BATTLE OF THE PACIFIC: One Year of War

(3 of 6)

After Admiral King was called to Washington last December, but before he publicly took command, the Pacific Fleet got its fundamental orders: "Hold the Hawaiian Islands area on the Midway line at all costs," and "Hold the communications line to the southwest Pacific on the Samoa-Fiji line and extend it to New Caledonia" (see map, p. 32). Said Admiral King last week:

"Those orders still stand. Hawaii is the key to our position in the Pacific and we've got to hold it. The supply line to Australia and the southwest Pacific is only slightly less important."

Establishing and holding these lines was what chiefly occupied the Pacific Fleet in the first months after Pearl Harbor. The Gilbert and Marshall raids, offensive in themselves, were defensive in objective: they smelled out the Japs at a point where they threatened the new supply lines, and possibly averted an effort to break up those lines. Only when the lines were functioning was the Navy ready for even a limited offensive, and then the first offensive moves were partly intended to secure the Navy's southwest Pacific communications.

King on Offensive: Air assaults on the Japs at Tulagi and the Coral Sea battle of planes v. ships in May were actually the preludes to the Solomons campaign. But the Navy's air victory (with some Army help) at Midway was the real turning point: "Things began to break for us at Midway. We began to get the edge there. . . . After the Midway action we told ourselves: 'Now is the time to hit the Jap in the southwest Pacific.' "

In June, when the Solomons were finally chosen for the big blow, "we didn't have the resources." But: "We set a date for it to begin. That date was Aug. 1, and they actually got started on Aug. 7.

"We had been getting word of the Jap's activity in the Tulagi area. He'd been there a long while, and when reports came in about that airfield on Guadalcanal it heightened our interest. If our attack had been delayed a week, the Jap would have been able to use that airfield.

"That campaign did two things. It made our own line of communications that much more secure, and it took something away from the Jap that he had had. The virulent, violent reaction was greater than we expected, so our attack must have stung him to the quick."

Admiral King's account seemed to confirm the impression that the Navy had underestimated the requirements of the Solomons campaign (TIME, Oct. 26), and that in this instance the U.S. command's insight into Japanese thinking and strategy had been none too keen. But his recital took nothing from the luster of the Navy-Marine-Army team's recent successes in clearing the Solomons waters of Jap ships and extending the land forces' hold on Guadalcanal.

King on Losses: "We still haven't got enough stuff to be everywhere, but we'll keep a close eye on the Aleutians. No one can say what the Japs planned there, but it has cost them tremendously. The attrition has been very heavy. In the Solomons the Jap's planes have been shot down by the hundreds, his ships have been sunk by the tens, and he's lost men by the hundreds certainly."