Blood on the Bismarck Sea

Most military historians consider the Battle of Midway to be the turning point of World War II in the Pacific. If considering only the naval role, this is probably true, but in spite of the loss of most of their main carrier force at Midway in June 1942, the Japanese military was still very much a powerful force throughout the Pacific, especially in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands in early 1943. There the Japanese had established a series of bases as stepping stones in their strategy of defeating the Allies by extending the Greater East Asia Prosperity Sphere to the very doorsteps of the continent of Australia. But all of the Japanese plans fell apart at 10:00 AM, local time, on March 3, 1943, in the Bismarck Sea just off the New Guinea coast from Lae. In the span of about fifteen minutes the Japanese lost World War II. And there wasn’t a single US Navy ship or carrier-based airplane involved.

Immediately after the Japanese attack on US military facilities in Hawaii, hundreds of thousands of young men heeded the call from the White House and War Department to “Remember Pearl Harbor” and rushed to the nearest recruiting center to enlist. With only a few exceptions, they were put into the training pipeline to staff units being organized to go to Europe to assist the British in defeating Germany. While the Navy and its Marine Corps would fight in the Pacific, the Pearl Harbor attacks had so devastated the US Pacific Fleet that there was very little they could do in 1942. Yes, the Navy didn’t lose the Battle of Midway in June, but it suffered heavy losses, and the arguable win was a fluke.[1]

On December 21, 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt made the decision to write off the Philippines and throw the bulk of America’s might into the war in Europe, while throwing a token force into the Netherlands East Indies to defend the oil fields. The Allied Java Campaign was a failure and Australia was threatened as Japan moved its troops further and further south. Before drawing off thousands of her young men for duty in North Africa, Britain promised the Australian government that they would defend the country if the Japanese attacked. But when war came, the British forces in Asia were as severely mauled as the Americans were in the opening days of the war. Australia turned to the United States for help, but all they got were a few Army Air Corps stragglers who had been on their way to the Philippines when the war broke out and had been diverted to Australia when the Japanese navy blocked the sea lanes. They were joined by others who came out of the islands as the Japanese began pushing the American and Filipino defenders onto the Bataan Peninsula. Although President Franklin Roosevelt promised General Douglas MacArthur that reinforcements were on the way, no ground units and only a handful of air units were sent to Australia in the opening months of the war in the Pacific. It would be nearly nine months after Pearl Harbor before US ground combat troops would enter combat in the Southwest Pacific.