The Final Storm - Jeff Shaara [5]
On the mainland of Asia, a different war is being waged. Beleaguered Chinese forces under Chiang Kai-shek are surviving only with the assistance of the British and Americans, who have created two supply routes for sustaining Chiang’s army. One, through Burma, is too vulnerable to Japanese attack and so can barely be sustained. The other, far more dangerous, is “the hump,” an air route from India across the Himalayan Mountains to China, where fleets of planes and some of the most illustrious pilots in American aviation history haul much needed supplies for the Chinese. But Chiang’s army is receiving help from ground and air forces as well, led from India by American general Joseph Stilwell, and inside of China by the Flying Tigers, an American fighter plane wing led by General Claire Chennault. But the two Americans never work effectively together, and Stilwell in particular alienates the British, whose assistance he needs to continue the flow of supplies out of India. Seeds of dissension are sown as well by Chiang, whose corrupt officers and brutal training methods cannot ever put a fighting force into the field to match the Japanese. Worse for Chiang, in China’s north there is a new rival leader emerging, whose own army is doing what it can to combat the Japanese. His name is Mao Tse-tung.
In the Pacific, the Americans seem to be falling into the exact kind of strategy the Japanese are now hoping for: a piecemeal, grinding assault against a vast scattering of Japanese island outposts. With sea and air power decidedly in their favor, the Americans believe that overwhelming bombardment of Japanese positions will allow the Marines and army ground troops an advantage in sweeping ashore in so many of these crucial outposts, where airfields and deepwater anchorages await.
The Japanese have purposely expanded their empire into lands where precious war materials, especially oil, rubber, and metal ores, can be ferried to factories in Japan. Cutting those supply lines becomes a priority, mostly for MacArthur, who knows that the Japanese have established large and powerful bases all around resource-rich New Guinea. MacArthur continues his drive up toward the Japanese forces, which results in several sharp engagements, including the Battle of Bougainville, costly for both American and Australian troops.
By this time, it is apparent that a competition has developed between MacArthur and Nimitz, most of that energy coming from MacArthur, who has as his primary goal the liberation of the Philippines. Despite strategic considerations that seem to point more to mainland Japan as the most desired goal, MacArthur insists that his efforts be directed at recapturing the nation to whom he has pledged his return. MacArthur has significant popular appeal, especially with the troops in his command, and in Washington not even the chiefs of staff are willing to back him down. Thus the two-prong strategy of the Americans begins to resemble something more like a race.
While the complex strategies and vicious campaigns continue, one particular disaster befalls the Japanese. Code intercepts reveal to American intelligence that Admiral Yamamoto will be traveling a certain route at a certain time through the area approaching Bougainville. In response, American fighters rise to intercept the Japanese admiral and his escorts. They are successful. On April 18, 1943, Yamamoto’s plane is shot down, and Japan loses arguably