Turning Point WWII: The Pacific

I would like to highly recommend the book "Shattered Sword:  The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway" by Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully.  This book combined with Eric Hammel's book "Guadalcanal:  Decision at Sea" to me has redefined the importance of Midway and the turning point in the Pacific Theater of Operations (PTO).  While Midway is a decisive American victory, its importance must be reevaluated.

Parshall and Tully have completely busted the myth about the mythical "five minutes" at Midway because the main Japanese basis for that position was from Mitsuo Fuchida.  He was a high ranking air officer on the carrier Akagi, but he wrote his book in the 1950s, well after the actual events.  Fuchida also blamed the fates of war on the defeat, saying that the strike force was in fact on the deck ready to rumble down the decks when the Dauntlesses sneaked over top the carriers and demolished three carriers of the Kido Butai.  In fact, "Shattered" places the strike force awaiting a transit to the flight deck to take off.  The devil is in the details and there is where we find what truly happened.  Arming a plane on a carrier was only half the story; spotting the plane for takeoff must be done on the deck on a Japanese carrier (unlike the well ventilated American hangers where we actually could).  What is spotting?  Essentially, it is warming up the plane and making sure that the plane will take what the crew will throw at it in flight.  Same concept for a commercial driver inspecting their vehicles.  The main reason the Japanese couldn't spot their aircraft was due to the US air attacks (like from Midway and the Devastator torpedo squadrons).  The four aircraft carriers were to busy maintaining their combat air patrol to even think about spotting aircraft that and their poor aircraft directing.

Not to say that the loss of four aircraft carriers wasn't devastating.  But lets look into the battle more concerning the first six months of the Pacific war.  The Kido Butai was the First Mobile Fleet consisting of six fleet carriers:  Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu, Shokaku, and Zuikaku.  This force devastated Pearl Harbor, Wake Island, the Indian Ocean and Darwin, Australia.  The Japanese should have realized that either all their carriers should have been involved or none of them because it gave them a major tactical advantage.  However, they violated this principle by detaching Shokaku and Zuikaku for the Coral Sea operation.  Of course, the Japanese could not have known that their communication code was broken, but the US knew their objective and that led to the Battle of Coral Sea.  While the US lost carrier Lexington, the Shokaku was damaged heavily and Zuikaku's air group took heavy losses.  Thus, both were out for the Midway operation.  These two carriers were the present advantage in carriers the Japanese held over the US Navy.  Japanese martial spirit thought their four senior carriers would be able to sweep the Americans from the seas.  This was not to be.

While the Japanese lost their carriers, pilots and plane crews, the US launched an offensive onto Guadalcanal, an island in the Solomon Islands where the Japanese were building a new airfield to strike US supply routes to Australia.  US Marines landed in August, but from August to November the USN and Japanese fought numerous battles, carrier and night surface battles.  While the US Navy fought, it did lose precious carriers to the end of 1942.  Compare losses of carriers in carrier battles in 1942:

                                          US                                                        Japan
Coral Sea                         1 sunk, 1 damaged                              1 damaged
Midway                             1 sunk                                                   4 sunk
Eastern Solomon             1 damaged
Submarine attacks           1 sunk, 1 damaged
Santa Cruz                        1 sunk, 1 damaged                            1 damaged

So during 1942, the USN and IJN (Imperial Japanese Navy) lost the same amount of carriers.  America lost Lexington, Yorktown, Hornet, and Wasp, while Japan lost her four at Midway.  At the end of the year, Japan had two operational fleet carriers to the USN's one (lucky Enterprise), but Japan's two carriers sustained such heavy losses in aircrew that they were rendered impotent for offensive action.

Due to a lack of carriers, the naval fighting around Guadalcanal devolved into a surface action.  Four major surface actions occurred in Iron Bottom Sound, north of the island.  Savo Island was the worst defeat on the high seas it ever suffered.  Cape Esperance avenged that defeat, but to me it was the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal that seems to be the turning point of the PTO.  Why do I say that?  Let's investigate...

Japan's objective was to take the airfield they constructed on Guadalcanal, which the US renamed Henderson Field.  If they could knock out the airfield, they could safely move in enough troops to eradicate resistance from the US Marines.  By October and November, it became almost nightly for the Japanese Navy to streak down, bombard the airfield, then bug out before the US aircraft came streaking down on them.  November 13th was the largest force the Japanese dispatched to bombard Henderson Field.  The US Navy realized they had to stop them.  The Japanese were not prepared for a surface action and the US was using an archaic surface formation.  The result was the famous "bar room brawl" where the US lost two cruisers and four destroyers sunk with two cruisers and three destroyers heavily damaged.  Crucially, Japan lost one battleship and two destroyers.  In her history, Japan never lost a battleship before.  While the carrier was emerging as the capital ship of navies, to lose a battleship was indeed a blow to prestige.  This was reinforced by the November 15th fight (Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal) where Japan lost another battleship and destroyer while the US lost three destroyers sunk.  The defeat of the Imperial Japanese Army on land was bad enough; for the Imperial Japanese Navy to lose two battleships at sea was pretty much point where Japan cried "uncle."  Within a few weeks, Japan decided to throw in the towel and evacuate Guadalcanal.

That's not to say that Guadalcanal occurred in a vacuum.  The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal could not have occurred without gaining carrier parity at Midway and that could not have occurred without the removal of the two Japanese carriers as a result of the Coral Sea action.  So the critical period of May to November 1942 set the tone for the rest of the Pacific action.

Greetings!

Good day and welcome to my blog about United States Military History.  My name is Matthew and I am a "professional" historian (as close to one can get in this economy).  I have a Bachelors in History and it has been my passion since around age 7 when I got into the American Civil War at a gifted elementary school.  Being that I am currently out of the history field (again, due to economic conditions) and needing a creative outlet, I started this blog just to jot down my thoughts and get feedback on American Military History.

My specialties include the Civil War and World War II.  I am versed in the Revolutionary War, Mexican American War, Spanish American War, Korean War and the First Persian Gulf War.  I honestly don't know as much as I should about World War I and Vietnam, but I'm always looking for more expertise.

My aims are to present American Military History in an unbiased fashion through a variety of means.  This includes book reviews, wargaming and places to visit where I've been.  I am based out of Virginia so this will include a lot of Virginia sites, but hey, we are history here in the Old Dominion.  So sit back, enjoy the reading and jump in if you feel like it.

P.S. - I don't have internet at home, so please bear with me if I don't post every day.