Pacific Blitzkrieg: World War II in the Central Pacific

Conclusion

209 In August 1942, all that stood between the Japanese and total domination of the Western Pacific was a near-starving, pitifully small band of marines, lining a few miserable ridges on Guadalcanal. Supporting them was a naval force that was nearly wrecked at Pearl Harbor and further depleted by a disastrous engagement off Savo Island. From this inauspicious beginning, the United States in the span of three years built a fighting force more powerful than anything the world had ever seen. In that time, the United States military went from an underfunded skeleton force, numbering less than 400,000, to a dominant war machine of more than 12,000,000. Just as impressive was the sheer volume of materiel churned out by a pitiless American industrial base mobilized to equip and supply this massive force. By the conclusion of the war the scorecard of Allied victories won by the Central Pacific force was impressive, as the Japanese advance was first stopped, and then rolled back. What became a massive allied counterattack uncoiled slowly, but gained momentum with each passing month. Still, Japan never yielded an inch without forcing American soldiers and marines to engage in grinding battles of attrition. But as the Americans fought they also learned. It was knowledge bought only at great cost. All along the 5,000-mile route from Hawaii to Okinawa, the blood of tens of thousands of Americans soaked the reefs, beaches, and jungles of dozens of islands. There had been no playbook for the kind of war fought on these islands, just some general principles and a determination to master the deadly practice of amphibious warfare. Along the way, the American military built and refined the concepts of modern joint operations. It would have been difficult for a homogenous force to educate and prepare itself for the challenges faced by the U.S. military in the Central Pacific. It was doubly difficult when it became necessary to merge army and marine units into a single fighting force. Their respective leaders not only had to build a professional force out of a mob of untrained civilians, but CONCLUSION 210 Pacific Blitzkrieg: World War II in the Central Pacific simultaneously assimilate diverse—and distinct—service cultures into a cohesive force. Very little of the required adaptation would have been possible without the institution of a rigorous program for the organized collection of post-engagement lessons learned. For, although the basic principles of amphibious landings remained unchanged, their actual implementation was a matter of continuous improvement and refinement. As technology changed and materiel became more abundant the American approach in the Pacific changed. Such change started at the strategic level, as commanders adjusted their attitudes from a desperate defense to strategic offensives along multiple lines of advance. Executing these plans was never as simple as drawing arrows on a map and ordering one’s forces forward . Troops had to be trained, supplies stockpiled, new equipment integrated , and doctrine updated. All of this had to be accomplished before the advance began for it is this pre-engagement preparation that often decides the outcome of any battle. In combat the devil is truly in the details, and it is in such detailed preparation that the U.S. military in World War II excelled. Of course, such preparations, on a previously unimaginable scale, were rarely accomplished without overcoming profound difficulties, which often frayed tempers and sometimes threatened to halt all forward progress. In fact, one does not have to peel back many layers before revealing a degree of ugliness that has been neglected in other histories of the war. But, it was here where American leadership, even at the bleakest moments of the war, demonstrated a genius for pragmatism that was to drive their forces to victory. Through a formal process, the lessons of each engagement were promulgated throughout the force. What worked was reinforced. What failed was ruthlessly discarded. How this came about was not an accident. From the beginning of the war the American command system and the nation’s military forces were designed on the assumption that rapid adaption was not only desirable, but necessary. The entire American way of war was premised on the military system’s ability to take millions of raw recruits and mold them into an effective military machine. With few preconceptions on how wars should be fought, these recruits, including tens of thousands of officers with no previous military experience, were constantly on the lookout for better ways to do...