The Second World War (59 page)

British failure to resist the Japanese was largely blamed on their colonialist behaviour. However tempting an explanation at the time, it was far
from the whole truth when the major part of the nation’s war effort had to be concentratedon the other side of the wall. In the first half of 1942, the British government nearly gave in to pressure from Washington and Chungking to renounce Hong Kong, but later in the year London would agree only to discuss the handover at the end of the war. The Nationalists, convinced that their forces would occupy the city first, did not press the matter.

Chiang Kai-shek believed that, since Britain was no longer a great power in the Far East, Nationalist China should now be recognized as one. Roosevelt was happy to comply, but he knew that Stalin would not accept China joining the ‘Big Three’. And Chiang, ever the realist, knew that whatever his feelings about the British he would need Churchill’s support, which partly explains his flexibility over the postponement of discussions on Hong Kong. On the other hand, the Nationalists were enraged that Britain’s Special Operations Executive was working with Chinese Communist guerrillas in south China on the East River and in the New Territories of Hong Kong. The Communists helped British prisoners of war who escaped from the colony. One party was treated to a feast of goose and rice wine round a fire, during which an officer taught the Communist guerrillas to sing ‘
The British Grenadiers
’ and ‘
The Eton Boating Song
’.

In India, relations between the British and the Congress Party, which wanted independence for the country, had deteriorated badly. Lord Linlithgow, the viceroy, proved both arrogant and inept, politically and economically. In 1939, he had made no effort to consult the leaders of the Congress Party and obtain their support for the war. Churchill was no better, with his romantic notions of empire and the Raj. Forced against his will to send a mission to India led by Sir Stafford Cripps, his least favourite politician, Churchill hated the idea of offering Dominion status to India once the war was over. Mahatma Gandhi famously described the proposal as a ‘post-dated cheque’ and Congress leaders were unimpressed. On 8 August 1942, prompted by Gandhi, Congress issued a call to the British to ‘Quit India’ at once, but to keep their troops there as defence against the Japanese. Next morning, the British authorities arrested its leaders. Demonstrations and riots followed, with a thousand people killed and a hundred thousand thrown into jail. The disturbances confirmed Churchill in his prejudice that the Indians were ungrateful and treacherous.

The loss of Burma to the Japanese in the spring of 1942 reduced India’s supplies of rice by 15 per cent. Prices shot up. Traders and merchants, in the hope of pushing up the price further, hoarded supplies, and an inflationary spiral began. The poor simply could not afford to eat. The government
in New Delhi did nothing to control this ferocious black market. It simply passed the responsibility to regional administrations which reacted with ‘
insane provincial protectionism
’. Those with surpluses, such as Madras, refused to sell to those with acute shortages of grain.

Bengal bore the brunt of the gathering disaster. At least 1.5 million died as a direct result of the famine which began at the end of 1942 and lasted all through the following year. A similar number again are estimated to have perished through disease–cholera, malaria and smallpox–because they were so malnourished that they had no resistance. Churchill, already furious with India, refused to interfere with the shipping programme to bring relief. Only when Field Marshal Wavell was made viceroy in September 1943 did the government of India begin to get a firm grip on the problem by using troops to distribute food reserves. Wavell made himself even more unpopular with Churchill by pursuing this policy. The whole episode was probably the most shameful in the history of the British Raj. If nothing else, it completely undermined the imperialist argument that British rule protected the poor of India from the rich.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had one saving grace for the Americans. It was their battleships, and not their aircraft carriers, that had been in port that fateful weekend. Admiral Yamamoto, the most far-sighted of senior Japanese commanders, had not joined in the jubilation after the attack for this very reason.

In Washington, uncertainty reigned in the offices of the Main Navy Building. The desire to hit back was overwhelming, but the badly battered Pacific Fleet needed to exercise caution. Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King, the new commander-in-chief, was famously irascible. He was furious that the British had persuaded General Marshall and Roosevelt to adopt the ‘Germany first’ policy, which meant that the Pacific theatre was obliged to go on to the defensive. British officers felt that King was a confirmed anglo-phobe, but their American counterparts reassured them that Admiral King was not prejudiced. He simply hated everybody.

The naval staff in Washington decided that it was too dangerous to send a carrier task force to relieve Wake Island. The three task force commanders bitterly resented the decision, but it was almost certainly the right one at the time. In late December 1941, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz arrived in Pearl Harbor to take over as the new commander-in-chief Pacific Fleet. The unfortunate Admiral Kimmel was still there, waiting to hear his fate, although he was treated with great sympathy by his colleagues. The most senior levels of the US Navy suffered remarkably little from rivalries and prima-donna ego clashes. Nimitz was an inspired choice for the post. A white-haired Texan descended from impoverished German nobility, he
was soft-spoken, decisive and able to get things moving with quiet authority. Not surprisingly, he inspired great loyalty and trust. This was particularly useful at a time when Washington had not yet developed a clear approach to the war in the Pacific.

Washington did, however, insist on launching a raid on Tokyo to raise morale. This was to be led by Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle of the Army Air Corps, with B-25 medium bombers flown off a carrier for the first time. Vice Admiral William F. Halsey set off on 8 April 1942, with the carriers
Enterprise
and
Hornet
. Halsey welcomed the chance to hit back, but Nimitz was dubious about an operation which sacrificed so many bombers for a gesture that caused little damage to the enemy. He was also concerned about having sufficient forces available to counter the next Japanese offensive, expected somewhere around the Solomon Islands and New Guinea. This was in the south-west Pacific region which was under the command of General MacArthur.

Commander Joseph Rochefort, the chief cryptanalyst at Pearl Harbor, had helped break the Japanese naval code in 1940. An unconventional officer, usually attired in carpet slippers and a red smoking jacket, Roche-fort had not been able to warn of the attack on Pearl Harbor due to the strict radio silence imposed on the Japanese carrier fleet. Fortunately for the US Navy, Rochefort had now been able to decode a signal which revealed that the Japanese were planning to land on the south-eastern edge of New Guinea in May and seize the airfield at Port Moresby. This would give their air force control over the Coral Sea and enable them to attack northern Australia at will.

With the huge distances involved in the Pacific, refuelling at sea presented a critical challenge for both sides. Each US task force of two carriers and escort vessels had to sail with at least one tanker or ‘oiler’, which Japanese submarines would target first. But, as the war progressed, US Navy submarines proved to be the most cost-efficient way of destroying Japanese freighters and tankers. This effort, in which
US submarines accounted for 55 per cent of all Japanese vessels sunk
, had a devastating effect on naval and land forces short of fuel and supplies.

Halsey, who had returned from launching the Tokyo raid, was the obvious candidate to lead this first major counter-attack. On 30 April 1942, he sailed with Task Force 16. But, as Nimitz suspected, Task Force 17 commanded by Vice Admiral Frank J. Fletcher, which was already operating in the Coral Sea, would face the bulk of the fighting before Halsey arrived.

On 3 May, a Japanese force landed on Tulagi in the Solomon Islands. The Japanese commanders were supremely confident that they would crush any American naval force in the Coral Sea south of New Guinea and the Solomons. Fletcher, supported by Australian and New Zealand
warships, sailed north-westwards on hearing that another Japanese force was heading for Port Moresby in New Guinea. Confusion followed on both sides, but aircraft from the USS
Lexington
sighted the Japanese carrier
Shohu
and sank her. Japanese aircraft thought they had found the American carrier force and sank a destroyer and a tanker.

On 8 May, the American and Japanese carriers launched strikes against each other. The aircraft from
Yorktown
managed to damage the
Shokaku
enough to render her incapable of launching any more planes, while the Japanese hit both the
Lexington
and the
Yorktown
. The Japanese, unable to protect their invasion fleet, decided to withdraw from Port Moresby, much to Admiral Yamamoto’s disgust. The
Lexington
, which had appeared to recover, then began to sink after explosions caused by leaking fuel.

The Coral Sea battle was a partial success for the Americans since it prevented a landing, while the Japanese convinced themselves that their enemy had received a ‘
beating
’. In any case, it provoked much thought on the American side about technical defects in their aircraft and armament. Most were unresolved by the time the next engagement took place.

Admiral Yamamoto, well aware of the United States’ potential to produce aircraft carriers more rapidly than Japan, wanted to get in a knockout blow before his fleet lost the initiative. An attack on the island base of Midway would force the few American carriers into battle. After the Doolittle Raid on Japan, critics in the naval general staff in Tokyo had now suddenly come round to his point of view. Signals intercepts analysed by Commander Rochefort and his colleagues indicated that the Japanese were about to turn west and north to attack the Midway Islands. This would suggest that they wished to establish a base from which to attack Pearl Harbor itself. The naval staff in Washington rejected this idea, but Nimitz summoned all available warships back to Pearl Harbor at best speed.

By 26 May, when the main Japanese invasion fleet left Saipan in the Marianas, its destination was no longer in any doubt. Rochefort had set a signals trap, sending a message in clear to say that Midway was short of water. This was repeated in a Japanese message on 20 May using the letters ‘AF’ to identify Midway. Since previous references using this code had signified their principal objective, Nimitz now knew for certain what Yamamoto’s overall plan was. This offered the opportunity of evading the massive trap ahead and turning it to his advantage. Halsey was suffering from a stress-related illness and had to go into hospital. So Nimitz chose Rear Admiral Raymond Spruance, a fitness fanatic, to command Task Force 16.

On 28 May, Spruance sailed from Pearl Harbor with the carriers
Enterprise
and
Hornet
, escorted by two cruisers and six destroyers. Fletcher,
who was to have overall command, left two days later with two cruisers, six destroyers and the
Yorktown
, which had been repaired with astonishing speed. The American warships had departed just in time. A line of Japanese submarines, hoping to ambush them, took up station between Hawaii and Midway hours after the two task forces had passed by.

Spruance and Fletcher faced a formidable array. The Imperial Japanese Navy had four fleets at sea, with eleven battleships, eight carriers, twenty-three cruisers, sixty-five destroyers and twenty submarines. Three task forces were heading for Midway and one for the Aleutian Islands some 3,200 kilometres to the north round the bottom edge of the Bering Sea. The Japanese believed that the Americans were ‘
not aware of our plans
’.

On 3 June, shore-based aircraft from Midway were the first to sight Japanese ships approaching from the south-west. The next day, the Japanese launched their first air attacks on Midway. US Army Air Force’s bombers and Marine dive-bombers from Midway responded. They suffered terrible losses and failed to score many hits, which increased Japanese complacency. Admiral Nagumo Chuichi, the commander of the Japanese task force, still had no idea of the presence of American carriers. Yamamoto on the other hand now suspected they might be there after a signal from Tokyo warning of increased signals traffic from Pearl Harbor, but he did not want to break radio silence.

For the young American flyers operating over the seemingly endless blue of the Pacific, the prospect of such a battle was both exhilarating and terrifying. Many of the pilots were barely out of flying school, and lacked the experience of their opponents, but these young, sunburned and enthusiastic aviators demonstrated an astonishing courage. It was bad enough to be shot down over the sea, but to be picked up by a Japanese warship meant almost certain execution by beheading.

The Japanese Zero fighter was superior to the stubby Grumman F4F Wildcat, but the Wildcat could survive a lot of damage, because it had self-sealing petrol tanks when hit. American torpedo bombers and dive-bombers stood little chance against the Zeros unless they had a fighter escort. The obsolete Douglas TBD Devastator torpedo bomber was slow and its torpedo seldom worked, so to attack a Japanese warship was close to a suicide mission for the pilot. The Douglas SBD Dauntless dive-bomber, on the other hand, was far more effective, especially in a near vertical dive, as events were soon to prove.

A Catalina flying-boat sighted the Japanese carrier force and passed back its position. Fletcher ordered Spruance to join his aircraft in an attack. Spruance’s task force went to full speed. Their targets were at maximum range for his torpedo bombers, but the risk was worth while if he could catch the Japanese carriers just before they launched their aircraft.
Due to confusion, the Devastator torpedo bombers arrived first and without fighter cover. They were massacred by Zero fighters. The Japanese assumed that they had achieved a victory, but their elation was premature.