December 28th - the Day of Infamy, Part X

Pacific: adj., peaceful, calm…

The lack of large operations did not mean the Pacific was living up to its name. The vital but often forgotten campaigns to protect and destroy commerce and supply lines continued. In November, RADM Lockwood issued a report concluding that there was not one, but at least three problems with the Mk 14 torpedo and its components. It ran too deep, the magnetic fuse did not function reliably, and the contact fuse was too fragile to function in a square impact – the ideal shot otherwise. As temporary workarounds, the magnetic fuse was disabled, torpedoes were to be set to run shallow, and depots and tenders throughout the Pacific fleet made field modifications to the contact fuses. By the end of December, US submarine kills began to increase rapidly, and BuOrd finally concluded that there might be problems. Even with strong backing from ADM Nimitz, it would be almost a year before the Pacific Fleet’s temporary fixes were given official approval by BuOrd and adopted by other commands.

The Japanese were also taking a toll on Allied shipping traffic. From bases in the Solomon Islands aircraft and surface raiders drove the convoys from the US to Australia and New Zealand ever further south and east. The French authorities on New Caledonia became less and less cooperative with the Allies, further complicating the problems in that area.

The China/Burma/India theater was becoming a stalemate. An attempted counter attack by the British towards Burma in October made little progress, and was finally thrown back with heavy losses in the spring of 1943. China had no land or sea connection to the Allies, and the air route over the Himalayas could only have supplied a fraction of its needs even if the Allies had been able to supply a large number of aircraft. The Chinese army was increasingly unable to meet the IJA in the field, but the IJA increasingly controlled only the territory they were standing on.

The USS Ranger arrived in the Pacific in late September, after a heated debate in Washington D.C. Chief of Naval Operations Admiral King had strongly advocated that she remain in the Atlantic for limited operations, while one or more Royal Navy carriers filled the gap in the Pacific. Anglo-American relations, however, were at a low point due to arguments about the coming campaign in the Atlantic theater.

The US favored invading France to establish a foothold for future operations, while the UK favored a peripheral campaign in the Mediterranean, optimally a landing in North Africa. The US finally conceded that the Allies were not yet strong enough to face Germany on the mainland, and accepted the invasion of Algeria. The Royal Navy insisted they would need every ship available for the invasion, slated for November, in case the Italian Navy sortied. The US countered by proposing that the invasion be delayed until early 1943, by which time USS Lexington and USS Yorktown would be repaired and able to cover the Pacific, or invade Morocco, which would reduce the threat from the Italians. Largely at the insistence of the Soviets for an earlier counterblow and General Montgomery for an offensive geographically closer to his own, these options too were rejected. The US tried to pry loose a Royal Navy carrier by highlighting the commitment of the three old battleships of BatDiv5 to the operation, but even this proved insufficient.

USS Ranger was made the centerpiece of a series of three raids in October, November, and December, each involving carrier strikes and shore bombardments; the first against the Solomons, the second against the Marshalls, and the third against New Britain.

USS Tuscaloosa and USS Concord were lost in a night action during the Solomons raid. USS Ranger herself was lost to a pair of torpedoes from I-21 as she was slowly steaming home from the New Britain raid in late December. Fortunately the USS Lexington and USS Yorktown had finished their repairs in early December and were already working up their new air groups. Nimitz, however, suspended the carrier raids; they had proven far too costly for too little result.

The major elements of the US Pacific Fleet spent the early months of 1943 training, conduction exercises between Hawaii and the West Coast, and waiting for either the next move by the IJN or the increasing number of new ships joining the fleet to permit their own major offensive to begin.