So they left it at that, and MacArthur made his way to Darwin, narrowly escaping from Del Monte Airfield before the Japanese could take it. He would arrive in Australia to learn the US was sending him the 41st and 32nd Infantry Divisions, and a mix of three regiments that would later be formed into the 23rd Division was to be sent to Fiji to relieve the two New Zealand Brigades there. To those forces he could add anything the Australians could make battle worthy, and in this, the three divisions Prime Minister Curtin recalled from the Middle East would play a very prominent role.
The General inclined his head, eyes narrowed with fatigue as he set down the sheaf of reports he had been reading. The memories of Corregidor were still heavy on him, the faces of the men and officers he left behind. He had no choice in the matter, as much as he hated to abandon his command in the middle of a fight.
My god, he thought, the Japanese certainly licked us in the Philippines, and damn good. But this isn’t over. I’ll be back. It will only be a question of time. Once I get the troops and supplies I need, the aircraft, then we’ll see how Tojo likes what I have planned for him.
Strategy… They are all trying to figure out what to do, Admiral King, Nimitz, Marshall and even the President. I mustn’t allow the navy to muddy the waters here. The United States has always been a maritime power, but now we’re looking at a war on two oceans. It’s clear where Marshall stands. He’s hot for action this year in the Atlantic, but I must impress upon him the importance of what we’re losing now in the Philippines. I must make certain the Pacific Theater is not overlooked.
In the early months of 1942 the United States was debating its war strategy at the highest levels, and the US Joint Chiefs had to decide how to divide up the resources at their disposal. The decision had been made early on that the Western Theater against Germany would be the primary area of US operations. MacArthur could understand that, but with the British pushed back to Burma, the Dutch entirely defeated, and the Japanese in an excellent position to seize the Solomons, he hounded Marshall for everything he could get his hands on, sometimes going right over his head and making direct appeals to Roosevelt.
The President decided to try and make a commitment of 100,000 men to the Pacific territories beyond Hawaii, and also send 1000 planes, the type and mix to be decided by the joint Chiefs. The first division sent to Australia was the 32nd, and the 1st US Marine Division was being moved into Samoa. Now more troops would soon follow, intending to bolster the defenses of Fiji. For the most part, however, Roosevelt remained convinced that the operations in the west should take precedence over the Pacific.
The planning division, now headed by Eisenhower, was already hard at work on joint US/British operations, and the movement of men and equipment to support them was dubbed BOLERO. He was one damn good clerk when he worked for me, thought MacArthur. Now he’s right in the middle of all the high level planning for the western front. Roosevelt wanted action, and he wanted it this year, in 1942. BOLERO was the war chest, and the operation they have in mind was being called GYMNAST.
The situation in the Atlantic was going to get the best units the Americans had, he knew. MacArthur had learned that the 1st, 3rd and 9th Infantry Divisions were being readied for operations there, along with the 1st and 2nd Armored Divisions. Well they mustn’t overlook the Pacific.
The German seizure of Gibraltar, France as an active belligerent in Northwest Africa, and Spain’s complicity in allowing German troops on its soil were all problems that Eisenhower never had to face in Fedorov’s history. The fall of Gibraltar and Malta had effectively sealed off the entire eastern and central Mediterranean, and the action then underway in the Canary Islands with the German Operation Condor was seeing more and more German resources directed to that theater.
The only development that proved in any way hopeful for the Allies was Rommel’s defeat on the Gazala Line and his subsequent withdrawal from Cyrenaica. Yet as Eisenhower looked over the plans for GYMNAST, the prospect of trying to invade both North Africa and Spain at the same time was a dual thrust that would tax existing resources. He subsequently flew to the Azores to meet with all the British Principles that would be involved in the operation and hammer the matter out. What emerged from that meeting would then become the first Allied operation on the long road they hoped to walk to victory, but the journey was by no means certain to succeed.
Its first obstacle, in spite of Roosevelt’s insistence that the Atlantic be given the highest priority, was the constant drain on resources that were being siphoned off for the Pacific. At one point, Marshall threw up his hands and wrote a pointed memo to the President stating that if 100,000 men had to go to the Pacific, the necessary shipping and time schedules would set back planning for BOLERO considerably, possibly even precluding it altogether.
The question again landed on Roosevelt’s lap, and he was quick to decide the issue saying: “I don’t want BOLERO interfered with in any way, and I regard it as essential that active operations be conducted in the Atlantic theater in 1942.” If this were to be the case, then the Pacific would simply have to make do with what it had.
Eisenhower and Marshall both thought that would be the end of it, and began drawing up plans to ship troops to Iceland, Ireland, and other Atlantic outposts. It soon became apparent that the operation required for offensive action in 1942—GYMNAST, was going to take considerably more time, materiel and planning than first expected, as well as careful coordination with the British. Even the most optimistic proposals and plan drafts did not see any real offensive beginning until late summer. In the meantime, the situation in the Pacific would continue to worsen with the loss of the Philippines the final blow.
The strategic problem facing the Allies in the Pacific was very much complicated by the hostility of the French. They had bristled when the US demanded Bora Bora as a rear supply base, impudently sending troops there. Then, in the brief hot action of early January, they had tried to exact a toll with a sortie against the US relief convoy bound for the Philippines that had to be diverted to Australia. The Pensacola Convoy had been fortunate that a pair of fast escort carriers had been sent to the region, and the diplomatic frost soon melted in the fire of real weapons, as the US put the French carrier Bearn under the sea for its meddling. With French now an active combatant in the Pacific, the Japanese had wasted no time in sending a small relief force to the primary bastion of French strength in the SE Pacific—New Caledonia.
The light Carrier Hiyo had arrived right in the thick of the disagreement then underway between the Americans and French, covering a small troop convoy bound for Noumea. Aside from its strategic position as a sword cutting right astride the lines of communications between the US and Australia, the Japanese also coveted this territory for its vital copper and manganese mines, resources the Empire was eager to secure.
The small Japanese convoy had carried the Ichiki Regiment to Noumea, the very same troops the Japanese once used to try and foil the early days of US occupation on Guadalcanal. Once there, the regiment distributed its battalions to the most vital locations, two near the big harbor in the south at Noumea, another further north at the airfield near Kone, and a cavalry reconnaissance units at the northern anchorage of Koumac. Other sites were being surveyed, for the detachment also had aviation engineers there to further develop airfields.
The French had little in the way of ground troops in the New Hebrides, but pressed by Japan in February of 1942 to contribute more to the defense of these important island outposts, two brigades of the Tonkin Division in French Indochina were shipped to the Pacific. Escorted by the Japanese Navy, they arrived just before more powerful American units could be shipped in to seize territories that had been otherwise unoccupied up until that month. By mid-March, the French had troops on Malakula, Ambrym and the more important island of Efate. Vanuatu, a joint holding with the British, saw the deployment of a single battalion in the southern French territory of that island. The northern segment, designated Espiritu Santo, found the only British unit then operating in the Southeast Pacific, a small constabulary force composed of no more than 15 police squads at Hog Harbor. Separated by miles of humid jungle and highland terrain, the two sides simply ignored one another, though both made vociferous claimed to the entirety of the island itself.