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By Root 1990 0

strategy, the state of joint strategic planning was tenuous at best. Far from solving any problems, the diverse opinion within the Army allowed the old arguments among the services, and among the Allies, to gain new fervor. The lack of a consensus within American ranks effectively left Germany-first to exist only in the minds of politicians. The numbers spoke for themselves: At the end of 1942, the United States would field nearly 25 percent more combat troops in the Pacific than it did in England and North Africa, 464,000 to 378,000. The gap between Roosevelt’s words and his military’s work caused Britain’s service chiefs to lament the very idea of combined planning with their Atlantic cousins. Their best insurance against America pursuing a full-on Pacific-first strategy was Churchill’s friendship with Roosevelt. If Japan was traumatized by the bulldog savagery of the American defense of Guadalcanal, the British didn’t care much for its implications, either.

ON THE MORNING OF November 23, Halsey wrote to his commanders to describe the array of new naval forces flowing into the South Pacific. The Saratoga was coming back. With the antiaircraft cruiser San Juan and a squadron of destroyers, she would re-form the nucleus of Task Force 11. The Enterprise, with the antiaircraft cruiser San Diego and Hoover’s old Desron 2, would continue to comprise Task Force 16. Lee, shorn of the South Dakota now but soon to be given two more fast battleships, the repaired North Carolina and the brand-new Indiana, flew Task Force 64’s flag in the Washington. With the fuel oil bottleneck finally easing, two older battleships, the Maryland and Colorado, would come south as Task Force 65 under Rear Admiral Harry W. Hill.

Rear Admiral Thomas Kinkaid, whom Halsey relieved of command of Task Force 16 because a better-qualified aviation man, Rear Admiral Frederick C. Sherman, was available, would take the cruiser striking force, Task Force 67, with the heavies Northampton, Pensacola, New Orleans, the light cruisers Honolulu and Helena, and six destroyers. Task Force 66 came into being as well, with eight destroyers.

Five days later, Halsey announced their new strategic objective, Rabaul. He wrote MacArthur saying that New Guinea couldn’t be secured until the Japanese strongpoint in the Bismarcks was under American control. He also staked the Navy’s claim to the job, arguing that the attack against Rabaul “must be amphibious along the Solomons with New Guinea land position basically a supporting one only. I am currently reinforcing Cactus position and expediting means of operating heavy air from there. It is my belief that the sound procedure at this time is to maintain as strong a land and air pressure against the Japanese Buna position as your lines of communication permit, and continue to extract a constant toll of Japanese shipping, an attrition which if continued at the present rate he can not long sustain.” The attrition wasn’t easy on the Americans, either. Even with the new naval units on hand, Halsey’s plan to surge toward Rabaul, much like MacArthur’s similar concept earlier that year, seemed ambitious with the limited amphibious resources he had immediately at hand.

In late November Halsey received his fourth star, elevating him from vice admiral to admiral. When it was discovered that Nouméa was short of four-star pins for his epaulets, the Navy obtained a pair of two-star pins from a Marine major general and had them reconfigured by a repair ship’s welding shop. After Vice Admiral William L. Calhoun presented Halsey with the makeshift four-star insignia, Halsey turned in his three-star pins and said, “Send one of these to Mrs. Scott and the other to Mrs. Callaghan. Tell them it was their husbands’ bravery that got me my new ones.”

Whatever else could be said of William F. Halsey, no one would complain that he didn’t lead from the front. He had felt the concussion of Japanese gunfire. And as November came to an end, the Japanese would demonstrate that they had a few good salvos left in them. They had not yet given up on Jack London