Pacific Skies: American Flyers in World War II

AN AIR WAR AT SEA AND ON LAND

AN AIR WAR AT SEA AND ON LAND The Doolittle Raid on Tokyo, flown on April , , stands as America’s first offensive action of World War II. The Battle of Midway, fought between June  and June  of the same year, is considered the first major victory by U.S. forces in the war, the Coral Sea Battle of a month before coming out a draw. Although the attack on Tokyo would prove most of all a morale lifter, the insignificant damage it inflicted on the Japanese was enough to revise enemy thinking and direct it toward Midway, where matters of immense substance were to be decided. In between, Japanese and American naval forces engaged each other in the Coral Sea, where on May – a major battle was conducted with the two sides out of sight and out of range of one another— except for their air elements, which inflicted all the damage and determined the outcome. When American air power foiled the enemy’s plan for taking Midway Island and wrought havoc on its carrier fleet in the process, the new character of this war in the Central Pacific was determined: air action would play a big part. 7 8 ✪ ✪ ✪ Japan, of course, had set that plan in action by virtue of its carrier-based attack on Pearl Harbor. But its land-based strategy was equally important for the war’s conduct and even more crucial for the economic matters that had prompted military force in the first place. World powers need raw resources for their industries, and in the s Japan had none: from petroleum to cotton, the colonial interests of Britain, France, and Holland had Southeast Asia sewn up. And so in terms of geographic conquest , it was in this direction that Japan proceeded. By May of  Japanese forces were ready to invade and occupy Tugali in the Solomon Islands and Port Moresby on the south coast of Papua New Guinea, each of which was presently occupied by Australian forces as defenses for their own homeland. The thought of Japan taking over Australia was too hideous to imagine ; but an enemy foothold in the southern Solomons and on New Guinea was a possibility whose effect could be easily measured , for such a presence would disrupt the U.S. to Australia supply line that was building up Allied forces for an offensive role. Therefore, with the Battle of the Coral Sea putting a temporary halt to Japanese advances, American attention turned to inaugurating an air-supported land war of its own, beginning with the landings on Guadalcanal commencing August , . From that day onwards American efforts headed “up the slot” through the Solomons toward the Philippines, a two-year campaign that wouldn’t end until the South Pacific was retaken and a strategic bombing assault on Japan from the Marianas could begin. How does the Doolittle Raid figure at the start of this complex progression? As a symbol of American ingenuity and resolve, for its meager bomb tonnage and total loss of its attacking aircraft hardly qualify as conventional success. In their  narrative, Battle Report, written well before victory was assured, A N A I R WA R A T S E A A N D O N L A N D 7 9 Navy publicists Walter Karig and Welbourn Kelley find the perfect phrase for describing Doolittle’s action: on April , , just nine days after the sickening fall of Bataan with Americans knowing full well that they were losing the war, Doolittle’s flyers “had come out of nowhere and laid a trail of bombs across the main island of Honshu from Tokyo to Kobe” (BR, p. ). The raid may not have had the material effect of Pearl Harbor, but the surprise was more insinuating. It was not just that the planes had come, but from where? That the sixteen B- medium bombers had lifted off the deck of the carrier Hornet was kept secret for a full year. President Roosevelt took special delight in saying how the planes had come from “Shangri-La,” the fantasy land of James Hilton’s novel (and popular Frank Capra movie starring Ronald Coleman) Lost Horizon. All the better for confounding the Japanese. In terms of strategy, they would for a time think the bombers had somehow extended their range so as to fly from Midway Island, presenting Japan with a reason to capture that base...