The meeting ended on a high note, for all present could still take some solace from their superiority in carrier numbers. But their calculus was already off, for even as they spoke, the USS Essex was slipping out to sea on her maiden voyage. It was not supposed to be commissioned until December of 1942, reaching the Pacific in July after an extensive series of sea trials. But many things in the history were askew, and the Essex program was also accelerated. The need being so great, the ship was already enroute to the Pacific, and so the four carriers Yamamoto hoped to challenge the Americans with off Fiji, might soon be facing three on the American side. Yet no one knew that when the meeting ended.
They would know it soon enough.
Part XVII
Operation C
“Clever archers who, designing to hit the mark which yet appears too far distant, and knowing the limits to which the strength of their bow attains, take aim much higher than the mark… to be able with the aid of so high an aim to hit the mark they wish to reach.”
Chapter 49
The plans that then developed from the meeting between Yamamoto and the officers off the Takami were clearly aimed at finding the strategy that would win the war, achieving some decisive advantage in the time frame Harada had put forward. They had six to eight months to prevent any US counteroffensive from gaining traction in 1943. With winter coming, Yamamoto ordered all his fleet carriers to leave the Home Islands and muster at Truk. He wanted them as far from the unseen raider in the Siberian north as possible. The Siberians would be opposed by the Army and air force instead, and no longer challenged at sea. All remaining carrier power would be concentrated in the South Pacific, and the Indian Ocean operation.
Now Yamamoto took stock of the forces he might have available. The 2nd Infantry Division, savaged by the eruption at Krakatoa, was slowly being rebuilt from new conscripts in Japan for anticipated operations in the south. One regiment was being built in Nasu, another at Sato, and the third at Fukushima. With the 48th Division already committed to Fiji, if the Ceylon operation should ever materialize, it would be given to the 5th Division, which was still a strong two regiment nucleus that could receive replacements and become a full triangular division, though it would never again be the powerful force it was as a square division under Yamashita. The Battle at Tengah Airfield on Singapore had killed many of its toughest veteran troops.
If necessary, General Nishimura stated that he would consider releasing one regiment of the Imperial Guards for deployment on Ceylon after it was taken, but only if the Army could not make a similar force available at Rangoon from the troops already committed to the Burma campaign.
All in all, Japan now bet its fortunes on the outcome of these crucial operations in the south. The additional land territory they might take was minimal, but the strategic windfall in being able to control the sea lanes of the Indian Ocean, and in isolating Australia from the US, would be significant if they could be achieved. Everything would be risked on achieving that outcome, but the one factor the planners were leaving out of their thinking, the sea monster they had come to call Mizuchi, would still remain a dangerous wildcard.
Yet Yamamoto was a realist, and the images he had seen in the library aboard Takami still haunted him. He was well aware that other staff officers at Imperial General Headquarters thought that even the push into the Solomons was an overextension of Japan’s military capabilities. Now, to add the Indian Ocean as an objective seemed an even greater reach. So we will simply aim higher, he thought.
To win in the south he had to first secure Fiji, and that could only be done if he achieved decisive naval superiority there. If he could not do that, then the Americans would have a strong base to organize further offensives into the Solomons, or against the French New Hebrides. He knew that New Caledonia, and particularly the major port there at Noumea, was a two-edged sword. On the one hand, it thrust like a dagger between Fiji and Australia, but if Fiji were to fall, it would then be subject to attack from both those enemy camps.
Australia was also of great concern, for in it the Allies possessed what appeared to be an unassailable anvil upon which to forge their weapons of war. The vast Pacific Ocean offered endless sea lanes. Though it would take much longer, American convoys could venture deep into the South Pacific if they had to, and approach New Zealand from the southeast. In time, they would still get enough troops, supplies and equipment to Australia and New Zealand to pose an offensive threat.
In the north, though New Guinea had been mostly cleared of enemy presence, there was still a nest at Milne Bay that had to be taken, and the Port of Darwin on the North coast might be used as a base for a thrust into the Arafura or Banda Seas. That would be possible only if the enemy achieved naval superiority, but he had to always keep it in the back of his mind. Perhaps he should take Admiral Hara’s advice, and permit him to make a landing at Darwin, anchoring the defense there instead of at Dili on the Island of Timor.
Then there were the British, who had a division at Perth to use if they should want to strike at the barrier islands again. That was why he decided to send Harada and his ship into the Indian Ocean. If Hara’s carriers could defeat the British squadron, and occupy Ceylon, any threat from the British would be completely neutralized. And then, there was always the possibility that the Americans might use their base at Hawaii to strike directly into the Marshalls, or attempt to retake Wake Island. From those bases they could attack the Marianas, and such a strategy would completely bypass the Solomons, New Hebrides and New Guinea. That was what they actually did in those books the Admiral reviewed. And then there was the problem on Karafuto Island, where the Siberians had been stopped by the Japanese 7th Division, but still represented a serious danger.
So many threats, from so many directions, and the defense rested primarily with the navy. At first glance, it seemed that all the dramatic gains achieved in 1942 were war winners, but Yamamoto knew that even his face cards could be taken by the enemy trump cards. Yet ‘life was not a matter of holding good cards,’ said Robert Louis Stevenson, ‘but of playing a poor hand well.’ Yamamoto was considering how to play out the hand he now held to win this game, and it was time to lead. He wanted no shadow over his shoulder when he finally turned to face the Americans again.
In the high summer of 1942, Great Britain, which had stood alone in the west since the fall of France, at last had a powerful Ally in the United States. In spite of that, the British Empire still remained under grave threat, and Churchill could see shadows everywhere he looked. The German Occupation of Norway, with their new major base at Nordstern, was a constant threat to the northern seas, and served to sever the line of communications to Soviet Russia at Murmansk. The U-Boat threat was at its height, making cross Atlantic communications with the US precarious. Britain’s Pacific holdings, chiefly Hong Kong and Singapore, had been smashed and occupied by Japan, and now the Japanese were in Burma.
In this light, the British occupation of Madagascar, taken from the French in May of 1942 in this history, and its strong presence on Ceylon at Colombo were now the two bastions of power aimed at securing lines of communications through the Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal. Those lines reached out to Australia and New Zealand, and had once linked India with the Empire’s Pacific holdings before the war. Now they served commercial shipping to ports like Madras, Calcutta and Bombay, where the Jewel of Britain’s occidental empire, India, was slowly coming under increasing threat from the Japanese.