Turning the Tide

United States preparations were still inadequate when it became evident that the Japanese intended to advance south from the Bismarck Archipelago, and thus threaten our communications with Australia. It was decided nevertheless to attempt to hold Port Moresby and a line north of Espiritu Santo and the Fiji Islands. Exceptional intelligence gave us advance information that a group of transports, protected by the Japanese carrier Shoho and by a covering force including two other carriers, was on its way to occupy Port Moresby in May 1942. This information enabled us to concentrate at the appropriate point two of our four carriers then available in the Pacific (one had come to the Pacific from the Atlantic, but two were returning from the Doolittle raid on Tokyo), and to sink the Shoho by torpedo-plane and dive-bomber attack. In the ensuing air engagement with the covering force, we damaged one of the Japanese carriers in that force, but lost the Lexington. The Japanese force had two carriers left to our one, but their air groups had been badly depleted. The transports turned back from Port Moresby to return to Rabaul and, for the first time, the Japanese advance had been checked. The combat in this Battle of the Coral Sea was entirely carrier air action.

Similar intelligence provided advance information as to the Japanese move toward Midway in June. In this case, the transports were supported by an advance striking force, including the most powerful surface forces yet assembled in the war and four of Japan's remaining eight operational carriers. An additional Japanese carrier was in a supporting force farther to the north. Again only weaker forces were available to the United States three carriers, the Enterprise, Yorktown, and Hornet, the only ones available for combat action in the Pacific at that time, were rushed to the attack. Our planes located the Japanese fleet and sank three of the enemy carriers, and so damaged the fourth that she subsequently fell an easy prey to a United States submarine. Deprived of its carriers the Japanese Fleet was forced to retire despite its preponderance in heavy ship strength. Survey interrogations of surviving officers from the Japanese carriers indicate that they were sunk by carrier-based dive bombers. Two-thirds of the pilots on the Japanese carriers sunk were rescued by Japanese destroyers. Some of the Japanese carrier-based planes discovered our carriers and succeeded in damaging the Yorktown so seriously that she went dead in the water and was sunk by a Japanese submarine. Except for the finishing off of stragglers by submarines, the combat in this engagement was entirely air action.

Immediately after Midway, the Japanese had 4 carriers fit for action, shortly to be joined by a fifth; but of these only 1 was large. In addition, they had 6 carriers under repair or construction. The United States had 3 large carriers operational in the Pacific and 13 carriers, and 15 escort carriers, either being readied for operation, or under construction. The Japanese Navy, thereafter, was hobbled by its weakness in the air, and could engage our forces only at night or under cover of land-based air until that air strength was rebuilt. A balance of naval air power in the Pacific, and as a consequence a balance of naval power as a whole, was thus achieved at Midway.

The scene of intense conflict shifted back to the islands south of Rabaul, the seas surrounding them, and the air over both. The Japanese had determined to renew their efforts to capture Port Moresby, if necessary by the overland route from the northern shore of New Guinea, and were constructing air fields in the Solomons. The United States Joint Chiefs of Staff ordered a two-pronged attack; one directed toward northern New Guinea from Port Moresby, the other up the chain of the Solomon Islands beginning with Guadalcanal; both with the final objective of capturing Rabaul. General MacArthur and Admiral Ghormley considered the forces available to them inadequate, but, in view of the importance of maintaining the line of communication with Australia, they were ordered to go ahead with what they had. A test of the Japanese perimeter thereby developed earlier than the Japanese had expected.

While the Southwest Pacific command was building air fields in northern Australia, Port Moresby and Milne Bay, the Japanese landed, on 21 July 1942, at Buna on the north coast of New Guinea opposite Port Moresby and infiltrated over the Owen Stanley Range. Their lines of communications were cut by air attacks, their advance columns strafed and their attack held and pushed back by ground forces, in part supplied by air. The Japanese testify that they were unable to reinforce this attack to the extent they had planned because of developments at Guadalcanal.

On 7 August 1942, a surprise landing was made on Guadalcanal. Three United States carriers gave initial air support and the Marines who landed quickly captured the air field (later named Henderson Field) which was under construction by the Japanese. Interrogation of the senior Japanese commanders involved in the Solomons campaign indicates that they originally misjudged the strength of our attack and sent in only one reinforcement battalion of 500 men on fast destroyers from Truk. After this battalion was virtually destroyed, they sent in 5 more which again were not quite sufficient. Finally, they attempted to send in whole divisions. Thirty thousand troops were landed but, by that time, it was too late. Local control of the air provided by planes based on Henderson Field made it possible, but barely possible, to defend our unloading supply ships in the daytime, and made it impossible for the Japanese to land, except at night and then under hazardous and unsatisfactory conditions. The efforts of the Japanese to run in reinforcements at night, and at times to shell our shore installations, resulted in a series of night naval surface engagements which caused heavy losses to both sides. Our air strength was initially limited, was maintained by desperate and irregular reenforcement, and at one time was reduced by enemy naval bombardment to only 5 operational airplanes. The Japanese constructed a chain of air fields between Guadalcanal and Rabaul, and attempted to raid our ships and installations. In the air actions, however, they suffered increasingly heavy losses, not merely in numbers, but also in proportion to United States losses. The Japanese paint a vivid picture of the intolerable position in which inability to achieve air control placed them. General Miyazaki testified that only 20 percent of the supplies dispatched from Rabaul to Guadalcanal ever reached there. As a result the 30,000 troops they eventually landed on Guadalcanal lacked heavy equipment, adequate ammunition and even enough food, and were subjected to continuous harassment from the air. approximately 10,000 were killed, 10,000 starved to death, and the remaining 10,000 were evacuated in February 1943, in a greatly weakened condition.

By the end of 1942, the most serious of the Japanese attempts to drive us off Guadalcanal had been thrown back and Allied operations to capture the Buna area were drawing to a close. We were securely established in these critical areas and had gradually built up local superiority in all arms, air, ground and sea. Our losses had been heavy. The Japanese, however, had suffered a crucial strategic defeat. Their advance had been stopped, their strategic plan fatally upset, many of their best pilots lost, and Allied forces firmly installed in positions in the Solomons and New Guinea, which threatened the anchor of their perimeter at Rabaul. In opposing this threat, the Japanese committed in piecemeal fashion and lost all of their fully trained Navy air units, including those rescued at Midway, and a portion of their best Army air units. The Japanese never fully recovered from this disaster, the effects of which influenced all subsequent campaigns. For the first time, the few Japanese who had all the facts at their disposal appreciated the seriousness of the situation. Greatly expanded programs for the training of pilots and the production of aircraft, radar and communications equipment, antiaircraft guns and ammunition, cargo vessels and tankers, were drawn up, but time was required to implement them.

The initiative had passed to the United States.