Indian Ocean Interlude

CHAPTER 1 3 PACIFIC DRIVE—INDIAN OCEAN INTERLUD E N the early part of 1944 a number of questions exercised the minds o f I the Allied statesmen, Chiefs of Staff, and area commanders. The question how the war would end was being answered by events and by Allied progress in all theatres. By now its direction and probable period were becoming clearer . In both the European and the Pacific theatres its direction was, with mounting force, towards the final subjugation of th e enemies ' home territories . In the west the Axis "Fortress Europe" was bein g assailed in the south through Italy, and plans were in the making for th e main cross-Channel attack on northern France about the middle of the year, and for another subsidiary attack on southern Europe later on . (During the first half of the year the "official" Admiralty date for the defeat of Germany was October 1944 .) In the Pacific the north-westerly drive of MacArthur and the westerly drive of Nimitz in their twin assaults on the Japanese eastern perimeter were making good progress . That perimeter's boundary had already been pushed well westward and north - westward from its 1942 limit . There was, however, no close estimate of th e date of Japan 's defeat, and the possibility of a protracted struggle was no t dismissed. Meanwhile the British Navy's part in this, and the rival claims of a n Indian Ocean strategy and a Pacific Ocean strategy engaged the considera- tion of both the British and the Americans—and was also the cause of dissension between Churchill and his Ministerial colleagues, and the British Chiefs of Staff . Broadly, the Americans were in favour of the Britis h pursuing an offensive in the Indian Ocean, as was Churchill . The British Chiefs of Staff, on the other hand, wished a part to be found for th e Royal Navy in the offensive in the Pacific after Germany's defeat . And though Churchill and the Americans were in agreement regarding British activity against the western Japanese perimeter, they differed regarding th e type of activity; and the insistence of the Americans on a land campaig n in Burma persisted against Churchill's wish for amphibious operations. Churchill later stated : We of course wanted to recapture Burma, but we did not want to have to do i t by land advances from slender communications and across the most forbidding fight- ing country imaginable . The south of Burma, with its port of Rangoon, was far more valuable than the north . But all of it was remote from Japan, and for our forces to become side-tracked and entangled there would deny us our rightful share in a Far Eastern victory . I wished, on the contrary, to contain the Japanese in Burma, and break into or through the great arc of islands forming the outer fringe of the Dutch East Indies . Our whole British-Indian Imperial front would thu s advance across the Bay of Bengal into close contact with the enemy, by usin g amphibious power at every stage .1 l Churchill, Vol V, pp . 494-5 . 1943-44 A BRITISH PACIFIC FLEET 36 3 Churchill then adhered to his CULVERIN plan, and disapproved of th e British Chiefs of Staff proposal to use naval forces, and any others that could be spared, to act with the left flank of the United States forces in the South-West Pacific, based on Australia. Cooperation on thes e lines was discussed in the late months of 1943 between the British an d American planners in Washington, and an outline scheme was produced, together with some calculations as to the strength of the " Fleet Train " that would be needed. 2 The then First Sea Lord, Admiral Cunningham, was whole-heartedly in favour of sending the fleet to join with the America n fleet in active operations, and "the Chiefs of Staff also agreed, for i t seemed about the only force that could be spared" . But, writing of this later, Admiral Cunningham recorded : For some reason which I never really understood the Prime Minister did not a t first agree . He seemed to take the view that the fleet would be better employed i n assisting in the recapture of our own possessions, Malaya and Singapore, or it ma y be he was rather daunted, if daunted he ever was, by the huge demands made upo n shipping by the provision of the fleet train . He may also have been influence d by the undoubted feeling that prevailed in naval circles in the United States, fro m Admiral King downwards, that they wanted no British fleet in the Pacific . All this uncertainty led us to consider the middle course of Australian and Empire troops , and the necessary Air, with the British Fleet, going for Amboina in the Molucca s from northern Australia late in 1944 or early the next year. From there they woul d operate against the Dutch East Indies and Borneo . 3 While all these divergent views continued to exercise some effect over some months, the Admiralty went steadily on with their preparations to send a fleet to the Pacific. In the meantime, on 2nd January 1944, they promulgated a revised composition of the Eastern Fleet comprising 14 6 vessels for its reinforcement up to the end of April . The list included 3 capital ships, 2 fleet carriers, 14 cruisers, 24 fleet destroyers, and sloops , frigates, corvettes, minesweepers, submarines, and ancillary vessels. On 12th January Admiral Somerville sought from the Admiralty clarificatio n of the policy to be followed in his area . His own appreciation was that it was intended to hold the Japanese in the Indian Ocean and strike in th e Pacific. On 15th January the Admiralty confirmed this view, and assured Somerville that savings in manpower which he envisaged as possible wer e the Indian Ocean war to be a holding war would be a welcome contribu- tion in view of the existing shortage. On the 25th of the month Admiral King took a hand and indicated t o the Admiralty the American naval desire that the British should confin e their naval activities against the Japanese to the Indian Ocean . He suggested that if their naval forces there were aggressively employed agains t Japanese airfields, port installations, shipping concentrations and oil target s 2 These calculations caused some concern to the British because the size of the fleet train prove d —after discussions with the Americans by an Admiralty team sent out to the Pacific to investi- gate requirements—to be greatly in excess of what the British had imagined would be necessary . One of the British delegation, Commodore E. M . Evans Lombe, told the Australian Naval Staff in Melbourne on his return from Pearl Harbour that the delegation members had had to recas t their thinking on this matter . 3 A Sailor's Odyssey, p . 598 . 364 PACIFIC DRIVE—INDIAN OCEAN INTERLUDE 1944 the threat would tie down a considerable number of Japanese aircraf t and contribute more to the war in the Pacific than would British interven- tion in that ocean. He proposed that the fleet the British planned to send to the Pacific should, initially at any rate, be thus employed in the India n Ocean. On 29th January the Admiralty expressed the view that attack s against targets such as those King suggested were unprofitable unles s there was some definite objective to be achieved, and were a misuse o f fleet carriers and naval aircraft . While these exchanges took place between the Admiralty and King , Churchill made it clear to the Chiefs of Staff Committee that he stoo d firm for an Indian Ocean strategy, and that CULVERIN was the "only effectual operation" providing an outlet "for the very large air and military forces we have standing in India and around the Bay of Bengal" . In the middle of February his views received support from Mountbatten, a mission from whom, headed by his American Deputy Chief of Staff, General Wedemeyer, visited London and Washington to present the East Asia n Supreme Commander 's strategy. This opposed the American project for a land campaign, and proposed penetration of the Japanese perimeter of Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies, and a north-eastern advance along the Asiatic coast—with CULVERIN as the first step . But though this commended itself to Churchill and the Foreign Office "who thought that the British role in the Far East should not be a mere minor contributio n to the Americans ",4 it failed to secure an appreciative audience at Washington. At this stage a series of important Allied moves in the Pacific produce d results which put a stop for the time being to CULVERIN or other amphibious essays in the Indian Ocean, where the position of the Easter n Fleet vis-a-vis the Japanese Fleet became somewhat similar to that it ha d occupied almost two years earlier—one of inferior strength consequent o n a concentration of major enemy units at Singapore . This concentration , in the last week in February, evoked the threat of a Japanese descent i n force into the Bay of Bengal, and the resultant tendency on Somerville 's part to withdraw the Eastern Fleet to the west of the Maldive Islands . It soon became apparent, however, that the Japanese move was defensiv e rather than aggressive . It arose from the devastating American air attack on Truk on 17th-18th February, and the American seizure of control o f the Marshall Islands with the capture—by marines supported by powerfu l naval forces under Vice-Admiral Spruance—of Kwajalein (31st January - 7th February) and Eniwetok (17th-22nd February) .

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