As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
In many ways the current dictator of China in Xi, mimics the Imperial Japanese projection of power to the South Pacific which provided Japan a ring of defense once the attack upon Pearl Harbor was complete.
There is a profound lesson in this as the Americans were most fortunate, literally by God, in their blunders were rectified to successes as the propaganda covered up their mistakes.
In the Pacific, General MacArthur was a national hero. He though was Army Chief and was contending with the entire United States Navy which had not performed well in fighting to a draw at Coral Sea and being fortunate at Midway for 5 minutes to change the course of the war in the Orient.
What followed in 1943 was the Navy more at odds with General MacArthur than the Japanese. This boiled over into a split command of General MacArthur and Admiral Chester Nimitz. The basis of this was a South Pacific strategy to gain Japan, where MacArthur would have jurisdiction over the main islands of New Guinea and New Britain in land mass while the Navy would have the Solomon chain of islands with Marine landings.
While MacArthur had great success with limited supply and shipping the Navy embarked on their first strike on August 7, 1942 at Guadalcanal of the Solomons. While the Japanese would lose 22,000 soldiers to the several thousand of the Americans, this was some of the worst planning in American history.
Of the 5 major naval battles engaged in, America won only 3, and in that the USS Hornet was burned out and sunk, and the USS Enterprise was damaged.
There is a U shaped area off Guadalcanal called The Slot, which was a dangerous kill zone for the Americans and the Americans paid dearly. In one of the battles of November 14th, the USS South Dakota was hit 42 times by the Battleship Kirishima, which later fell to the USS Washington hit the Kirishima with 9 sixteen inch shells to sink her.
The Americans had radar but this kind of severe engagements is what the Navy was making contact with and could have rightly been sunk as at Pearl Harbor.
As the battles progressed with Admiral Halsey in direct command of the Navy, his Marines were finding the mission taxing as Guadalcanal ran from August 7, 1942 to February 9, 1943. This was a trademark of the Navy in landings in the Marines were put into positions of hard fighting for months, when none of this should have ever been the case.
General MacArthur in the US Army was faring much better as MacArthur with less resources, a greater enemy concentration, but in better planning was driving the Japanese back by a series of leap frog shore landings on New Guinea outflanking the Japanese. While the Marines were fighting suicide concentrations of Japanese hardened by months of deprivation, MacArthur was moving swiftly and at one point surprise the Japanese so completely that they ran away. That point can not be lost, because the Navy was allowing the Japanese to harden themselves, and creating a legend where MacArthur was hitting them hard and fast, and the Japanese were retreating, which saved American and Allied lives.
These realities are lost in the propaganda of the Marines. As my beloved Uncle used to say, "We always heard the Marines have landed. We always said, "Big deal ,as the Army was already there".
In the case of the moving on Rabaul in Bouganville, the prize of the Solomons, after the Quebec Conference between Churchill and Roosevelt, MacArthur's people informed him that Washington thought the war was going too slow in the Pacific. MacArthur was delighted in this, and promptly invade more forward islands and was ready for the pincer movement which Admiral Halsey was to bring to Rabaul. The conflict between Army and Navy was completely unproductive as the Marines which are a small landing force of the Navy, had the Navy's jealousy to deal with too, and the Marines always suffered.
In many ways the two best aces of the Pacific in Greg Pappy Boyington and Joe Foss did the United States and the Corp a disservice as their accomplishments would taint the Navy's dismal record of dismal support to being hidden, which has produced a lackluster Marine aerial combat support ever since.
This is a lesson which must not be overlooked in a modern confrontation with nuclear powers like China in the Pacific.
The Pacific war is not going to be fought with carriers. The warfare will be submarines and long distance aircraft. The Chinese will not make the mistake the Japanese did in the Aleutian Islands, but will instead land in Alaska to gain the American oil fields there to starve out Japan.
Likewise nuclear submarines will provide the Chinese islands of defense, instead of the islands. The real region which China will encompass will be Australia for food and to deprive the United States of that military platform.
Certainly key operational islands in the Philippines and Taiwan will be struck and occupied, but others in Diego Garcia will be scorched earth as Guam, and Japan will be crippled, in a first salvo of obliterating Okinawa with the Americans there.
In this type of warfare the United States can not ever be in a position again of the Navy doing Marine landings. The Navy belongs in space attacks and the Army belongs in landings as the Air Force controls the ether between heaven and earth.
If there is one thing to remember past the propaganda of Guadalcanal and the Marines is the Marines should never have had to slug it out as they did. That was the Navy's fault and has never been called on it.
Remember that.
Nuff Said
agtG
