W.E.B. Griffin - The Corps 03 - Counterattack

"Should we have taken the chance with the aircraft carriers and reinforced Wake?" Fowler asked.

"I think so. We could, in any event, have made taking it far more costly. The Japanese do not have a really good capability to land on a hostile beach. They managed it at Wake because there was not an effective array of artillery on Wake. They only had one working rangefinder, for one thing. And not much ammunition. And no planes. All were aboard Task Force 14. I think they should have been put ashore."

Fowler grunted.

"Again, now a moot point, Wake is gone. So is Guam. On December tenth, the Japanese landed two divisions on Luzon. Three weeks later they were in Manila. We are now being pushed down the Bataan Peninsula. It will fall, and eventually so will Corregidor."

"It can’t be reinforced?"

"There is a shortage of materiel to load on ships; a shortage of ships; and the Japanese have been doing a very creditable job of interdicting our shipping."

"And how much damage are we doing to them?"

"MacArthur has slowed down their advance. From our intercepts, we know that the Japanese General-Homma is his name; interesting guy, went to school in California, speaks fluent English, and did not, did not, want to start this war-anyway, Homma is under a lot of pressure to end resistance in the Philippines. It’s a tough nut to crack. After they finally get rid of Luzon and Corregidor, they have to take Mindanao, the island to the south. We have about thirty thousand troops there, and supplies, under a general named Sharp."

"Why don’t they use his forces to reinforce Luzon?"

"Transportation. If they put out to sea, the Japanese have superiority: submarines, other vessels. It would be a slaughter."

"And what are we doing to the Japanese?"

"Very little. They’re naturally husbanding what’s left of the fleet: aircraft carriers, cruisers. . . ."

"What about our submarines?"

"Our torpedoes don’t work," Pickering said simply.

"What do you mean, they don’t work?"

"They don’t work. They either don’t reach the target, or they do and don’t explode."

"I’d never heard that," Fowler said, shocked. "Not all of them?"

"No, of course, not all of them. But apparently many. A hell of a lot, maybe half, maybe even more. The submarine brass, obviously, are not talking about it much. The story goes that submarine captains returning to Pearl Harbor who complained have been ordered to keep their mouths shut. I’m going out there to see for myself."

"I can’t understand that," Fowler said. "Didn’t they have any idea they wouldn’t work?"

"I don’t know. I understand it has something to do with the detonators. And since the detonators are the brainchildren of some highly placed admirals, obviously the submarine captains, not the detonators, are at fault."

"How can you hide something like that? In training, I mean. A torpedo that doesn’t explode?"

"They didn’t fire many of them in training, apparently. I asked that question. It cost too much," Pickering said. "The admiral I asked also made it rather clear that he objected to a civilian, even one wearing a captain’s uniform, asking questions like that of a professional sailor."

"How did that go down?" Fowler asked.

"I told him I had been master of a ship when he was still a midshipman."

"You didn’t!"

"No, I didn’t. I was tempted, Christ, how I was tempted. But I kept my mouth shut."

"I’m impressed, Flem," Senator Fowler said.

"OK. Let’s get on with this. The Japanese were already in French Indochina. The French-I don’t suppose they had much choice, with the Germans occupying France-permitted them to station troops and aircraft in Hanoi, Saigon, and other places, and there was a naval presence as well. From French Indochina, the Japs moved into Thailand. The Japanese have been in Korea for years.

"They landed in Malaya and conquered Singapore, our British allies having cleverly installed their artillery pointing in the wrong direction. The British surrendered seventy thousand men. That’s the largest Allied surrender so far-Frank Knox told me it was the worst defeat the English had suffered since Burgoyne surrendered at Saratoga-but it will lose its place in the history books when the Philippines fall."

"There’s no way we can hang on to the Philippines? Not even Mindanao? What about General Sharp and his thirty thousand men?"

"We probably could-hang on to Mindanao, I mean. But Roosevelt has decided the first stage of the war has to concentrate on Europe. That means no reinforcement for the Philippines."

"You sound as if you disagree."

"So far as I’m concerned, we should let the Germans and the Russians bleed each other to death," Pickering said. "But my theories of how the war should be fought have so far not been solicited."

"So what happens now?" Fowler asked.

"Well, we try to keep the Japanese from taking both Australia and New Zealand, which are obviously on their schedule. And we try to establish bases in Australia and New Zealand from which we can eventually start taking things back. It’s six thousand five hundred miles from San Francisco to Brisbane. At the moment that sea lane is open. MacArthur has already been asked, politely, to leave the Philippines and go to Australia."

"What do you mean, ‘asked’?"

"I mean asked. If he doesn’t go, I suppose Roosevelt will eventually make it an order. General Marshall’s been urging him to do it right away. MacArthur and Marshall hate each other, did you know that?"

"I’d heard rumors."

"When George Marshall was a colonel at Fort Benning, MacArthur was Army Chief of Staff. He wrote an efficiency report on Marshall, saying he should never be given command of anything larger than a regiment. MacArthur thinks Marshall- who’s now in MacArthur’s former position, of course-was returning the compliment when he recalled MacArthur as a lieutenant general."

"I don’t understand."

"MacArthur retired as a general, a full four-star general, when he was Chief of Staff. Then he got himself appointed Marshal of the Philippine Armed Forces. When Roosevelt called MacArthur back from retirement to assume command in the Philippines, he called him back as a lieutenant general, with three stars-junior to a full general, in other words. MacArthur thinks Marshall was behind that. I frankly wouldn’t be surprised if he was. Anyway, their relationship is pretty delicate.

"So the idea is that MacArthur will go to Australia. And that we will stage out of Australia and New Zealand. That’s presuming we can hang on to New Zealand and Australia. There are no troops there to speak of. They’re all off in Africa and England defending the Empire.

"And the Japanese know they can take it unless we can maintain a reasonably safe sea route to Australia and New Zealand, and they have already made their first move. On January twenty-third-which is what, three weeks ago?-they occupied Rabaul. Here."

He pointed at the map, at the Bismarck Archipelago, east of New Guinea.

"They’ve already established forces on New Guinea, and if they can build an air base at Rabaul, they can bomb our ships en route to Australia and New Zealand. And, of course, they can bomb New Zealand and Australia."

"And we’re doing nothing about that, either?"

"In that briefcase you won’t look at-"

"I told you why."

"-there is just about the final draft of an operations order from Admiral King. Unless somebody finds something seriously wrong with it, and I don’t think they will, he’ll make it official in the next couple of days. It orders the soonest possible recapture of Rabaul. To do that, we’ll have to set up a base on Efate Island, in the New Hebrides."

"Where the hell is that?"

Pickering pointed to the map. Fowler saw that Јfate was a tiny speck in the South Pacific, northwest of New Caledonia, which itself was an only slightly larger speck of land east of the Australian continent.