Talking Proud: Service & Sacrifice
Asiatic Fleet: Dark Days of 1942
“ABDA Command was an abject failure, and is a case study
in almost everything that can go wrong in coalition warfare.”
Samuel J. Cox, Director NHHC
Introduction
I recently read The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945, by John Toland. I was absorbed by Toland’s detailed descriptions of major naval and air battles in the Pacific during WWII, and was rocked by the losses incurred during these battles.
Each time one of our ships went down, and many of them did, I thought about the hundreds, if not thousands, of crewmembers who went down with them in terrifying struggles.
While exploring the major naval battles of WWII in the Pacific, I learned of six naval battles that occurred during the period January through early March 1942, before the great battles of the Coral Sea, Midway, Guadalcanal, and Leyte Gulf.
These six battles are considered small battles, but serious fights nonetheless. The US and its allies lost a bunch of ships and thousands of warfighters; by my count, 14 ships and more, including one heavy cruiser, which was the Asiatic Fleet’s flagship, five destroyers, one coastal gunboat, two submarines, two torpedo boats, a tanker and seaplane tender, plus other support boats.
Allied naval forces fighting in these six battles fought in the Dutch East Indies and near environs did not prevail. The Japanese conquered these islands. The US Navy (USN) had to regroup and claw its way back over the next three years of war, which it did through incredible grit.
Several points jumped out to me when I explored these six battles. First, I had to acquaint myself with the geography of the East Indies and adjacent waters. Second, I had to examine the Japanese strategy and avenues of approach to the East Indies. Third, I had to get informed on how the US responded to the threat of the Japanese invasions that caused these battles.
This is not an uplifting story. The US Asiatic Fleet entered WWII with its back to the wall. It took a tough bruising. But it is a part of our history.
All six battles occurred in the Netherlands East Indies (NEI), now the Republic of Indonesia, an area marked by several thousand islands. Taken together, these six battles are known as the Dutch East Indies Campaign, a Japanese campaign to capture all of the islands.
Japan’s overall strategy was to create a “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” to dominate the Pacific. Japan wanted to evict the white Europeans who were exploiting the region’s resources. However, Japan, too, needed the islands’ resources, especially rubber and oil, and intended to control the sea lines of communication (SLOC) to fulfill its strategy.
The East Indie islands invaded by the Japanese in 1942 were colonies of Britain and the Netherlands. Britain was an imperial power with colonies from India to Southeast Asia. The Netherlands was also an imperial power, holding the East Indies Islands in the Southwest Pacific and several in the Caribbean.
The US was not an imperial power in the Pacific, though it did annex the Philippines and fought a war there that ended in 1913.
The First and Second Island Chains
I interacted with Elbridge A. Colby prior to his becoming the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy in 2025. His focus was on adjusting US defense policy to address China’s growing power and ambition. He wrote a book entitled The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict.
In this book, he talks of the importance of the first island chain and the second island chain, stressing how crucial it was for the US to secure the first island chain: the Kuril Islands, the Japanese Archipelago, including Okinawa, Taiwan, the Northern Philippines, and Borneo. The second island chain running through the Mariana Islands (like Guam) and Palau, extending to Micronesia and New Guinea, provides a second line of defense in the Indo-Pacific.
I have since been acquainted with the notion of defending the third island chain
The feeling behind the first island chain is that the US and its allies need to erect a natural barrier to contain China’s naval power and project influence into the Pacific region. The second island chain is sort of a fallback position to project power and contain China.
The third island chain would “rapidly establish robust and resilient advanced bases in the third island chain to support contingency campaigns in the South Pacific.”
By June 1942, Japan held Manchuria, the first island chain, parts of the second island chain, and was on its way to extending its holdings, when the US Navy (USN) defeated the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) in the Battle of Midway in June 1942, putting a halt to that expansion.
US Navy Overview: Early 1942
Some say the US Navy’s (USN) fleet was shifting from a battleship navy to an aircraft carrier navy. Perhaps so. The Imperial Japanese Navy’s (IJN) attacks at Pearl Harbor in December 1941 caught eight battleships lined up there. Two were sunk, and the other six were heavily damaged but did return to duty over time.
The USN had seven aircraft carriers, four of which were assigned to the Asiatic Fleet. One of the four was recovering from torpedo damage in California, leaving three available for the Southwest Pacific. None of the three were available for the six battles described here, and there were no battleships available either.
In short, the USN was in tough shape when WWII broke out. Wake Island was lost on December 8, the Japanese attacked the Philippines on December 8, Manila fell on January 2, 1942, and US forces there surrendered in April.
Early Naval Alliance
For me, the story of these six battles of early 1942 in Southwest Asia is a naval story, though there was action from the air and on the ground.
The US allied with Britain, the Netherlands, and Australia in the Southwest Pacific in early World War II. Interestingly, the US first established diplomatic relations with Australia only in 1940.
Roughly speaking, the British and the Netherlands divided their spheres of influence in this region. The British focused on India and Malaya, the Dutch on most of the Dutch East Indies archipelago. The US was focused on the Philippines.
The US and Britain agreed on a “Germany First” strategy, leaving the Pacific region as second fiddle.
None of the three allies was prepared to go to war to defend their interests in the Southwest Pacific. Each had different interests:
- Britain: Singapore and Burma;
- The Netherlands: East Indies;
- Australia: East Indies, because Japan could launch attacks from there;
- The US: the Philippines.
A huge problem for the Allies was that the Germans controlled and occupied the Netherlands in 1940. Dutch forces, estimated at maybe 30,000 in the East Indies, were cut off from the homeland.
Britain stood alone in Europe against the Germans, though it had a sizable allied force in Singapore, about 85,000.
The US would not enter the European war until December 1941, when the IJN attacked Pearl Harbor.
It seemed like a good idea at the time for the US, Britain, and the Netherlands to form a combined command. They created the first combined Allied military theater command of WWI on December 22, 1941, the American-British-Dutch-Australian Command or ABDACOM, or ABDA.
British Army Lt. General Archibald Wavell commanded ABDACOM. The objective was to hold the Malay Barrier and retain Allied control of the Indian Ocean.
The Malay Barrier was seen as a notional line running down the Malay Peninsula through Singapore and the southernmost islands of the Dutch East Indies. The idea was to keep the Japanese out of the Indian Ocean. For the British, that meant keeping them away from India.
This combined command had almost no chance for success; Japan owned the seas of the Southwest Pacific. That meant it could move its ground forces at will throughout the region.
ABDACOM had no responsibility for India, the Hawaiian Islands, Midway Island, the Philippines, and much of Australia, Papua New Guinea (PNG).
Dwight John Zimmerman has written,
“Lasting about two months, it became a textbook example of how not to run a supreme headquarters. Pitted against a Japanese army and navy unified command at the height of its power, it’s a wonder ABDACOM lasted as long as it did.”
Major Rene W.A. van den Berg, Royal Netherlands Army, prepared a paper on ABDACOM in 2014 expands on the problem,
“The pathway to failure stemmed from Allied inability to reconcile political agendas and rationalize national objectives to coalition strategic ends before the outbreak of hostilities in the Far East. As a result, the ABDACOM Nations had to establish a unified command under fire and lacked the time to conduct combined exercises, develop common doctrine, and establish an effective command and control architecture.”
General Wavell saw the handwriting on the wall and recommended the termination of the command. It was dissolved on February 25, 1942 about two months after it was created. He handed the command to the Dutch, who surrendered on March 9, 1942. That marked the end of ABDACOM.
ABDACOM had a naval force, known as ABDAFLOAT. Admiral Thomas C. Hart, USN, was in command until February 12, after which Admiral Conrad Helfich, Royal Netherlands Navy (RNN), was in command. By my count from Wikipedia, the US contributed 26 ships, the British 16 ships, the Dutch 11 ships, and Australia five.
The USN ships included one heavy cruiser, two light cruisers, 13 destroyers, two gunboats, and some support ships. There was one aircraft carrier assigned, but it served in Australia helping the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) conduct anti-submarine patrols from Darwin and also transported aircraft for the US Army Air Force (USAAF).
The British contributed one battleship, two heavy cruisers, four light cruisers, and nine destroyers.
The Dutch had two light cruisers, six destroyers, and one coast defense ship.
The Australians employed two light cruisers and three destroyers.
Lieutenant Kyle Cregge, USN, tells us that WWII historian Samuel Eliot Morison described the Japanese advances in Asia in the context of ABDACOM,
“(Moving like) the insidious yet irresistible clutching of multiple tentaclestentacles. . . . Like some vast octopus, [the Japanese] relied on strangling many small points rather than concentrating on a vital organ. No one arm attempted to meet the entire strength of the ABDA Fleet.”
The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) prevailed in all six battles for the East Indies. Each battle was precipitated by the IJN using transports to bring ground forces to conquer the islands of the East Indies and escorting these transports with naval combatants. In each case, the IJN was able to land forces at their objective in the East Indies.
This graphic displays the Japanese avenues of approach to conquering the East Indies. Note that the Indies lie between Southeast Asia, the Malay Peninsula, New Guinea, the Philippines, and Australia.
Admiral Thomas C. Hart, USN, commanded the US Asiatic Fleet. Captain Bernard D. Cole, USN (Ret.) wrote, “the small fleet consisted of one cruiser, flotillas of destroyers and submarines, and perhaps most notably, half a dozen or so gunboats that patrolled China’s rivers.”
Admiral Hart also had 29 submarines operating from Cavite Naval Yard, Philippines. They were forward deployed and meant to counter Japanese expansionism.
War Plan Orange was the US plan for war against Japan developed early in the 20th century and frequently revised, nine times between 1919 and 1938, and replaced by the Rainbow Series of war plans in 1939. The Asiatic Fleet withdrew its units from China in 1940 and centered them in the Philippines.
Before the US entered WWII in December 1941, the US established “Neutrality Patrols” to support those engaged in war with Germany. It was extended to the Far East. Patrol Wing Two in Hawaii selected a patrol squadron (VP-21) to go to the Philippines, equipped with PBY-4 flying boats. They flew out of Naval Air Station (NAS) Sangley Point, just south of Manila, conducting neutrality patrols around the Philippine islands and over the South China Sea toward Hainan Island, the China coast, and Formosa.
Importance of Airfields
In the late 1930s, the Government of the Netherlands debated whether to protect its vast holdings in the Netherlands East Indies (NEI) by beefing up the Royal Netherlands Navy (RNN) or the Royal Netherlands Indies Army (KNIL). The decision was to expand the KNIL’s air forces with land-based bombers.
The government bought 121 bombers for the KNIL and built two sets of airfields in considerable secrecy: the outer ring (blue dots) and the inner ring (red dots), as shown on this map. In looking at the map,
The outer rings were meant to protect the Indies on the north side, which was from where the Japanese were most likely to invade; the inner ring offers the greatest protection to Sumatra, Java, and Timor.
The Dutch meant for their airfields to be secret, but the Japanese knew about them. By the look of the map showing the Japanese avenues of approach, these airfields were well placed.
