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.
The brief but violent British assault on French held Madagascar had taken place right on schedule, between the 5th and 7th of May. As such, it was eclipsed by the far larger battle off Fiji then underway, and the decisive collision in the Koro Sea. Yet for the British, seizing Madagascar was of great significance. It was one of two vital possessions Vichy France held that the Allies dearly coveted, the other being the New Hebrides.
“We already know what the French have suggested,” said Churchill to Brooke when the matter had come up. “They’ll go so far as to hand the entire island right over to the Japanese. Then what? From there they will have cut us off from Ceylon and India, and if they take that naval base, they can put bombers on Durban, and stop every last convoy we send around the Cape. It would be a disaster of the first order, so that place simply must be taken. I don’t care how we do it, or where the troops come from. You must find them, and carry it off like a thief in the night before the Japanese realize what they’ve lost.”
Brooke handed the matter to Tovey for the naval arm, and he teed up Illustrious and Indomitable with 82 planes to cover the operation. He then scraped up the 29th Independent Brigade, the 13th and 17th Brigades of 5th Division, the 7th South African and Rhodesian 27th Brigades. Number 5 Commando would be on the cutting edge of the attack. This was a force of some 15,000 troops against the French garrison of 8,000 troops and six tanks, with 32 antiquated planes.
The landings had occurred at the northernmost tip of the island where the vital protective Diego Suarez Bay provided one of the best anchorages in the Indian Ocean. The 29th Brigade was the hammer that struck that anvil, with the other British forces following later. The action in the north was a great success, and though low level fighting continued for the next 45 days, Churchill had Madagascar, and saw it as a great outer bulwark protecting the vital Cape Town region.
When ULTRA intercepts indicated that the enemy was now planning a sortie into the Indian Ocean, it was therefore cause for some alarm in Whitehall. It was clear what their objective might be—Ceylon. If japan were to take that, they could use it to base aircraft, naval units and submarines that could pose a threat as far away as the Persian Gulf and Red Sea. Beyond that, Ceylon was also a source of over 90% of Britain’s rubber, and it would produce 60% of the rubber all the Allied powers used, a resource that was much needed in wartime. All those tires on trucks and planes needed it, and it had many other wartime applications. Ceylon was also a major producer of tea, and that, too was a vital resource insofar as the British were concerned.
Yet for all that virtue, Ceylon’s liability was that it could not produce enough food to feed its local population. As Hara’s carriers headed west, there was no more than 14 days supply of rice on the Island, and the island needed to import over half a million tons of rice per year. Some of it came from India, more from the Middle East, and that meant the waters around the island were full of merchant shipping on those thin, highly vulnerable sea lanes. The Japanese knew this, and therefore one of Vice Admiral Ozawa’s chief objectives, in addition to screening Hara’s carriers, was to seek out and destroy merchant shipping off the coast of India.
And so just one brief look at a single piece of the great puzzle that had been the British Empire, was quite revealing. This piece was particularly important, for it connected directly to great segments of the puzzle on either side, the Australian and New Zealand Commonwealth to the east, and India to the north. Remove it from British control, and a deadly gap appeared in the puzzle that could only be filled again by fire, steel, and blood. In many ways, it was more strategic then Malta was in the Med, or even Gibraltar, and perhaps even the equal of the Suez Canal in terms of importance to that theater. Churchill himself commented that the approach of Japanese naval units to Ceylon filled him with dread.