The Fall of Singapore and the simultaneous capture of the intact oil facilities at Palembang on Sumatra by Japanese airborne forces were the death knells for the ABDACOM (American-British-Dutch-Australian Command) in the southwest Pacific. A series of lightning strikes seized Borneo, Celebes, and Sarawak islands, and left Field Marshal Wavell with a weak and battered force on an indefensible and exposed line from Java to Timor. Adm Nagumo’s Kido Butai ranged the seas around the islands and shot down any Allied plane in the air, and bombed any ship it could find. Allied air cover was nonexistent outside of East Java, and air reconnaissance was impossible. The Allied ships were blind and flailing about looking for the Japanese, and the ships’ crews were nearing exhaustion from being on near constant battle stations. Wavell refused further reinforcement lest they arrive just in time to surrender, as the 18th Division had on Singapore, and directed all further men and material be rerouted to the fight in Burma which itself was going badly. Finally, he requested and received permission from Churchill to disband the ABDACOM HQ. America’s first attempt at an Expeditionary Joint Multi National headquarters ended ignobly.

Despite ABDACOM’s departure, the Dutch decided to stay and fight on. Hitler’s armies occupied the Netherlands, and the Dutch government-in-exile was not willing to give up the East Indies. The Dutch settled the area a century before the US was a glimmer in George Washington’s eye, and many Dutch families had lived there for eight generations. Java and East Timor were no different in Dutch eyes than Holland and Zeeland. Adm Karel Doorman, the former ABDACOM Naval Commander and highest ranking Dutch officer in the Pacific, requested that the forces still in theatre, whether they be American, British, or Australian, remain. Wavell agreed in order to gain time, do as much damage and tie up as many Japanese resources as possible. The old WW1 vintage British, Australian, and US Asiatic Fleet ships fell under Dutch command.

Doorman received his first challenge almost immediately. On 18 February 1942, a Japanese task force landed on the island of Bali and captured the airfield. It had to be retaken: if the Japanese managed to get land based fighters on Bali, they would be able to threaten the main Dutch base at Surabuya on Eastern Java. Surabaya was the last base in the East Indies with the facilities to refuel, repair, and rearm the remaining Allied ships. Doorman ordered every ship and plane he could get in contact with to concentrate on the Badung Strait.

On the morning of the 19th, the last B-17s and A-24s of the USAAF in the South West Pacific attacked the convoy in the restricted waters around Bali. They scored exactly one hit on a transport. But from the Japanese point of view the Bali operation was risky as the Kido Butai was enroute to raid Australia and unavailable to support this first operation against the Java to Timor line of resistance. Not wanting to risk his exposed task force further, the Japanese commander unloaded his ships and withdrew north. The majority of the task force got away before Doorman’s ships arrived, but two destroyers, the Asashio and Oshio, were left to escort the wounded merchantman and one other transport that was the last to unload.

Doorman’s ships and submarines tasked with destroying the Japanese in the Badung Strait were scattered about the area, and did not have time to concentrate. They would attack the four small Japanese ships in four waves throughout the evening and night of 19/20 February. The first wave were two submarines, one and American and one British. The American submarine got lost and ran aground, and the British submarine was driven away by depth charges from the destroyers. The next wave was led by Adm Doorman with the pride of the Dutch navy, the light cruisers HNLMS’s DeRuyter and Java, along with a Dutch destroyer, and two American destroyers. They alone constituted six times the fire power as the Japanese. But Doorman’s ships had trouble identifying them. The Asashio and Oshio immediately attacked and crossed Doorman’s “T” inflicting significant damage on the Java, and forced the two leading cruisers northward, from where they would lose contact. The Allied destroyers made torpedo runs on the transports, but were duds or failed to hit. In the process they were ambushed by the Japanese, one of whose torpedoes sunk the Dutch destroyer. The two battered and confused American destroyers fled south.

Three hours later the next Allied wave attacked the two aggressive Japanese destroyers, and again superior Japanese night gunnery skills won the round. This time four American destroyers and one Dutch cruiser, the HNLMS Tromp, sailed into the strait. But the Americans and Dutch had trouble identifying the Japanese in the smoke and darkness, and the language barrier between the Dutch commodore and the American destroyer captains prevented any coordination. In the confused melee that followed, the Asashio and Oshio deftly maneuvered through the torpedo spreads and fog of war, and savaged the larger Allied force. By this time two more Japanese destroyers arrived to assist them but they weren’t needed. They even got in the way of the two lone samurai ships and one was crippled. Unable to come to grips with the slashing and evading Asashio and Oshio, the damaged and humiliated Allies fled. The fourth wave of seven Dutch torpedo boats arrived at dawn, but they found nothing.

The outmatched and out gunned Japanese defeated and scattered a superior Allied force strictly through aggressiveness, and superior training, discipline, and seamanship. The conduct, state, and training levels of the American crews were especially appalling. The US Asiatic Fleet got its first hard lesson: More attention needed to be given to surface warfare than to Filipino hookers, Indonesian hooch, and tall tales in seedy bars by tattooed old salts. It was too late for them though.

“15 February 1942.

To: Lieut. Gen. Arthur Percival, GOC (General Officer Commanding) Malaya.

From: General Sir Archibald Wavell, Supreme Commander Far East.

So long as you are in position to inflict losses to enemy and your troops are physically capable of doing so you must fight on. Time gained and damage to enemy of vital importance at this crisis.

When you are fully satisfied that this is no longer possible I give you discretion to cease resistance…”

That was all the gaunt and gloomy Percival needed. He thought that his command was forsaken in the face of overwhelming Japanese military might, and he just wanted the chaos to end. On 8 February, the island of Singapore, the “Gibraltar of the East” was invaded along its entire north coast, and it seemed his troops did nothing about it. His big 15” naval guns, placed and designed to protect against an attack from the sea, were turned against the Japanese landward but their armor piercing shells were ineffective against infantry formations. At every point they attempted to defend, the Japanese appeared behind them. The newly arrived 18th Division had barely gotten into the fight, and were already cut off. Even worse, he received reports that entire Australian companies refused to fight anymore, and that thousands of Australian and Malayan soldiers were drunk and rioting in the city. The entire island’s civilian population was crammed into a small area around the harbor and order there broke down. The mass of humanity made a perfect target for air attack.

The Japanese planes ruled skies and bombed and strafed both military and civilian targets at will. On the 14th, the Japanese Army captured the last reservoir, and quickly water became scarce for his 80,000 troops and one million civilians. And now there was a mass exodus. Down in the harbor, chaos reigned as hundreds of ships of all sizes and packed with people tried to escape. Japanese planes made a sport of strafing and bombing them as they exited the harbor. Percival had heard nothing from his commander for days (Wavell fell off of a wall and was unconscious for four days) and one of his first communiques after being incommunicado was this message referencing surrender. Percival contacted Gen Yamashita immediately.

Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita was already being referred to as “The Tiger of Malaya” by his men, peers, and superiors, but Percival’s request for a cease fire and surrender was most welcome. He only had 30,000 men on Singapore, and they were exhausted. His men were extremely low on supplies. That he could invade Singapore at all was a wonder to him: the week’s worth of preparations at the beginning of the month was in full view of British observers and Australian patrols and grossly exposed to any artillery fire at all. Had Percival’s large coastal defense cannons had any high explosive rounds, he would have had to retreat out of range farther up the peninsula and await reinforcements. His “invasion fleet” was composed of captured civilian coastal and river craft, and it had taken three days to ferry his army across the narrow Johore Straits.

On the beaches he found no defenses, and that the British didn’t seriously counterattack his meagre beachheads baffled him. And later British counterattacks were piecemeal and halfhearted, when they came at all. His tanks ran roughshod over the Allies, but were beginning to break down and run out of ammunition. The British in the east fought off the feint by the Imperial Guards Division but that was expected: they were good for ceremonial duties in Tokyo, but made poor soldiers in the field. The only troops that put up any serious resistance were ethnic Chinese irregulars and the Australians in the west, and they had seemingly melted away (The Australians compromised 14% of Percival’s force, and took 77% of the casualties so far in the Malaya campaign. They assumed they were being sacrificed to save British units, and were no longer willing to fight for someone who wouldn’t fight for themselves. On the 14th, the Australian commander with his staff commandeered a junk in the harbor and sailed home.)

And now Yamashita was receiving reports of Australians in the city. His greatest fear was a protracted house to house fight for Singapore. He simply did not have enough men and supplies for such a costly operation, even with Japanese control of the air. It would be untrue to say that Yamashita himself had control of the air: the Japanese pilots did, and he had no influence over their operations. If the British discerned the true Japanese situation on the island, there was no doubt they would fight on.

Yamashita accepted Percival’s surrender as soon as it was offered.

“Yamashita’s Bluff” was one of the greatest deceptions in history, if only because the only witting and unwitting actors were well led, well trained, and enthusiastic soldiers that made themselves seem eight times their actual number targeted against lethargic and out of touch commanders of poorly equipped and demoralized troops. On 16 February 1942, 80,000 British, Australian, Malayan, and Indian troops marched off to captivity, some having been in theatre for less than three weeks. In context of the recent Russian defense of Moscow and American and Filipino defense of Bataan, it was the largest and most humiliating surrender in British history.

On 10 February 1942, Glenn Miller was awarded the very first Gold Record for his swing version of “Chattanooga Choo Choo”. The song went to #1 on 7 December 1941 and by February sold more than 1.2 million copies. Chattanooga Choo Choo was featured in the movie “Sunny Valley Serenade”, one of only two movies that featured Glenn Miller and his orchestra. The song accompanied a dance number and sung by Dorothy Dandridge and the Nicholas Brothers.

With the battleships at the bottom of Pearl Harbor, the US Navy’s aircraft carriers in the Pacific were America’s only force capable of offensive operations in early 1942. The carrier admirals wanted to be unleashed, if only to restore the Navy’s honor.

The new commander in the Pacific, Adm Chester Nimitz, knew something needed to be done but the four carriers were the only defense against a Japanese invasion of Hawaii. However by constraining them to Hawaiian waters they were also a target. On 11 Jan the Saratoga was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine, and only the heroic efforts of her crew kept her afloat. She would spend the next two months in dry dock in Washington, and out of the war: “a 25% reduction of America’s offensive combat power.” At the ardent behest of Halsey, Nimitz had made the decision, and the Saratoga sealed it: the carriers needed to attack something, anything. The air bases at the far eastern end of the Japanese Central Pacific perimeter offered an opportune target.

Under cover of escorting a convoy carrying a marine brigade to Samoa, Halsey and the Enterprise met Rear Adam Fletcher and the Yorktown, then in transit from the Atlantic. On 21 January, the two carriers and escorts sped off into the night to strike isolated Japanese air and sea bases in the Marshall and Gilbert islands, despite the threat from Japanese land based planes. It was a plan that, “was ‘daring’ if it worked, but ‘foolhardy’ if it didn’t.”

America’s first offensive of the Second World War started poorly and to much frustration for Halsey. Even before the Enterprise arrived off of Samoa, the limitations, and most importantly, the self-imposed constraints of peacetime training were glaringly obvious. Peacetime procedures were simply inadequate for wartime operations, even without enemy contact. Fatal accidents, friendly fire episodes, security breaches, flight delays, navigation errors, and logistics difficulties of all types were commonplace. According to Halsey, the US Navy “needed more of everything: more training, more gunnery practice, more anti-aircraft guns of every caliber, more ammunition, more torpedoes, more radios, more radar, more intelligence, more reconnaissance, more planes, more supplies, and more spare parts”. Refueling at sea was particularly cumbersome, and Halsey commented that “it took longer to get into action today than it did in 1812”.

On 31 January, Nimitz received confirmation from his code breakers that the Japanese carriers were in the Dutch East Indies, and gave Halsey and Fletcher the go ahead to extend their initial timelines and expand their targets. They were to “press home their attacks and work over the Japs”. On the night of 31 Jan/1 Feb, the American carriers parked themselves between the two largest Japanese air bases in the Central Pacific.

Around 5 am the two carriers launched their bombers, Halsey and the Enterprise’s against the Japanese bases in the Marshalls, and Fletcher and the Yorktown’s against the Gilberts. They were unescorted because there were not enough fighters to protect the fleet and escort the bombers at the same time.
Fortunately, the surprise was complete. It was a reverse Pearl Harbor, albeit on a much smaller scale. The dive and torpedo bombers neutralized both main air and sea bases, severely damaged several cruisers, and sank a plethora of merchant ships. The ineffectual previous generation Japanese Claude and Nate fighters were swept from the sky by the few American fighters that got into battle, while the carrier’s escorts made high speed runs to fire at targets from off shore.

For seven hours, the American crews listened to the radio transmissions and pilot chatter of the bombing raids with the undisguised glee of football fans listening to their team winning the big game. About noon, some of the pilots and senior officers began to wonder if they were pushing their luck. They were within easy reach of at least nine Japanese air bases (and maybe more) in various states of destruction, and surely every Japanese submarine in a thousand miles was heading for them.
At one pm, the ops officer from the squadron “Bombing Six” came back from his third run that morning and confronted Halsey, “Admiral, don’t you think it’s time we got the hell out of here?” He replied, “I’ve been thinking the same thing myself”.

The carriers recovered their aircraft and forty five minutes later were heading back to Pearl.

The strikes on the Marshall and Gilbert Islands shocked the Japanese. The events since 7 December were a nearly unbroken string of victories; this was the first time the US Navy fought back effectively. Moreover, just two months into the war, the flawed premises of the General Staff’s perimeter defense strategy were exposed. The physical damage was temporary and repaired quickly, but only because there were no follow up landings. The far flung bases were not mutually supporting and the Japanese did not have enough carriers to cover the entire perimeter. Yamamoto quipped that, “We will have to dictate peace terms from inside the White House”.

But first things first: he needed to destroy those carriers, even at the expense of ongoing operations. The experience they gained on the raids was invaluable and they were now even more dangerous. Yamamoto needed a suitable target to lure them out and destroy them. That target was Hawaii, more specifically the last stepping stone before the invasion of Hawaii:

Midway Island.