Supremacy at Sea: Task Force 58 and the Central Pacific Victory

A book review

The Second World War can be seen as a succession of phases, or campaign events, each of which in terms of timeline and effect had its own impact on the course and outcome of the war. The two big turning points in the Second World War both occurred in 1941. The first was Hitler’s turn to the east, with the start of Operation Barbarossa on Sunday 22 June. The second was Japan’s attack on Malaya and the Philippines on 8 December (7 December in terms of the US time zone), attacks that occurred at the same time as the coup de main assault on the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. In terms of the great turning-point battles in the Second World War, when the tide of war changed irreversibly and dramatically against those who initially held the upper hand, I usually plump for four. The first was arguably at Midway in June 1942 when the US Navy successfully challenged Japanese dominance in the Pacific. The second was at Stalingrad between August 1942 and January 1943 when the seemingly unstoppable German juggernaut in the Soviet Union was finally halted in the winter bloodbath of that city, where only 94,000 of the original 300,000 German, Rumanian and Hungarian troops survived. The third was at El Alamein in October 1942 when the British Commonwealth triumphed against Rommel’s Afrika Korps in North Africa and began the process that led to the German surrender in Tunisia in May 1943. The fourth was the great battle of Imphal & Kohima, which raged in the hills of north-eastern India from March through to late July 1944. It was during this battle that the much-vaunted Japanese ‘March on Delhi’ was brought to nothing at a huge cost in human life, and the start of their retreat from Asia began.

By this time Japan had reached the apogee of its power, having extended the violent reach of its Empire across much of Asia since it launched its first surprise attacks in late 1941. Its initial surge in 1941 and 1942 into what was to be Japan’s ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’ was as dramatic as it was rapid and two years further on several millions of peoples across Asia laboured under its heavy yoke. But by early 1944 the tide had turned decisively in the Pacific, the American island-hopping advance reaching steadily but surely towards Japan itself, its humiliated enemies fighting back with desperation, and determination, but with rapidly dwindling resources compared to their enemies. At this time the British and Americans were preparing for D Day. The Soviets were advancing in Ukraine. There was a stalemate in Italy at Monte Cassino. The Americans were preparing to land in the Philippines.

In the Central Pacific, the subject of Evan Mawdsley’s excellent book, the naval equivalent of Kohima/Imphal took place. Early to mid-1944 truly was a period in which Japanese military failure became embarrassingly apparent, in both Tokyo and Washington. In 1942 the US Navy had six aircraft carriers operating in the Pacific, of which four were lost in operations against the Imperial Japanese Navy. Less than two years later the two remaining carriers of the pre-war US Navy had been joined by no less than 16 new fast carriers, of which seven were the enormous 27,200-ton ‘Essex’ class carriers and nine were the 10,000-ton ‘Independence’ class light carriers. The seeds of this expansion had been laid in the years immediately before the war, when a prescient US government recognised, notwithstanding widespread domestic isolationist instincts, that the rumblings of war across the globe would sooner or later have implications for America. By January 1944 the USN boasted a maritime supremacy that to this day has never been matched by any other world power. These carriers had been joined by a new fleet of fast battleships, cruisers, and destroyers, bristling with anti-aircraft guns and sophisticated radar, crewed by the results of a massive increase in manpower. The number of enlisted personnel in the USN rose from 111,000 in 1939 to 2,808,000 by 1944. This was compared with nearly six million people in the US Army and 2,314,000 in the US Army Air Force by war’s end.

The extraordinary increase in the size and fighting power of the US Navy, as well as the rapidity of this change, was an astonishing feat. The story of how the USA transformed itself for war is a huge drama in and of itself. The speed of the building up of the new Navy was astonishing: ships destined for completion in the three Navy Yards in 1944 and 1945 were delivered in late 1942, as the entire nation turned itself into an industrial powerhouse to defeat its enemies and support its friends. This wasn’t just about industrial potential but also about the overwhelming power of human will. America had been attacked at Pearl Harbor and in seemingly one great expression of national will joined the fighting forces, When the communications officer of USS Hornet, one of the four carriers to be lost in 1942 found himself swimming for his life following the sinking of his ship he recalled, four days later, a conversation in the water. “Are you going to re-enlist?” “God damn yes – on the new HORNET.” Millions of ordinary men and women (though the only women allowed to sail in combat were 11,000 female nurses) volunteered in huge numbers, or allowed themselves to be allocated through the conscription process to one of the services without demur.

The Navy divided the Pacific into North, Central and South.  Mawdsley’s book focuses exclusively on the operations in the Central Pacific (Micronesia), north of the equator, between January and August 1944. This set of battles led an advance across the Pacific ‘extraordinary in its depth and decisive in its outcome.’ To considerable Japanese losses not a single US surface warship was lost and less than 100-men. It was a campaign immense in its planning, execution and outcome. Mawdsley deftly presents this dramatic story with plenty of detailed description about how the navy delivered its operational tasks, as well as the men who made it all happen, which adds much helpful depth to the story. This is an excellent exposition of the campaign that made the US Navy the extraordinary fighting machine that it remains to this day.