US AAF 4 Pacific - Guadalcanal to Saipan: Foreword

Foreword

The present volume of The Army Air Forces in World War II,, though numbered fourth in a projected series of seven, is actually the third to appear. Bearing the subtitle The Pacific: Guadalcanal to Saipan, August 1942 to July 1944, it deals with the AAF’s part in the struggle against Japan during those two critical years. Practical considerations of bookmaking have demanded, in a history of such scope as this, some convenient break in the narrative, and the editors hope to have found in the period herein described a distinct phase of the war as it was fought by the Army’s air forces. That phase began with the enemy’s outward sweep at full flood; it saw, though by almost imperceptible degrees, the slow turn in the tide of war as the Allies checked the forward flow and took the initiative, and then the beginning of the ebb as the Japanese were driven back toward their Inner Empire. As the volume closes, MacArthur’s forces were being readied for the return to the Philippines, and in the Marianas engineers, still under sniper fire, were preparing the great air bases whence the B-29 could lay under attack the heart of industrial Japan. The last phase of the air war (which will be described in Volume V) was to move swiftly and inexorably and was to introduce with the B-29 a type of warfare hitherto unknown in the Pacific. But the success of the strategic bombardment campaign which ended so dramatically at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was rooted in the two years of bitter fighting by air, naval, and ground forces which had carried the Allies from Guadalcanal and Port Moresby to Guam and Sansapor. It was the campaigns of those years which had blunted the enemy’s air weapon and had provided the bases within bomber radius of Honshu.

The first phase of the war has been described in Volume I. During

the six months after Pearl Harbor the Japanese had thrust outward from their home islands with hardly a momentary check – save perhaps in the Coral Sea. Thus the narrative was a dreary chronicle of defeat and retreat for all Allied forces in Asia and the Pacific. The anchors of the defensive line, a great semicircle, had been fixed at Alaska, Hawaii, Australia, and India-Burma. Along a ladder of widely spaced Pacific islands, airfields had been thrown down to provide an air LOC between Hawaii and Australia and to help guard the vital sea lanes to that subcontinent. Australia, still nervous for its own security, would be a prime base area for future offense as for present defense, and the slow build-up of forces had begun early in 1942.

Then in June had come the decisive carrier victory at Midway which had shorn off the barb of the enemy’s striking force. The diversionary feint at Dutch Harbor had been parried as well, and thus stability was assured for the Central and North Pacific. Thereafter the Japanese outposts lay in a bold arc, concentric with the defense line of the Allies and facing it: the Kurils and the outer Aleutians; Marcus, Wake, and the mandated islands; the Solomons, New Guinea, and the Netherlands East Indies; Singapore, Burma, and occupied China. Checked in the Central and North Pacific, the enemy had continued to push southward and within a few weeks after Midway had imperiled the Allied defense line in two vulnerable spots. He had moved into the lower Solomons and was hurrying to complete on Guadalcanal an airfield which would threaten the lifeline between Hawaii and Australia. Late in July he landed on the northern Papuan coast, and his drive over the Owen Stanley Mountains would, if successful, emplace his air forces at Port Moresby and bring northern Australia under the shadow of the wings of his Bettys and Sallys. It is with these twin crises that the present volume begins. Efforts to eject the enemy from Guadalcanal and Papua were to absorb most of the energies of the Allies in the Pacific throughout the rest of 1942, and the activities of Army air forces against the Japanese in other areas were of lesser scope and importance.

In all, six Army air forces figure in this volume: the Eleventh (North Pacific); the Seventh (Central Pacific); the Thirteenth (South Pacific); the Fifth (Southwest Pacific); the Tenth (India-Burma); and the Fourteenth (China). Widely scattered geographically, those several forces operated under varying conditions which, with the character of their respective commanders, tended to mark each

with its own individuality. There was no unity of command in the war against Japan, and this lack exaggerated the particularism inherent in geographical isolation. The narrative, as it moves from theater to theater, has reflected inevitably something of the disjointed nature of the war, but it is hoped that an underlying unity may be found in the over-all strategy formulated by the CCS and in the common dependence of all forces upon a single pool of material resources. A brief forces.

Those deployed at the extremities of the Allied defensive lines operated in areas which seemed to offer few strategic possibilities during the period under discussion and were consequently held to a minimum of combat units. In the North Pacific the Eleventh Air Force had helped throw back the Japanese feint at Dutch Harbor and subsequently participated in the westward move out along the Aleutians from Adak to Kiska. Weather and geographical factors made air operations exceedingly difficult for Americans and Japanese alike, however, and after the summer of 1943 the Eleventh, reduced in size to a “shadow” force, lapsed into a desultory sort of harassing warfare against the Kuril Islands.

On the opposite wing, in the CBI, the stakes were higher, but the prospect of striking a decisive blow did not seem bright enough to encourage the Combined Chiefs to throw into the area preponderant forces. Many difficulties conspired to thwart Allied efforts; two were of especial importance. The logistical problem was perhaps more formidable in the CBI than in any other theater. The distance to India from the United Kingdom or the United States was tremendous. Distances within the theater were of continental proportions, and transport facilities were unequal to wartime needs. For outside aid China was dependent wholly upon an airlift operating under grave natural and military hazards.

Even more serious was the lack of a common objective (other than the defeat of Japan) among the Allied powers. Divergent political aims among the Chinese, the British, and the Americans forestalled any agreement on strategy and fostered a command system of bewildering complexity; even among U.S. generals there was a lamentable lack of accord. The chief aim of the United States was to help keep China in the war by providing lend-lease material and technical assistance. This objective involved little in the way of ground force commitments;

service and air forces constituted the main contribution. Fundamentally the Tenth Air Force’s mission was to protect the Hump air route by which China was presently nourished and to aid in clearing a trace for the Ledo Road, which was to supplement the airlift with a ground LOC from Burma to Kunming. In China the Fourteenth Air Force helped guard the Hump route, aided Chinese ground operations, and attacked Japanese air forces and shipping. Chennault’s flyers developed skilful tactics and, operating with marvelous parsimony, inflicted damages wholly disproportionate to the minute force involved.

But the supply factor severely limited the scope of operations, even when it became possible to send some reinforcements to the theater. Both the Tenth and the Fourteenth had been strengthened by mid-1944, and in Burma they had contributed to the long-expected Allied offensive. Gains there were offset by the enemy’s spring campaign in eastern China which threatened to engulf those advanced airfields which had been the key to Chennault’s offensive tactics. Thus, in spite of hard fighting and much solid work in the CBI, the tactical picture as the volume closes is hardly more cheerful for the Allies than in the earlier chapters.

The role of the Seventh Air Force was wholly different. Throughout 1942 its mission was strictly defensive and, since after Midway the enemy made no serious efforts in the Central Pacific, combat activities in that area were slight. The Seventh performed valuable services in reconnaissance, in combat training of units and replacements headed westward for more active theaters, and in supply, maintenance, and modification. But it was only in late 1943, as growing naval strength fostered a more aggressive strategy in the Central Pacific, that the Seventh’s units were sent regularly against the enemy. Most of the force’s missions involved long overwater flights to strike at island bases, tiny coral atolls barely supporting a fighter strip or the great redoubt at Truk. The purpose might differ as the bombers softened up islands marked for assault or continued to neutralize those which were by-passed, but the pattern of operations remained pretty constant, with the Seventh moving its bases ever forward as CENPAC forces swept through the Gilberts and Marshalls and, by-passing the Carolines, on to the Marianas. It was a monotonous sort of war, with its own hazards but involving relatively little combat with enemy planes. The monotony was broken as assault forces moved into the Marianas where P-47’s from the Seventh provided direct support for

ground troops on Saipan, Guam, and Tinian, but there was no letup – nor would there be soon-in the everlasting hammering-away at “one damned island after another.”

In each of the three areas noticed above Army air forces performed their tasks creditably under difficult conditions, and it is no slur upon their activities to suggest that the heaviest and most sustained air campaigns were those conducted in the South and Southwest Pacific. In those areas the campaigns initiated by the U.S. landing on Guadalcanal on 7 August and the Japanese landing at Buna on 21 July carried into the early weeks of 1943. On Guadalcanal the Thirteenth Air Force fought with Navy, Marine, and New Zealand air units in an effort to interfere with the enemy’s air and naval counterattacks and his efforts to reinforce and supply his garrison; there was some close support of ground forces. In Papua the fight for Buna and Milne Bay involved heavy work for the Fifth Air Force and the RAAF (united under the over-all command of the Allied Air Forces) in antishipping strikes, in air supply and troop transport, and in close support.

With Guadalcanal and Papua secured, Rabaul became the chief concern of the Allies in both theaters. Threatening as it did Allied positions in the Solomons and in New Guinea, Rabaul’s capture had been scheduled as the third and climactic phase of the ELKTON plan, which had envisaged, after the Guadalcanal and Papuan campaigns, parallel and coordinated moves toward the northwest – MacArthur’s forces along the upper coast of New Guinea, SOPAC forces up through the Solomons to the great naval and air base at the head of New Britain. The titles of the chapters and their subdivisions in the present volume indicate the progress of those parallel drives and suggest the important changes in strategy made possible by the sustained air offensive which eliminated Rabaul as a serious threat and by the westward push of Central Pacific forces. The Thirteenth Air Force provided land-based air support for SOPAC forces as they moved through the central and upper Solomons, extending the range of their activities as each advance provided new bases-on the Russells, Rendova, New Georgia, Vella Lavella, Bougainville. By the beginning of 1944 the Thirteenth had taken over from the Fifth responsibility for beating down Rabaul; when SOPAC forces moved into the Green Islands and Southwest Pacific units into the Admiralties, this hitherto formidable base, now bereft of air power, could be left to wither on the vine. So too could Kavieng on New Ireland. On 15 June the Thirteenth

was joined with the Fifth to form, under Kenney’s direction, the Far East Air Forces, in anticipation of MacArthur’s return to the Philippines.

The Fifth, meanwhile, had spearheaded MacArthur’s drive along the New Guinea coast. Throughout 1943 the reduction of air power on Rabaul – a boon to both SOPAC and Southwest Pacific operations – had absorbed much effort. So also had attacks on Japanese shipping, a top priority for both air forces; the Battle of the Bismarck Sea was merely the most spectacular manifestation of a continuously successful campaign. But the main effort was in the successive elimination and/or capture of Japanese positions along the New Guinea coast and on adjacent islands and in the occupation of favorable sites not held by the enemy. By these tactics SWPA forces doubled the Hum Peninsula and drove on to the Vogelkop, and the Fifth’s progress is marked by the seizure of those places, actual or potential sites for airfields: Woodlark, Kiriwina, Nassau Bay; Lae, Nadzab, Finschhafen; Arawe and Saidor; Aitape and Hollandia; Wakde and Biak; Noemfoor and Sansapor. Meanwhile the landings at Cape Gloucester had secured control of Vitiaz Strait and, with the move into the Admiralties, had helped isolate Rabaul. Thus by midsummer of 1944 Kenney’s combined air forces could look to the Halmaheras and the Philippines without fear for their right flank.

Even so sketchy a summary of the air war against Japan is indicative of its complexity and of the variant conditions and missions obtaining in the several theaters. Certain features of the war, however, all or most of the air forces shared in common; and in certain instances these common features contrasted sharply with those which have been described in Volume II as characteristic of the European war.

The prime factor affecting all Army air forces in Pacific and Asiatic theaters was the preeminence accorded by the CCS to the war against Germany. Because of the paramount interests of the U.S. Navy in the Pacific, there was no stinting of naval forces there in favor of the Atlantic. But during the early part of the war allocations for Army air (and ground) forces were kept at the minimum demanded for safety and even later were strictly conditioned by the needs of the ETO. Commanders in the Pacific (of whatever service) tended to question the assumptions upon which the over-all strategy was based and persistently strove for more generous allocations, In this effort they differed not a whit from aggressive commanders elsewhere, but

in some instances (as in Alaska and China) their reiterated and urgent requests for air reinforcements seemed to reflect a parochial view of a global war. At times the demands from the Pacific appear hardly to have been justified by the enemy’s estimated air order of battle. Even in the summer of 1942-when, according to General Arnold’s subsequent statement, “the various commanders” in the Pacific “began yelling their heads off for airplanes”* – current estimates available in Washington did not seem to favor the enemy. Theater commanders tended to question the accuracy of those estimates in terms of serviceable planes actually on hand. But certainly during 1943 the advantage in strength which the Japanese had enjoyed in the early months of the war was more than overcome. For want of sufficiently precise Japanese statistics it is impossible to document closely the stages by which the imbalance in forces was reversed, but after the fall of 1943 the combined strength of U.S. Army, Navy, and Marine and Allied air forces was generally greater than that of Japanese units directly facing them. By midsummer 1944 the Allies had preponderant air superiority.

With the substantial U.S. reinforcements and the continuous and determined attrition against Japanese air power, preponderant superiority might have been achieved earlier but for the advantages the enemy enjoyed in easier lines of communications. Possessing air bases conveniently spotted along routes that led from Tokyo to each front, he was able quickly to fly in replacements for planes destroyed in combat or on the ground. It was this factor which made it so difficult to take out permanently such airfield complexes as Rabaul and Wewak, and it was fortunate that the enemy could not replace so readily the skillful pilots who were lost.

Conversely, the lines from the United States to the several theaters were long-quite long to the Aleutians and Hawaii, very long to New Caledonia and Australia, fantastically long to India and China. Bombers could be flown out, but short-range planes, ground personnel, and supplies went by ship. Shipping remained unequal to demands throughout the period under review; priorities favored the ETO, and over such tonnage as was assigned to the Pacific, air force commanders had little control. Hence the proportion of allocated planes and men and supplies “in the pipeline” was inordinately high. This factor made it difficult to keep deployed units at combat strength and delayed the

* H. H. Arnold, Global Mission (New York: Harper & Bros., 1949), p. 334.

build-up of forces; it contributed also to the frequent lack of agreement between Washington and theater commanders as to forces available for combat. Intratheater distances were great, too; where transportation was by water, the shortage of bottoms was again a limiting factor; where the LOC traversed land masses, as in Australia and the CBI, primitive rail and highway systems imposed a heavy brake on the movement of material. Air transport came then to play a very important role, even a unique one in China, where the Hump airlift was the sole means of supply and where air activities were limited less by the size of U.S. forces than by the tonnage available for fuel, bombs, and ammunition.

Supply and maintenance, handicapped by low priorities and difficult lines of communication, suffered also from dearth of proper facilities. In Hawaii, Australia, and even India some skilled civilian labor was available and some locally produced supplies. But nowhere were the advantages of a highly industrialized society close at hand, as they were for air forces operating out of England or Italy. Improvements came in time, until some rear-area bases were comparatively well equipped, but at advanced bases facilities remained primitive, temporary, makeshift. Aviation engineers developed great skill in the rapid development of airstrips and other installations, and the stories of ingenious improvisations in maintenance and modification have become almost legendary; but there were times when, in spite of Yankee ingenuity and the plentiful use of baling wire and tin cans, an uncomfortable number of planes were inoperable.

Primitive conditions affected men as well as machines. In the wind-swept Aleutians and the tropical jungles of other areas climate, disease, and fatigue took their toll. Aircrews and ground crews at advanced bases lived constantly in tents and on field rations. Opportunities for rest and recreation were scarce and, because of low priorities and the distance from home, it was difficult to set up a satisfactory rotation policy. The circumstances that condition morale are complex, and they certainly are not limited to physical factors; but, to the degree that they are, the Pacific and Asiatic theaters generally suffered in comparison with the ETO and MTO insofar as the AAF was concerned.

Command arrangements in the war against Japan also contrasted sharply with those in Europe. The most obvious feature was, of course, the lack of a unified command in the Pacific or in the CBI.

AAF Headquarters in almost every discussion advocated a single command against Hitler and against Japan, with an air, ground, and naval force on an equal level under the supreme commander. This preference was strengthened by experience in the Japanese war, where command arrangements varied so widely in the several theaters that the one common feature seemed to be complexity. The South and Southwest Pacific were divided in theory by no more than the imaginary line of the 159th meridian east, but there was in reality the vast abyss of the conflicting views of MacArthur and the Navy, reflected in the sharp debates over strategy and but poorly bridged by the cooperation” which was substituted for unified command. The tangled command situation in the CBI has already been cited as perhaps the worst in any theater of the war; in Alaska and the Aleutians there was divided authority between the Army and Navy. In those theaters (or “areas”) in which the Navy had command it was difficult for AAF leaders to secure the degree of operational control they deemed necessary for effective combat, though that condition improved during the period covered in this volume. Probably the happiest arrangement was that in the Southwest Pacific, where the relationship between Kenney and MacArthur was based on a mutual confidence which left to the former a wide latitude in air operations, but even here that confidence was not always shared by MacArthur’s GHQ.

Conditioned by these several factors – and others – the nature of the air war against Japan bore little resemblance to that being fought concurrently in Europe and the Mediterranean. There was as yet no effort to beat down the Japanese war potential with attacks on home industries. Such attacks constituted the chief mission of the AAF in Europe, but until summer of 1944 the Americans held no bases from which they could effectively reach Kyushu and Honshu. The wide variety of activities engaged in by Army air forces fighting Japan before the advent of the B-29 and the success of those activities seem hardly to confirm postwar accusations that the Air Force is interested only in strategic bombardment.

There was, too, relatively less of the sort of close support of ground forces which the AAF had developed so successfully in Africa, Sicily, and Italy and was to apply so spectacularly in France and Germany. In the war against Japan there were no large-scale land battles involving great masses of infantry, armor, and artillery. In China, where

Chennault’s handful of P-40’s and B-2 5’s occasionally worked with Chinese armies, there was open countryside, but elsewhere the battlefields rarely permitted the successful application of tactics taught in the AAF schools. In the Aleutians perpetual fog minimized the effectiveness of close support of infantry; in the other Pacific areas and in Burma ground soldiers usually fought in small units and under terrain conditions-jungle, rain forest, swamp, mountains-which made identification of targets extremely difficult. Hence though bombing and strafing of enemy troops and field fortifications and supply dumps was often attempted, it was rarely on a large scale and rarely with unqualified success. But in support of amphibious forces in landing operations, which involved special problems, the air forces in the Pacific developed great skill, and here the AAF played a more considerable role.

The pattern of the Pacific war was suggested by the Japanese in the months immediately after Pearl Harbor as they surged out of their homeland to overwhelm the feeble Allied resistance, but it was the U.S. commanders who gave definitive form to that mode of warfare as they returned along the same routes against a bitter Japanese defense. The Allies were successful only after their forces were strong enough to outweigh the enemy’s advantages in position, bur their success suggests that AAF tactical air doctrines had been sound and flexible enough to allow adaptation to unusual conditions. For the tactics evolved in the Pacific followed the classical pattern of first gaining local air superiority, then isolating the battlefield, and finally assisting surface forces to move forward. Operations were usually joint – or combined, since Australian and New Zealand forces were frequently involved – and the air task was performed by Army, Marine, and Navy air units, land-based, carrier-borne, and seaplanes alike, so that it is often difficult to delineate too sharply between the activities of the AAF and of their brothers-in-arms, but the general picture is clear enough.

Beating down the enemy’s air strength in any local area was a formidable task in the early days when he possessed superior forces and more numerous bases, and until the end of 1943 he was able, as has been indicated above, to funnel down substantial reinforcements via his island routes. The persistence with which he fed replacements into Rabaul after Allied strikes was remarkable, and the attacks on that and other bases had to be unremitting, regardless of attacks on the air

defense of an area earmarked for seizure. Part of the attrition came through air combat, and as the Allied forces gained experience and acquired more-and better-aircraft, they showed a marked superiority over the enemy, particularly after heavy losses had depleted his store of seasoned pilots. By 1944 combat scores, even when allowance is made for the inevitable errors in reporting-and those are less gross for fighter than for bomber claims-were one-sidedly in favor of the Americans. Meanwhile, heavy strikes were made at airfields; runways were made unserviceable and planes on the ground were bombed and strafed. The development of the parafrag bomb in the Southwest Pacific allowed low-altitude attacks which were highly destructive even against planes protected by dispersal and revetments. The general success of this campaign was reflected in the marked decline in Japanese air power, already apparent before the great carrier strikes of 1944; the particular success in each minor campaign after Guadalcanal and Papua was reflected in the failure of the enemy’s air forces to impose serious losses on assault forces or to retaliate effectively after the area under attack had been seized.

Pacific warfare was island warfare. In one of those long letters to Arnold which presented so discerning an analysis of the campaigns in MacArthur’s theater, Kenney has pointed to the significant fact that it mattered little whether a Japanese base occupied a small island (like Biak or VelIa LavelIa) or a shore-line position on a larger land mass (as at Saidor on New Guinea or Cape Gloucester on New Britain). In either case, there was no effective land LOC with other bases. For reinforcements or supplies each base was dependent upon sea or air transport, and in the latter category the Japanese never showed the daring and imagination which characterized American usage. Isolation of any chosen area came to mean then largely an attack on shipping and convoying naval vessels; less usual, though occasionally remunerative, were strikes at jungle trails as in the Buna or Markham valley campaigns.

As in counter-air force activities, antishipping strikes served two purposes. There was a perpetual campaign of attrition, carrying top priority, against merchant vessels wherever found. Here the aim was essentially strategic, since the exploitation of the newly won empire put a strain upon the Japanese merchant marine; and, when losses exceeded the shipbuilding potential, there would follow a general weakening of the enemy’s war machine. There was besides a more specific

effort to isolate each intended or actual battlefield from possible reinforcement and resupply. Part of the attrition in either case was the silent work of US. submarines, part was done by Navy and Marine planes; there was plenty of hunting for all. In this volume the interest is, without intended slight, focused largely on the activities of the Army air forces. The story is particularly gratifying because, for reasons elucidated in Volume I, the early record of the AAF against ships had proved disappointing. Some of the adverse factors continued to plague the Fifth and Thirteenth Air Forces in the early campaigns hereinafter described; their efforts off Papua and Guadalcanal were none too successful, and the long resistance of the enemy in those places, as compared with later battles, was an accurate gauge of the importance of isolating an enemy garrison. But, as heavy bombers became more plentiful, they were dispatched in formations permitting a standard bomb pattern; better conditions of operational control allowed AAF commanders to follow or improve on their own doctrines. The heavies were brought down below the excessive altitudes from which they had earlier bombed, and their scores showed a decided improvement. Eventually a limited number of SB-24 radar-equipped “snoopers” were deployed in the theater, and they showed an extraordinary ability in tracking and striking by night. Yet the lesson of 1942-that the heavy bomber was not the ideal antishipping weapon it had once been thought-was not forgotten; ground targets absorbed most of the B-24’s efforts, and against surface craft it was perhaps most effective when teamed with other aircraft types.

Much more lucrative were the results obtained by light and medium bombers. Kenney turned B-25’s into “strafers”‘ by crowding onto them as many forward-firing .50-cal. machine guns as possible and sent them and his A-20’s in at mast height, first to beat down antiaircraft fire, then to lob in 500-pound bombs at low level. Mixing these planes with bombers at medium and high altitudes, he was able to score again and again on enemy convoys and their escorts. The mission reports carry remarkable claims; even when scaled down by the Joint Army and Navy Assessment Commission, never extravagant in its estimates of AAF accomplishments, the record in the South and Southwest Pacific was impressive. As losses, or threatened interdiction of a given route, forced the Japanese to depend upon luggers, barges, and other light craft which crawled along the shores at night and holed up by day, light and medium bombers became adept at hunting

them out and attacking with bombs or strafing with machine guns and the 75-mm. cannon of the B-25G. Japanese diaries found in many of their captured bases told a grim story of want of ammunition, food, and medical supplies, but these accounts merely fill in the details of a story suggested in outline by the very success of the assault.

As for the assault, that was delivered only after the base had been pounded from the air, often by naval gunfire too. The weight of effort applied, and the efficacy of results, varied widely from island to island: at Tarawa preinvasion bombardment failed to destroy many defensive works, and the Marines lost heavily; at Cape Gloucester, a month later, the Marines were able to go in “with their rifles on their back” (to quote Kenney), for the whole defense area had been so thoroughly saturated in a long and persistent bombardment that the verb “gloucesterize” came into usage in the Southwest Pacific as “coventrize” had in England. In general, preassault bombardment seems to have had more significance than the close support of ground soldiers after they had contacted the enemy; perhaps the most important job of the air forces during the actual invasion was to protect the amphibious forces from enemy air attacks. In this the AAF was highly effective. An infantry officer with wide experience in the North and Central Pacific wrote: “As a ground soldier I have never seen a Japanese airplane in the air during an American amphibious assault-not one.”* Had he been at certain other landings, he might well have seen enemy planes but, after Guadalcanal, rarely in considerable numbers. In part this security resulted from the constant hammering of Japanese airfields within range, which forced the enemy to adopt a narrowly conceived defensive policy, with his fighters more active than his bombers, but there still remained the need for an Allied fighter cover during the landing.

This need and the radius-of-action factor of the fighters conditioned strategy in the Pacific. Some assaults were covered by carrier planes alone and there the jump from island to island was long, but usually the move was within a distance over which land-based fighters could operate. The long range of the P-38 (to say nothing of the saving grace, in overwater flights, of a second engine) made it a favorite plane for this purpose, and modifications in the theater added significantly to its original range. But the necessity for fighter cover

* Quoted in Vern Haugland, The AAF against Japan (New York: Harper & Bros., 1948), p. 112.

put a premium on the occupation of potential sites for advanced strips in undefended or lightly defended areas (as at Marilinan) and in the rapid restoration and development of fields seized from the enemy. Aviation engineers moved in with the assault troops, and, although their exploits were less widely publicized than those of the Seabees doing similar work, the difference lay rather in the effectiveness of public relations campaigns than in actual accomplishments. The grader and the bulldozer became weapons almost as important as the plane itself and generally more useful in the campaigns, one may suppose, than the tank.

The pace of the advance was sometimes accelerated by the skillful use of paratroopers (as at Nadzab and Noemfoor) and of air transport, both for troop movements and for supply. Here the C-47 was the wheel horse, and it took its place with the B-24, B-25, A-20, and P-38 as the favored weapons of the AAF in the Pacific. The time-table was advanced also by the practice, made possible by Allied air superiority, of neutralizing and by-passing some enemy bases. Attacks on such bases, usually by heavy bombers, continued long after the striking blade of the combined forces had swept forward, but the tactic paid off in lives as well as in time saved.

This, in briefest outline, was the nature of the air war in the Pacific: the assaults were never to gain land masses or to capture populous cities, but only to establish airfields (and fleet anchorages and bases) from which the next forward spring might be launched. Or such, at least, was the nature of the war as it has appeared to the editors; another reader may gain from the narrative a different, perhaps a more discerning, view.

It is hoped that the maps will help the reader to follow the general movement of the war as well as the details of the several campaigns. The spelling of some of the place names, particularly those involving transliteration into our alphabet, has caused the cartographer some difficulty. In general, the practice has been to follow the orthography of the Army Map Service save for those names where common usage has established other spellings. In certain cases the usages of that service are not fully standardized, and advice has been sought from the Board on Geographic Names. It is hoped too that the photographs will serve to illustrate some of the generalizations hazarded in this Foreword as well as the particular activities or places which they portray. The illustrations, incidentally, are from the Air Force Photographic Records and Services Division, to which the editors owe

thanks for aid in combing the files and for permission to use the pictures. The cartoon on page 438 was provided through the courtesy of Lt. Gen. George E. Stratemeyer.

General Stratemeyer has been most helpful too in answering questions pertaining to his tour of duty in the CBI, including many that concerned the command structure so pungently depicted in the cartoon. Because much of the story of the CBI turns upon personal factors – sometimes too delicate to describe fully in an “Eyes Only” cable-interviews with individuals concerned have often proved of more than usual value, and the editors hereby acknowledge their gratitude to those who, like General Stratemeyer, have so courteously submitted to queries which sometimes must have seemed impertinent – to Mme. Chiang Kai-shek, Maj. Gen. Patrick J. Hurley, Maj. Gen. Claire L. Chennault, Maj. Gen. Frank D. Merrill, and Maj. Gen. P. T. Mow of the Chinese Air Force.

The editors are glad also to record their sense of special indebtedness to Gen. George C. Kenney for his careful and penetrating criticism of that part of the manuscript which deals with operations in the South and Southwest Pacific. He brought to his reading of the text a memory sharpened by a review of the record for his own personal account of the war, recently published,” and his willingness to concede to other authors the right to interpret the record differently has strengthened the assurance with which the editors have accepted his clarification of problems that otherwise would have remained obscure. Especially useful has been his assistance in supplementing a none too complete record of the period of the Buna campaign.

The aid thus given by these leaders, and others, serves to emphasize again the cooperative nature of this historical project, and nowhere has the cooperative spirit been more apparent than among the authors of the present volume. For reasons that already have been suggested, the war against Japan lacked even that imperfect degree of unity that characterized the war against Germany. Inevitably, the manuscripts originally submitted to the editors involved a certain amount of duplication arising from the authors’ efforts to relate their respective stories to the over-all plans of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the editors had no choice but to place the discussion of certain general subjects where it seemed in their judgment best to fit. This has involved more than a little transplanting, as the editors have borrowed heavily from one author to bolster the account of another, and, considerations of time

* General Kenney Reports (New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1949).

being what they are, the borrowing has been done without so much as a by-your-leave. It is believed that the loans about cancel out in the end, but perhaps the reader will tolerate here an editorial apology to the author who may find one of his choicer phrases deeply imbedded in an account credited to a colleague.

The authors are identified in the Table of Contents by their present positions; it may be useful here to indicate also their wartime assignments. Three have already contributed to Volume I of this series. They are Richard L. Watson, Kramer J. Rohfleisch, and Herbert Weaver, all of whom, as Air Corps officers, were members of the Historical Division, AAF Headquarters, with special responsibilities for the Southwest Pacific, the South Pacific, and the CBI theaters, respectively. Of those who appear first in this volume, Harry L. Coles was associated with the same office. The others served with Army air forces in various Asiatic and Pacific theaters: Lee Bowen with EAC SEAC in India; Frank Futrell with FEAF in the Philippines; James C. Olson with AAFPOA in Hawaii and Guam; and Capt. Bernhardt L. Mortensen with V Bomber Command in the Southwest Pacific.

There are many others who have helped, each in his own way, to present this story of the air war to the American public. Col. Wilfred J. Paul, Dr. Albert F. Simpson, and Lt. Col. Arthur J. Larsen of the Air Force Historical Division, which is responsible for this and other volumes in this series, at all times have given their energetic and intelligent support. Mr. Alan Bliss, Mrs. Wilhelmine Burch, and Mrs. Estelle Baldwin Cornette, as readers of the manuscript and of the printer’s proofs, have saved the editors from much of the burden normally falling to their office and from numerous blunders, large and small. Mrs. Juanita S. Riner and Mrs. Lola B. Lowe, especially in their care for accuracy of detail, have been of great assistance in the preparation of the text. T/Sgt. Fred Kane and Miss Fanita Lanier have done the maps, and Miss Juliette Abington has made the initial selection of the pictures. Capt. George W. Satterfield, Jr., has been most generous in answering questions of a technical sort. Miss Marguerite Kennedy and Mr. Frank C. Myers, as custodians of Historical Division files, frequently have been able to suggest where needed information was to be found; so also has Dr. Edith C. Rodgers, whose acquaintance with those files is both wide and deep. Lt. Col. Garth C. Cobb and Mr. David Schoem have provided substantial assistance at all stages of the project. Others of Colonel Paul’s staff, past or present, to whom

acknowledgment should be made for services too varied to be specified are Capt. John W. Miller, Capt. George H. Saylor, M/Sgt. J. P. O. L. Beaudry, S/Sgt. John C. Rayburn, Sgt. Hasken E. Willis, and Sgt. Joseph V. Willis.

In Maj. Gen. Orlando Ward and Dr. Kent Roberts Greenfield of the Army’s Historical Division the editors have at all times found a friendly willingness to help with the resources at their command. Similarly Rear Adm. John B. Heffernan and Dr. Henry M. Dater of the Department of the Navy have been generous in their readiness to assist in correcting the details of the text. To Brig. Gen. John T. Selden, Director of Marine Corps History, and to his professional associates, goes a special acknowledgment for their courtesy in making available to Air Force historians the records of air operations in the South Pacific which were joint operations in the fullest sense of the term and are recorded more fully in the files of the Marine Corps than elsewhere.

The editors would like, while making these acknowledgments, to point out one of the embarrassments of their position. Currently the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, and the Air Force are engaged in an attempt to present to the public a careful estimate of their respective contributions to the war effort, and in general those of us who write of one service are privileged to draw upon the work of associates of another service-as the incomplete acknowledgments listed above will affirm. As a practical matter, however, it is not always possible to interrupt established publishing schedules in order to take cognizance of the latest published results of our colleagues’ work. If in the following pages insufficient attention seems to be given to such recent studies as John Miller, Jr.’s Guadalcanal: The First Offensive, Maj. John L. Zimmerman’s The Guadalcanal Campaign, or Samuel E. Morison’s The Struggle for Guadalcanal, it is because at the time of their publication this book had gone to press. It can only be hoped that historians of a later date who can put our several published works side by side may be able to come somewhat closer to conclusions that are definitive.

Once again the editors are happy to record their indebtedness to members of the Air Force Advisory Historical Committee: Professors Richard A. Newhall of Williams College, John A. Krout of Columbia University, Joseph R. Strayer of Princeton University, and Clanton W. Williams of the University of Alabama.

Wesley Frank Craven

James Lea Cate

Chicago, Illinois

18 February 1950