Peter G. Tsouras

by Rising Sun Victorious: An Alternate History of the Pacific War

  With the command structure somewhat in order, U.S. I Corps in the Cairns area attempted a limited attack toward Ravenshoe on August 20, while Australian I Corps distracted the Japanese at Townsville. Led by the U.S. 41st Division, the attack made some initial gains, but quickly ground to a halt in the face of stubborn resistance compounded by the inexperience of the green U.S. troops. The Australian militia battalions in the 2nd and newly organized 11th Divisions did little better, but the two weeks of fighting taught the Allies important tactical lessons and shook a lot of deadwood out of the leadership positions. Despite fairly heavy losses, the American and Australian units emerged from the August fighting tougher, wiser, and more formidable.

  The Japanese, however, also gained a success in August when a large convoy was able to evade ineffectual Allied bombing efforts to bring the 20th Division and, even more important, a significant resupply of fuel and ammunition, to Cairns. With these resources, Yamashita planned what came to be his last major offensive.

  A Final Desperate Phase

  Yamashita's September attack surprised the Allies, who were busy planning their own offensive operation. While the Australian 7th Division decimated an ill-conceived diversionary advance by Horii's South Seas Detachment southwest of Townsville, the Japanese 17th Division found the weakly held right flank of U.S. I Corps near Koombooloomba and achieved a deep penetration. Worse, the 20th Division and the 2nd Tank Division were able to punch through the center of U.S. I Corps, isolating some units, overrunning others, and spreading fear in their wakes. For Yamashita, it began to seem like a repeat of the Malaya triumph.

  Yamashita's satisfaction proved very brief indeed. While badgering Washington for more troops and equipment, MacArthur had gathered a reserve of two divisions (Australian II Corps), albeit untried ones, to launch a massive Allied assault on the Cairns front (see Map 10). This large force was still training and stocking munitions when the Japanese attacked, and the Allied commander waited for the initial fury of the enemy assault to expend itself before he unleashed his counter-stroke. Preceded by a short but intense artillery bombardment and an all-out air assault on the Japanese air bases, the Australian 1st Armored Division crashed into the 20th Division's lines north of the Ravenshoe-Mount Garnet road on September 13. With utterly inadequate antitank weapons, the 20th had no hope of stopping the well-trained Australian tankers despite the self-sacrificing bravery of the Japanese foot soldiers. By nightfall the Australian armored spearheads were deep behind Japanese lines, leaving numerous pockets of isolated but desperate and determined defenders for the American 41st Division to eradicate. The 20th's commander, Lt. Gen. Kane Yoshihara, was almost killed when his forward headquarters was overrun, but he escaped to the 79th Infantry Regiment's command post and radioed for help. His pleas brought an uncoordinated counterattack by the 2nd Tank Division's 3rd Tank Brigade on the morning of September 14. Ill prepared for tank-versus-tank engagements, the Japanese armor suffered seventy percent casualties as they tried to close with the Australian Grants and Stuarts. Lacking adequate infantry support, the victorious Australians reluctantly withdrew some ten kilometers during the night, but their dramatic success had so disordered the Japanese that Yamashita had to pull back or risk watching his command be taken apart piece by piece.

  The action on September 13-14 gave the Japanese a healthy respect for Allied tanks, but the Australian tankers and American GIs could not achieve a breakthrough. As elsewhere in the Pacific, the tactical skill and ferocious tenacity of the Japanese infantry made every mile's progress slow and costly. Nonetheless, when MacArthur called a halt to the offensive on September 30, his troops had retaken Ravenshoe and inflicted disproportionate losses on Yamashita's command. The contrast in losses was greatest in armored vehicles. A second tank battle had erupted on September 20 when the Japanese 2nd Tank Division attempted to overcome technical inferiority by resorting to a night attack. One Japanese column was detected and destroyed when the lead vehicle opened fire too soon, but a second column threw parts of the 1st Armored Division and 41st Division into temporary confusion. Japanese command and control quickly collapsed, however, and most of the Allied defenders held firm, leaving the isolated and disjointed elements of the 2nd Tank Division to succumb to unremitting Allied fire the following day. As a result of fights like this, by the end of the battle the 2nd Tank Division was a wreck. Though less successful and more costly to the Allies, the timely intervention of the American 32nd Division over the same period had sufficed to check the Japanese 17th Division and restore the situation on the U.S. I Corps' right flank.

  Map 10. Operational Situation in Northeastern Australia, October 1942

  September not only brought the first successful Allied counterattack, it also provided the first tentative glimmer of hope that the balance in the entire theater was beginning to shift in favor of the Allies. In the first place, significant reinforcements were arriving in Australia. Although the naval situation remained precarious and the fighting around Guadalcanal absorbed most of the available Allied ships, MacArthur's and Curtin's consistent pleas for help resulted in the appearance of increasing numbers of replacement aircraft and crews. The “Germany first” strategy and the strategic crisis in North Africa also limited the number of new ground troops available, but Churchill agreed to divert the British 2nd Division en route to India in exchange for retaining the already legendary Australian 9th Division in Egypt. Even more important in Australian eyes was the return of the veteran 6th Division and a growing inventory of modern equipment, especially artillery, to outfit and replenish the existing Australian formations.

  Beyond these material gains, the Allied troops were learning, albeit painfully, that the conquerors of Malaya, Java, Burma, and Papua were not invincible. This was a critical psychological victory, as important in its own way as the physical success achieved in crippling the 2nd Tank Division or inflicting punishing losses on the Japanese bomber fleet. The Allied armies and air forces were also slowly gaining in battlefield competence, while the Japanese, renowned for their combat prowess, were beginning to turn to the tactics of desperation: mass infantry attacks with inadequate support. Yamashita's 17th Army was by no means a spent force, but its combat advantage over the Americans and Australians was slipping away.

  Yamashita, perceiving the slow shift in the tide of the campaign, urgently requested reinforcements. Competing demands for shipping to support Guadalcanal delayed the departure of his designated reserve division, the 41st, until November, so he launched Sakai's 17th Division in a spoiling attack against the vulnerable right flank of U.S. I Corps in early October. This time, however, the Allies held, and the Japanese 53rd Regiment, which had broken through a weak point in the line, was surrounded and annihilated over the course of the next three days. The attack and severe logistical problems did however, cause the postponement of MacArthur's next offensive and granted the Japanese 8th Area Army time to dispatch the 41st Division from Rabaul.

  Unfortunately for Yamashita, the 41st would never reach Australia's shores. The Allied air forces, though still inadequately supplied with men and machines, had grown in experience, skill, and numbers since the first Japanese raid on Darwin in February. Now under the extraordinarily competent leadership of U.S. Maj. Gen. George C. Kenney, they were increasingly taking the fight to the enemy and had made Japanese air operations from Cairns and Townsville nearly impossible. They had also received numbers of new B-25s, and when signals intelligence indicated that the Japanese were organizing a large convoy to reinforce the 17th Army, Kenney made detailed preparations to destroy it. The result was a disaster for Yamashita. While three Royal Air Force Spitfire squadrons kept Japanese fighters at bay, Kenney's American and Australian fliers caught the 41st Division's convoy with little air cover and wrecked it. In addition to the loss of most of its heavy equipment, an estimated 4,000 men of the division were killed, drowned, or wounded during the two-day battle. The disaster not only left the 41st a hollow shell, it also seriously depleted Japanese
shipping at a time when the simultaneous struggles on Guadalcanal and Australia were placing an impossible logistics burden on slender Imperial resources. Though Yamashita continued to hope for reinforcements and adequate resupply, this Second Battle of the Coral Sea proved to be the last attempt to send substantial assistance to the 17th Army.

  As the scattered remnants of the Japanese 41st Division assembled at Port Moresby, the tide had truly turned in the Battle of Australia. In the first place, by late 1942, Allied military power in the Australian theater was quickly growing to unassailable proportions, despite Marshall's continued insistence on priority being given to Europe. Though naval strength remained problematic, ground force strength and tactical competence were steadily improving. Furthermore, an increasingly effective Australian resistance movement was tying down Yamashita's troops and disrupting his supply efforts. Most important, however, was the change in the air balance. While Japan relied on inexperienced pilots flying obsolescent Nells, Bettys, Sallys, Oscars, and other types, Kenney's air forces were increasing in overall numbers and pilot quality. Kenney's squadrons were also receiving greatly superior aircraft, such as the B-25 bombers used to good effect in the destruction of the 41st Division's transports, RAF Spitfires, and P-38 Lightnings, which began to arrive in November. These Allied advantages compounded the woes of Yamashita's army. Casualties were a problem, but much more serious was the general deterioration of his logistic situation. Grave shortages of ammunition, fuel, and food left his large force physically weakened, largely immobile, and unable to apply large caliber firepower except in the most dire circumstances.

  In addition to these tactical and technical considerations in the immediate theater of operations, the broader strategic situation was also developing to the Allies' advantage. By January 1943 it was clear to Imperial General Headquarters that Guadalcanal could not be held without an enormous Japanese effort, an effort that was not certain to succeed. Even if Japanese power sufficed to transport massive reinforcements to the island, it was obvious that those forces, like Yamashita's, could not be sustained at anywhere near the level required for offensive operations. The Allied conquest of Guadalcanal in February 1943 and their subsequent advance up the Solomons effectively outflanked the Japanese foothold in Australia and granted Allied aircraft even greater access to Yamashita's lines of communications through Papua and across the Coral Sea. The arrival of the Japanese 35th and 36th Divisions in New Britain and the Solomons during early 1943 temporarily stemmed, but could not halt the mounting Allied pressure.

  On the other side of the Coral Sea, the Allies were also advancing. When the American 32nd Division and the Australian 2nd reached the coast near Innisfail on December 14, 1942, the two division commanders celebrated by sending General MacArthur a canteen full of seawater with a U.S. flag painted on one side and an Australian flag on the other.22 Their waggish gift symbolized the separation of Yamashita's 17th Army into two isolated enclaves and foretold the end of the bold Japanese enterprise in Australia. Many dreary months of fighting remained as the Allies slowly contracted the circle of fire around Yamashita's dwindling force, but at Christmas, MacArthur was able to direct his staff to begin planning the invasion of Papua and New Guinea. Though he had hoped to “fight the Battle of Australia in New Guinea,” the Japanese attack on Australia actually made the coming Allied operations at Port Moresby and elsewhere easier. By consuming enormous amounts of materiel and more than 100,000 men, Operation AU left Japan's forces gravely weakened.

  Thus, in March 1943 the Imperial General Staff adopted a defensive strategy designed to cripple the Allies with heavy casualties and to create the conditions for a counterstroke. Faced with simultaneous Allied thrusts in New Guinea, the Solomons, and the Central Pacific, however, that strategy gradually collapsed and MacArthur could justifiably, if grandiloquently, claim that “the sacrifices of our united forces in the defense of the Australian homeland have paved the way for the ultimate destruction of the Japanese Empire.” From his broader perspective, Marshall could be equally pleased. As he surveyed the Allied strategic situation in May 1943, he could happily record that he was “very gratified to see Tunisia become the Nazi Townsville.”23

  The Reality

  Speculative scenarios provide a useful laboratory for historical analysis, allowing us to gain a better understanding of what actually happened by exploring what might have happened. In general, our fictitious forays diverge from reality along two paths. On the one hand we can examine the changes that might have resulted from specific incidents—cases, for example, where a shift in luck, skill, or perseverance might have altered the outcome of a battle. These experiments with history require little alteration of actual events but might yield significant results. Consider the potential catastrophe for the Allied cause had Japanese carrier aircraft attacked Yorktown and Lexington on May 7, 1942, instead of blasting the unfortunate Sims and Neosho. On the other hand our speculative examinations can reveal areas where larger, farther-reaching changes would have been needed to alter events. This line of investigation brings us to strategic, institutional, and attitudinal aspects of the historical situation. The Japanese prewar policies on air crew recruitment and training provide one example of this avenue of research; the Allied decision to pursue the Germany-first strategy is another.

  The present chapter detours from reality in both ways. At the lower, incidental level, it posits a new outcome to the Battle of the Coral Sea, one in which the Japanese are more determined and suffer fewer losses than they actually did and can thus continue with the assault on Port Moresby. The battle thereby becomes both a tactical and strategic success for Japan. In reality, of course, the Imperial Navy achieved a tactical victory by sinking the fleet carrier Lexington for the loss of the light carrier Shoho, but the Allies simultaneously gained strategically by thwarting the seaborne attack on Port Moresby and reducing the potential danger to Australia. Perhaps even more important were the heavy losses inflicted on the Japanese carrier air wings involved in the battle and the damage done to Shokaku. As a result of Coral Sea, both units of the 5th Carrier Division were absent at Midway, where their participation would have given the Imperial Navy six fleet carriers against three American and might have tipped the balance in Yamamoto's favor.

  At the strategic level, two important shifts were introduced to make this scenario possible. First, the Imperial Army makes a strategic commitment to the Southwest Pacific, which did not exist in reality. The Japanese army, institutionally focused on China and the Soviet Union, had almost no interest in expanding operations in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, let alone Australia, which military planners believed would require ten or twelve divisions and an impossible level of logistical support. Hoping that the anticipated German successes in the summer of 1942 would create an opportunity for a Japanese attack against the USSR, army planners therefore kept troop allocations to the Southwest Pacific to a bare minimum (General Horii's South Seas Detachment, which was little more than a reinforced regiment). Given the army's predominance in Tokyo, the Japanese navy's urge to extend its Pacific conquests was quashed. 24 Senior American and British decision makers were thus correct in assessing a Japanese invasion of the Australian mainland as a very unlikely prospect. Indeed Japan's only hope for a successful invasion of eastern Australia would have been to exploit the momentum of their early victories by attacking in February or March 1942.

  The second “strategic” change is within the Japanese navy. This chapter assumes that the Navy General Staff's interest in the Southwest Pacific would have resulted in the provision of tralia. While such an”operation would have stretched and perhaps exceeded Japanese maritime capabilities, the principal obstacle was Admiral Yamamoto and the Combined Fleet. Obsessed with orchestrating the “decisive battle” with the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Yamamoto would have brooked no diversion of precious carrier assets to Australia. His iron determination and vast prestige doomed the Navy General Staff's plans for the southwest area. At a crucial planning confer
ence in April 1942, he threatened to resign if his plan for the Central Pacific was not adopted. The Navy General Staff capitulated and the Imperial Japanese Navy set its course irrevocably toward Midway.25

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