This is another chapter that is basically a straight adaptation of one of Morison's books, in this case Volume 8, with which it shares a title. Unfortunately, the first half gets extremely short shrift, which I think is sad. As much as I am not a fan of Douglas MacArthur, Morison's full account of the New Guinea campaign has long convinced me that it is one of the great military accomplishments of WWII, and he simply doesn't use enough space here to do it justice. I also am not sure that Morison's claims about only MacArthur being able to pull it off are true, but I will agree that it is the one unambiguous piece of evidence the case in favor of him being a great general has going for it.
One thing that jumped out was Morison ascribing the inactivity of the Japanese fleet to American air superiority. While that's certainly part of the picture, the increasingly perilous oil situation the Japanese found themselves in was also a major component not only of the ships not moving, but also of the Japanese inability to train replacement pilots, and it's weird that he doesn't even mention that. That section also has another veiled reference to codebreaking in the Pacific Fleet "finding out" where the enemy submarines were and sending hunter-killer groups after them. And of course, this is where England put up an unmatched score of 6 boats in 12 days, despite the efforts of the group commander to spread kills out among the ships of the unit. For kill number 6, she was only allowed in after 3 other DEs had failed, and promptly added to her tally.
I was also confused by Spruance choosing Indianapolis as his flagship because she was expendable. That seems like a weird thing to want in a flagship, as the Admiral in charge presumably isn't, but a check of a biography I have of him made sense of it. He wanted to be able to direct his flagship where he thought his presence would be most useful, which ruled out a battleship (taking such a powerful unit out of position was a bad idea) and thought that he might end up exposing the ship to enemy fire when observing a landing, so wanted something that wouldn't be too badly missed if it was damaged in his service and had to be sent back for repairs.
Then you get the actual battle of the Philippine Sea, the greatest and last carrier battle of the war. Of course, much of the actual killing was done by submarine, and Morison doesn't spend much time on the story of Taiho, or "why you are exceedingly careful with your avgas systems". I also think he doesn't spend nearly enough time on how much this battle differed from earlier carrier battles. The expectation prewar had been that whichever side got its shot in first would win, but thanks to radar and the CIC, the Spruance's force was able to tank the Japanese attack and survive unscathed.
Recent Comments