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.

America’s entry into the war had so far, by late January 1942, produced little more concrete assistance to the British than they had provided before Pearl Harbor. In fact, they were complicating matters with their failure to take the U-boat threat seriously off the American East Coast, and the tonnage sunk was rising dramatically. Despite the creation of ABDA Command, American assistance was sparse in the Western Pacific. The Philippines were doomed, and America’s Asiatic Fleet was inexperienced, untrained, undisciplined, and also didn’t take the threats seriously. Their sole contribution should have been an unparalleled victory when four American destroyers surprised a Japanese convoy off of Balikapan in the Dutch East Indies a few days before, but they only sank or damaged four of the 18 un-escorted transports. All of their torpedoes failed to explode, and their gunnery was poor even by American standards. American submarines and B-17 bombers were in theatre, but their support requirements far exceeded their value. The submarines were not doing damage consummate with their numbers, and the B-17s couldn’t actually prove they hit anything, either by damage assessments, photo reconnaissance, or by Japanese intercepts. But the blame for the state of the war couldn’t be put on the Americans. The Russians were facing the bulk of the Wehrmacht, and what adversaries faced the British were victorious much more often than not.

It was these defeats, and their political fallout, that occupied Churchill in the last half of January.

Operation Crusader failed to secure Western Cyrenaica, so Malta was vulnerable indeed, but unless the Germans and Italians invaded the situation was politically manageable. Additionally, Bismarck’s sister ship Tirpitz was spotted recently in Norway. After the loss of Repulse and Prince of Wales to the Japanese, the loss of the Queen Elizabeth and Valiant to Italian frogmen, and the loss of the carrier Ark Royal to U boats, all in December, the Royal Navy simply did not have the capital ships necessary to deal with another breakout. Commando raids were planned to neutralize the Tirpitz. However, Churchill couldn’t say anything about them, and his Labour party opponents were beginning to grumble that he was again losing the Battle of the Atlantic.

In the Pacific, the Dutch lost Borneo and the Australians were thrown off of the Bismarck Archipelago. The Aussies were beginning to panic, and again threatened to pull all of their troops back to Australia to defend against a Japanese invasion. The British and Commonwealth troops were being run out Burma. Even Kuala Lumpur fell to the Japanese recently, proving that speed doesn’t equate agility as the outnumbered trail bound Japanese consistently out maneuvered the road bound British and Commonwealth forces in Malaya. But Churchill was assured that they would retreat to the island fortress of Singapore which could withstand any Japanese assault. Domestically, all of these were manageable unless Malta or Singapore fell. If one of those disasters occurred, his government would face a no confidence vote in Parliament – one which he would not win.

For months, the Imperial General Staff assured Churchill that Singapore was ready for any attack, whether by land or sea. The reality was much different. Singapore was a naval base with no navy. And it was a poor naval base at that. It had suffered from interwar defense cuts worse than most, and was last in priority for all classes of supply. Its harbor defenses were pointed to sea, and not landward towards Malaya, just one short mile to the north across the Johore Strait. Its water reserves were located on the north coast. The civilian population had not evacuated, and until recently had not even accepted there was anything to worry about. Singapore’s many beautiful and wide beaches were undefended. The RAF on the island nearly ceased to exist and there was no Royal Navy of any great capacity left in the East, and therefore no possible repeat of Dunkirk. Morale was non existent, and most units felt that the Japanese were invincible jungle fighters. It didn’t help that the commander, Lieut Gen Arthur Percival ordered the port facilities manually destroyed over the last few weeks, confirming in many eyes their fears that all was lost. The only reliable units were those that were still arriving, and only continued to do so because Churchill was convinced the island was impregnable.

On 19 January 1942, the Imperial General Staff briefed Churchill on Field Marshal Wavell, the ABDACOM commander’s assessment of the situation. Wavell pulled no punches, and flat out stated he expected Singapore to fall within the month.

Churchill was furious.

He flew into a booze filled rage unlike any that had been seen before. He demanded that the entire city be defended to the death, and that “commanders and staffs should perish at their posts.” He tore into the Imperial Staff all day. But in the end, he knew he was responsible.

On 27 January, 1942, Churchill assembled the Parliament and his ministers for a frank three day long debate and assessment on his conduct of the war. Nothing was held back, except ULTRA intelligence. The discussions during those days were arguably the most polite, open, honest, and vicious parliamentary proceedings in history. At the end of the day on 29 January, Churchill gave an impassioned speech which ended,

“Although I feel the broadening swell of victory and liberation bearing us and all the tortured peoples onwards safely to the final goal, I must confess to feeling the weight of the war upon me even more than in the tremendous summer days of 1940. There are so many fronts which are open, so many vulnerable points to defend, so many inevitable misfortunes, so many shrill voices raised to take advantage, now that we can breathe more freely, of all the turns and twists of war. Therefore, I feel entitled to come to the House of Commons, whose servant I am, and ask them not to press me to act against my conscience and better judgment and make scapegoats in order to improve my own position, not to press me to do the things which may be clamoured for at the moment but which will not help in our war effort, but, on the contrary, to give me their encouragement and to give me their aid. I have never ventured to predict the future. I stand by my original programme, blood, toil, tears and sweat, which is all I have ever offered, to which I added, five months later, “many shortcomings, mistakes and disappointments.” But it is because I see the light gleaming behind the clouds and broadening on our path, that I make so bold now as to demand a declaration of confidence of the House of Commons as an additional weapon in the armoury of the united nations.”

The Motion of Confidence passed 464-1.

On 31 January, the last Commonwealth troops crossed onto Singapore, and blew the causeway behind them. The Japanese arrived several hours later.

MacArthur’s order to fall back to the Bataan Peninsula concentrated the American and Filipino forces and provided them with good defensive lines but it also cut them off from the supply depots scattered about Luzon. (MacArthur initially wanted to fight aggressively so the depots were placed closer to potential Japanese landing zones). LieutGen Homma, the Japanese commander, felt that with the Allies on the run and no US Navy to rescue them, they would be an easy target. If they weren’t then he could just besiege them and starve them into surrender. So he released his best men to accelerate the timetable for the real prize in the South Pacific: Java and the Dutch East Indies. His remaining 60,000 men were facing 80,000 Americans and Filipinos, but were much better supplied and had complete control of the air. But in Malaya, Homma’s peer and rival, Lieut Gen Yamashita, was making steady progress against the British and Commonwealth troops, and he only had less than half what the British had. If Homma didn’t continue to attack, he would be disgraced.

Homma’s men and tanks threw themselves at the first defensive line stretching Abucay in the East to Mauban in the West. The Allies put up tough resistance but with little capacity for reconnaissance operations, and an impassable mountain prohibiting mutual support between the defending corps, the well fed and well supplied Japanese used solid infiltration tactics to establish local superiority at the points of attack. What little counterattack capability the Allies had, including the last horse mounted cavalry charge in American history by F troop 26th Cavalry Regt (Philippine Scouts) led by 1LT Edwin Ramsey couldn’t stop the Japanese. MacArthur abandoned the Abucay-Mauban Line on 22 January 1941.
Under pressure from the Japanese the exhausted and hungry Allies were slow to abandon the line lest the withdrawal became a rout. Homma decided to speed things up, and ordered all of his units to attack. Many Japanese units bypassed the retreating Allies, and drove deeply down the peninsula, some infiltrating well passed the next defensive position, the Orion-Bagac Line. Bypassing the units was a mistake. Recognizing the danger, an adhoc force of American and Filipino troops plugged the gap on 23 January and held the vital Trail 2 open as the galvanized remainder of Allies trudged into the much more easily defended Orion-Bagac Line.

The Orion-Bagac Line was much shorter, and very quickly the infiltrating Japanese found themselves isolated and cut off. As the main Japanese force launched banzai charge after banzai charge against the Allies in order to break through to these “pockets”, the Filipinos took to them with a vengeance, systematically eliminating each one over the next two weeks. Homma attempted and end run with amphibious landings on the southern end of the peninsula but these too were quickly contained. They were initially supposed to trap the retreating Allies, then they were to relieve the pockets, but instead they became pockets themselves, just on the “points” of land jutting into the sea.

The Americans and Filipinos on Bataan at the Battle of Trail Two, The Stand at the Orion-Bagac Line, the Battle of the Pockets, and the Battle of the Points caused Homma enormous casualties. So many so that the Japanese could not continue the offensive. On 13 February 1941, the disgraced Homma ceased operations, dug in, and to his eternal shame, requested reinforcements.

The Japanese took extensive casualties (and would lose one of their best generals), but to the Allies, this small consolation prize couldn’t change the horribly obvious truth that the Americans and Filipinos on Bataan were still doomed.

On 22 January 1942, the Japanese 8th Area Army invaded the Australian New Guinea Mandate, which consisted of eastern half of Papua New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, and the Solomon Islands. Their immediate objective was the capture of Rabaul, on the northeast tip of New Britain in the Bismarck Archipelago. Rabaul offered a deep water port and secured the southern flank of the main Japanese naval base in the South Pacific, Truk, in the Caroline Islands. On the twenty second, the Japanese 55th Division landed on the island of New Ireland. The next day they assaulted New Britain to capture the port and airfield. They were garrisoned by the 2bn/ 22nd Infantry, an Australian unit recruited almost exclusively from members of the Salvation Army, a battalion of the New Guinea Volunteer Rifles, and a squadron of training aircraft, some light bombers and seaplanes from the Royal Australian Air Force.
For three weeks, the massive waves of Japanese carrier fighters and bombers from Pearl Harbor veterans, Akagi and Kaga, struck Rabaul and the airfield, and swept the skies clear of RAAF resistance. On 23 January as the Japanese were landing, the last Hudson bomber took off for Australia stuffed with wounded. The last obsolete lightly armed trainer had already taken off to attack the invasion force. Before he climbed into his cockpit, the pilot sent a message off to the RAAF HQ: “Nos Morituri Te Salutamus”, the ancient Roman gladiatorial motto, “We who are about to die, salute you.” It was a giant FU for the real and imagined lack of support from the newly formed ABDA Command.

The Australians met the Japanese on the beaches but were thinly spread way, and though they inflicted heavy casualties on the Japanese, were quickly overwhelmed. About 2/3rds of the defenders escaped into the interior of the island from which they conducted guerrilla attacks for many weeks. But long term guerrilla operations were not planned for and no weapons, ammunition, and most importantly medical supplies were stockpiled. The Australians simply died out, or surrendered and were worked to death. 

Rabaul became the main Japanese Army and air base for the SouthWest Pacific. The recapture or isolation of Rabaul became the main Allied operational objective in the South Pacific for the next two years. It was from Rabaul that the Japanese conducted the Solomon Islands campaign (started w/ Guadalcanal) and the longest continuous land campaign of the war against the Americans and Aussies: the now mostly forgotten fighting for the island of New Guinea. They were the last obstacles before the Japanese could invade Australia. The brutal fighting for New Guinea and the Solomon Islands continued for the remainder of the war. Amidst their mountainous jungles, these campaigns consumed Allied divisions at a frightening pace and never received the recognition (or supplies) that Nimitz’ Central Pacific and MacArthur’s Philippine’s campaigns received. 

Rabaul was never retaken by the Allies during the war.

On 18 December 1941, Adm Karl Doenitz dispatched five of his long range Type IX U-Boats from Lorient, France on Operation Paukenschlag or Operation Drumbeat. British Intelligence picked up on the departure and warned the Canadians and Americans that they were most likely heading to the Western Atlantic. They indeed were: each U-boat was stuffed with to capacity with food, fuel and torpedoes for an extended patrol off the US coast. Each had tour guides of the coasts of their respective patrol zones, many of which included harbor maps, and in many cases, military installations.

President Roosevelt established the Pan American Security Zone after Germany declared war on 11 December, and the Eastern Sea Frontier included the Atlantic coast. But the unfortunate rear admiral who pulled that duty had only seven coast guard cutters, four yachts, and a smattering of civilian sailing ships. In any case it didn’t matter: cargos ships traveled with their running lights on, there was no blackout along the coast, and no convoy system between American ports was adopted for months.

The first ship sunk off the American coast was on 14 January when U-123 put a torpedo into the Norwegian tanker Norness, within sight of Long Island. (There were 13 American destroyers sitting idle in New York harbor.) Those five Uboats would submerge during the day, and attack on the surface at night against targets brightly silhouetted by the coastal lights, many with civilians watching along the coast. The Germans sank 160,000 tons of shipping in two weeks, more than the last six months combined.

U boat crews called the next six months, “Die Glueckliche Zeit” or “The Happy Time”.

Late December 1941 was a time of unexpected changes in the Second World War. War Plan Orange, the interwar campaign plan for the Pacific was permanently discarded on the 31st – its centerpiece, the battleship squadrons, were all sunk or severely damaged. The old guard of battleship admirals in the Navy Department were thrown into chaos, but the carrier admirals led by Nimitz and Halsey were already planning to strike back at Japanese possessions in the central Pacific with their surviving ships.

However, the state of American land forces in combat was deceptive. Wake Island had fallen after an epic 13 day defense, and other American possessions in the Pacific such as Samoa, Johnston, Howland, Baker and Midway Islands, and even Hawaii and the American West Coast thought they were next. In the Philippines, MacArthur pulled most of his Far East Command back to the strong defensive lines on the Bataan peninsula, while other American and Filipino units spread throughout the archipelago were holding their own against the Japanese. But without relief from Hawaii, their fate was sealed. The Japanese knew this, and accelerated their timetables to seize the true prizes of the South Pacific: the oil fields, tin mines, and rubber plantations of Borneo and Dutch East Indies.

At the hastily planned Arcadia Conference in Washington, British and Americans created the much needed ABDA Command (American, British, Dutch, and Australian) to coordinate the fight against the Japanese. Unfortunately, the forces at its disposal were meager. In any case, larger problems loomed: The inexperienced Americans struggled against a very prepared British delegation in hammering out a common strategy for war. The British (and FDR) wanted to focus on the fight against Germany, while Adm King and Gen Marshall wanted to focus on the Japanese and avenge Pearl Harbor.

With the destruction of the Royal Air Force on the ground in Malaya, the Japanese acquired a near mythical perceived ability to appear anywhere. The air attacks and sea borne landings down the Malaya peninsula perfectly complimented the light Japanese infantry’s ability to out flank the road bound British and Commonwealth defenders through the jungle. Churchill still believed in the “fortress” of Singapore, but it was a hollow shell due to interwar spending cuts. Moreover, its defenses briefed well by staff officers in London, but were totally inadequate for coming Japanese onslaught. Entire Commonwealth brigades, desperately needed in Burma for the defense of India, would continue to arrive in Singapore: a naval base with no navy after the sinking of the Prince of Wales and Repulse.

The Royal Navy’s fortunes were the gloomiest yet in the war. The U boats heading to the American east coast were a looming train wreck and the British could do nothing but watch, and continue to pester the obstinate Americans. In the Mediterranean, Italian frogmen sank or damaged four capital ships in Alexandria harbor in late December, and almost single handedly returned naval parity. This was confirmed when in an attempt to sink a convoy of desperately needed tanks for Rommel, Force J and K from Malta were devastated at the First “Battle” of Sirte. The opposing sides barely saw each other, but British ships wandered into an Italian minefield near Tripoli, which sunk or severely damaged six ships. It would have been a great Italian victory had they too not wandered into the same minefields. In any case, Rommel’s tanks got through.

In defiance of Hitler’s No Retreat order, Rommel fell back all the way to his supply dumps and fuel farms at El Alghelia, where he had started the spring before. But the pursuing British were strung out. Although Operation Crusader was everything Auchlinek wanted, they were now 180 miles from their own depots. Rommel just received a new shipment of tanks, which he recently used to maul the pursuing British armor. He now had the initiative and planned to use it to reestablish a line before Hitler noticed and took action on his violation.
Hitler had already fired his top commanders, and had taken direct control of operations in the East. His no retreat order saved precious equipment from being abandoned, but only the professionalism and desperation of the Wehrmacht prevented a disaster in front of Moscow. Germany would pay for Hitler’s decision for years to come. Nonetheless, the Soviets were attacking everywhere, but the Germans were containing the hastily trained and poorly led troops, if barely. Although the Germans didn’t conquer the Soviet Union in 1941, they were confident they would in 1942. Everywhere the Axis reigned supreme.

On the 26th Winston Churchill addressed the US Congress. He felt that with America in the war, it was now winnable, but it would take 18 long months for the tide to change. Congress was not prepared when Churchill told them that “many disappointments and unpleasant surprises await us” in the New Year.