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By Root 946 0

enemies. It would have been shameful indeed had Slim’s forces been unable to crush a Japanese army which lacked tanks or effective anti-tank guns, possessed negligible air support and little artillery, was starved of supplies and ammunition, and heavily outnumbered. Logistics, climate and terrain, much more than the Japanese, determined the snail’s pace of the Burma campaign until its last weeks. Scarcely any of the advanced technology used by the Allies in Europe for movement or bridging was available to Slim’s army. His was a “make-and-mend” campaign, unloved by Churchill, barely tolerated by the Americans, woefully underacknowledged at home in Britain.

“This army is like Cinderella185,” Slim’s chief of staff “Tubby” Lethbridge wrote ruefully, “and until the German war is over one can only wait patiently for all the things we want. One gets an awful feeling of frustration when every request, whether it be for equipment or individuals, is turned down.” Fourteenth Army deserved more credit for its advance into Burma than sceptics such as young Flying Officer Montague Brown were minded to offer. In the early months of 1945, notable deeds and spectacular successes lay ahead for Slim’s soldiers. What is remarkable, however, is not that the British prevailed, but that their Japanese foes sustained resistance for as long as they did. Victory in Burma was painfully long delayed.

CHAPTER FOUR

Titans at Sea

1. Men and Ships

AS SLIM ALWAYS PERCEIVED, though his campaign engaged more men than MacArthur’s, it was a sideshow. The critical struggles to defeat Japan were taking place far to the east, in conditions very different from those of the Kabaw Valley and Chindwin approaches. Most Americans in the Pacific theatre learned to regard salt water as their natural element. To be sure, scattered across the ocean there were pimples of rock and coral adorned with brilliant vegetation, barely visible on a hemispheric map. The value of these as unsinkable aircraft platforms caused their possession to be contested with terrible ferocity. Until the last months of the war, however, ground forces were relatively small. Navies dominated. From 1942 to 1945, hundreds of thousands of sailors grew accustomed to waking each morning to horizons of sky and sea interrupted only by ships and aircraft. The greatest fleets in history sailed the Pacific, yet shrank to nothingness in its immensity. When the American cruiser Indianapolis was sunk, it was four days before anyone noticed that she was missing, far less located her survivors. Many American, Japanese, Australian and—in the last phase—British sailors lived afloat for years on end. The U.S. carrier Essex once steamed continuously for seventy-nine days, during which she flew off her flight deck 6,460 planes, which dropped 1,041 tons of bombs, fired over a million rounds of .50 calibre machine-gun ammunition and consumed 1.36 million gallons of aviation gas.

The wartime expansion of the U.S. Navy was an extraordinary achievement, which should never be taken for granted. Between 1941 and 1945186, its tonnage swelled from three million to almost thirty. Of the service’s total war expenditure of $100 billion, more than a third went to ship construction. The pre-Pearl navy mustered 8,000 officers. Each war year thereafter, an additional 95,000 were granted reserve commissions, becoming “feather merchants” or “ninety-day wonders” at the end of their three months’ training. The precipitous quality decline of the Imperial Navy contrasts starkly with the proficiency achieved by the Americans. As the Japanese lost experienced seamen and aircrew, those replacing them proved ever less competent. Suicide pilots might be brave enough, but in the battles of 1944–45 many of Tokyo’s aviators and warship captains displayed astonishing diffidence. The U.S. Navy, meanwhile, grew better and better, in seamanship, gunnery, replenishment, submarine warfare, aircraft handling. This prowess was achieved mostly by men who, before the war, knew the sea only as a place to swim in. The fighter direction staff187