Operation FS: Japan's Final Strike

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XXI: Rolling the Dice, October 1942

The storm clouds cleared to reveal open skies on the morning of the 23rd. Yamamoto had hoped for another day of bad weather so that he could position his navy for a surface duel not far from Noumea. As things were, the bulk of his fleet: three battleships including Yamato, the carriers Soryu and Hiryu, four heavy cruisers and seventeen destroyers – was in the middle of a great movement around the west of New Caledonia, by 0600 they were roughly 100 kilometres south of Koumac. Reconnaissance efforts indicated that Fletcher’s navy was located nearly due south of Noumea.
Fletcher knew that Yamamoto was coming, with intelligence officers bringing him a list of Japanese ships allocated to the operation two days earlier and coastwatchers confirming the Japanese movements west of New Caledonia. Those reports indicated that Yamamoto’s flagship was the Yamato, at this point believed to be a Japanese heavy cruiser. That belief would cause considerable confusion among the Allied command, as three battleships had been sighted but only two reported, and while it was obvious that a reporting error existed, no-one could yet be certain where it had come from.
While Yamamoto was willing to risk exposing his landing beaches to Allied attack (only the Akagi and her escorts had been left near Thio to protect the cargo ships), Fletcher felt that his fleet would need to stay near Noumea. Even after taking the emergency step of ordering local New Caledonians to help unload ships, Noumea’s docks were still overcrowded and several weeks’ supplies were still sitting on ships waiting to be unloaded. Protecting those ships would be an important part of New Caledonia’s defence, leading Fletcher to declare their defence as the greatest priority in the upcoming battle with Yamamoto. His second objective needed only three words: “sink the admiral”. As long as Yamamoto was around, he was sure that the IJN would remain a powerful threat.

The Japanese bombers reached the Americans first, although Yamamoto’s lack of detailed information regarding his enemy’s position ensured that his aircraft were dispersed across a 300 kilometre arc south of Noumea when the Americans were spotted. Those aircraft that could attack immediately did, primarily targeting the Saratoga and Enterprise, each of which suffered several bomb and torpedo hits. Fires broke out in numerous parts of Saratoga, leading Fletcher to order all of the carrier’s aircraft be landed on New Caledonia when they returned, although damage control teams eventually extinguished the blazes with few casualties. Enterprise suffered lighter damage, and while the flight deck was damaged, this was easily repaired after the battle’s conclusion.
The rest of the Japanese aircraft, redirected from the south, arrived half an hour later to one of the war’s greatest clashes of airpower so far. In addition to the CAP aircraft of Fletcher’s three carriers, every available fighter based on New Caledonia had been ordered into the skies (elsewhere on New Caledonia, the Japanese were busy unloading the second wave, leaving Efate’s air groups unavailable for the fight at sea). In the confusion of battle, the Japanese pilots did not even think to look for the Wasp, which was known to be in the area, and believed the Saratoga was about to sink. Instead, they dropped their ordnance on the South Dakota, which was heavily damaged, and at least three destroyers, two of which were sunk.

Because Yamamoto had intended to fight a surface battle, his cruisers and battleships were positioned almost thirty kilometres forward of his carriers. When the American bombers reached the fleet, it was these ships that were discovered first. Under orders to destroy Yamamoto’s flagship, the Americans attacked. As Yamato was still a relatively unknown design, the pilots had not been trained to recognise it, and many attacked the four heavy cruisers that were present: Atago, Chikuma, Suzuya and Kinugasa, with each suffering considerable damage. Atago and Kinugasa would collide soon afterwards and sank, while Chikuma would be destroyed by a large explosion caused by an American bomb. Suzuya would survive, only to be destroyed in a devastating raid on Truk later in the war. The loss of the three highly-regarded cruisers would be a great blow to the Navy’s prestige.
The presence of a never-before-seen battleship far larger than anything previously encountered did not go unnoticed by many American pilots however. Such a behemoth was an obvious choice for an admiral’s flagship, and instead of diving on the ruined cruisers, those pilots instead attacked the Yamato, which was firing off huge quantities of anti-aircraft shells in an attempt to bring down its attackers. Despite nine bomb hits, the attacks failed to do any serious damage to the giant ship. “That,” one American pilot said as he landed on the Enterprise, “was no heavy cruiser!”

Yamamoto was pleased when reports of the battle began coming in. Although nearly forty aircraft and the three cruisers had been lost, he was told of the sinking of two US carriers and one battleship, which would make the battle an unquestionable victory for Japan. After seven days of operating near New Caledonia, the fleet was running out of fuel, and if a second strike was to be launched it would have to be done soon: the planned surface action had been called off after the battle had begun – pushing forward into the path of a hundred of more US bombers would be a good way to lose a battleship or two. But the decisive battle had yet to destroy America’s last battleship and carrier – the second strike had to go forward.
Considerably weaker than the first strike, the second strike was forced off course by the appearance of a great swarm of American planes. Realising the danger, the pilots radioed back to the Yamato warning that another attack on the battleship was likely, while desperately trying to avoid the Wildcats themselves. The Japanese soon found three US destroyers and a light cruiser, which were now taking the positions where the US carriers had been in the morning: without any surviving scout planes in the nearby area to tell them where the Wasp was likely to be found, these ships would bear the brunt of the Japanese attacks. As sunset approached, Yamamoto knew there was no time for a search effort: the decisive battle would have to be called off. When the surviving Japanese aircraft returned to the fleet, they found the Soryu in flames.

The carrier would be scuttled 40 minutes later.

- BNC

 

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XXII: Bouloupari, October 1942

The Naval Battle of New Caledonia had been a costly defeat for Yamamoto, but the threat it presented to Fletcher’s navy distracted the Americans enough to allow the second wave of transports to be unloaded at Thio with minimal interference. Alongside the 5000 men, the ships brought much-needed food and ammunition, several light artillery and anti-air guns, and 24 Type 95 Ha-Go tanks. As the Imperial Navy departed for Rabaul and Truk, General Yi was once again on his own. When the reports came in saying that the crippled Kaga had been sunk by an American submarine, he felt more isolated than ever.
As the American resolve stiffened in the foothills, Yi knew that he would need every ton of supply and weaponry he could get. While scouts reported that the force facing him at present was not especially large, captured documents found in Fiji had made reference to an entire US Division, whose whereabouts was yet unknown. It was a safe bet that some of them were in or near Noumea, but Yi was even more sure that everything not deemed necessary for the defence of that city would be directed towards stopping him. New Caledonia was a large island, but not so large that forces on the other side could be ignored. He had to move immediately.

By dawn of October 26th, most of Yi’s reinforcements had made it to the frontlines, and the general wasted no time assembling his offensive. The Japanese tendency to attack as soon as supplies were received would be noted by one American veteran of New Caledonia, who when interviewed after the war said: “It was as if they thought their bullets would rot in the heat of the jungle. If we heard about Jap ships in the area it was never more than a couple days before their men followed.” The American regiment facing Yi had at times heard the planes flying past and had been preparing for the inevitable Japanese attack, and when their hated enemies came, they were ready.
Despite being outnumbered by almost 3:1, and operating on lower ground than the Japanese, the Americans managed to repulse Yi’s first assault. Yi’s tactics in this attack were notably unimaginative, ordering his forces to break in to the US lines near the road and then overwhelm them with superior numbers. The action cost Yi just shy of 600 men, the Americans 112.
Deciding that brute force alone wouldn’t work, Yi turned his attention to a ten-kilometre ridge east of the road. The northern part of that ridge had been in Japanese hands for several days, while the valley to the east was thought to be unoccupied by anything more than small patrols. Yi ordered nearly half of his men into that valley, hoping to force the Americans out of their prepared positions nearer the road. Instead, they found the American lines thinning but still present all the way to the ridge’s end.
This apparent weakness, no doubt caused by the Americans’ local numerical inferiority (itself caused by a lack of good roads in New Caledonia), prompted Yi to order the ridge be assaulted directly. Japanese losses were again heavy, but the ridge was taken, forcing the Americans to abandon the position near the road. An effort to fall back on the village of Bouloupari was made, but Japanese forces sweeping west from the ridge soon made a proper defence of the village impossible, and by the end of the 28th, the village was in Japanese hands. The coastal road had been cut in two.

General Patch’s headquarters were in panic, with the better part of two regiments stuck on the western half of the road when the Japanese assault would be heading east. Forces in the west were unlikely to get pushed back any further, for the 132nd Regiment reached the 182nd’s position on the 29th. The two regiments now manned the west bank of a river just west of Bouloupari, extending between the coast and a large mountain, a position that would require the crossing of even more difficult terrain if it was to be outflanked. With nothing important behind it, the position was not likely to be attacked in any serious way.
The presence of a force almost as large as Yi’s west of Bouloupari posed a challenge for the Japanese commander: although he too had no intention of crossing the river separating his force from his enemy’s, if he devoted too much attention to the thrust towards Noumea he risked the Americans breaking out and cutting his force off from the Thio road, or even being attacked from the rear. On the other hand, if he committed too much to protecting the western flank and the vital road behind it, he would not have enough men available to fight the defences in front of Noumea. The predicament caused him to split his force in half: 7,000 to guard the west, 7,000 to strike east. An urgent call was made to Rabaul for more men, but the thousands of kilometres separating them meant it reinforcements could not come quickly.

Unable to afford delay, Yi began moving on Noumea on October 29th. Now in relatively open ground, this offensive was exposed to air attacks even where Patch’s infantry did not make an appearance. Two rivers separated Yi from Tontouta airfield, his first objective of any real worth on the island. The first was crossed without any great difficulty, only for the Japanese to find the US 164th Regiment not far behind it. Patch, having been told of Yi’s call for reinforcements, ordered the regiment push the offensive. The Americans gained ground and forced Yi back over the river they had just crossed.
As October became November, both sides were content to hold their positions on the rivers for the time being. They looked out to the promised reinforcements: the 48th Division for the Japanese and the 3rd Marines for the Americans, knowing that whoever could be reinforced first would hold the upper hand, not just in New Caledonia, but in the Pacific War as a whole.

- BNC

 

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XXIII: Fighting on a Shoestring, November 1942

After seven weeks of commanding both the South Pacific Area and the carrier groups operating within it, Admiral Fletcher knew that he was overworked. As early as October 21st, he had requested that Nimitz send someone to take command of the carriers, a decision that was postponed once the Naval Battle of New Caledonia began to avoid disruption to the battle. Now that the Japanese Navy had departed, Nimitz chose Vice Admiral William Halsey for the job.
Halsey had proven himself to be an aggressive commander, having raided the Gilbert and Marshall Islands in February, Wake in March and Tokyo in April before being forced out of command by poor health. If anyone was going to take the fight to Yamamoto, Halsey was sure to be the first, and when he raised his flag on the Enterprise for the first time in months, that was exactly what he was determined to do. With Saratoga headed to Puget Sound for repairs and Hornet on the way south to replace it, Halsey only had two carriers to work with, a fact that did not appear to concern him in the slightest.
Fletcher however, was concerned by Halsey’s aggression. Yamamoto had struck at Noumea once, and was sure to do so again once the fleet had been refuelled. The congestion at Noumea’s port had been a problem for months, and the threat of Japanese invasion had forced him to order locals to assist in the unloading process. Luckily, the Japanese had not appeared interested in attacking the vulnerable merchant ships in the last battle, but until the docks could be cleared he ordered Halsey to keep the carriers near Noumea. By November 6th most of the ships in the harbour had been unloaded and could finally be directed to other duties, putting an end to a persistent problem for the time being. Halsey’s reaction was to begin planning his next raid.

While Fletcher had the problem of too many ships, the Japanese had the opposite problem of too few. When FS began, it had taken a great effort to assemble even the meagre transport fleet that had taken the Army to Fiji. Since the middle of July, that fleet had been worn down by everything from Allied attacks, to accidents on coral reefs, to mechanical failures caused by lack of maintenance (crews and ships getting at best a day in port when they returned to Rabaul). Just over half of the original ships were still serviceable, and only two replacements had ever been sent. Tokyo had promised more once the first round of new constructions was completed in early 1943, but the present campaign was relying on a supply chain that was falling apart.
Fiji, until the capture of Suva, had been supplied exclusively by sea. During the campaign there, semi-regular convoys escorted by carriers had managed to keep the ammo boxes at least partly filled, but once the battles were finished and the army transferred, the convoys stopped. The occupation did not demand nearly so many resources as the invasion had. Ito’s forces would buy, or occasionally steal, food from the locals, with yen or poorly-made counterfeit pound notes being easier to deliver than large crates of rice. Once the airfield at Guadalcanal was operational, the occasional flight of transport planes was ordered to deliver weaponry, ironically using the Japanese version of the US-designed DC-3.
With the fleet able to carry less cargo in October than they had in July, air transport became an important part of the New Caledonian campaign as well. While the Japanese had no access to an airfield on New Caledonia, their base at Efate was less than two days’ sailing for even the slow transport ships, and being much closer to Rabaul meant that multiple trips were possible on the same tank of fuel. Many supplies were thus airlifted from Rabaul to Efate, before finishing the journey to Thio by sea. Less shipping tonnage and more challenging conditions around New Caledonia meant that the supply situation was worse than Fiji, but not so much so as to cause the collapse of the army.

***

While the fighting in and around New Caledonia briefly stalled, across North Africa the fight against Germany was quickly becoming more intense. On October 23rd, Montgomery launched a massive attack on Rommel’s Afrika Korps. Becoming known as the Second Battle of El Alamein, this attack got off to a rather slow start, Montgomery’s force having been weakened by the withdrawal of Australian and New Zealand troops in recent weeks. Despite a series of victories by British and Allied forces, Rommel was able to slow them down in a series of rearguard actions, most notably at Sidi Barrani which remained in Axis hands until the 13th of November, allowing a significant part of his forces to escape west.
On November 8th, the British and Americans began Operation ‘Torch’, a series of amphibious landings into Vichy French Morocco and Algeria. The local garrisons in most places did not offer any significant resistance and the territories were soon under Allied control, the armies rushing east towards Tunis, hoping to take the strategically located city before Rommel could arrive from Libya.
The lacklustre efforts by the Vichy-aligned forces in Africa to defend their colonies infuriated Hitler, who by now had little reason to continue allowing the Vichy regime any form of independence. On November 10th, he ordered the Vichy French territory to be occupied by German troops, ensuring that France’s Mediterranean coast could not be used by the Allies as an easy route into occupied Europe. Two weeks later, the French fleet would be scuttled at Toulon, preventing its seizure by German forces.
The Japanese reaction to the occupation of Vichy was remarkably quiet. In Indochina, by far the most significant French territory under Japanese control, the territory remained under the Vichy government according to official policy. In New Caledonia, where Vichy rule had no practical meaning anyway, the Tricolour flown in Thio in support of Vichy was quietly taken down and the occupation continued as it had before.

- BNC

 

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XXIV: Breaking the Chain, November 1942

The third wave. Three words that made Yamamoto optimistic about the New Caledonia campaign. In Fiji, the third wave had turned a stalemate into a great Japanese victory. Why should anything be different further south?
The third wave, which began unloading at Thio on the morning of November 14th, had come directly from Rabaul. Escorted by almost the entire resources of the Combined Fleet in the South Pacific, it would bring nearly 8000 men to reinforce General Yi, along with a dozen small artillery pieces. Tokyo had been alerted to the presence of the new American heavy tanks, but no more Japanese ones could be spared. Yamamoto wished for a transport plane capable of lifting a tank by air: while every square foot of space in the third wave had been filled with much-needed manpower, tanks would be very useful in the fourth, which consisted mostly of food and ammunition and was waiting on Efate. Once the third wave had unloaded, it would be collected to complete the last leg of the journey to New Caledonia.
Many of those crates of supplies would never be opened. For while the third wave of transports was emptied on the beaches at Thio, the contents of the fourth were under attack.

Nearly a year into the war with Japan, the Allies were under pressure to strike back. Raids had been launched against some of Japan’s island outposts in the early months, but Coral Sea had greatly reduced the available resources for such expeditions. The appearance of the bulk of the Japanese fleet in the South Pacific put an end to a plan to strike back in the Solomon Islands, and then the series of Japanese invasions that followed had made any offensive planning difficult: what few resources were in the area were needed to keep the islands still in the fight. Generals Blamey and MacArthur, Prime Ministers Fraser and Curtin, and civilians back home were unhappy with this perceived lack of aggression, but Fletcher refused to budge. Defending the islands would take all the resources that his fleet had.
Halsey’s arrival in theatre changed things. Instead of a cautious commander, the fleet was now under the command of an aggressive, even reckless, admiral. Fletcher had ordered him to hold back until the Noumea docks were cleared, but now that that matter had been dealt with, Halsey presented a plan. Months of observation of the Japanese movements made clear the importance that each island base played in the capture of the next: Rabaul for Guadalcanal, Guadalcanal for Fiji, Fiji for the attempt at Samoa. In the south, Rabaul had led to Efate, and now Efate led to New Caledonia. “Wreck Efate,” Halsey proposed, “and the Jap bastards below it rot away.” The alternative, offered by MacArthur and strongly supported by Curtin, was an attempt to re-invade New Guinea. A raid on Efate would not require any ground troops (although political pressure meant an invasion would have to be conducted at some point), and only needed the carriers for a couple of days. Nimitz and Fletcher approved it.

Once his raid was approved, Halsey only waited long enough to see the Enterprise, damaged in the Naval Battle of New Caledonia, be given some emergency repairs in Brisbane. The patched-up carrier was joined by Wasp, which had come out of the battle unscathed, and the battleships South Dakota, Maryland and Colorado, along with a swarm of escorts. Codebreakers had not located the Japanese fleet for several days, but all of their previous approaches to New Caledonia had come from the northwest: anticipating this Halsey sailed east, swinging around the Loyalty Islands and the Tanna District of the New Hebrides (which was still nominally Allied, although with no military facilities there was of no concern to either side). Held up a day by bad weather, Halsey gave the order to attack on November 14th.
Efate was wholly unprepared for the onslaught that followed. Only four Zeroes were patrolling the base when thirty Wildcats swarmed in from the east, shooting them down before machine-gunning crews on the ground scrambling to put new fighters in the air, not just more Zeroes but A5M ‘Claude’s as well. Urgent calls were sent out to every Japanese base within range, only to find that MacArthur had also lunched strikes of his own aimed at Port Moresby while Fletcher had struck Fiji. The only available forces belonged to Yamamoto, who had to balance the defence of Efate with the protection of the transport fleet. He had four carriers, three large ones and the smaller Zuiho, but what was to say that yet another strike would be aimed at the fleet? Allied airpower in the South Pacific had already proven itself stronger than even the bleakest predictions intelligence had offered.
Their way cleared, the SBD bombers swept across Efate, destroying any installations that might be useful to the Japanese. American-built hangars, now housing two squadrons of bombers, were turned to piles of rubble. A5Ms on the ground, about to be launched, were blown up or grounded as craters were made in the poorly-maintained runways. A minelayer in Port Vila’s harbour, one of the few Japanese ships to spend any length of time in the port, sank to the bottom loaded with mines. Not even the town of Port Vila was spared, having been identified as the headquarters of several senior Japanese officers including many of Yamamoto’s staff and thought to house the great admiral himself.
Perhaps the most important of all was the destruction of several fuel storage tanks. Taken over from the Americans in July still half-full of fuel, the tanks were the only thing keeping Efate a viable base. Yamamoto had made sure to replenish them every time a supply convoy was sent south, but they were thousands of kilometres away from any reliable sources of fuel – if those tanks ever ran dry, no aircraft could be launched. And now every above-ground tank, half the island’s capacity, was spilling its contents over the airfield, spreading flames wherever the oil went and overwhelming the small garrison’s ability to fight them. As the bombers departed, thick clouds of black smoke said that Efate would be useless for months to come.

Off the New Caledonian coast, Yamamoto never saw the smoke. Instead, he saw an opportunity.

- BNC

 

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XXV: Retribution, November 1942

Decisive battle had dominated the planning of FS ever since Imperial Headquarters had decided to scrap Yamamoto’s grand plan to strike at Midway. Coral Sea had been significant but not decisive. Samoa had been a disaster. New Caledonia had hurt the Americans, but a lack of fuel had once again made a proper pursuit of victory impossible. By striking Efate, the Americans had provided the admiral with another chance. No tropical storms had yet appeared, but the season was beginning: this would surely be his last chance before the end of the year, and next year was too late. This was not the time for caution, and Yamamoto would not waste one second after the supplied were unloaded to abandon it. Why not? He had a week’s fuel and the entire fleet this time.
Efate had reported that most of the American aircraft, save some B-17s that surely originated from New Caledonia, had come from the waters nearly due east of the island, and a submarine had reported a sighting of an enemy destroyer somewhere southwest of Fiji the day before. Between those two pieces of intelligence, Yamamoto was confident he would find the American fleet. The raid had been too damaging to be the result of just one carrier – Tokyo had lost track of how many carriers the Combined Fleet had sunk by now, but that raid had surely been the work of most of what was left, and Yamamoto wanted to finish them off. Efate was in no position to launch aircraft, but Fiji was ordered to put scout planes in the air. His enemy was there for the taking, and he would take them.
His plan was to strike his opponent – reports were suggesting it was Halsey, who had bombed Tokyo last April before mysteriously vanishing – from the south, setting a trap for the US Navy. West of his position were the New Hebrides, east was Fiji and north would only take him further into Japanese controlled waters, where submarines were now being sent. Leaving the small carrier Zuiho to escort the transport ships back from Thio, the Imperial Navy had three carriers: Hiryu, Akagi and Shokaku, every one of them a veteran of a past battle in the South Pacific. They were supported by five battleships – Yamato, Nagato, Mutsu, Hiei and Kongo, four heavy cruisers, two light cruisers and twenty-one destroyers.

Fletcher’s intelligence team had noticed the massive fleet leave port days earlier, and had been wholly convinced that his opponent’s target was Noumea: such a plan had been attempted once before, and the Japanese could not have missed the crowd of ships that had been waiting outside the port three weeks earlier. Those ships were no longer there, but if the Japanese still believed them to be – Noumea’s overcrowding had been an issue for several months – then they were an obvious target if the Japanese intended to take over New Caledonia. Instead, the Japanese would find next to nothing near Noumea: Halsey and the fleet were readying a strike against Espiritu Santo. When a Catalina found that the Japanese fleet had instead turned northeast the next morning, Halsey was ordered to prepare for battle.
An hour later, the first of Yamamoto’s bombers, armed with both bombs and torpedoes, arrived from the south west. Under orders to destroy carriers first and battleships second, they dived on the first enemy carrier they located. The Enterprise, heavily damaged in the last battle and only given a quick round of repairs since, stood no chance against the Japanese aerial assault. Wildcats launched by the carrier just minutes before the Japanese arrived shot down no fewer than eight enemy aircraft, only for one plane, which had lost its engines but still carried its bombs, to be turned into a piloted weapon. That crew, willing to sacrifice themselves on the Emperor’s behalf, rammed the bomber into the middle of Enterprise’s flight deck before their plane exploded into a huge fireball. Halsey, injured by the blast, was forced to transfer his flag to the Wasp as the Enterprise burned and sank.
Their carrier destroyed, Enterprise’s strike wave joined another wave from Wasp to seek and destroy the Japanese carriers that had caused this disaster. The morning’s report had located Yamamoto’s fleet between the islands of Efate and Erromango, heading east, although by the time the Americans reached his carriers they were a good sixty kilometres of their last known position. Thirty Zeroes, every one of them piloted by a veteran of Pearl Harbour, were waiting, and when the Americans came, a ferocious battle erupted thousands of feet above the Akagi. Some SBDs and newer TBF ‘Avenger’s managed to break out of the dogfight and attacked both the Akagi and nearby Hiryu, but many more were shot down without a chance to attack the Japanese carriers themselves. Enterprise’s surviving aircraft were ordered to fly to New Caledonia, while Wasp readied a second strike. Yamamoto’s carriers were all still serviceable, although they would need some time in the repair yard in the near future. The entire fleet was long overdue for a trip to Tokyo, but first the South Pacific campaign had to be finished.

As he prepared his own second strike, Yamamoto turned his fleet to the northeast. The decisive battle would not be complete until the entire US fleet was destroyed, and the best way to ensure that they could not escape was by blocking every path out. The closest Allied bases were New Caledonia and Tongatabu: if Halsey wanted to retreat, it was very likely that he would turn south. Indeed, a scout plane reported two hours after Enterprise’s sinking that the Americans were doing just that. And when they did, the long-awaited battleship duel could begin.
Halsey’s air strength had been greatly weakened, with fighters based at Noumea now being called to defend the Wasp against the next Japanese attack. Bombers were launched as quickly as they could be reloaded and refuelled, in a desperate attempt to get the planes off the carrier before the Japanese had another chance to sink it: three carriers against one did not make for good odds, and the safety of Tongatabu was a long way away.
While the fighters would stay and fight for Wasp, using the bombers against Hiryu and Akagi was almost sure to be a doomed effort – the squadrons were only a little over half strength, while Japan’s combat air patrols were clearly being conducted with elite pilots. Instead, Halsey and Fletcher, who was now actively commanding the squadrons on New Caledonia, decided to strike at Zuiho and the transport fleet. Absent a miraculous stroke of luck, a dozen or so bombers would never be able to sink all three large carriers, but the Americans believed it may be possible to draw Yamamoto away from a battle that he was about to win. Zuiho, escorting a large group of slow transports, was only travelling at around 11 knots, and could only hold around thirty aircraft, some of which were surely bombers. Next to New Caledonia’s rapidly-growing air forces, she was a sitting duck. Only two bomb hits were needed to destroy her.
Yamamoto was undeterred. Zuiho was a small price to pay for what he believed to be the rest of the US Pacific Fleet, although the large tanker and three cargo ships that were reported destroyed ten minutes later was certainly a significant blow. With the supplies at Efate destroyed, there was no longer any point to even attempting another supply run to Thio, and the surviving transport fleet and its escorts were ordered directly back to Rabaul: dusk was sure to arrive before the Americans could finish them off. FS, ever since Coral Sea, had been about the fleet, not the islands. And the fleet was about to win a great victory...

- BNC

 

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XXVI: Guns in the South, November 1942

Halsey’s flag was only on the Wasp for a matter of hours before the warning sirens rang out. He had been lured into a trap, albeit one that had not been planned long in advance by an opponent that continued to surprise him. With New Caledonia busy, and the fleet too far from Tongatabu for any immediate assistance, Halsey had only one choice: to break out to the east. The carrier a certain target and the battleships sure to follow, he transferred his flag to the destroyer Barton. In a battlefield where large ships were being struck every hour, a destroyer would be easily overlooked.
Wasp’s destruction was swift and bloody. Two thirds of Yamamoto’s enormous bomber force descended upon the carrier, scoring sixteen confirmed hits and possibly many more uncounted. Damage control efforts were brave but futile, and only the Pacific Ocean could put out the many blazes that broke out across the ship. Fighters, coming from Wasp and from New Caledonia, shot down another fifteen Japanese aircraft, but lost nearly as many of their own as the rest of Yamamoto’s aircraft dove on the battleship Maryland, disabling one of her gun turrets and causing other minor damage.
Unlike the past battles at Samoa and New Caledonia, the coming of dusk did not mean the end of the fight. Yamamoto sent a message to Tokyo announcing the final defeat of the American carriers, but the decisive battle would not be finished until the battleships were sunk as well. He continued his course slightly north of east, both in an effort to draw Halsey into a surface battle and, perhaps more importantly, to get his fleet out of range of New Caledonia before Fletcher could have another chance at his own carriers. Halsey, whose fleet was by now quite disorganised, was also heading east, his only goal being to escape to Tongatabu with whatever was left. The Japanese had pulled back after every past carrier engagement, and this time they had a more convincing victory than most. Once there, the South Pacific Fleet would be joined by the Hornet and preparations for the next fight could be made.

Instead of an American escape and a Japanese withdrawal, the two fleets met around 0200, nearly five hundred kilometres east of where the morning’s battle had begun. Although the encounter was a matter of chance, Yamamoto had ensured that his navy was prepared for a surface battle: the carriers and their escorts were a safe distance away to the southwest, with orders to rejoin the fleet only when dawn approached (at which point another wave of air strikes was planned), while the five battleships formed a line running from west to east, with the Yamato taking pride of place in the centre.
25 kilometres to the north, Halsey was shaken awake by the sounds of the fourteen-inch guns of Kongo and Hiei firing first in the general direction of the Americans, and then the Colorado once that battleship’s location had been more accurately identified. Colorado’s fire was directed towards the Hiei, the closer of the two enemy battleships, but a lack of specific night-battle training put the American gunnery crews at a disadvantage compared to their Japanese counterparts. Despite this, it was Colorado that scored the first kill of the night action, with some well-aimed shells striking Hiei and causing the magazines to explode.
Yamato’s massive guns soon took the place of the sinking Hiei, and nine minutes after Hiei was destroyed, the Colorado too suffered a series of critical hits after a failed attempt to sink the Hiei’s sister ship Kongo. Yamamoto turned his attention to the Maryland, which had begun engaging Nagato in another duel, and gave orders for Mutsu to finish off the damaged veteran of Pearl Harbour. In the resulting clash, Maryland damaged Nagato, which would need months of repairs back in the Home Islands, but proved unable to overcome the tremendous weight of fire being directed towards her, and the South Pacific soon claimed its third battleship.

Halsey’s priority remained escape. The Japanese Navy had pushed his own forces north of their original course towards Tongatabu, although they were continuing east as much as could be done while avoiding the fury of Yamamoto’s battle line. Yamamoto had not yet found the South Dakota, Halsey’s last battleship, although he undoubtedly knew it was in the area. Now it would provide the US Navy’s best chance of getting out of this disastrous encounter.
With Tongatabu no longer viable, Halsey ordered his entire fleet to set a course due north, with the intention of taking a long circular route around Fiji before arriving in Samoa, far enough away from the Japanese to be considered relatively safe. At the same time, Halsey asked Fletcher to order a series of airstrikes against Fiji from Tongatabu, which would distract if not destroy any Japanese reconnaissance efforts based out of Viti Levu’s two airfields. Yamamoto’s carriers would remain a dangerous threat, but a rain squall was developing in the area that would hamper search efforts.
While Halsey’s fleet turned north, Yamamoto concentrated his attention on ships that had already been located, principally the heavy cruisers Chicago and Astoria, which were attacked by a group of Japanese destroyers and then Mutsu. Chicago can be credited with the sinking of two Japanese destroyers, Amagiri and Nowaki, before both American cruisers joined the growing collection of ships on the South Pacific’s floor. The battle they fought distracted the Japanese battleships long enough to allow the rest of the US fleet to escape.
With dawn came the greatest Japanese victory since Pearl Harbour. Yamamoto ordered all of his carriers to begin searching for any surviving US ships, only to have these efforts interrupted by a storm. Only when a submarine north of Fiji located the scattered survivors did he find out he had missed the last battleship in the massive battle. That submarine, the I-158, attempted to finish the job by shooting off two torpedoes aimed at South Dakota. One missed entirely, while the other instead struck the destroyer Barton, sinking it almost immediately. It would take Admiral Halsey down with it, burying him in the graveyard occupied by so many of his ships.

- BNC

 

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XXVII: The Final Storm, November 1942

In Bouloupari, General Yi had no time to celebrate the Navy’s victory in the Battle of the South Pacific (named so for the wide area of ocean that the battle covered). The Navy’s failure to protect Efate had inflamed the tension between them and the Army, although to their credit they had managed to get the third wave, 8000 much needed reinforcements, to Thio, from which they were promptly ordered south. Yi, having experienced the entirety of Fiji and New Caledonia first-hand, knew how difficult the campaign ahead would be even without an interservice rivalry getting in the way. Those in Tokyo might disagree, but they weren’t trying to conquer a heavily defended island with half the needed supplies and the threat of tropical storms on the horizon.
The front lines had not moved from the two rivers near Bouloupari since the actions at the beginning of the month, and Yi’s plans remained the same: to strike east and take Noumea while holding the line in the west, which had very little of importance behind it. With no settlements larger than villages and no ports west of Bouloupari, Yi had assumed that the Allies would either supply those forces in the west using methods similar to the chaotic beach crate-dumping that the Japanese had used all across the South Pacific, or do the dishonourable thing and surrender. Instead, he found that the Allies had reopened an airstrip at the village of Oua Tom that had been built before the war and largely ignored since. Yamamoto would have bombed the airstrip, probably knocking it out of action for good, if not for the arrival of the US Navy, and the loss of a tanker had now forced him into an early return to Rabaul. Another reason to blame the Navy, and another reason why Noumea needed to be taken with the greatest haste.

At dawn on November 17th, artillery fire thundered across southeastern New Caledonia. The river east of Bouloupari, rarely more than twenty-five metres across, was no more challenging a natural obstacle than anything that had been dealt with in Fiji. The defensive line behind it was: a solid wall of entrenched men, extending from the coast to the mountains. In addition to the American infantry, Free French units were eager to defend their colonies. Some of them were from the French mainland, now entirely under German occupation, but many others called New Caledonia home. The local New Caledonians had not resisted the Japanese nearly so fiercely as the Fijians had, but anyone who volunteered to fight against Japan was sure to be brave and determined.
So determined, the defence was, that Yi’s first infantry assault across the river was thrown back before the engineering company had the chance to set up a pontoon bridge for the heavy equipment. 500 of his men became casualties for no gain, but this was no time to worry about blood spilling into the river. With a grim determination, Yi ordered a second attack, backed up by seven tanks. One of them was a captured M2, turned against its old masters with its petrol tank still three quarters full. This time, the infantry pushed across to the other bank, occupying the American fortifications and securing ground while the engineers established bridges and the M2 drove across.

General Patch had already earned Yi’s respect as a tough adversary, and with Tontouta airfield just a few kilometres behind him, Patch once again proved himself deserving of that reputation. In a situation not too different from the current one, in Fiji Yi had seen his opponents fall back to a city only to surrender shortly afterwards, or to flee with their men into the jungle. Patch, unlike the generals in Fiji, had never tied himself to the concept of a Defence Zone, and considered the entire island fair game for a battlefield. His second line, built around the village of Tomo, was quickly broken through before it could be reinforced, but behind another river Patch had overseen the construction of another line, and he was steadfast as his men retreated towards it.
Behind the line, behind the river, lay Tontouta.
The airfield was still launching bombers as the first Japanese troops reached the river line, bombers that would strike the Japanese positions all along the twenty kilometre stretch of coast that they controlled. Many bombs would be dropped in empty jungle to the north, or the Pacific ocean to the south. But many others hit near the road, disrupting and killing many Japanese as they desperately rushed east. Never before had a Japanese army been so isolated: with Efate wrecked and Yamamoto too far away to help, no Japanese aircraft would be able to support the Army on New Caledonia. If Tontouta could be taken, transport planes would be able to fly in. Without it… perhaps the Navy could save the Army. Yamamoto had annihilated Halsey’s fleet, but then again Halsey had been nowhere near the luckless Zuiho.

On November 19th, Yi ordered his troops across the river. The M2 had been wrecked by one of Patch’s Shermans the previous day, but several Type 95s were still serviceable, providing covering fire and distracting the attention of the seemingly unstoppable American tanks. Twice the Japanese stormed across the river and broke into the trenches behind, and twice they were thrown back by one of Patch’s counterattacks. More Japanese troops attempted to outflank the French and American lines by marching through the hills, only to find that Patch had covered his flanks to the north as well.
By then it was late in the day, when cheers were heard in the American lines. Those Japanese fortunate enough to have field glasses would have been able to see, marching near Tontouta’s runways, a new unit of men, carrying not only a Stars and Stripes, but a predominantly red flag as well. The flag of the Marine Corps. Reinforcements.
When Yi was informed, he knew that the offensive was over. His own men were hungry and exhausted when they were ordered to dig in to the river’s western bank. Tontouta airfield, clearly visible behind the Allied trenches, would never be taken. This was as far as the Japanese would ever come. Unless Tokyo could end the war soon, only one question mattered any more:

Could the gains be held?

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XXVIII: Breakdown, November 1942

With Fiji under their control and the entirety of the US Navy thought to be destroyed, the Japanese considered Operation FS to be a success. Although Yi had been halted, he was still just a few trench lines away from Tontouta. Such lines had proved no obstacle outside Suva. New Caledonia too would surely fall. Save Samoa, which had only ever been considered a target of opportunity, the plan’s objectives had been met. It was time to end the war.
Tokyo sent a message to Washington indicating their interests to negotiate an end to the year-long conflict on November 22nd. As the Americans swiftly rejected the offer, the exact terms of the proposed agreement remain unknown, but they are thought to include demands for the immediate independence of the Philippines and continued Japanese control of French Indochina and the Dutch East Indies, although islands in the Central and South Pacific would be returned to their original owners. Roosevelt said of the offer later: “I would not accept any peace on their terms unless Tojo and Hitler were shaking hands on the front lawn of the White House.” Although the ‘unconditional surrender’ policy had not yet been made official, Roosevelt and his government were already decided: this fight would go on until the bitter end.

The refusal threw the Japanese military into chaos. Their entire plan for the war had been a decisive battle followed by peace negotiations, before America’s incredible industrial power could tip the balance against them. Beyond New Caledonia, there were no more islands that could be taken to force Washington to change their mind: Samoa, Midway and New Zealand were beyond the reach of any supply convoys, while the Army refused to attempt an invasion of Australia due to the huge amount of resources that another continent-wide campaign would require when they were still bogged down in China.
Yamamoto returned to the Home Islands as soon as the Yamato reached Rabaul, with some grim news. While the Battle of the South Pacific had at the very least crippled the US Navy’s presence there, his efforts had used up the rest of the stockpiled fuel at Rabaul, and had cost one of Japan’s valuable tankers too. As long as oil deliveries could be made to the islands, the situation was not yet lost (especially as enemy naval opposition was no longer a threat), but massive operations involving several carriers and battleships would not be sustainable. New transports that had been under construction for the last several months were beginning to become available, but as American submarines were becoming a deadly nuisance to Japanese shipping, very few of these could be spared to replace the losses near New Caledonia.
The battle fleet too was in urgent need of replacements. A year of nearly unbroken combat operations was taking its toll on everything from crews to machinery, and nearly every major ship had suffered some form of battle damage as well. Without any real threat from the American Navy, Imperial Headquarters decided that the time had come to bring the carriers and battleships back to Tokyo, sending four light carriers (Ryujo, Junyo, Hiyo and Unyo) to Truk to take their place. Shokaku and Akagi would stay behind to escort the fourth supply run to Thio as the light carriers arrived, before they too would return to Tokyo. There, Yamamoto began drafting plans for the second decisive battle, to be fought once the American infantry had wasted itself on the islands of Japan’s defensive perimeter: Fiji, New Guinea, the Gilbert Islands.

The loss of most of Halsey’s fleet, as well as Halsey himself, forced the Americans to reconsider their own plans. The remaining fleet, now just South Dakota and some cruisers and destroyers, was placed under the command of Aubrey Fitch, who had been present at Coral Sea and had held a variety of small commands in the region since. Hornet’s arrival in-theatre on November 25th meant that the fleet would have at least some air cover, but the possibility of another Efate-like raid, most likely aimed at Guadalcanal, was gone for the time being. MacArthur’s plan to invade and reoccupy New Guinea in early 1943 also had to be cancelled.
Fletcher turned his attention back to New Caledonia, where the Japanese offensive had well and truly broken down. The destruction of Zuiho and her associated convoy was sure to place even more pressure on General Yi, who was already known to be struggling to feed his troops. General Patch now had two divisions across the island, nearly all of them concentrated around Tontouta and Boloupari, giving him a clear advantage over Yi. Fletcher’s orders were clear: tie down and destroy as many Japanese units as possible. If Fiji was anything to go by, the Japanese would keep throwing men at the island until it fell.
If the Japanese were ever to be pushed out of the South Pacific, Fletcher would need more carriers. Hornet alone, or even it rejoined by Saratoga once that ship had been repaired, would not be enough if Yamamoto returned with a force as powerful as that which had defeated Halsey. Although the Essex and Independence classes were being launched and about to be commissioned, those ships would still need months of sea trials before they would be ready for action, which would force any further offensive actions to be delayed until well into 1943. As Curtin, Fraser and MacArthur continued to urge for more action immediately, a short-term solution needed to be found.
The answer came in the form of the British carriers Victorious, which had just finished escort duties for Operation Torch, and Illustrious, which was currently part of the RN Eastern Fleet in the Indian Ocean. After Roosevelt sent a message to Churchill the day after the South Pacific disaster, Churchill wasted no time finding reinforcements. After two weeks, and the need to heavily escort forces for Torch long past, he put the following proposal to Roosevelt: in exchange for Ranger being attached to the RN Home Fleet, he would send the two British carriers to join Fletcher’s forces. Illustrious was seen as a risk, as it would leave the Indian Ocean open to the Japanese, but their almost fanatical focus on the South Pacific convinced the two leaders that if Yamamoto was going to show up for another fight, he would do so there. Roosevelt accepted the offer, and the carriers soon became known by their code-names Jamestown and Halsey. The name for Victorious was chosen to signify British-American cooperation, the name for Illustrious just to confuse the Japanese.

Replacements for the lost battleships were also considered, as it was clear that South Dakota alone would not be sufficient against Yamamoto. Indiana, another South Dakota-class, was sent to join Fitch’s fleet within days of the great defeat, and Massachusetts was soon ordered to leave the fleet off North Africa to join her sister ships. The North Carolina, damaged in recent months, would also be sent to Fitch after her repairs had been completed.
The construction yards were also busy. In addition to the Essex and Independence carriers, five Iowa-class battleships had also been laid down. In late November, the sixth Iowa, named Illinois was laid down, as recent experience demonstrated a continued use for battleships in this war, putting an end to discussions of converting both Illinois and Kentucky to aircraft carriers for good. This use for battleships did not apparently extend to the Montana class, the Iowa’s successor: the shipyards on the East Coast were already working at capacity, and no Essexes were to be cancelled in favour of yet more battleships. The design of Montana was also too large to allow the ships to cross the Panama Canal, a notable hindrance when most of America’s naval action was happening on the other side of the canal. The class remained suspended, while other projects took priority.

- BNC

 

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XXIX: Retreat, November 1942

With the 3rd Marine Division now under his command, General Patch launched his counterattack on November 22nd. Across the entire line in front of Tontouta, artillery fire pounded the Japanese lines while the few surviving Japanese guns provided only an ineffective response. A swarm of bombers was sent on a mission to destroy the Japanese base at Thio, which caused heavy damage to the village including the destruction of a flagpole flying the Rising Sun, but there was little equipment in the village to destroy.
Yi ordered his men to dig in. As long as his troops were encamped on the river line, Tontouta would remain out of action for the most part, as his artillery could still strike at the airfield. The army was running short on supplies of every kind, but that situation would not improve anywhere on New Caledonia until Yamamoto could put another fleet together. There was nothing to be gained by falling back, and a retreat into the mountains could very well mean the end of Japan’s presence on the island forever. Like the Germans and their allies attempting to keep the route to Stalingrad open, the Japanese too could not move one step back.
Allied infantry, primarily American but also including a small Free French component, stormed across the river is the mid-morning, where they were met by the most determined resistance yet seen. Although half-starved, few Japanese were willing to contemplate the dishonour of surrender, while they had been told that the Emperor would be greatly displeased if the Tontouta line was abandoned (Yi, back at his headquarters in Bouloupari, had told them this to boost morale without the Emperor ever making a statement about Tontouta). The Allies were met not only with rifle and machine-gun fire, but with swords and bayonets when the bullets ran out. Patch quickly realised that victory at Tontouta would not be won until all six thousand Japanese had been killed: only ten from the entire force took the dishonourable way out and surrendered.

After two days of heavy fighting, the Allies broke through Yi’s line. The Japanese force was fragmented as a series of bridgeheads split one unit from the next, the gap between them filled with GIs, Marines and Sherman tanks. Patch knew that several more days would be needed to completely remove the Japanese presence from the area, but now that their strength was shattered, his priority was to push forward. The remaining Japanese, particularly those in the hills north of Tontouta, could be dealt with later.
While his main force advanced towards Bouloupari from the east, Patch gave the order to begin an advance from the west. The two regiments behind the river nearest Bouloupari had been reliant on supply from the air ever since they had been split from the rest of the army by Japan’s advance, and lacked the same overwhelming superiority in equipment that the Marine division had been able to deploy. The breakthrough near Tontouta had convinced Patch that Yi was finished as an opponent, and it now looked like a good time to destroy the Japanese force once and for all. Bouloupari, Japan’s only significant conquest on New Caledonia’s southern coast, would surely be considered to be an objective worth defending, perhaps moreso than the empty fields near Tontouta.

Yi had come to a different conclusion than Patch: Bouloupari, in his eyes, was not worth defending at all. The village’s use to him only extended as far as it could keep his enemy’s forces divided, and it was now clear that he could not defeat the Allies in front of Tontouta or Noumea. Admiral Yamaguchi promised more supplies would soon be sent to New Caledonia, but he was from the Navy. So far, the Navy had done a poor job of keeping Army supplies afloat when they came under attack: Zuiho had proven itself to be useless. And even if Yamaguchi kept his word, in one run he could not deliver enough men to support a new offensive. Possibly enough to hold on, but nothing more.
Bouloupari then, was too exposed. Thio, on the other side of the island, was the only location that still mattered, and Yi was concerned that the Americans would just bypass Bouloupari and storm up the mountain road instead, a move which would be a disaster for Japan. Hoping to preempt his opponent, Yi ordered the remaining half of his army, stationed west of Bouloupari, to fall back to a position in the mountains, roughly half way between Bouloupari and Thio and with a river to use as a new defensive position. Requests were sent to Tokyo for reinforcements with the utmost urgency, but Tokyo did not answer.

American intelligence soon picked up a message suggesting that the expected fourth supply run had been dispatched from Rabaul, and could be expected in the waters around New Caledonia within a few days. Fletcher was alerted, and passed the information on to Patch. Without any report indicating the strength of this new convoy, the worst was feared: three carriers and four battleships. Most of the fleet, under Admiral Fitch, was based in Samoa and out of reach of the Japanese, but a force that large could disrupt a land offensive too if given the opportunity. Patch took Bouloupari and began pushing into the mountains, but when the new Japanese line was encountered, he decided to wait. Only when a PT Boat patrolling near Thio spotted the one Japanese carrier and its escorting cruisers and destroyers, was the offensive allowed to resume.
On November 30th, the fourth supply convoy reached the northern shore of New Caledonia. Carrying five thousand men and what was hoped to be enough provisions to keep Yi’s force as a credible threat to the Allies, it had been targeted by every available resource: submarines, PT boats and the occasional air raid had all attempted to disrupt it. The men and supplies were landed in the midst of rough conditions, the calm seas of the tropical dry season well and truly over, and while some goods were thrown overboard by the waves, Yi rathered lose them than see Patch and Fletcher able to send more air raids in better weather. At least stormy seas didn’t attack the troops desperately holding on in the mountains fifteen kilometres to the south.

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XXX: An Island Too Far, December 1942

Seven months of commanding in the South Pacific had convinced Fletcher that the only way to stop Japan’s offensives for good would be to utterly destroy their ability to send more men into the fight. They had sent convoy after convoy to Fiji until that fell, and while New Caledonia was extremely unlikely to fall now, convoys were being sent there as often as possible. Even if Yi’s force was wiped out, there was a considerable chance that another invasion of the island would be sent, just as happened at Wake.
As soon as the skies cleared, every available aircraft on New Caledonia was directed to attack Yamaguchi’s fleet before it could escape out of range to Rabaul. The result was devastating for the Japanese, as the Shokaku could not possibly hope to hold off nearly 200 aircraft with just 60 of her own. Yamaguchi ordered his Zeroes to protect the carrier first and the transports second, no doubt a result of the growing enmity with the Imperial Army, but also a decision made with a view towards the Second Decisive Battle, an idea that was quickly growing in popularity in Tokyo that had room for carriers but none for transports.
Fletcher’s priority was the opposite: sinking the carrier would do nothing to end the invasions, nor would it help in the immediate goal of destroying Yi’s army, but the destruction of the transports would finally allow the United States to seize the initiative. As a result, the bombers were ordered to attack the fourteen cargo ships that made up the majority of Yi’s supply line. Eight were sunk as Yamaguchi ordered the Shokaku to flank speed in an attempt to get it out of the battle zone as quickly as possible, effectively abandoning the cargo fleet to its fate. The admiral’s actions would cause the army to resent him, to the point that not one Army officer would attend his funeral service in 1944.

With his air support engaging the Japanese, General Patch returned his attention to the task immediately in front of him: Yi’s mountain line. The Japanese fourth wave was known to have landed now, and whatever men it brought would surely be rushing south to reinforce. The attack had to be made soon, or the cost in blood would be much greater. Reports from the battles at Tontouta had painted a grim picture, and two years later Patch would find out that Japanese resistance could be far more formidable than anything he had yet seen.
The Battle of the Spine, named as such for the shape of New Caledonia’s mountain range, was nothing like Tontouta had been. The withdrawal, Japan’s first in a year of war, had greatly demoralised the troops, who had already suffered a month of starvation, and many were content to retreat in face of Patch’s latest onslaught. Patch, at this point maintaining a 4:1 numerical superiority over the Japanese and an abundance of heavy equipment, was relentless in pushing them back.

When the battle moved all the way north to Thio, there was no more option of retreat. Only three days after the last group of reinforcements arrived, Yi knew there was no chance of any more for another couple of weeks. The crates of supplies on the beach, many of them still unopened, were all that he had left, and they would not last long. Yi’s last diary entry, written minutes before the great battle began, reads “I took my sword out of its holder as word reached Thio that the Americans were here. Many rifles are already empty, so it must come to this. My only wish is that we honour the Emperor with our sacrifice.”
While he had not been able to take full advantage of his much larger force in the mountains, Patch could now spread his forces out: as the ground flattened out, he sent a regiment west of the road and another to the east, surrounding Thio on three sides by land. Submarines would ensure that no help could come from the fourth. Then, for two days a fierce battle raged, the Japanese lines forming an arc protecting a pile of supply crates and the small village in which they were being kept. The village was attacked by SBDs while heavier bombers struck Efate, ensuring that the ruined base could pose no threat.
In the afternoon of December 4th, General Yi decided that the struggle was hopeless. His sword had not been used against the Americans or the French, but now it claimed its first and only victim. Yi’s decision to commit seppuku was symbolic, not only for a general who felt he had disgraced himself and sought an honourable end, but for the Japanese war effort as a whole. The famous photograph of the general’s death is one that shows how Japan had sacrificed some of its best troops, and half of their carriers, in an ultimately doomed effort. The great banzai charge that followed only added to the futility of the effort.

While Patch celebrated a great victory and Fletcher looked toward his next targets, Tokyo was more concerned with finding someone to blame for the failure at New Caledonia. Admiral Yamamoto, by virtue of having left the region before the campaign fell apart, managed to escape criticism, despite the venture into New Caledonia having been his idea in the first place. Instead, the Army blamed Yamaguchi, in no small part due to his abandonment of the transports on December 1st, although that had been much too late to save the situation. The Navy blamed Yi, saying that it was irresponsible for the Army to trust a Korean general with Japan’s most important campaign, and this soon turned into a denunciation of Yi as a traitor by more radical elements of the Navy elite. More modern studies have since considered Yi to be an overall competent general frequently given nearly impossible tasks, undeserving of much of the personal criticism he has received. Yet while Japan’s situation in the war grew worse, the Army and the Navy were becoming more interested in the feud with the other, a feud which Yamamoto warned would soon ruin Japan’s ability to fight the Americans. Yi and Yamaguchi were just the first victims.

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XXXI: Planning the Perimeter, December 1942

The staff officers in Tokyo had been seven thousand kilometres from the battlefields of New Caledonia, and while the campaign was fought on the island they could only follow the progress through radio reports. Yamamoto and Yi had been confident of their imminent victory, and the advance to Tontouta had looked impressive on a map, so Imperial Headquarters had little reason to doubt them. No-one there had seen the conditions in New Caledonia: a lack of food that got worse the further inland the soldiers pushed, increasingly powerful air attacks, and the knowledge that the Americans were receiving reinforcements while the Japanese struggled to bring a convoy every three weeks without losing ships. Thus, when the battle turned from imminent victory to total defeat in just two weeks, Tokyo was shocked.
The Chief of the IJA General Staff, Field Marshal Hajime Sugiyama, was among those taken by surprise. In May, he had committed 30,000 Army soldiers to the FS plan on Yamamoto’s request, when his initial support for the operation was based around the assumption that the Navy would only demand one quarter of that force. Although the men had been taken from other islands, particularly Java, every Army man fighting in the Pacific was one not being used in the more important struggle: the conquest of China (where Sugiyama had briefly served in 1939). FS, especially after Coral Sea, had been a Navy plan that had used predominantly Army resources. Marshal Sugiyama was furious now that his men appeared to have been used up. Fiji had been nice for prestige, but had since proven largely useless as a base and almost impossible to supply. Efate had been wrecked, and Samoa and New Caledonia had both been disasters, although at least Samoa was entirely the Navy’s problem.
On the anniversary of the Pearl Harbour raid, an angry Sugiyama met with Admiral Yamamoto, who while technically subordinate to Admiral Osami Nagano, Chief of the IJN, by now greatly overshadowed his superior. Yamamoto was told that the Army would oppose any more offensive plans outside of China, and that no more Army troops were to be transferred to the Pacific islands. In other words, the Pacific was now the Navy’s fight, and would have to go it alone.

Yamamoto had already come to the conclusion that further offensives would not be to Japan’s benefit: any potential targets save perhaps Funafuti would be too far to supply and have limited strategic value, while FS had served its main purpose in allowing him to finally destroy the US Navy. Funafuti was considered for invasion first as a part of FS, and then under a new plan drawn up in August codenamed ‘FF’, which was to be carried out once New Caledonia fell. Now that the carriers had been sent back to the Home Islands for repairs, the earliest time that FF could be attempted would be in the middle of 1943, and that would require more transport ships and oilers that Yamamoto doubted he would be able to use: new constructions were barely keeping up with losses in more important theatres.
FF was unlikely to go ahead, so Yamamoto turned to his other plan for the coming year: the buildup of the outer defensive perimeter. With complete control of Java, New Guinea, the Solomons, Gilberts and Marshall Islands, the Japanese had formed an arc of territories, at least part of which the Americans would have to attack before they could even approach the Home Islands. The refusal of Japan’s peace offering meant that a new American Navy would inevitably attack somewhere along that perimeter, at which point Yamamoto would send the bulk of the Combined Fleet to destroy them in a second decisive battle. Any American infantry would be killed on the beaches of the chosen islands, and Japan would prove once and for all that it was too strong to be conquered, and the Americans would be forced to make peace.
The recent conquests, the New Hebrides and Fiji, were not considered an essential part of this defensive plan. Halsey’s raid had destroyed Efate as a useful base, and now that the New Caledonia operation had been defeated there seemed little value in rebuilding it: it had already become a target for endless waves of Fletcher’s bombers and no other Allied bases were in range of bombers stationed on Efate. Fiji meanwhile was just as good a location for interdicting communications between Australia and the United States, and had proved ineffective in that role: ships headed to Brisbane or Sydney were now taking the slightly longer route via Samoa instead. Fiji was too exposed to form a part of any perimeter, and supplying it had been a chaotic affair since August. Yamamoto hoped the islands would buy him time to ready more important positions, but otherwise wrote them off.

Yamamoto had long feared that a long war with the United States would be one that Japan would surely lose, but ten weeks in the South Pacific had convinced him that the nation was unprepared for a long war, even if America’s vast industrial power was ignored. Most importantly, he worried that a shortage of skilled pilots would soon result in a disastrous drop in the quality of the Japanese air forces: there were only about half of the Pearl Harbour veterans still alive a year after the raid, and at present two years of training was considered necessary to train a carrier pilot to the elite standard that had been expected. Two years would mean that a new pilot starting today would not be ready until the beginning of 1945: Yamamoto felt that would be too late.
Despite some opposition from elements of the Navy, Yamamoto decided to split the training program in two: one part would continue under the old methods, with graduates to be assigned to the carrier forces. These carriers, under repair for the moment but set to be ready for use in a few months’ time, would form the most important part of the fleet in the second decisive battle, and Yamamoto wanted to have the most elite force possible. Until the day of the decisive battle, they were to be kept somewhere safe as a fleet in being, training for the decisive battle off the Japanese coast or in low-risk operations against the Chinese. The rest of the training program was cut down to twelve months, and then six as fuel became an issue. The islands under the Navy’s control were to be garrisoned with lower quality pilots, filling aircraft while keeping the elite units for the decisive battle. Yamamoto saw the islands as bait, intended to draw the Americans in, and saw the use of elite pilots on the islands as an inefficient use of valuable resources.
Had he told Sugiyama of that, his requests for more Army troops would have been met with a cold silence, if not anger (and Tojo’s reaction would have been even more hostile). Instead, he presented his grand plan to the entire Imperial General Headquarters and secured the Emperor’s approval. Sugiyama was once again angered by Yamamoto’s new request for 40,000 men, which would have to come from China, to man the defences across the Eastern Pacific. Only with the Emperor’s support of Yamamoto’s plan did Sugiyama begrudgingly transfer the forces, which would be transported to various locations including the Marshall and Gilbert islands throughout the first few months of 1943. As long as Yamamoto could deliver victories, the Army would tolerate him, but many within the IJA ranks had already come to resent an admiral that was either extremely skilled, or very lucky.

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XXXII: Cyclone Sam, January 1943

General Patch’s victory at Thio and the withdrawal of the Japanese fleet carriers brought a lull in the fighting across the South Pacific. The arrival of the tropical wet season meant that aircraft were grounded most days, with storms battering airfields and bombing targets alike. Weather stations had only been set up in the area in the years immediately before the war, and several had been damaged by the fighting, leaving both sides with an incomplete picture of conditions. This is known to have influenced Japanese planning at least once, when a submarine was ordered to bombard a station believed to be on the Samoan island Savaii. The raid was ineffective, and American destroyers soon located and sank the submarine.
Fletcher was relieved to have the break. Despite intelligence suggesting that Yamamoto and his fleet had been moved, he was still operating at a considerable disadvantage to the IJN, and his reinforcements would not be ready for months: the two British carriers were being repainted and re-equipped for American service, Saratoga was still part way through an extensive repair job, which had expanded to include the installation of new components, and Essex was in the midst of sea trials. Once they were ready, he was confident that the Japanese would not be able to manage any more successes in the region, but until then he was stuck waiting.
Japan’s situation had not greatly changed with the season. Yamamoto’s decision to move the fleet had come from a lack of fuel and a lack of clear objectives now that they believed the USN to be a beaten foe and New Caledonia too difficult to capture. He had sent four light carriers in their place to serve as escorts, but the situation on land had fallen apart before they arrived in Truk. Unable to fly their aircraft, the carriers were ordered to stay in Truk until an opportunity presented itself for their use.
It may not have mattered too much in New Guinea or the Solomon islands, but grounding the aircraft proved problematic in Japanese-held Fiji. Occasional flights out of Guadalcanal had been needed to send ammunition to the garrison on Viti Levu, which was still battling an unending resistance effort in the jungles beyond Suva. The Americans too could not send supplies to the Fijians by air, but they had been able to send more than the Japanese in the past, and it would be the natives who could work off their existing stores for longer. The resistance alone was not large enough to utterly defeat the regiment of professional soldiers tasked with holding the islands, but during January they did briefly take control of a substantial agricultural region northeast of Suva – a temporary loss but one that caused General Ito many headaches.

The worst of the weather came in the form of a cyclone, that struck Vanua Levu on New Years Day, 1943. With no regard to their owners, the storm tore through all manner of structures on the island, damaging the small docks of Savusavu, barracks housing the Japanese garrison and Fijian villages that paid as little attention to the war as they could get away with. The small airstrip that the Japanese had built was covered with debris, and the collapse of a radio pole temporarily cut the island off from communication with Suva and Rabaul. The commander of the island’s garrison, a colonel of no particular importance, sent a report to General Ito describing the situation as a mess, but the physical damage to Japan’s military capabilities was minimal.
The damage done to the garrison’s morale was much greater. Most Japanese knew the story of the two great storms that had destroyed the invasion fleets of Kublai Khan and the Mongols in the thirteenth century – the “divine wind” often credited with saving Japan. This time, the divine wind appeared to have turned its back on the Japanese and sided with their enemy, a fact noted by one member of Fletcher’s staff who named the storm ‘Cyclone Sam’ after Uncle Sam himself. Seven thousand kilometres from the Home Islands with only rare resupply efforts, the Japanese on Vanua Levu were already among the most isolated military units in the world. The storm made isolation feel like abandonment, and the following weeks did nothing to help that feeling.

The cyclone, coming to Vanua Levu from the northwest, had no immediate impact on Allied forces: nearly all of its path was deep in Japanese-controlled waters, and those few USN submarines in the region had been ordered out at least two weeks earlier. With his naval forces still waiting on reinforcements, Fletcher was unwilling to rush into any confrontations with the Japanese: the bulk of Yamamoto’s fleet had gone but could easily return, but he ordered his intelligence unit to pay particular attention to radio traffic coming out of Fiji.
Fletcher expected a huge increase in activity in the wake of the storm: America regularly experienced hurricanes and it was no secret that the clean-up after one required a great deal of resources and manpower. Instead, they found a notable drop in traffic lasting for a few days, and then nothing more than the usual amount of intercepted messages. A few explanations existed for this, the most prominent suggestion being that the storm had missed the Japanese garrison entirely. The brief silencing of Vanua Levu could easily be due to an accident or a radio-silence order.
Fletcher acknowledged those as possibilities, but noted that the timing of such an order was unusual. His belief was instead that the Japanese either didn’t have the strength, or simply didn’t care enough, to do anything about the damage caused by the cyclone. In either case, the forces present in Fiji were smaller than what had been previously assumed, or at the very least Vanua Levu had been stripped of units to battle the resistance on Viti Levu. As Savusavu was not much worse a base than Suva or Nandi, a garrison there was likely to be of similar size to one around one of those locations on Viti Levu, and Fletcher now believed that such a garrison was not one to be feared.
As soon as the weather showed signs of clearing, a significant increase to reconnaissance efforts was ordered, not just for the Fijian islands but for the surrounding seas as well. Political pressure to retake the islands had been overwhelming since the New Zealanders laid down their arms. Perhaps the time was nearly ripe.

[OTL Note: This cyclone was a real event, although I wasn't able to find details on what exactly on Vanua Levu it hit.]

- BNC

 

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XXXIII: Forming Plans, January 1943

In the days following the successful landings in Northwest Africa, Roosevelt and Churchill had been planning a new conference, so that the future of the war could be planned. In November, Casablanca had been proposed as the location of the conference, but after Charles de Gaulle refused to appear (it is believed he was still angry at Roosevelt’s handling of the situation in New Caledonia), the two leaders believed it would be inappropriate to have the conference in French territory, and Washington was chosen to host them instead. Stalin was offered an invitation, but declined, claiming that the ongoing Battle of Stalingrad demanded his full attention (whether it really did is open to debate: the German Sixth Army surrendered in early February).
The Third Washington Conference focused mostly on events in Europe, in line with the policy of ‘Germany first’. Stalin had been vocal in the past about his desire to see a second front opened with an amphibious landing in France, but during the conference this was decided not to be feasible in the summer of 1943, and the decision was made to land in Italy instead upon the conclusion of the Tunisian campaign, with France planned for 1944. The “unconditional surrender” policy, which had been informally discussed even before the Japanese peace offer was made, became official with the Washington Declaration. Hitler turned the declaration into a propaganda piece, attempting to motivate Germans to fight harder, “the alternative our opponents would leave us with being the dismemberment of the German nation and the eradication of the German people”. The Japanese convinced themselves that the Declaration was an attempt to disguise fear, and that American resolve was one great battle away from total collapse.

Churchill said little about the war in the Pacific during his time in Washington. Since the fall of Singapore, the British Empire’s most significant contributions to the fight against Japan consisted of the Burma front, which had stalled once more as an offensive into Arakan was defeated by the IJA, the return of the Australian and New Zealand units to their home countries, and the two carriers which would soon be sent to Fletcher. These contributions were important, but it was obvious to all that the Americans would dominate Allied policy in the Pacific, and Churchill was willing enough to follow that in exchange for more influence in Europe.
Thus it would be another conference, held in Honolulu in the last week of January, where the direction of the Pacific war would be determined. Among those attending were the four most important US commanders: Admirals King, Nimitz and Fletcher, and General Douglas MacArthur, as well as John Curtin and Peter Fraser, the Prime Ministers of Australia and New Zealand. Roosevelt was kept well informed of the discussions, but allowed his commanders to make nearly all of the decisions on how to fight Japan.
Honolulu was dominated by one question: which of two strategies was to be adopted. The first was to make the Central Pacific be the main axis of advance, beginning in Hawaii and invading a series of important island groups in Micronesia, among them the Marshalls and Marianas, before invading Japan itself and taking Tokyo. The alternative, championed by MacArthur, was to focus on the Southwestern Pacific, taking first New Guinea and then the Philippines, before striking the Home Islands from the south.
MacArthur’s proposal made a lot of political sense – the Philippines had been an American territory in 1941 after all – but few could doubt that MacArthur wanted glory for General Douglas MacArthur as well. He had spent many years in the Philippines and had developed an attachment to the people there, and had boasted “I will return” upon his defeat there the previous year. But to get to the Philippines, several island groups would have to be taken or neutralised first, New Guinea and its inhospitable terrain first among them, but also Japan’s island fortress at Rabaul and perhaps the Solomons as well. The Central Pacific route by contrast, was almost entirely open ocean, which could easily be dominated by the US Navy once Yamamoto was defeated and the copious quantities of ships currently under construction were put to sea. With little need for bloody overland campaigns like New Caledonia, it was clearly the easier route. Nimitz and Fletcher agreed that it should have the priority.

That didn’t mean that the southern route could be abandoned entirely however. While the admirals were willing to ignore MacArthur, they could not ignore their Australian and New Zealand allies in the same way. Curtin had been as fixated on New Guinea as MacArthur had been since Coral Sea, and was adamant that Port Moresby be retaken at the earliest opportunity. Fraser meanwhile advocated for Fiji’s recapture, which absent political pressure would have been entirely unnecessary. Thousands of New Zealander POWs believed still to be on Viti Levu, and the threat of an invasion of New Zealand, meant that bypassing Fiji would not be acceptable. The New Hebrides, once considered in the same light as Fiji, were now determined to be a lower priority target: New Caledonia had been won and Efate was no longer a serious threat.
While the Central Pacific strategy was favoured, it would also not be possible to attempt a primarily sea-based campaign before the end of 1943. Japan’s navy was still powerful, and Yamamoto would surely attempt to engage the landing fleet in battle, a battle where the Japanese would likely hold the advantage in numbers for the immediate future. Any attempted landings would therefore have to be conducted under land-based air cover, which was possible over Fiji and New Guinea but not over the Marshalls. While the carriers were built, the Southwestern strategy would be adopted.
Fletcher proposed Fiji as the first target, with D-day set for March or April 1943, at the end of the tropical wet season. Fiji, he argued, would be an easier target than Port Moresby, and could be used to gain experience before the more difficult operation was attempted. Not only was Fiji much more distant from major Japanese bases, but Cyclone Sam had just hit and in three months it would be unlikely for the Japanese to have totally recovered. The native resistance would also be a considerable help to the forces that landed, and the capture of a POW camp was undoubtedly more important than stopping the activities of a small submarine base. Despite MacArthur’s misgivings, King and Nimitz agreed that Fiji would be the first operation, now given the codename ‘Hangman’, while Port Moresby would follow a month or two later.

- BNC

 

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XXXIV: Fleet Review, February 1943

Imperial support for his defensive plans and the Second Decisive Battle caused Yamamoto to devote all of his energy to that plan. Despite his official role being limited to the command of the Combined Fleet, Yamamoto’s prestige among Navy ranks after the Battle of the South Pacific gave him a far greater influence over the Imperial Navy as a whole. The Minister of the Navy, Admiral Shigetaro Shimada, was a weak leader and easily influenced by Yamamoto. Their superior, the IJN Chief of Staff Admiral Osami Nagano, had meanwhile made many enemies in the Imperial Headquarters, and was reliant on Yamamoto’s support to convince the Army to do anything.
Under Yamamoto’s ‘recommendation’, the entire IJN was given orders that Yamamoto hoped would prepare it for the Second Decisive Battle. Cruisers and smaller ships would continue their usual duties as escorts, but carriers and battleships were to remain in Japan so as to avoid being drawn into another attrition battle. Six months of intense action around Fiji and New Caledonia had cost five carriers (two light) and one battleship, losses which could not be afforded and requiring oil that could not be provided. The four light carriers that had been sent to Truk a couple of months prior would remain there as a fleet in being, hoping to deter the Americans from launching an attack on Fiji or any of Japan’s other recent conquests, but they were not expected to see combat. Fuel that was not needed immediately was stockpiled in Japan, for the decisive battle would be ideally fought as far from the Home Islands as possible. With the US Navy thought to be destroyed, Yamamoto decided that he would have twelve months before the Americans could rebuild their forces and turn them against Japan. The decisive battle would be fought as soon as possible after 1 February 1944, and everything had to be ready by then.

Foremost on Yamamoto’s mind were the new battleships and carriers under construction. The second Yamato, Musashi, had just completed her sea trials and would soon become Yamamoto’s flagship, but the third of the class, Shinano, had experienced some delays and was looking at a May 1944 commission date. The other major construction project, the carrier Taiho, was also set to be completed in early 1944, too late for his desired decisive battle. Taiho’s sister ship Unryu was still in the early stages of construction, and work on that would not be able to be accelerated sufficiently. Giving up hope on being able to use Unryu, Yamamoto gave the shipyards orders to have both Shinano and Taiho ready for sea trials no later than the beginning of December 1943.
Yamamoto found better news during his tour of some of Japan’s aircraft factories. The long-awaited successors to the D3A “Val” dive bomber and B5N “Kate” torpedo bomber were both ready for production and appeared to be promising aircraft. The Val’s successor, the Yokosuka D4Y Suisei (‘Judy’ to the Allies) combined the speed of the Zero with an increased bomb load compared to the Val, and a prototype used at New Caledonia had performed well: the structural issues found in October had been resolved by some small modifications to the design. The replacement for the Kate, the B6N Tenzan (or ‘Jill’) had seen a difficult development period so far, with disputes arising regarding the engine to be used and a lack of range if self-sealing fuel tanks replaced the unprotected ones currently in use. Yamamoto, who wanted the bomber put into serial production as quickly as possible, ordered that the originally planned engine and the unprotected fuel tanks were to be used in all first-round production models. Along with improved models of the Zero fighter, the new bombers were to be the backbone of the strike forces in the second decisive battle.

The US Navy too was attempting to assemble its forces for battle as quickly as possible. Operation Hangman, the amphibious invasion of Fiji, had been set for March 21st, less than three months away when the Honolulu conference began. Fletcher currently had Hornet under his command, and Saratoga’s repair work in Puget Sound would be completed by the end of February, soon enough for it to join the fleet and be a part of the operation. The first of the Essex-class carriers were now entering commission, but they would need some months of trials before they would be ready for combat: Essex could potentially join the Port Moresby operation if trials went well, but that decision would not be made for another couple of months.
Fletcher also wanted to use the two carriers loaned to the US Navy by the British for Hangman, but trials of Victorious off the US East Coast presented a major problem: the smaller British carrier could not reliably land the TBF Avenger bomber, America’s heaviest and most powerful carrier plane at that stage in the war. Illustrious, of the same class as Victorious, would have the same issue, but that carrier had not yet arrived in Pearl Harbour from the Indian Ocean when the issue was discovered. Refitting either of the ships to handle the Avenger would take at least a month, thirty or more days that Fletcher’s timetable had no room for.
Fletcher considered postponing Hangman to allow for the refits to be completed, but eventually decided against doing so. Not only would it delay MacArthur’s invasion of New Guinea, with all the political fallout that would follow, but it would also give the Japanese time to reinforce Fiji that they would not have during the cyclone season. Cyclone Sam had undoubtedly weakened them, and he wanted to take full advantage of that weakness.
Nimitz agreed that delaying Hangman would be an unwelcome change, not just with regard to the New Guinea operation but also the beginning of the Central Pacific strategy set to begin later in the year. Rather than refit the British carriers so that they could handle Avengers, they would be added to Fletcher’s fleet with a minimum of immediate upgrades and be limited to carrying lighter American planes such as the Wildcat and SBD. Avengers would fly off Saratoga and Hornet, as well as from Tongatabu, during Hangman, and modernisation of the carriers offered by the Americans could take place at the end of their South Pacific service. Fiji, after all, was a British territory and a combined operation for all the Allies: there was no reason that the carriers on loan had to be transformed to look American.
Fletcher received word from Brisbane and Pearl Harbour saying that both carriers could be made available for his fleet by the end of March. The March 21st date remained uncertain, but if there was to be delay, he could be confident that it would not be a large one.

- BNC

 

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XXXV: Building the Gallows, March 1943

The naval campaigns around New Caledonia had been dominated by the extensive coral reefs that surrounded the island. The landing site near Thio had been chosen in part due to the presence of a gap in those reefs, and even then several Japanese ships had been damaged in the attempt to bring troops ashore. Every ship that had got stuck on the reef had been destroyed shortly afterwards by Allied bombers: virtually unarmoured, they became sitting ducks that the Japanese could not afford to lose. Reefs were on Fletcher’s mind as he and his staff planned out Operation Hangman. The reefs around Fiji were just as extensive as those around New Caledonia, and now that the Allies were on the offensive, they were an obstacle that he would need to negotiate.
Fletcher’s maps were much better than those that the Japanese commanders had been able to use in their invasion of Fiji: while General Yi had been fortunate to land on the south coast of Viti Levu, where the reefs were smallest, Fletcher knew where that opening was. But Fletcher had no interest in the southern coast of Fiji’s largest island. Yi had landed there with the intention of avoiding any likely Allied strongpoints, which had forced him to march along dozens of kilometres of poor-quality coastal road before he could attack Suva, using up valuable supplies in the process. The Allies would be operating with gunfire support from multiple battleships, and did not need to avoid the enemy the same way. In order to reduce casualties, Fletcher would still land some distance from Suva, but he preferred not to order his men to march halfway across the island to get there.
The location he eventually settled upon was on Viti Levu’s east coast, about thirty kilometres north of Suva. This location had no reefs near the coast, although some further out meant that the landing ships would have to approach from the north. That in turn meant that Vanua Levu would have to be secured first, an island that offered very few suitable landing sites. There, Fletcher felt he had no choice. The same beaches that the Japanese had used in August would now be stormed by the Marine Corps.

Fletcher could count on another advantage that General Yi had not been able to: the Fijian resistance. While the Fijians, particularly in the southern half of Viti Levu, had been harassing the Japanese since the day they landed, a lack of equipment had made communication with the Allies difficult. Fiji had suffered from a lack of radios since the beginning of the war, and a considerable amount of what had been there was now in Japanese hands. Air supply efforts by the USAAF had helped, but while it was known that the Japanese held little control of the interior, coordinating resistance groups with other Allied forces had been difficult.
In February, Fletcher gave the orders to get the Fijian resistance more involved in the effort to liberate Viti Levu. As part of this effort, a battalion of Marine Raiders were landed on the eastern coast, where they scouted out the terrain seeking the most ideal beachhead available. These units also brought communications equipment and orders to contact one of the Fijian HQs, where village chiefs were now doubling as field commanders. Korovou, a village established by British settlers in the wake of the Great War, was one such location. Fifty kilometres north of Suva, it was far enough from Ito’s camps yet close enough to monitor the situation around the colonial capital. The chiefs in the village welcomed the Americans, and as resistance fighters moved through the village a plan to distract Japanese attention was made: while the Marines and New Zealanders landed in the east, the natives could threaten Suva from the north and west. The Fijians also passed on their knowledge of the land, discussing everything from potentially difficult rivers, to good paths through the jungle, to known Japanese defences. The battalion’s commander was pleased to hear that Ito’s defences appeared to be lacking.
General Ito could do little but watch. Long breaks in the bad weather were rare, reducing the amount of supply flights between Guadalcanal and Fiji to nearly zero, and those few that did get off the ground risked interception by the Allied fighters. His own reconnaissance flights too were so few as to be almost meaningless, and a growing fuel shortage made an already problematic situation much worse. On the ground, his forces consisted of just a few thousand Japanese and the Fiji Battalion of Indians, far short of what was needed to maintain control over the island. Nearly half of all Ito’s men were stationed near Suva, where defences had been taken over from the New Zealanders, but while he could rule the town and its immediate surroundings, he did not have so much as a platoon watching over Korovou. Reports reached his desk suggesting possible American activity more than a week after the Marine Raiders first landed, and Ito decided to consider them mere rumours. Even if they weren’t, what could he do about them? Neither the Army nor the Navy seemed to care about Fiji any longer.

As D-day for Hangman neared, Fletcher was forced to delay the operation. Even the shortened refit program on the British carriers had taken longer than expected, and while they were now en route to Samoa and Tongatabu, it would be closer to the end of March before they would be able to join the fleet. The Indiana and Massachusetts, two of the newest US battleships, had joined the Victorious to escort the carrier after it passed through the Panama Canal, so they too would not be ready for the original plan. April 2nd, the new date chosen for the operation, looked much more promising.
Fletcher was soon very glad for the two week delay. Just four days before he would have ordered landing craft to carry troops to the beaches, a second cyclone smashed through Fiji. The Lau islands, east of Viti Levu, were almost directly on the route that his navy would have to sail through in order to reach the Japanese, and now they bore the full brunt of the new storm. Nothing of military value was located on the islands, and Fletcher was fairly sure that the Japanese had not even occupied them, so the cyclone was unlikely to have any impact on the upcoming invasion. If anything, Fletcher hoped the weather would convince the Japanese that no invasion would be coming.

- BNC

 

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XXXVI: Hangman Begins, April 1943

In the morning twilight of April 2nd, 1943, Major General Vandegrift of the First Marine Division stared out at the island of Vanua Levu. The battleships South Dakota, Indiana and Massachusetts, along with a swarm of cruisers and destroyers were delivering a massive bombardment to the Japanese defenders of the beaches near Savusavu. In the air, all four of Admiral Fitch’s carriers had launched their strike aircraft, while heavier bombers were flying in from Samoa. Across the entire South Pacific, diversionary attacks led by B-17s were about to hit the Japanese on New Guinea, Efate and even in the Gilbert Islands. Yamamoto’s fleet had yet to make an appearance, and if the intelligence officers were correct, was nowhere near the invasion fleet. The weather left a fair bit to be desired, with low tides not until mid-morning and rain threatening to fall, but the tail-end of the wet season rarely offered perfect conditions. Three hours before the Marines were set to land, Hangman looked to be going according to plan.
Despite the apparently good news, Vandegrift was worried. Only two of his regiments would be used in today’s operation, while the third would be held back, to be used to support the New Zealanders landing on Viti Levu tomorrow unless something went horribly wrong. The decision to split the division had come after intelligence noticed just how weak Japanese reinforcement efforts were, both by land and sea, and estimates of Japanese strength on Vanua Levu had been revised down several times, from two divisions’ worth at the time of the New Caledonian operation to either a strong battalion or a starving regiment, spread across the entirety of a large island.

By 1100, Vandegrift realised that he had been pessimistic. What his troops found was not a strong battalion or a starving regiment, but a starving battalion. Ito’s subordinates had ordered that a strong defence be made on the beaches, since geography made it obvious where the Americans would attempt to land, and the 500 or so Japanese soldiers on Vanua Levu had done their best to turn Savusavu into a fortress. That meant trenches, machine-gun positions, and the odd artillery piece range-trained on the landing sites. Equipment shortages, worse than almost any other unit in the war except for the weakest of the Volkssturm, ensured that the defenders would be forced into a hopeless fight.
The Marines, outnumbering their pathetic foes by an astonishing 25:1, broke through the beach defences in less than an hour, and the ground battle for Vanua Levu lasted fewer than nine. Upon the fall of the beaches, most of the Japanese officers on the island were devoting their attention to the proper procedure of seppuku instead of actually defending Savusavu. Japanese infantrymen fought hard for the most part, inflicting enough casualties on the Americans to deny the battle a chance to be called a walkover, but losses remained far below Allied expectations. Some Japanese infantry fled into the jungle, many to be found and killed later in the war and one as late as 1953, while a few would attempt to become Fijian citizens, claiming to have arrived before the war and the loss of their papers and houses being due to the fighting. Fijians of Indian heritage, who had little reason to support the British establishment and had often accommodated the Japanese (though outright collaboration was unusual), did not say otherwise.

The second stage of Hangman, the beginning of the Viti Levu campaign, began as planned on April 3rd. The ‘landing’, if it could really be called that, would actually be a series of unloading operations in resistance-controlled territory along the island’s eastern coast, with the heaviest equipment being sent to the small beach near Korovou village and most of the infantry sailing up the area’s many rivers before disembarking slightly inland. Despite many threats of rain storms, the weather remained calm, although usually overcast, during the operation. The Japanese garrison at Nandi, on the opposite side of the island, were not pleased to be suffering the full fury of the storm that had ignored the Allies entirely. Perhaps they would have thought differently if they knew that a B-17 raid against Nandi had been cancelled as a consequence.
Hangman Phase 2 was executed without incident, and by the end of the day Vandegrift’s last Marine regiment and the 2nd New Zealand Division under the command of Lieutenant General Bernard Freyberg were all ashore. Freyberg, a veteran of Gallipoli and the Western Front in World War I and then wounded in North Africa in this war, was the most senior Allied officer in Fiji, and took command of the operation once his forces were on shore. Orders were given out to move all regular troops to the village of Naimasimasi, at the edge of Japanese-controlled territory, before an attack on Suva would be attempted. When he did attack, he wanted as many men as possible to take part. The resistance, not bound by his orders, was eager to push forward, providing Freyberg with useful information about the Japanese defence in the days before the Third Battle of Suva.

The invasion of Vanua Levu was on Freyberg’s mind as he planned out his Suva campaign. While the individual Japanese soldier had proven to be a brave and determined foe, their government appeared to have completely neglected the defence of Vanua Levu. Their military strength would later be compared to that of an exceptionally sharp katana, but where four months earlier that had been the sharpest of all nations’ swords, now Japan looked to be fighting with just a slightly pointy stick, or perhaps the katana’s handle. Freyberg, who had expected the Japanese would fight as hard as they did in New Caledonia, considered Japanese weakness a welcome surprise, but not one he expected to become habitual. Many other officers were becoming fooled into thinking the war nearly won, and until Third Suva proved otherwise, they advocated even more aggressive plans for taking the fight to Japan.
The reason for the poor showing of Ito’s subordinates is partly due to Japan’s weakness in the region, as can be expected of any power forced to fight on a 7000 kilometre supply line, but has more to do with Ito himself. Ito had been left enough equipment and supplies to bring his entire force up to a satisfactory standard when most of the men were withdrawn for use in New Caledonia, and further supply runs had been – barely – sufficient to cover losses. The battalion left behind on Vanua Levu would have been grossly outnumbered regardless by Vandegrift’s Marines, but they could have made the cost of the island much more expensive.
Instead, Ito allowed himself to get drawn into several clashes with the resistance, which was a persistent nuisance but never powerful enough to control Fiji’s largest towns on its own. Every one of these battles cost Ito men from an already small garrison, and to avoid weakening his strongpoints in Suva and Nandi, he took forces out of Vanua Levu. Replacement equipment sent to his command, intended to be split between the two islands, would be directed in its entirety towards an unwinnable fight on Viti Levu. Some historians have pointed out that Ito’s actions had a remarkable cynicism about them: Navy troops were on Vanua Levu under Ito’s command, and it was those that were both starved and wasted against the resistance. Army troops then would be free to prepare the defences of Suva, suffering far fewer losses and keeping the best of the equipment. The Navy would meanwhile be either a crippled threat or a convenient scapegoat. For a general that despised Yamamoto more than he did Roosevelt, nothing could be better.

- BNC

 

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XXXVII: Third Suva, April 1943

Outside Suva, General Freyberg had an advantage that few commanders on either side of the war would ever have. His countrymen had built the fortifications around Suva in 1940, and maps had been sent back to Auckland showing every detail of the defences Ito had taken over. Every bunker, large gun and minefield had been marked, and weaknesses of the position found by the original garrison could now be exploited by the men who had come to liberate them. Fijian resistance fighters had watched the Japanese in Suva, and reported that the Japanese had done apparently very little to improve the defences at Suva. Many guns still pointed out to sea, and ammunition for them would be lacking.
The most important part of Ito’s bastion at Suva was the only significant installation not on Freyberg’s maps. Ito’s prisoner-of-war camp, which was believed (accurately) to still hold most of the New Zealanders who had surrendered after the town’s fall, had been built by the Japanese, and few resistance fighters had managed to locate it. Even fewer had survived to tell the story. The best estimate was that the camp was somewhere south of the airstrip and north of the town of Suva, outside the best of Suva’s defences but likely to be well guarded by Ito. Freyberg ordered that this be the primary objective of the offensive unless information came out proving the camp to be elsewhere. Fiji, which was too far from Micronesia to be of any strategic use, was very much a political campaign. It made sense that the political objectives should be secured first.

Coordinating their plans with the New Zealanders and Americans, the Fijian resistance launched an attack on the Japanese just west of Suva in the night of the 5th/6th of April. The Japanese, as they usually did, sent more than a hundred men rushing into the jungle to hunt the natives down, only to find the Fijians retreat into its depths. Instead of drawing the Japanese into a wild goose chase, which would usually go on until the Japanese gave up and returned to their posts around Suva a few men short, this time the natives set up an ambush. Their knowledge of the land proved invaluable, as they guessed what routes the Japanese would follow and set one of those up to become a killing field.
The last time they had tried this, a Fijian chief would later explain, had been very early in the conflict on the island. Sixty Japanese had been killed, a couple of days before the First Battle of Suva, and for a couple of hours it had been considered a great victory. Then the Japanese retaliated, sending an entire battalion in to kill any Fijians they found, with horrific results. After that, the chief said, “we did not want to get into large battles with them. The invaders were far from home, so they could not fight forever. We did not have the men to crush the Japanese, but as long as they kept bleeding, we would win eventually.” Now that the Allies were there, provoking the Japanese into a big reaction was no longer something to be avoided, but the most desirable outcome of all. Ito, who could be counted on to deliver brutality and ruthlessness, fell right into their plans: 700 men were sent into the Fijians’ ambush.

At dawn two hours later, Ito’s men were still fighting the Fijians when Freyberg attacked in the northeast. His force, at a little over twenty thousand men, greatly outnumbered that of his opponent, and Ito sending every fifth man he had to fight the Fijians only made the disparity in numbers that much greater. With proper defences, the Japanese fought hard to keep their vital airfield out of Allied hands. Machine guns and artillery, no small number once belonging to the New Zealanders (and some few having been used on the Western Front in 1918), created a battlefield far bloodier than that of Vanua Levu. At least 500 Allied soldiers became casualties, while nearly all of the Japanese had to be shot or bayoneted before the POW camp could be freed.
The fall of the trench line reduced Ito’s army to only a puny shell of what it had been just days earlier, and the general ordered what was left of his men to gather for a final banzai charge, which he believed would be the only way to push the Americans back (it appears that he was never told that New Zealanders made up two-thirds of the Allied force). Ito sought an honourable death on the battlefield, and led the charge personally. While his men fell around him, he was hit by four bullets, three in one arm and another below his right knee. Determined to fight on, he staggered towards the Allied lines before falling to the ground and passing out.

Freyberg was also leading his troops from the front when he was told of the capture of a badly wounded Japanese major general. Considering how few Japanese were willing to surrender, such a high-ranking officer was an even more prestigious victory than usual, and Freyberg doubted that the general would ever have given himself up willingly. As soon as the medics dragged Ito behind the line, where he would lose his broken arm, Freyberg stopped thinking about him. The Japanese defence, now practically leaderless, had been shot to pieces and now the way to the prison camp was open. The first Allied troops would reach the camp in the late afternoon.
What they found was an ugly scene. Fijians living near the Japanese bases had already told stories of the occupiers stealing food from locals, to make up for a lack of supplies from the rest of the Empire. The dishonour of surrender and a brutal general at the top had meant that very little of that food got into the barbed wire surrounding the crudely-built camp, and it was evident that many hundreds of prisoners had starved to death. Most of the survivors were in little better condition: in addition to lacking food, the camp had well below any minimum standard of shelter, nearly all of it poor quality. Many prisoners told the story of how the camp was given a barbed wire fence, hundreds of armed guards and an empty field; the now-dead colonel in charge of managing the camp had pointed to a pile of bamboo left in the centre of the field and yelled something at them in Japanese. As far as anyone could tell, the Japanese had not cared what happened to the prisoners after that.
The story of the camp was initially kept quiet while various leaders worked out how to best release the news. Stories of the Bataan Death March, another incident of appalling treatment of prisoners, had been filtering out of the Philippines for the past year, but had so far been kept quiet. Now that the Allies had proof that the Japanese were just as savage as the stories claimed, none who knew the story of Bataan doubted it any more, and when Nandi fell in early May, both Bataan and Fiji were announced to the public, where they would soon become a common part of anti-Japan propaganda works.

- BNC

 

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XXXVIII: Islands Divided, April 1943

General Ito remained proud of his actions during his post-war trial. Hoping to immortalise himself as a master and a “guiding hand for Fiji’s future”, he claimed that “Fiji was the greatest of battlefields between Asia and Europe. Japan supported the Indians, for they recognised the path of progress, while your colonial regime was one intending to halt it.” The Japanese government had no clear policy for Fiji, but Ito believed that the islands would be given independence once Japan won the war. His support for a racial conflict between Indian and native Fijian was defended as “necessary to ensure the safety of Fiji within the Asian community and preventing its exploitation by the Western powers.”
Open racial conflict on Fiji, of the sort Ito hoped for and spent seven months attempting to cause, never quite broke out. The closest he ever came was with the Indian National Army’s Fiji Battalion, a grossly understrength unit by the time of ‘Hangman’. Like its counterparts in Burma, the Fiji Battalion disintegrated as soon as the Allies opposed it in serious strength, and with the exception of a few fanatics most members threw down their (once New Zealand-owned) arms and disappeared into the jungle. Those who were captured would become POWs.
The charge of treason against the British crown was considered, but Freyberg and other officers tasked with the restoration of British rule in Fiji were wary of disturbing a pair of islands that were already upset. Most Indians in Fiji were not so willing to oppose the British as to join the Battalion, but a great number of them sympathised with those who had, or at least with the relatively good treatment they had received under Japan. Even before the Indian-majority areas of western Viti Levu were retaken, it was apparent that pre-war discrimination could provoke an uprising in Fiji that would take resources away from the fight against Japan. The pro-Allied resistance had been damaging to Japanese efforts on the islands, and no-one was keen to see a pro-Axis resistance take its place.
Sir Philip Mitchell, the British Governor of Fiji for mere weeks before the Japanese invasion, returned to Suva on April 20th. Churchill had made it clear that independence would not be an option for Fiji, and Fijian chiefs for the most part did not want to break from Great Britain, fearing an Indian-dominated government taking power and weakening native control of the islands. Mitchell worked with Freyberg in an attempt to diffuse the tensions, most importantly allowing Indo-Fijians to volunteer for service for the same pay as their native counterparts, but the damage had already been done, and few joined. The unit that was formed would be used to garrison Vanua Levu. Meanwhile, volunteering among native Fijians dramatically increased upon the liberation of Suva, and the resistance fighters were gradually integrated into regular units. The Fiji Regiment (named as such to mock Japan’s less impressive effort, despite only maintaining the strength of two battalions) would be placed under MacArthur’s command shortly after the New Guinea campaign began, giving him a crack unit and allowing more US forces to be transferred from the Brisbane Line to the campaign in Italy.

Fiji’s liberation had not just exposed cracks between populations on the islands. Shortly after Suva was retaken, a years-old tension between the Allied commands created another bitter confrontation.
General Douglas MacArthur would never forgive himself for leaving the Philippines as the situation at Bataan had deteriorated, and his famous statement of “I will return” was a promise that he was determined to keep. Tens of thousands of soldiers – his soldiers – had been left behind, their fate uncertain after they were forced to surrender. For a year, the Bataan Death March had been a grim rumour, but discoveries in Fiji showed that the rumours, while they could not be confirmed, were more likely than ever before. Thousands of the men he had left behind were surely dead. The survivors could not be abandoned.
MacArthur had disagreed with the plan created by Nimitz and supported by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, to drive through the Central Pacific with full force as soon as the carriers were built, ever since it had been created. Aside from a small campaign in New Guinea planned for June, his vast command (which covered everything from Australia and New Guinea to the East Indies and the Philippines) would be nothing but a backwater. The plan had not yet made any decisions about the fate of the Philippines, but MacArthur was sure that Nimitz would ignore them and drive straight for the Ryukyu islands and then Tokyo as soon as Micronesia was conquered. MacArthur sent a strongly worded protest to Washington, urging their plan be reconsidered in light of the horrific treatment that American prisoners were surely suffering. At the end of the document was the now famous line:

“There are no American divisions waiting for us in Micronesia.”

To MacArthur’s surprise, although perhaps no-one else’s, the Joint Chiefs refused to budge on their strategy. In their eyes, the POWs in the Philippines were not worth the thousands of casualties that would be suffered in MacArthur’s planned offensives through the Solomons, Rabaul and then finally the Philippines, all of which would detract from the most important goal of all: the destruction of Yamamoto’s Navy. None of the leading admirals could see their rival committing his carriers to a clash in the Solomons, which were hardly more useful to the Japanese defensive perimeter than Fiji. Better to destroy the South Pacific salient by going around it, like the Germans would soon attempt at Kursk. The flanks Manstein would face on the Eastern Front were made of minefields and walls of tanks; in the Pacific there was nothing but the sea and an inventive Japanese admiral.
MacArthur’s protest did succeed in convincing the admirals to start seriously considering a Philippines campaign however. If Fiji, a position of practically no strategic value at all, could be given top priority for political reasons, then why did an American territory like the Philippines not deserve the same treatment? Such an operation would have to be mounted out of one of the Micronesian island groups, not MacArthur’s hoped-for offensive out of New Guinea, but now it would be seriously considered.
More immediately, MacArthur’s protest brought America’s other lost possessions to the front of the admirals’ minds.

- BNC

 

[BiteNibbleChomp]

XXXIX: Old Enemies, May 1943

The Imperial Army was bristling with confidence even as Fiji fell to the Allies. Army forces had seen a nearly unbroken chain of successes for as long as anyone bothered to think about: Eastern China, the Philippines, Malaya, Burma, the East Indies and the South Pacific had all returned victories, and British attempts to push them back in Arakan had been a total failure. The two most prominent defeats, in New Caledonia last year and Fiji just recently, were both the Navy’s fault for failing to deliver the proper supplies. Other than General Ito, who had become a prisoner instead of seeking an honourable death, no major Army commanders had brought shame upon themselves or their families.
As the war dragged on, this overconfidence had been clouding the judgement of Japan’s top commanders to an increasingly extreme degree. A victory in the East Indies had led to the Port Moresby landing being approved, then that had led to FS, and on Yamamoto’s part at least, the final naval clashes of FS had led to a fixation on the Second Decisive Battle, which was fast becoming an unwinnable affair owing to America’s enormous productive capabilities. The Army had also succumbed to the so-called ‘victory disease’, perhaps worse than the Navy had (at least privately, the Navy acknowledged that losses so far had been higher than expected). By the middle of 1943, tensions between the Army and Navy had reached an all-time high, and both services were spending more time looking warily at each other than at any of Japan’s much more powerful external enemies.
Fiji’s fall was a shock to all in the Japanese High Command. Yamamoto was unconcerned (and possibly the only senior officer not involved in the internal conflicts), but the Army decided that this was the time to take control for themselves.

In May, the IJA’s plans had not yet reached the far more radical actions that would soon follow. They had already secured control of the country’s propaganda arm, and appeared to wish to sideline the Navy’s influence in the war planning. They had already blamed the Navy publicly for every major failure that Japan had suffered, but the Navy had won just as many victories as the Army had: while the Army could claim the credit for the Philippines, East Indies and Burma, the Navy had Pearl Harbour, Coral Sea and the destruction of the USN off Efate. If the Army was to prevail against the Navy, they had to score another triumphant victory. More importantly, this victory had to be won in a theatre where the Navy had no influence, so that they could not claim any credit of their own. The decision was obvious at that point: the battle had to be won in China.
The plan they decided to use, ‘Operation 5’, was the last realistic hope Japan had to win the war. Made up of two simultaneous offensives, one beginning in Henan province to take Xi’an and then Chengdu, and the other beginning in Hubei province and advancing along the Yangtze river, the final goal was to conquer the Sichuan basin, Chiang Kai-Shek’s last meaningful power base, and take his capital in Chungking. While the plan would do nothing about the persistent guerilla problem in China, if successful it could severely weaken any further organised resistance against Japan in the country.
Unfortunately for the Japanese, the Army was impatient and utterly certain of victory. Despite earlier versions of the Sichuan plan calling for several divisions’ worth of troops to be transferred from Manchukuo to strengthen the offensive (troops that were still available by May 1943), the Army faction in the Imperial Headquarters urged that the offensive go forward immediately. About 100,000 troops were available in the region, instead of possibly triple that had a two month delay been allowed. The Army believed that a two month delay would allow the Navy an opportunity to do a never-defined ‘something’ (they had influenced the Emperor once before after all). Generals were given orders, and the offensive was rushed into action.

When the offensives began on May 4th, the Chinese lines broke just as the Japanese believed they would. Equipment shortages and weak leadership, problems that had never been solved in China’s vast armies, once again reared their ugly heads. The Japanese were facing roughly double their number in these opening stages, and for several days the Army’s belief of its own superiority looked to be ‘proven’ true once again.
Chiang Kai-Shek, who was hesitant to get into a major battle with the Japanese (instead preferring to prepare for the next stage of the old conflict with the Chinese Communists), knew that this time he had no choice. Sichuan was too important to lose. As soon as reports of the Japanese offensive reached him, he ordered every available reserve be sent to the battle. Hundreds of thousands of troops. Even poor quality soldiers could slow down the Japanese, burying the attackers in a sea of manpower. The Communists watched on, their stronghold in Shanxi being largely ignored by the Japanese who were more interested in targets further south. The IJA felt there was no prestige to be gained from taking Mao’s mountain forts.
Their ignorance would cost them. When the moment was deemed right, towards the end of May, Mao unleashed his forces, striking the northern Japanese force in the flank and throwing them back. Although the counter-offensive pushed the Japanese most of the way back to their starting point, it cost the Chinese, Communist and Nationalist both, thousands of casualties. Chiang Kai-Shek’s incoming reserves began turning the tide in western Hubei at around the same time, but instead of a dramatic push east, all that he achieved was a stalemate. A new cell of guerillas opened up in the newly-taken territory, but there was no glory to be found there. In a battle that looked for prestige first and military objectives second, that stalemate was useless. The Japanese Army had been halted, the Nationalists had been bloodied, and the true victor of the offensive was the one power that was never supposed to be a part of the battle in the first place.

The Imperial Army made sure that they covered up the story as much as possible. No-one was to know that they had rushed a plan into action without the forces it needed to succeed (post-war historians believe that had the Japanese attacked with 300,000 troops instead, they would very likely have taken at least one of their first-stage major objectives). What men did already know about the operation outside of the Army’s highest ranks in the Home Islands were told that it was a localised incident of no particular importance. Those same top generals, foiled in their plan to present a major victory to the Emperor and the Navy, now began to look to other sources of power and glory. The fact that MacArthur was gathering an invasion force off the coast of New Guinea appeared to be of no concern to them at all.

- BNC

 

[BiteNibbleChomp]

XL: The Next Step, May 1943

Douglas MacArthur spent months pressuring the Joint Chiefs to approve his plans for a large-scale offensive through the South Pacific, with no success. Their strategy to focus on Micronesia left little room for the recapture of island after island in the south, every one of them sure to cost thousands of American casualties for little strategic benefit. Japan’s more important outposts, in the Marshalls, Gilberts and Marianas, were more easily attacked with the fleet operating out of Pearl Harbour. Smaller operations would be conducted first to test amphibious doctrines and new equipment, and to remove the direct Japanese threat to Australia and New Zealand. Fiji’s liberation had protected New Zealand, now Port Moresby would do the same for Australia. Only now, they would call it ‘Drop Bear’.
Much to MacArthur’s annoyance, the Port Moresby operation was very much a limited offensive. Drop Bear called for a single amphibious landing near Port Moresby, followed by an advance to the foothills of the Owen Stanley mountains. At that point, MacArthur was ordered to halt and build a new set of fortifications in case the Japanese decided to launch an overland counteroffensive. The Japanese base at Lae, which had grown substantially since its capture early in the war, would be destroyed by air bombing, as would Guadalcanal and then Rabaul as more long-range bombers could be deployed to the South Pacific.
MacArthur was convinced that the operation should be expanded to include a conquest of all of New Guinea, a suggestion that was repeatedly denied. The malaria-ridden jungles and mountains of central New Guinea was some of the worst terrain possible for any kind of military operations, and the resources such an advance would require were considered not worth expending in a secondary theatre. MacArthur then suggested that the Allies do what the Japanese had done in taking New Guinea in the first place, but in reverse: two landing operations, one in the south and then a follow-up operation in the north to take Lae. This too was met with opposition: as long as the Japanese controlled Guadalcanal and Rabaul, sending the fleet through the Solomon Sea would be a dangerous move, made worse by the knowledge that the Japanese still had a powerful Navy. Yamamoto’s whereabouts were unknown, but if he was anywhere near MacArthur’s command it was likely that he would show up once more.

Allied intelligence had been hard at work trying to put together a picture of the Japanese defence system across New Guinea and the Solomons and Bismarcks, but they had achieved little success into the middle of 1943. Air reconnaissance was difficult, made more difficult by six months of heavy tropical rain and then several newly-reinforced squadrons of Japanese fighters, including the new Ki-61 and more familiar Ki-43. New Guinea had not spawned a resistance movement anywhere near the scale of that of Fiji, so another very useful source of information was gone. The Australian defences had still been quite small when the port fell in May 1942, and it was likely that the Japanese had built them up considerably, the details of which would now be unknown as well. Where Fiji could be likened to an open book, New Guinea was shrouded by the fog of war.
The job of piercing that fog of war would fall primarily to signals intelligence units, which had been reading the Japanese communications for much of the war. In Fiji, radio traffic had revealed a notable lack of Japanese reinforcement efforts for the islands, and more recently it had revealed that Rabaul was much more strongly defended than the Allies had previously thought, with several divisions fortifying the island. In New Guinea however, there was only a very confusing series of messages to go by. It seemed as though major Japanese commanders could not agree on what they were doing in New Guinea, or even who was in command in the first place. Units were appearing and then disappearing, in a far more unorganised fashion than any usual rotation of forces. “By God, sir,” one of MacArthur’s intelligence officers was recorded as saying, “the Japs have gone mad!”
Some believed that the Japanese had started a deliberate misinformation program intending to confuse the Allied commanders or perhaps disguise an important troop or fleet movement. Considering the Allies’ incredible good fortune in reading the Japanese communications for so long, it was certainly possible that the Japanese had worked out that their codes were no longer effective. Others thought that the confusing messages were a massive overstatement of strength, possibly intended to please the Emperor after the loss of New Caledonia and Fiji.

The truth was stranger than anything the Allies considered. The Imperial Army and Navy were turning the South Pacific into a political battlefield of their own on the eve of MacArthur’s invasion. In order to make up for their loss in China, the Army’s top commanders ordered Generals Hyakutake (commander of the 17th Army based Rabaul and the Solomons) and Horii (55th Division, New Guinea) to enforce the IJA’s control over the South Pacific, evicting any Navy infantry and taking over the naval bases unless Navy personnel would submit to Army authority.
For the moment, no-one from either the Army or Navy had been killed, and the matter was passed off to Tokyo. The Army was the clear victor in the present dispute, acquiring total power over the defence of the entire South Seas Area at a time when Yamamoto and the rest of the Navy had little interest in supporting the region. Only when a Japanese (Army) scout plane noticed an American destroyer operating nearer New Guinea than usual did the two services appear to remember that they were also fighting the juggernaut of US production, and even then the swapping out of Navy Zeroes for Army Ki-43s continued.

General Horii was reading a report about the Navy’s complaints to Tokyo regarding the incident when MacArthur approached. The bear was beginning to drop.

- BNC