The Conquering Tide

by Ian W. Toll

  GENERAL MARSHALL stated that, in his opinion, the British Chiefs of Staff wished to be certain that we keep the enemy engaged in the Mediterranean and that at the same time maintain a sufficient force in the United Kingdom to take advantage of a crack in the German strength either from the withdrawal of their forces in France or because of lowered morale. He inferred that the British Chiefs of Staff would prefer to maintain such a force in the United Kingdom dormant and awaiting an opportunity rather than have it utilized in a sustained attack elsewhere. The United States Chiefs of Staff know that they can use these forces offensively in the Pacific Theater.

  SIR ALAN BROOKE said that the British Chiefs of Staff certainly did not want to keep forces tied up in Europe doing nothing. During the build-up period, however, the first forces to arrive from America could not be used actively against the enemy; a certain minimum concentration had to be effected before they could be employed. His point was that we should direct our resources to the defeat of Germany first. This conception was focused in paragraph 2(c) of the British Joint Planning Staff’s paper (C.C.S. 153/1) in which it was stated that we agreed in principle with the U. S. strategy in the Pacific “provided always that its application does not prejudice the earliest possible defeat of Germany.”

  ADMIRAL KING pointed out that this expression might be read as meaning that anything which was done in the Pacific interfered with the earliest possible defeat of Germany and that the Pacific theater should therefore remain totally inactive.

  SIR CHARLES PORTAL said that this was certainly not the understanding of the British Chiefs of Staff, who had always accepted that pressure should be maintained on Japan. They had, perhaps, misunderstood the U. S. Chiefs of Staff and thought that the point at issue was whether the main effort should be in the Pacific or in the United Kingdom. The British view was that for getting at Germany in the immediate future, the Mediterranean offered better prospects than Northern France.

  GENERAL MARSHALL said that he was most anxious not to become committed to interminable operations in the Mediterranean. He wished Northern France to be the scene of the main effort against Germany—that had always been his conception.

  ADMIRAL KING said that we had on many occasions been close to a disaster in the Pacific. The real point at issue was to determine the balance between the effort to be put against Germany and against Japan, but we must have enough in the Pacific to maintain the initiative against the Japanese. . . . He felt very strongly . . . that the details of such operations must be left to the U. S. Chiefs of Staff, who were strategically responsible for the Pacific theater. He did not feel this was a question for a decision of the Combined Chiefs of Staff.

  Brooke wanted to check the westward momentum of the Pacific offensive, for fear that it would divert shipping and other resources away from the Mediterranean. He asked that any decision to push past Rabaul to Truk be “deferred.” In the event that Rabaul fell into Allied hands, Brooke wanted surplus forces in the South Pacific transferred to the Mediterranean. King replied that whatever forces became available in MacArthur’s theater would be needed by Nimitz for the conquest of the Marshalls. Moreover, he added, “on logistic grounds alone it would be impossible to bring forces from the Pacific theater to the European theater.”

  The committee’s final recommendations to Churchill and FDR represented a compromise skewed toward the American view. The Allies would aim to seize Burma and Rabaul by the end of 1943, with the proviso that “these operations must be kept within such limits as will not . . . jeopardize the capacity of the United Nations to take advantage of any favorable opportunity that may present itself for the decisive defeat of Germany in 1943.” The Americans could launch further operations against the Marshalls and Carolines only after the capture of Rabaul, using forces already allocated to the Pacific theater.

  At the Trident conference in Washington the following May, the Allies remained largely divided over the same issues and along the same lines. While en route to Washington, Brooke confided to his diary that he dreaded the renewal of old arguments: “Casablanca has taught me too much. Agreement after agreement may be secured on paper but if their hearts are not in it they soon drift away again!”56

  In fact, the Joint Chiefs did not intend to offer any concessions at all concerning the scale of the Pacific campaign. When the Combined Chiefs of Staff convened in the ornate marble Board of Governors Room at the Federal Reserve Building on May 13, the Americans took a brusque tone from the outset. Admiral Leahy, now serving as de facto chairman of the Joint Chiefs, flatly informed the British that any provision limiting freedom of action in the Pacific “would not be acceptable to the United States Chiefs of Staff.” He added that if the Americans suffered an unexpected reversal in the war against Japan, they would shift forces to the Pacific “even at the expense of the early defeat of Germany.”57

  On the morning of Friday, May 21, King provided a long briefing on the progress of the Pacific War, ending with an analysis of possibilities for the latter half of 1943 and 1944. “Regardless of which route might be taken,” he concluded, “the Marianas are the key to the situation because of their location on the Japanese lines of communication.”58

  Brooke, in restrained exasperation, reiterated his familiar arguments. He later complained to his diary that King had tried “to find every loophole he possibly can to divert troops to the Pacific!”59 But with few forces actively engaged against the Japanese, the British lacked standing to shape strategy in the theater. Without quite saying it, Leahy, King, and Marshall intimated that the Pacific was now an American responsibility, and left no doubt that they would fight it on their own terms and according to their own schedule. In Trident’s final conference documents, the American strategic proposals were enacted wholesale, including “Seizure of the Marshall and Caroline Islands” without reference to the timing of MacArthur’s assault on Rabaul.60

  TWO PARALLEL PACIFIC CAMPAIGNS, north and south of the equator, now had the imprimatur of the Allied high command. But Nimitz did not yet possess the sea or carrier air forces needed to wage a central Pacific offensive, and the troops in his theater required months of additional amphibious training. From his South Pacific headquarters, Halsey was calling for reinforcements to carry his fight into the central Solomons. Nonetheless, King wanted hard deadlines for the central Pacific campaign. “In order that effective momentum of offensive operations can be attained and maintained,” he told his fellow chiefs on June 10, “firm timing must be set up for all areas.”61 Four days later, the Joint Chiefs of Staff instructed Nimitz to prepare to invade the Marshall Islands with a tentative sailing date of November 15, 1943. MacArthur was to release the 1st Marine Division in time to participate in the operation, and most of Halsey’s naval and amphibious forces would be shifted to Pearl Harbor as well. With unusual candor the chiefs acknowledged that the date was somewhat arbitrary—but in the absence of deadlines “it is not repeat not practicable to provide able structure for our operations throughout the Pacific and Far East.”62

  Predictably outraged, MacArthur objected that the demands of his CARTWHEEL campaign precluded any transfers of troops or ships from his theater to Nimitz’s. Indeed, MacArthur wanted (and would receive) covering support from the Pacific Fleet’s new fast carrier task forces in raids against Rabaul, Truk, and other Japanese bases on the southern route. Likewise, Halsey was anxious about the withdrawal of aircraft from the SOPAC region for support of operations north of the equator. Diverting airpower from the drive on Rabaul, he warned Nimitz on June 25, “would seriously jeopardize our chances of success at what appears to be the most critical stage of the campaign.”63

  Without borrowing forces from the South Pacific, Nimitz could not realistically tackle the Marshalls until early 1944, and some on the CINCPAC planning staff counseled patience. They argued, not unreasonably, that the new offensive should await the arrival of a large fleet of Essex carriers, which could spearhead long leaps across ocean wastes and beat back enemy land-based air att
acks. By February or March 1944, a much-expanded Fifth Fleet could simply steam into the Marshalls and seize the four or five largest Japanese bases in the group simultaneously. If the Japanese fleet came out to fight, the fast carrier task forces would willingly and confidently give battle.

  But King wanted action in 1943. He insisted that the northern line of attack be opened before the final assault on Rabaul, so that the enemy could not concentrate his defenses against either prong of the westward advance. Enemy territory had to be taken, somewhere in the central Pacific, before the end of the year. Two competing suggestions were debated at CINCPAC headquarters. Captain Forrest P. Sherman, the influential chief of staff to Vice Admiral John Henry Towers (Commander Air Forces, Pacific, or “COMAIRPAC”), circulated a plan to recapture Wake Island and employ it as a springboard for a later assault on the Marshalls, which lay about 500 miles south. Spruance favored opening the new campaign much farther south and east, where the fleet could count on greater land-based air support from rear bases in the South Pacific. He wanted to launch the new offensive in the Gilbert Islands, some 600 miles southeast of the Marshalls. Nimitz was swayed by his chief of staff’s reasoning, and persuaded King in turn. COMINCH arranged the necessary Joint Chiefs of Staff directive on July 20, 1943. The operation, code-named GALVANIC, called for the simultaneous capture of objectives in the Ellice Islands, the Gilbert Islands, and Nauru by November 15 of that year.

  SINCE HIS VICTORIOUS RETURN from Midway a year earlier, Raymond Spruance had privately hoped for another major command at sea. But it was not the taciturn admiral’s way to lobby for a job, and he was neither surprised nor disconcerted when Nimitz told him, as the two men walked to CINCPAC headquarters one morning in May 1943, “There are going to be some changes in the high command of the fleet. I would like to let you go, but unfortunately for you I need you here.”

  In his version of the conversation, recalled years later, Spruance replied, “Well, the war is an important thing. I personally would like to have another crack at the Japs, but if you need me here, this is where I should be.”

  The next morning, as the two went again on foot from house to office, Nimitz brought the subject up again. “I have been thinking this over during the night,” he said. “Spruance, you are lucky. I’ve decided that I am going to let you go, after all.”64

  Nimitz sold King on the assignment during their meeting in San Francisco later that month. On May 30, a dispatch from Navy Headquarters in Washington lifted Spruance to the rank of vice admiral. Shortly afterward, he was detached from the CINCPAC staff and placed in command of the Central Pacific Force, later designated the Fifth Fleet. It was the largest seagoing command in the history of the U.S. Navy.

  Time was short. Spruance had little more than four months to plan the largest and most complex amphibious operation yet attempted. Naval forces and landing troops had to be collected from far-flung parts of the South Pacific and the mainland. His key commanders had not yet been named to their posts, nor had they even been identified. Writing the plan would be an immensely complicated and demanding job. Spruance moved quickly to recruit a chief of staff with the requisite experience and initiative. He chose an old friend and shipmate, Captain Charles J. “Carl” Moore, who was then serving in Washington as a member of Admiral King’s war-planning staff. Spruance asked Moore to select the other key staff officers, poaching them from navy headquarters if he wished, but asked him to keep the headcount to a manageable minimum. Moore arrived in Pearl Harbor on August 5 and moved into a spare bedroom in Nimitz and Spruance’s house atop Makalapa Hill.65

  Spruance’s command philosophy was to delegate any task that he did not absolutely have to do himself. He later observed, with worthy candor, “Looking at myself objectively, I think I am a good judge of men; and I know that I tend to be lazy about many things, so I do not try to do anything that I can pass down the line to someone more competent than I am to do it.”66 Carl Moore would have agreed with the entirety of that judgment. Spruance did not micromanage; he picked good men, gave them authority, and held them accountable. He never failed to grasp the data he needed to render major decisions, but once those decisions were made, he dismissed from his mind the details of their execution. By refusing to absorb himself in such particulars, he kept his mind clear to consider the broadest problems of strategy and organization. Plausibly, Spruance did not need to work as hard as others because he possessed the sort of mind that took in and processed information more rapidly. Ernest King, who was no simpleton, attested that Spruance “was in intellectual ability unsurpassed among the flag officers of the United States Navy.”67 His distinction as a seagoing commander, at the Battle of Midway in 1942 and with the Fifth Fleet later in the war, would seem to vindicate his hands-off approach.

  It was also true, at least in a limited sense, that Spruance was lazy. He seemed to bore easily, and often resisted talking about the war. He was a compulsive walker, and tended to walk out of the office at all hours of the day, whether or not work remained to be done. He often took members of his staff along with him. Moore wrote about one such instance in a letter to his wife, composed three days after his arrival in Hawaii: “Raymond is up to his tricks already, and yesterday took me on an eight mile hike in the foothills. It was hot and a hard pull at times, and particularly so as we carried on a lively conversation all the way which kept me completely winded.”68 Moore tried to engage the boss about the coming operation, but Spruance steered the conversation toward unrelated subjects and held forth on the virtues of physical fitness. A few days later Moore wrote his wife again: “Yesterday Raymond stepped up the pace and the distance and we covered over 10 miles in three hours. My right leg caught up with my left and both were wrecked by the time I got back. . . . If he can get me burned to a crisp or crippled from walking he will be completely happy.”69

  Spruance wanted Kelly Turner to command the amphibious fleet. It was not necessary to give the issue much thought. With a year of hard-earned experience in the South Pacific, Turner was the navy’s preeminent amphibious specialist. Spruance knew him well, having served with him at sea and at the Naval War College. “I would like to get Admiral Kelly Turner from Admiral Halsey, if I can steal him,” he told Nimitz in June.70 With the northern Solomons island-hopping campaign in high gear, Halsey was not keen to release Turner, so Nimitz made it simple. In a personal “Dear Bill” dated June 26, the CINCPAC explained that he had been ordered to wage a new offensive in the central Pacific: “This means I must have Turner report to me as soon as possible.”71 When Turner came north, he brought several of his best staff officers with him, causing Halsey further heartburn.

  Marine Major General Holland M. Smith would command the invasion troops, designated the Fifth Amphibious Corps (or “VAC”). Smith was one of the pioneers of amphibious warfare. He had persuaded the navy to adopt Andrew Higgins’s shallow-draft boats as landing craft, and had successfully trained several divisions in amphibious operations at Camps Elliott and Pendleton in southern California. He had lobbied for a combat command in the Pacific, and was backed for the job by Secretary Knox and Admiral King. Nimitz did not know him well, but Spruance had worked with him in the mid-1930s, when both officers were stationed in the Caribbean. Nimitz offered him the job during an inspection tour of the South Pacific, and Smith readily accepted it.

  Turner and Smith made a combustible pair. Both men were aggressive, ambitious, and overbearing. Both were respected authorities in the field of amphibious warfare, but had become accustomed to running things without competition or interference. Both were prone to fits of rage, and had earned nicknames as a result: “Terrible Turner” and “Howlin’ Mad” Smith. Smith was exceptionally touchy about command relations between the navy and the Marine Corps. At Guadalcanal, Turner had offended General Vandegrift by infringing upon the latter’s command prerogatives. During the planning of GALVANIC, Spruance sometimes wondered “whether we could get the operation planned out before there was an explosion between them.”72
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br />   Arriving in Pearl Harbor the first week of September, Holland Smith was assigned quarters in a bungalow at the base of Makalapa Hill. The little house was beneath his rank, and he knew it. Always sensitive to any trace of an insult to the Marine Corps, he coldly reminded the responsible naval officer that he was a major general, senior to most admirals at Pearl, and demanded more suitable quarters. The assignment was explained as an oversight, though Smith did not believe it had been; apologies were offered and the general was lodged in a grander house higher on the hill.

  Smith had previously met Kelly Turner in Washington, when the latter was the navy’s war plans chief. He found the admiral precise and courteous, like “an exacting schoolmaster,” and “affable in an academic manner,”73 but he had also encountered Turner’s famous temper. “He could be plain ornery. He wasn’t called ‘Terrible Turner’ without reason.”74

  For Operation GALVANIC, Turner expected to stand above Smith in the chain of command. That would be consistent with the model employed in Operation WATCHTOWER. But Smith wanted direct command of all amphibious troops throughout the operation—prior to, during, and after the landing—and wished to report directly to Spruance.

  To Turner the issue was simple. A precedent had been set in the South Pacific; the existing model was proven. By what right did Smith, a newcomer to the Pacific, propose to change it? To Smith the issue was one of principle, and concerned the status and honor of the Marine Corps. Smith suspected that the navy would take care of its own, and that he would not get a fair hearing in Pearl Harbor. The issue reverberated in Washington, and was even appealed to the secretary of the navy, who would not rule on the question directly but expected it to be resolved in such a way as to secure effective cooperation between the navy and the Marine Corps.