by Rising Sun Victorious: An Alternate History of the Pacific War
Would the United States have invaded Guadalcanal even though it had lost three carriers? Probably. Both MacArthur and King knew the value of that airstrip to the Japanese and knew they had to keep it from being built in order to protect America's lines of communication to Australia. They also knew that if U.S. aircraft could operate from Guadalcanal instead the major Japanese base at Rabaul would be threatened. Once the Americans were on the island, the Japanese would react quickly, and in this depiction of MacArthur's strategy the American invasion would have distracted Japanese attention from much more potentially damaging directions.
Even with a large defeat at Midway and the distraction of the United States, the war could have been finished in mid-1945 anyway, but with a more difficult postwar recovery. The early reverses and the brutal treatment of prisoners by the Japanese would have hardened American attitudes further and given the war an even more desperate cast. The Manhattan Project would still have had the highest priority, and once a bomber was available to deliver the new nuclear weapons, there would have been no hesitation about using them. Jack Northrup's elegant Flying Wings (with the unintended but welcome attribute of being nearly invisible to radar) could have delivered nuclear destruction to the very heart of enemy territory, and Tokyo and possibly Berlin would have been the first of several targets as the new fission weapons became available.
The enemy had sowed the wind, and they reaped a whirlwind they could never have anticipated. The loss of Midway would have only increased its force and ensured its inevitability.
The events presented in this chapter as following such a defeat turn on the decision of Lieutenant Commander McCluskey to turn toward Midway rather than northwest, which would have taken him toward the Japanese carriers. In reality he turned toward the Japanese, seeking the enemy rather than safety, in the finest traditions of the U.S. Navy. He found the enemy carriers, and his strikes led to the sinking of all four of them. Midway was the critical, decisive defeat of the Imperial Japanese Navy that ultimately wrested initiative away from it.
Bibliography
Baker, A. D., Japanese Naval Vessels of World War II as seen by U.S. Intelligence (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 1987).
Baldwin, Ralph B., The Deadly Fuze: The Secret Weapon of World War II (Presidio Press, San Raphael, 1980).
Boyne, Walter J., Clash of Wings: Air Power in World War II (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1994).
Francillon, R. J., Japanese Aircraft of the Pacific War (Funk & Wagnalls, New York, 1970).
Frank, Richard B., Guadalcanal (Penguin Books, New York, 1990).
Freeman, Roger A., Mustang at War (Doubleday, New York, 1974).
Gay, George, Sole Survivor (Midway Publishers, Naples, Florida, 1980).
Gunston, Bill, Bombers (Grosset & Dunlap, New York, 1978).
Hoyt, Edwin P., Japan's War (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1986).
McCullough, David, The Path Between the Seas (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1977).
Moore, John, Captain RN, Jane's American Fighting Ships of the 20th Century (Modern Publishing, New York, 1995).
Morison, Samuel Eliot, The Two-Ocean War (Little, Brown, Boston, 1963).
Prados, John, Combined Fleet Decoded (Random House, New York, 1995).
Smith, Peter C, The Battle of Midway (Spellmount, Staplehurst, 1976).
Wooldridge, E. T., Winged Wonders (Smithsonian Institute Press, Washington, DC, 1985).
Notes
1. For the purposes of this story, it is assumed that Lieutenant Commander Max Leslie of the Yorktown didn't find the Japanese carriers when Commander McCluskey turned toward Midway Island.
*2. For greater detail of this battle, see Minora Genda, Glorious Victory in the Pacific (Asahi Shibun Press, Tokyo, 1944).
*3. Ibid.
4. John Prados's Combined Fleet Decoded (Random House, 1995) gives excellent detail of this remarkable area of the war.
5. This remarkable weapon was second in secrecy only to the atomic bomb during World War II. The U.S. government only reluctantly shared the technology with Britain in 1944.
*6. The Battle of Guadalcanal deserves much more attention than it has gotten. Coming so soon on the heels of an unbroken succession of Japanese victories, it was the first true recovery of American initiative and the Allies' first step on the road back. Unfortunately, the success of the 1st Marine Division in the Solomons was eclipsed by the momentous events taking place in the East Pacific.
*7. Because of the uniqueness of San Diego's position as the only city in the continental United States to have suffered an attack by enemy forces in World War II, San Diego's War Memorial Museum at Balboa Park has been America's number one tourist attraction ever since.
*8. President MacArthur's Library Foundation was kind enough to allow the author access to the president's staff planning notes for this time period.
*9. Captain C. Gable's account of this battle in Revenge! The Ambush of Japan's Raid on Panama (Silent Service Publishing, Norfolk, Virginia, 1976) gives additional insight into his deployment of his submarines into the path of the Japanese special attack force.
CHAPTER 6
Samurai Down Under
The Japanese Invasion of Australia
John H. Gill
Key British and U.S. military leaders faced a bleak prospect in April 1942 when they gathered in London to discuss strategy. In Russia, the Red Army had succeeded in throwing the Wehrmacht back from the gates of Moscow, but exhausted itself in the process. An operational pause had set in, but there was every expectation that the spring would bring a vast new German offensive. A similar pause brought a temporary lull to the Western Desert after General Erwin Rommel's January attacks had carried his Afrika Korps deep into Libya, regaining much of the territory lost to the British the previous year. Much more threatening to Great Britain's immediate survival were the continued German successes in the Battle of the Atlantic, particularly Operation Drumbeat, the U-boat campaign that was devastating shipping along the U.S. East Coast.
The picture was even worse in Asia, where the shock of Pearl Harbor and the sinking of the warships Prince of Wales and Repulse had been followed by an unbroken string of Japanese triumphs. In a seemingly irresistible tide of conquest, Japan's armed forces had forced the humiliating surrender of Singapore, crushed disjointed Allied resistance in the Netherlands East Indies, overrun the Philippines, evicted the British from Burma, threatened the last Allied link to China, bombed Australia, and seized bases on the northern shores of New Guinea. Even as Gen. George C. Marshall, the head of the small U.S. delegation, was flying to England, Japanese carriers were rampaging through the eastern Indian Ocean, bombing facilities on Ceylon, and adding to the Royal Navy's list of casualties, including the carrier Hermes. Nonetheless, from Marshall's perspective, the London conference went well. America's military and industrial might was slowly unfolding, and he believed he had won a British promise to launch an invasion of Western Europe in 1942. The British, having borne the brunt of Axis wrath thus far, were cautious and skeptical of an early cross-channel attack, but likewise looked for an opportunity to take the offensive somewhere in 1942. As they said their farewells, Churchill spoke of the two nations marching ahead “in a noble brotherhood of arms,” and Marshall headed home with hopes of a “crescendo of activity” that very year.1 What neither the British prime minister nor the American general yet knew was that the first notes of this particular crescendo would be sounded by their enemies on the other side of the world.
Strategic Points in the Australian Area
While Allied leaders were planning in London, Japan's military strategists were debating their next moves. Even before the first phase of conquests had been fully achieved, a General Liaison Conference between the Army and Navy General Staffs decided, in early Marcii 1942, that Japan, contrary to prewar assumptions, would have to continue its offensive operations: “In order to bring Britain to submission and to demoralize the United States, aggressive measures shall be taken by seizing opportuni
ties to expand our acquired war gains.”
Although the policy adopted by the conference included “measures such as the invasion of India and Australia,” the exact actions to be taken remained under discussion for the next three weeks.2 After rejecting the possibility of reconstituting and defending its existing gains, Japan had fundamentally three offensive strategic options in early 1942. First, it could advance into the Central Pacific and attempt to force the U.S. Pacific Fleet into a decisive naval battle by threatening a key American asset such as Midway or Hawaii. The second possibility was a drive into the Indian Ocean to destroy Britain's Eastern Fleet, weaken the British hold on India, and perhaps establish a link with Germany in the Middle East. Third was the “Australia-first” option, with an adjunct push through the Solomons to Fiji and New Caledonia to isolate Australia from the United States.
As the heated interchanges accelerated through the month of March, navy captain Sadatoshi Tomioka argued passionately and persuasively in favor of the Australia option. Tomioka, assigned to the Plans Division in the Navy General Staff, was a vain but able officer, the top graduate in his class at the Naval War College. In his presentations, he highlighted several important advantages he expected Japan to gain by a direct attack on the Australian mainland. In the first place, a successful invasion would deny to the Allies the logical springboard for any counteroffensive against Japan's new holdings in the Southwest Pacific. Moreover, as an arena where the Allies could exploit America's material superiority, Australia “would be a weak spot in Japan's defensive armor unless it were either placed under Japanese control or effectively cut off from the United States.” Finally, Tomioka and his superiors saw an invasion of Australia as a key step in their campaign “to break the fighting determination of the Allies,” a crucial consideration for a military culture that placed a high premium on the psychological factor in war.3
At a conference in early April, while General Marshall was flying toward London, the Japanese staffs quarreled and contemplated. Tomioka's principal adversary was army colonel Takushiro Hattori, who saw the Australia option as a diversion of effort from the army's traditional continental focus. Meeting privately over tea one evening, Hattori was unable to shake his navy counterpart's conviction. Picking up his teacup, Hattori said: “The tea in this cup represents our total strength.” He then spilled the tea on the floor and added, “You see it goes just so far. If your plan is approved I will resign.”4 Unfortunately for Hattori, Tomioka had by that time garnered the support of the Combined Fleet, whose chief of staff wanted to ensure that Imperial forces remained “vigorously on the offensive” so Japan would not be put “in a position of waiting for her enemies to attack without any special advantages to herself.”5 The navy plan gained additional help from Lt. Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita, the “Tiger of Malaya,” whose skill and daring had brought about the surrender of Singapore several weeks earlier. Overwhelmed Hattori attempted to resign as promised but was reassigned to the staff of the 38th Division in China.
Tomioka had won the day, and the conference concluded on April 5, 1942, with a decision to move against “strategic points in the Australian area as speedily as operational conditions permit.”6 The price for this victory, however, was the Navy General Staff's acquiescence in Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto's complex plan for the Combined Fleet's attack on Midway. Though the naval staff “pleaded vigorously, on occasion almost tearfully, against the plan,” Yamamoto would not be moved and Japan found herself committed to conducting two simultaneous major offensives separated from each other by thousands of miles of ocean.7
Further Pressure on Australia
The Japanese plan for the invasion of Australia envisaged two grand phases. The first, scheduled for early May, would set the stage for later moves by seizing Port Moresby on the southern coast of Papua (Operation MO) and establishing a seaplane base on the tiny islet of Tulagi near Guadalcanal in the Solomons. The second phase, Operation AU, would be the actual invasion of northeastern Australia with the aim of seizing Allied air bases that could threaten the Japanese stronghold at Rabaul, and then driving south so land-based bombers could devastate the principal Australian east coast ports and sever links to the United States. Japanese planners thus calculated that there was no need to conquer or occupy all of Australia, a prospect Hattori and other army staff officers predicted would require ten or twelve divisions and impossible amounts of shipping. Instead Yamashita and the navy developed a campaign plan that would leave Japan in possession of bases in coastal enclaves as far south as Brisbane.8 From these, Japanese aircraft could easily range to Sydney, Canberra, and Melbourne, and possibly even strike as far as Adelaide, while patrol planes scoured the seas to the south and east.
Operation AU was slated to occur approximately one month after the capture of Port Moresby. It was thus timed to coincide with Yamamoto's offensive toward Midway in the hopes that the Combined Fleet would draw off the American Pacific Fleet, leaving the Australian invasion force unmolested by the U.S. carriers. Air bases and seaplane bases in the Solomons would provide flank protection to Operation AU and establish a foundation for a subsequent advance toward Fiji and New Caledonia. Other Japanese forces would loom menacingly in the Dutch East Indies, posing a constant threat to northwestern Australia and distracting Allied attention. As an addendum to the plan, Tomioka included the possibility of future amphibious attacks to seize Darwin and perhaps Perth “to bring further pressure on Australia.”9 Even without these acquisitions, however, the Japanese were confident that Operation AU would cut Australia off from any reasonable hope of succor and simultaneously deal a crippling blow to Allied morale.
The decision to invade Australia led to a rapid increase in Japanese military and naval might between New Britain and New Guinea. Headquartered at Rabaul was the newly established 8th Fleet, or Outer South Seas Force, under Vice Adm. Gunichi Mikawa, “an intelligent, soft-spoken sailor of broad experience.”10 Although the skilled Mikawa controlled the 8th Fleet's ships and a substantial contingent of naval guard and amphibious troops, navy air was under Vice Adm. Nishizo Tsuka-hara's 11th Air Fleet. The Imperial Army, initially represented by Maj. Gen. Tomitaro Horii's brigade-sized South Seas Detachment, was now supplemented by four infantry divisions (5th, 6th, 17th, 51st), two separate brigades (21st, 65th), and one of Japan's three recently created tank divisions (2nd). General Yamashita, as the author of the outline plan, was designated to lead this large force as the commander of the new 17th Army.11 Further, he was promised the use, at least temporarily, of two additional divisions should opportunities for easy conquest develop.
On April 23, 1942, Mikawa issued the directive for Operation MO, Outer South Seas Force Order No. 13. Less than two weeks later, a large naval task force sailed from Rabaul under Mikawa's personal command, transporting Horii's South Seas Detachment, the 3rd Kure Special Naval Landing Force (SNLF), and other ground troops slated for the assault on and occupation of Port Moresby. Other elements of the 3rd Kure SNLF headed for Tulagi in the Solomons, while the fleet carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku of Vice Adm. Chuichi Hara's 5th Carrier Division steamed down from the Central Pacific to cover the invasion. 12 Mikawa exuded calm confidence and the troops “were in high spirits as they embarked on their grand and ambitious scheme.”13
Coral Disaster
As the Japanese assembled their forces, the Allies struggled to find a way to gain the initiative. Marshall argued against any diversion from the buildup in Europe, but Gen. Douglas MacArthur, in Australia after his escape from the Philippines, and Adm. Ernest J. King, Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet, urged action in the Pacific. As commander of the new Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA), MacArthur naturally stressed the importance of Australia, but King also recognized its significance as an Allied base for future operations, pointing out that the line of communications to the island continent was “only barely less important” than the link between Hawaii and California. Owing to King's determination and good intelligence that “an offensive in the Southwest Pacific is shaping
up,” two U.S. carriers, Yorktown and Lexington, were on hand to intercept Mikawa's task force as it sailed around the eastern end of Papua and into the Coral Sea.14
Unfortunately for the Allies, the Battle of the Coral Sea proved to be yet another in a long string of reversals, albeit not as disastrous as some of the earlier encounters. The battle began well enough for the Allies. U.S. attack planes found part of Mikawa's force in the late'morning of May 7 and sank the light carrier Shoho, jubilantly reporting “Scratch one flattop!” By excitedly concentrating on the hapless Shoho, however, they failed to damage any of the vulnerable transports, and Mikawa quickly set about reassembling his scattered fleet behind the shelter of the Louisiades. As Shoho was sinking, aircraft from the 5th Carrier Division found and crippled the U.S. oiler Neosho while sending its lone escort, the destroyer Sims, to the bottom. That afternoon, Japanese navy G3M Nell and G4M Betty bombers from Rabaul found Task Force 44, a small U.S./Australian surface force that was cruising south of the Jomard Passage with the mission to attack the Port Moresby invasion fleet. By skillful maneuvering and good luck, TF 44 escaped this attack unscathed. The American and Australian sailors were less fortunate that night, when Mikawa led his cruisers and destroyers in an unexpected attack on the Allied ships. In a confused action, the Japanese navy's superiority in night fighting resulted in TF 44's lone light cruiser and two of its destroyers being sunk. Of the three remaining ships, both heavy cruisers (one American and one Australian) suffered serious damage and were fortunate to evade detection as they slipped south to make their way back to Australia. Mikawa lost just one destroyer.
As the Allied ships were limping away from the Jomard and Mikawa was gathering up his flock of transports, the two principal carrier forces found each other. In a series of hard-fought actions on May 8, American attack planes caused light damage to Shokaku before she and her sister ship disappeared in a heavy squall. The thick smoke from a fire aboard Shokaku, the poor visibility, and the lack of an overall attack commander led the U.S. Navy pilots to exaggerate their success. To their dismay, however, the Americans soon learned from signal intercepts that Zuikaku was unhurt and that Shokaku's crew had quickly extinguished her fire and resumed operations. Meanwhile, the Japanese fliers struck a damaging blow against the U.S. carrier force. While the Americans were trying to find tacked under clear skies, pummeling Lexington and also managing a hit on Yorktown. Still capable of flight operations, Yorktown accepted most of the aircraft from both air wings, while Lexington's crew struggled to save their beloved ship. Despite extraordinary valor, Lexington was beyond rescue and had to be sunk that evening as Yorktown hurried away toward Pearl Harbor.
