Dimitri’s Reviews > Hirohito's War: The Pacific War, 1941-1945 > Status Update

Railroad traffic out of Calcutta and the Himalaya "Hump" had to compensate for all the lost supply line, with the former under extreme weather circumstances "Tropical below, Yeti Above" and with low priority. 13 Airfields in India, 6 in China, 84.000 Allied troops & 2 million Indian labourers kept a fleet of 700 airplanes going at a median rate of a plane every 2 minutes ... and a casualty per 350 tons delivered.

The U.S. did everything it could to support China's capacity for sucking in Japanese strength, but the supply lines could be counted on the fingers of one hand as they were sliced off one by one. Indochina (with the port of Hanoi) & the Burma road - Forgotten Army or not - were for these intents and purposes overrun. Persia & Turkestan were a limited option thanks to the neutrality pact with the USSR of April '41.

"They knew they had to go along" - even a prima donna like MacArthur knew the safe limits of inter-service rivalry. Japan never created a Joint Chiefs of Staff to soften hers, which lay at the root of the North vs. South debate and would root again. On the plus side, the loose nature of the Axis pact meant she had no Allies to answer to, no LST ships to juggle.

"Indeed, the Soviet role was at this stage not dissimilar to the role being played by China in the Pacific." The US Navy used a 70% ratio in favour of the ETO in compliance with the "Germany first" grand strategy; the Marine Corps executed most of the ground attacks. MacArthur got off easy with a SW Pacific Command (New Guinea, the Solomons & Philippines) Nimitz took responsibility for the other half & the UK Birma.

This Japanese phase of contemplation gave the USA some much-needed time to mobilize its industry and do some soul-searching of its own. Now that "Bunker the Army in the Philippines and wait for the Navy" was out, a new strategy needed to be balanced out with the Atlantic Campaign. As Samuel Morrison worded it, America faced a two-ocean war.

What next ? How to bring the USA to the conference table to recognize the "Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" ? Conquer Hawaii ? Invade Australia ? Neither option was realistic with 1.5 million or 70% of their military effectives tied up on the Chinese horizons. Possession of Midway, however, would interdict Allied convoys in the South Pacific .. and the battle would draw the Navy out for that final showdown.

Not just fuel was short. In 10 years the size of the Japanese empire had grown twelvefold. The Home Islands lacked the manpower to garrison it and the economy only extracted enough to keep things level, even on full war footing. The logistics of occupation would stretch it. The war with China and the U.S. combined would tear it to pieces.

The Japanese Navy ended up eating its own black tail: the trickle they managed to squeeze from the Dutch East Indies failed not only to sustain the stock but even the annual consumption of its ships and airplanes.

The Dutch authorities carried out the demolition of their refineries with the same thoroughness as they built dykes; the Japanese lacked the high-tech repair capacity to restore them to the pre-war production level. Also they did not have enough tankers. This was a serious defect: the entire Strike South strategy predicated on the thesis that the Dutch East Indies reservoir could replace the oil imports from the USA.

Chiang understood better than Stilwell or Alexander that a fighting retreat north via 3 main rivers from a superior enemy preserved a fighting capability. By contrast the British call for aggression risked annihiliation... of course, the main front of North China was not their colony, so it was easy for them to say.