The Super Summary of World History - Alan Dale Daniel [216]
At sea, Japan started feeling the full weight of American air power and innovation. In the Battle of the Bismarck Sea in March 1943, a Japanese troop convoy sailing to New Guinea from Rabaul harbor on New Britain was located at sea and totally destroyed by air attacks. B-25 aircraft (same type that bombed Tokyo) with six .50-caliber machine guns mounted to the nose for strafing ships, tackled the convoy. The pilots also used new skip-bombing methods to slam the bombs into the sides of the transports. The attackers sank all the transport ships and most of the escorts. The US Army Air Force under General McKinney developed these new techniques.[295]
“Island hopping” was the key to US strategy in the Pacific. The idea was simple. The Allies did not have to conquer every island held by the Japanese. By taking only a few vital islands, and cutting off support for the rest, the Americans smashed the original Japanese assumptions about fighting the war. With each passing month the speed of the American advance increased. Japan faced an enemy with techniques of war undreamed of in 1941. Knocked off balance by Allied methods and technology Japan’s leadership never regained its footing.
By November of 1943 the US Navy was prepared to start an advance across the Central Pacific. This line of attack was in addition to MacArthur’s line of advance in the South Pacific. The first target was the Gilbert Islands, and the key to this group of island atolls was Tarawa (Betio). The island’s importance came from its air base. The Japanese anticipated an attack and studded the island with defensive fortifications, including a tremendous number of protected machine gun emplacements (pillboxes), large caliber cannons, huge bunkers, and barbed-wire entanglements defending every approach to the island.
Throughout the Pacific campaign, the islands seized had enemy air bases or land areas where the Americans could build air bases. Tactically, the Pacific War was fought over who held what air base. The airplane was the centerpiece of the Pacific War. The goal of the Central Pacific advance was winning islands within air range of Japan, and starting a bombing campaign to destroy Japan’s infrastructure. The goal of the South Pacific advance was winning back the Philippines, and cutting Japanese supply lines to the home islands.
We must talk about storming a defended beach for a moment. Before World War II, invaders avoided going ashore at a defended beach. From the Trojan War through the first part of World War II, the way one combatant invaded another’s territory from the sea entailed going ashore on an undefended beach away from the target and then advancing on the objective overland. In World War I, the British invasion of Turkey at Gallipoli proved the point that an amphibious operation against defended shores was suicide. The Japanese commanders knew the history of offensive actions against defended beaches, and they knew the assaults were usually failures. They noted that many small islands in the Central Pacific had no place for an unopposed landing. In addition, airstrips could be placed on the islands with ample aircraft to defend them. The Japanese believed an island was an unsinkable aircraft carrier endangering any fleet sailing within range of its aircraft. At first the US thought the same thing.
Figure 64 American Dual Offensives Against Japan
By 1943 US Navy carrier forces had combined their air units for overwhelming aerial assaults razing Japanese air power on the island fortresses. Then the fleet sailed up and disgorged the troops who took the island. These actions punctured Japanese assumptions about defending their empire. The fact that the Americans quickly