, in the face of this united front, concluded that “it was evident that we must meet the American view.” He did not ask the British war cabinet in London for its approval, but sent a telegram announcing that the decision had been made. The U.S. Navy would “remain responsible for the whole Pacific Ocean east of Philippine Islands and Australasia, including United States approaches to Australasia.” He concluded, “I have not attempted to argue case for and against our accepting this broadminded and selfless American proposal, of merits of which as a war-winner I have become convinced.”

  Receiving the news by cable to London, General Brooke was dismayed. In his diary he wrote: “The whole scheme [is] wild and half baked and only catering for one area of action, namely western Pacific, one enemy Japan, and no central control.” However, “cabinet was forced to accept the PM’s new scheme owing to the fact that it was almost a fait accompli!” By December 29, only four days after Marshall had first broached the subject, the other ABDA powers had agreed to Wavell’s appointment and the unlucky general had received his orders. Despite initial resistance from King, and heavier and more sustained resistance from the British, Marshall had gotten his way in remarkably short order. Wavell arrived at Batavia, on the island of Java, on January 10, 1942. By that time, the Japanese onslaught in that theater was nearing its successful climax.

  The ABDA command would be short-lived, but it forced the Allies to confront fundamental questions about how their coalition would be run. From whom would Field Marshal Wavell receive his orders? How would the American and British high commands be blended? Most crucially, where was the high command to be located, Washington or London? Or would it somehow straddle the Atlantic? And what of the smaller nations of the coalition—would they also have a seat at the table? Could the Second World War be waged by a multinational committee? Those questions were painful and difficult, and could not be resolved without spreading dissent and rancor within the Allied camp, but King insisted that they be decided immediately.

  Wavell’s orders had stated that he would receive his instructions from an “appropriate joint body,” accountable to the president and prime minister. Admiral Pound, the British first sea lord, proposed that the Allies should “utilize existing machinery.” In other words, the Allied high command would simply be represented by the Anglo-American service chiefs—the men sitting around that table in the Federal Reserve boardroom, plus General Alan Brooke, who had remained in London. Together, they would form a Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCOS) committee, accountable directly to the president and prime minister. They would guide the overall strategic direction of the war, set production goals, allocate military resources, distribute orders to all Allied commands worldwide, and (crucially) control all Allied shipping. In a private lunch at the White House on December 29, Roosevelt told Admiral King that he did not believe the high command could be expanded beyond the United States and Britain without losing coherence. The Australians, New Zealanders, Dutch, Chinese, Free French, and all the other lesser Allies would have to be excluded from those deliberations—they would receive orders from the CCOS and be expected to carry them out. King recognized that these nations would be severely disappointed, but agreed with Roosevelt that it was a price that must be paid for a functioning command structure. The president authorized King to convey his view to the CCOS in the next day’s meeting of the chiefs, and he did. “It was obvious that with so many participants in the war, decisions could not be made by a show of hands,” King later told a group of war correspondents. “This is a hard-boiled method bound to cause friction and unhappiness among the smaller nations . . . but it is the only way to function effectively.”

  Where was this “machinery” to be located? The Americans insisted that it should be in Washington, with a British representative acting as a liaison to London. That was a bitter pill for the British to swallow, having run their war from London for nearly two and a half years. They held out for two committees, one in London, the other in Washington—and proposed a system in which major decisions could be formulated through telegraph communications between the two capitals. Roosevelt, King, Marshall, and the Americans replied that this would be impractical, and would represent a fatal weakening in the principle of a single command organization to fight a global war. That was the single most controversial issue of the conference. The Americans pointed out that the United States would produce the great majority of munitions and other war matériel, and that North America was geographically more central to the European and Pacific theaters. Roosevelt primly anticipated that “There will possibly be quite a time over this,” while Hopkins noted that “The suggestion of an ‘appropriate joint body’ has kicked up a hell of a row.”

  The British angled to retain some power in London by proposing two “coequal” munitions allocation subcommittees, one in London and one in Washington, to be headed by Beaverbrook and Hopkins respectively. The idea was quashed when Marshall heatedly threatened to tender his resignation rather than accept it. It was a bitter point. Bob Sherwood judged that the issue “provoked more heated argument than any other topic considered at the Arcadia Conference. . . . This was one of the few subjects on which a division appeared on nationalistic lines as between British and Americans, and it was never completely closed.” Churchill did not accept defeat easily; he persisted in arguing his case robustly and at length. But when it became clear that Roosevelt was going to stand behind Marshall, and that the British must acquiesce or risk an open break, Churchill surrendered with the face-saving suggestion that “the system be set up and tried for one month.” Roosevelt gratefully agreed: “We shall call it a preliminary agreement and try it out that way.” The arrangement would continue through the end of the war.

  Receiving reports by cable in London, General Brooke was appalled: “I could see no reason why at this stage, with American forces totally unprepared to play a major part, we should agree to a central control in Washington.” Later, when the British service chiefs had returned to England, Brooke rebuked Portal and Pound for having “sold the birthright for a plate of porridge.” But Churchill had not been swindled. He had given in reluctantly, but with his eyes open. Lord Moran, as the prime minister’s doctor, observed that he was “possessed with one idea to the exclusion of all others”—to “bring the Presiden
t into the War with his heart set on victory. If that can be done, nothing else matters.” Before December 7, Britain had been in the position of a suitor; afterward, as the prime minister put it to King George VI, “Britain and America were now married after many months of walking out.”

  There was some consolation in the appointment of Field Marshal Sir John Dill to head the Washington-based British Joint Staff Mission. Dill had been removed by Churchill as chief of the Imperial General Staff and replaced by Brooke. He had come to Washington to assist in the transition; the decision to leave him in Washington came as an afterthought. Dill had an excellent rapport with all the American military leaders, and would remain a vital intermediary between the British and Americans until his death in 1944. The American chiefs traveled to wartime conferences in London and several other places around the world. The CCOS met a total of eighty-nine times between 1941 and 1945, and those summits produced many of the substantive decisions and compromises of the war. Of the CCOS apparatus Churchill later wrote, “There was never a failure to reach effective agreement for action, or to send clear instructions to the commanders in every theatre. Every executive officer knew that the orders he received bore with them the combined conception and expert authority of both Governments.”

  Lord Beaverbrook, the British production chief, believed the American production targets were “utterly inadequate,” and made his case directly to the president on December 29. He urged that U.S. production goals for 1942 should be revised upward to 45,000 tanks, 17,700 antiaircraft guns, and 24,000 fighter planes. As for the navy, Admiral Stark had already proposed to increase the existing building program (based on the 1940 expansion bill) to build an additional 8 aircraft carriers, 24 cruisers, 102 destroyers, and 54 submarines—a total of 900,000 tons. The keels would all be laid by 1944. But even those plans were not grand enough. In January 1942, the General Board of the navy envisioned a fleet composed of 34 battleships, 24 carriers, 12 battle cruisers, 104 other cruisers, 379 destroyers, and 207 submarines. Those figures represented a significant shift in favor of aircraft carriers. There were also calls for more escort vessels, and that would lead eventually to the construction of many destroyer escorts, vessels specially designed for convoy work. The necessary directives enforcing those colossal goals on every agency of the government were distributed widely to all concerned.

  The president’s State of the Union address, delivered to the Congress on January 6, showcased the president’s titanic production targets. “We must raise our sights all along the production line. Let no man say it cannot be done.” In 1942, the nation would manufacture 45,000 tanks, 20,000 antiaircraft weapons, 60,000 aircraft, and 6 million deadweight tons of cargo shipping. Those targets, Roosevelt added, “will give the Japanese and the Nazis a little idea of just what they accomplished in the attack at Pearl Harbor.” The numbers had been revised by Roosevelt himself, apparently with no actual basis in the estimates that had been given to him—he simply crossed out the estimates he had received and rewrote them with his own hand on the night before the speech. When Hopkins worried that these arbitrary, back-of-the-envelope figures might not be feasible, the president serenely replied: “Oh—the production people can do it, if they really try.” Roosevelt, Bob Sherwood observed, “was never afraid of big, round numbers.”

  The numbers were stunning. Lord Moran wrote that Churchill, more than any of his colleagues, understood what production on that scale would mean for the course of the war: “He is drunk with the figures.”

  Many thought the targets unrealistic. In the War Department, an officer was said to have remarked that Roosevelt had “gone in for the ‘numbers racket’!” Industry leaders, having operated for years at partial capacity during the Great Depression, were skeptical—many suggested that the president had been misled by Harry Hopkins. On January 13, the president responded to those criticisms by summoning a Sears, Roebuck executive, Donald Nelson, and creating a new agency to coordinate a complete mobilization of industry: the War Production Board (WPB). Nelson was appointed on the strong recommendation of Hopkins, who argued that he alone should be given the job rather than a three-man board. The president accepted Hopkins’s view that Nelson “was the best of the lot.” He would be the “war czar.” Under his supervision, the nation’s industrial base would be retooled and ramped up to round-the-clock production, seven days a week. Assembly lines would run in three-shift rotations. Vast industries devoted to such peacetime pursuits as building automobiles would be shut down by government decree. No further sales of cars or light trucks to civilians were permitted. All cars that were already in the retail pipeline, sitting on dealer lots, would be subject to a rationing system. Most went to the government, and a few more to professionals whose work was considered essential.

  SINCE 1775, ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS had been haunted by a spirit of antagonism, distrust, and jealousy. Even after Pearl Harbor, many Americans suspected that the British had somehow duped a second consecutive generation of their countrymen into pouring their blood and treasure into the European swamp. They feared the British would harness the power of American democracy to save their global empire, and in doing so plant the seeds of future wars.

  With those hoary grievances forming the backdrop to the Allies’ negotiations, the Arcadia Conference was a triumph of wartime diplomacy. The Allies had reaffirmed the “Europe-first” policy. They had agreed that the major issues of the war would be decided by a Washington-based Anglo-American Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCOS) committee. They had created the ABDA command with Field Marshal Wavell as its C-in-C. In writing Wavell’s charter, the Allies were reacting to an immediate crisis in the Pacific—but their ad hoc efforts had established the precedent for unified multinational and interservice theater commanders, and even created the institutional machinery of a blended high command. They had written the Charter of the United Nations, a joint statement of purpose that evolved into the New York–based multilateral organization that still exists today. They had set extravagant targets for war production, and would achieve them. They had created a true Allied coalition, an achievement that contrasted sharply with the Axis nations, which were never more than allies in name.

  Roosevelt and Churchill (with Hopkins in a vital supporting role) had cemented their personal understanding, which was based on genuine mutual fondness. Together, they would sit atop the whole structure, and make the major decisions that could not be resolved by their military chiefs. (Admiral Leahy, who served as Roosevelt’s military chief of staff after mid-1942, said flatly that the two leaders “really ran the war.”) Britain would work its influence gently, so as not to chafe the fragile American ego—Churchill informed his war cabinet that the Americans “were not above learning from us, provided that we did not set out to teach them.”

  George Marshall’s leadership has been forcefully stressed by historians of the Second World War. King, by contrast, has often been cast in the role of Marshall’s antagonist, rival, or spoiler. That there were substantive disagreements between them cannot be denied, but it is all too easy to blow those differences out of proportion. At Arcadia, King backed Marshall on unity of command. He agreed to place the U.S. Asiatic Fleet under the command of a British general. He argued for a larger allocation of scarce military resources to shore up the U.S.-Australia lifeline, a view that was controversial at the time but was largely vindicated by subsequent events. In negotiations concerning the creation of the supreme Allied command, he asked tough, penetrating questions that forced the participants to clarify their thinking. But at the conclusion of the discussion, he and Marshall held the same view.

  Above all, Marshall and King were partners. They were the two dominant members of the Joint Chiefs, and as such they always understood that their partnership was at the heart of the American war effort. If they failed to reach agreement on any substantive issue of the war, the dispute would have to be adjudicated by Roosevelt himself. Deadlocks would diminish their credibility and threaten the cohesiveness of the hi
gh command. In that spirit, Marshall and King almost always found a way to work out their differences. “King knew he had to get along,” one of his staff subordinates recalled. “That was the compelling influence on all of them. They knew they had to get along.”

  But there was one issue on which King would never yield. “I have no intention whatever of acceding to any unity of command proposals that are not premised on a particular situation in a particular area at a particular time for a more or less particular period,” King wrote a colleague during the conference. “I have found it necessary to find time to point out to some ‘amateur strategists’ in high places that unity of command is not a panacea for all military difficulties—and I shall continue to do so.” More directly to the point, King would never consent to place the Pacific Fleet under the command of the messianic, fame-seeking General MacArthur.

  JANUARY 13 WAS CHURCHILL’S PENULTIMATE NIGHT in Washington. The president, prime minister, first lady, and various other guests and staffers gathered in the Oval Study for cocktails before dinner. Louis Adamic, an author who had been invited to dinner that night, recalled that Churchill arrived late. He entered the room wearing a “semi-scowl on his big, chubby, pink-and-white face with its light-blue eyes,” and “moved as though he were without joints, all of a piece: solidly, unhurriedly, impervious to obstacles, like a tank or a bulldozer. . . . His large, round mug was perfectly smooth, blandly innocent—except for the eyes and mouth, which were shrewd, ruthless, unscrupulous.” Adamic had recently published a book advocating a leading role for the United States in promoting democracy in Europe after the war; Eleanor Roosevelt had read it and given copies to the president, the prime minister, and many others. Adamic, a liberal anti-imperialist, was not exactly an impartial observer—he freely confessed that he distrusted Churchill and the British Tories—but his eyewitness account of that evening’s dinner was nonetheless vivid and convincing. Watching the interplay between the two Allied leaders, he saw that they were genuine friends, familiar and affectionate toward one another; but he also noted a strained undertone, as if they had recently quarreled. “Gazing at each other, smiling yet not smiling, they seemed to be feeling out each other’s measure, speculating, challenging. . . . Each seemed to be saying inaudibly to the other: Now how am I going to handle you tonight? How will you react to my tactics?”