School of War - Ep 170: Evan Mawdsley on WW2 in the Central Pacific

Episode Date: January 21, 2025

Evan Mawdsley, Honorary Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow and author of Supremacy at Sea: Task Force 58 and the Central Pacific Victory, joins the show to discuss the successful 1944 U.S. naval campaign through the Central Pacific in World War II. ▪️ Times      •      01:36 Introduction     •      02:27 The Central Pacific      •      11:15 Carrier air power      •     14:31 Embracing the task force        •      20:00 Replenishment at sea      •      24:28 A campaign for airbases      •      27:56 Limiting loss       •      33:38 Spruance & Mitscher      •      38:36 Japanese defense doctrine      •      45:58 Parallels today     Follow along on Instagram or YouTube @SchoolofWarPodcast Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack

After the Japanese surprise attack at Pearl Harbor and following two years of grinding warfare in the southwest Pacific, the reconstituted and reorganized U.S. Navy embarked on a multi-thousand-mile series of strikes through the Central Pacific. Through the first half of 1944, culminating in the successful Battle of the Philippine Sea, a fighting organization known as Task Force 58 conquered vast distances to strike through to the heart of the Japanese-controlled Pacific and regain the initiative in the war. Let's get into it.

It is the prescription for war this Milwaukee invasion of Hawaii. December 7, 1941, a date which will live in it. A bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a state. We continue to face the rain situation in grand.

We'll fight on the beaches, we're just fight on the landing ground, we'll fight in the fields, for more follow school of war on youtube instagram substack and twitter and feel free to follow me on twitter at aaron b mcclain hi i'm erin mcclain thanks for joining school of war i'm delighted to welcome to the show today evan maudsley who is honorary professorial research fellow at the university of glasgow school of humanities he's a historian of the second world war of maritime affairs and he's the author most recently of Supremacy at Sea, Task Force 58, and the Central Pacific Victory.

Evan, thank you so much for joining the show. Thanks so much for inviting me. I very much enjoyed the book and recommended it to readers. In addition to being really thoughtfully composed, it has something, I always praise it when it's there because it's increasingly rare these days, but excellent maps and visuals that seem to have been custom done for the book and really contributed to my understanding for the kind of complicated operations that you're describing. And one of the things that I think you described really well in the book

is the strategic geography of the Central Pacific, which is kind of hard to wrap one's mind around. And maybe we could start there. You know, what does this part of the world look like to the naval strategist or maybe just the military strategist and how were the Americans and the Japanese thinking about this part of the world even before hostilities began? Yes, I think that's a lot of.

a very good way to start. On the maps, I would say that Yale University Press did a fantastic job on the maps. I've done a couple of books with them, and whoever does the maps, who I've never met, does a superb job. And these maps are, I think, are the ones for supremacy at sea are really good on the kind of both the big picture of the strategic geography of the Pacific, but also the actual events of the battle of the Central Pacific and the Philippine Sea in particular. Yeah, on the overall geography, I suppose it's kind of one level of geography is north-central south. And so the U.S. Navy had, or the American Armed Forces, had three armed forces coming from the east. And that would be the North Pacific, which is largely the Aleutians.

the South Pacific, which is really the famous campaign of 1942 with Guadalcanal and so on. And then the Central Pacific, which is what I'm really talking about today, which kind of corresponds to what we think of Micronesia. So you have to think about maybe three horizontal bands, north, central and south. And when both the Americans and the Japanese were thinking about what might happen in a future war, thinking in the 20s and 30s about a future war, then they kind of naturally thought about the Central Pacific. Part of because it was a Japanese mandate, legal nation's mandate, territory taken over from Germany after 1918. So it's kind of interesting kind of historical past. But the Japanese wanted to hold the mandate, leave this territory as a kind of outer defensive perimeter.

And then in the American into war war plans, which are often called war plan orange, they perceive of an advance from, largely from Hawaii, across the Central Pacific, towards the Philippines and towards Japan. And so it's really that particular campaign that I'm talking about. And that campaign takes into account, really, sort of three island, island change, the archipelagos, the marshals, the Carolines. Again, we're going from east to west here. Think, you know, think San Francisco, Hawaii, the marshals, and that's already a long way. Like 4,000 miles.

Yeah, to get beyond the national dateline, you know, here in the marshals. After the marshals comes to Carolines, which is where Truk, the major Japanese forward naval bases, and then the Marianas. the Mariana Islands, which are up to the west. And then beyond that, the Philippines and Taiwan. So it's a long kind of, it's a, it's a strip of territory, but a very, very long, very long strip of territory. So it's different from the South Pacific. South Pacific is south of the equator.

The North Pacific is, well, north of continental the U.S., you know, it's like Alaska, whereas this central belt is what the planning was all about. The first year of the war in 1942 is largely about the South Pacific. That's where Guadalcanal is. However, there's obviously a caveat here because both Pearl Harbor and Midway are in the Central Pacific. But that was a kind of an aside. There were unusual events that occurred there.

Obviously, Pearl Harbor was a surprise attack. Midway was an attempt to lure the rest of the American Navy out to destroy it, and it was based at Pearl Harbor. But after those two big battles, things return back to the South Pacific. When we think about Halsey and Guadalcanal, then that's the South Pacific. It's a different thing. So that's the geography. By the way, what I don't do in the book is talk about the Gilberts, which is the

Giroble is a well-known because of Tarawa, the first very bloody marine invasion against a fortified atoll. That operation, I kind of argue, falls out. side pre-war planning. And also, it's rather unusual because the Gilberts were British territory. So the Americans hadn't thought too much about the Gilberts when they were, and then were planning the war. And the Gilberts kind of spring out because of Japanese supply lines further south. The other final things I would say about this geographical situation is that on the other side, when you get to the Mariana's, Mariana's north-south, Guam, Saipan, Tinian. But when you get beyond them to the west,

we are into the Philippine Sea, and beyond that to the Philippines themselves. And the Philippines had been an American, as I'm sure your listeners all know, the Philippines had been an American colony before 1900. And one of the reasons for the nature of the American offensive through the Central Pacific would be to either to relieve the Philippines if the Japanese captured them or to recapture the Philippines. So that's a very important dimension there. But what I really stress, I think overall is this central belt east-west going right across the Central Pacific.

And it's not irrelevant today either. Right. Well, just as an aside, I'm a veteran of the 6th Marine Regiment. So I, Tarawa, Bediow, and all of that looms large, of course, in our unit memory. So as 1943 turns into 1944 and this offensive in the Central Pacific is launched, the significance of this terrain, the, you know, marshals, then Carolines, and then they kind of go up into the Marianas. The Marianas really are kind of the second island chain, you know, the Philippines and Japan and everything is the first island chain, which is discussed a lot today in the context of contemporary

strategic concerns. Then the Marianas in Guam is really the second island chain, but then, as you point out, everything else we're talking about, they kind of, they kind of connect to the Marianas, but then they kind of go out to the east in a bit of a cloud. It's not really a chain or a line. It has a broad horizontal axis that stretches well up to the dateline. Yeah, it is a cloud. And also we're talking about very small islands and atolls. You know, the Marianas are, the Philippines are, you know, a major, a very substantial territory. The Marianas are, you know, I mean, the Guam, Saipan, Tinian are all pretty big.

I mean, they're not big. The analogy I use is the Channel Islands, but they're, like Guernsey and Jersey. That's my British parallel, but it's like that. So you have to think the Mariana's on the second island chain are north-south, whereas the Central Pacific, you know, going from the marshals across the Carolines to Palau, which is a whole different thing.

And south of the Mariana, that's central, east-west, different thing, you know. And so all of, well, not all this, but most of it belongs to Japan as a consequence, right, of Versailles, and then they've seized what didn't belong to them in the opening stages of the war. Yeah, that's right. But mostly what they do is they hold a mandate, right? And what they actually sees are areas to the south to protect the mandate and areas to the west, which of the Philippines. So in fact, they're more secure after the invasion of the Philippines.

They had been before because before they had this advanced island chain, but behind it was territory of the U.S. So they're actually in a much stronger position in 1943, 44 than they had been in 1941. I mean, I could talk more about that. It's a different topic, but I mean, one reason why the Japanese attacked the United States. I mean, they're really interested in Malaya and Borneo and Dutch East Indies. But the reason why they attack the United States is because they want to control the second island chain. If the Americans still control the Philippines, then they can cut Chinese shipping up and down in the East China Sea and South China Sea. So that's controlled by the Japanese at that stage.

But that's really important for them. And the strategic significance of these islands, the second island chain in Cloud in 43 into 44 is one, it's a kind of road down which the Americans can drive and along which the Japanese have to defend for objectives further west, maybe potentially the Philippines to which, you know, MacArthur is making slow, steady progress in the south, kind of in a hook up towards. But also, as it turns out to be in a much more rapid fashion than going in kind of slow attritional fashion. up through New Guinea and so forth, to get much closer to Japan in the Marianas, which turns out to be the real strategic, significant strategic outcome of the campaign in 1944. Yeah. In fact, what I would stress is that the remarkable thing about the Central Pacific campaign,

and the book is really about that rather than about the, about Saipan or about the Philippine Sea, although there are two long chapters about that, but it's the fact that the passage from the marshals to the Marianas is done with very, very quickly. And unlike what they actually expected to do, it doesn't involve a whole lot of amphibious landings. And carrier air power makes it possible to, it's carrier air power versus Japanese land-based air power. It's a peculiar kind of campaign, but that particular dynamic is one that allows a very

rapid American advance at very low losses. One of the things about the whole Central Pacific campaign is that the campaign is, I think, hugely important. And I mean, I think it's actually more important than the Lady Gulf. But it's hugely important, but it involves very low American losses. I mean, no major American warship, you know, carrier, battleship, cruiser, destroyer is lost or even badly damaged in the entire campaign from January in the Marshals until after the Battle of the Philippine Sea. So it's really an example of air power making unnecessary at-fibious landings. They're able to suppress Admiral Spruance, who's the kind of who's the central guy in terms of overall planning. It talks about smothering the Japanese, and that's what they do.

They're able to smother the Japanese airfields one after the other, and the Japanese are always falling back. And the Japanese aren't really prepared to come out to fight until late May, early June when they soarkey from the Philippines and they attempt to engage the American fleet off Saipan. But until that time, they don't really respond. They kind of try to rely on land-based air power to achieve their results. And they are repeatedly overwhelmed by the American attack. And that American attack is the campaign of the fast carriers. The force which is built up rapidly in 42, 43, 44.

In general, the difference between 1942 and 1944, it's about production. The fact that in 1944, the United States has 16, 16, 16, 1-6 fast carriers in action in the Central Pacific. In 1942, they had six, and the four of them were sunk during the campaign. So it's, in material terms, qualitatively very different. Can you speak about, I mean, that's an excellent point in another relevant, even earlier, urgently relevant point as we think about today, that just the role of the American industrial base and the ability to put ships at sea. To what extent is it also the case that there's an evolution in the American way of fighting at sea and just American operational concepts?

Is it overstating or oversimplifying to say that what the Japanese achieve at Pearl Harbor the Americans perhaps under accounted for in their pre-war planning and now rapidly account for and pay back the favor? Is that too, simple? Is that not quite right? Like what actually happens here in the American embrace of these carrier tactics? Yeah, I think, and I think the Americans are surprised by how rapidly Japan has mastered the content of a task force and carriers and carrier aircraft. I mean, it is something which is very surprising in a way that the British don't, you know, the British, the British, the British fight the entire war with the hands really tied behind their back because they haven't

developed those kind of forces. I would say the Americans have for a range of reason. In America, there is a kind of, I said, this is not nothing new, but I mean, there's a conflict in the Navy between black and brown shoe sailors and there's a kind of aviation lobby, and there's a battleship lobby. And one of the reasons why the campaign is interesting is because it's commanded by an admiral from the battleship lobby, or two admirals of the battleship lobby spruents and Nimitz on one hand. And another person they work well through is the commander of the carrier task force. But I think what is important about the U.S. Navy, in my opinion, in the 20s and 30s,

is that it buys into aviation in a big way. And also it makes aviation a good career path for the senior officers. In fact, what's happening when the when the, when the, when Congress declares that captains of aircraft carriers have to have aviation training, quite a few senior American flag captains and even flag officers

learn do some flight training of Pensacola. They're not fighter pilots, but they are, I mean, that comes later on, but there's got an even bigger air lobby after the war. But before the war, you know, they train as observers and they command carriers. So they actually have quite a good concert to what's involved. There's a whole, and there's a good

pipeline of personnel who were there that when they do build these aircraft carriers, you know, roughly from 1940 onwards, when they actually come on stream and they're available in the Central Pacific, there are flag offices able to, or captains able to command carriers, there are flag offices able to command task groups and task forces. And that, that I think, is a result of a really very, very impressive long-term, long-term planning. The Japanese don't have that. Basically, although Pearl Harbor, I think, is one of the most remarkable operations of the Second World War. For the Japanese, it's essentially kind of come as you are a war. The Japanese have actually been fighting a full-scale war in China in 1937, which actually has a significant naval or naval air dimension.

And they have a big shipbuilding program. But once they go to war, there is no second string. there's nothing to slot in behind the first group of carriers. So when they lose four of their six carriers at Midway, they're really very hard-pressed. They lose some more at Guadalcanal. And so after October, November in 1942, the carrier force of the Japanese is unable to come out until June of 1944. And in contrast, the American carrier force spills up incrementally and then rapidly in 1943 and 44 from about June, July,

in 1943, new carriers begin to appear in the Pacific until this huge Task Force 58 is actually built up.

By the way, I was originally hoping to use the title Task Force 58 for the whole book. And then someone nipped in in front of me and used the same title

for another book. So I had to go for supremacy and see, which I was, I mean, I was unhappy about, but I think in some ways it makes sense

because I was trying to make a general point and not everyone has heard of Tavis. Force 58 or can tell it from other task forces. But we were talking before we started recording about parallels between all of this and present day considerations and the way in which the Navy, the American military and the Japanese for that matter have to embrace technological change sort of in real time strikes

me as another important dimension to examine if you're looking to learn lessons from the 40s that are relevant today. There's the geography itself, which is the same potentially, if there's going to be a conflict in the Pacific. There's the industrial-based production question, which is critical. And then there's what we're talking about. And obviously the operating concepts are different today. The planning is different today. And then that planning will likely have to evolve should there be a war with contact, because it won't look exactly like what everyone is thinking it will look like. Just that's the nature of the thing. And so here you have a Navy, and speaking of the Americans,

a Navy and a war plan that sort of in Mahanian fashion planned to fight in the Pacific through, you know, essentially a method of, you know, maintaining lines of communication and bases and presumed that decisive battles, at least early in the planning would be between ships, more or less within sight of each other, slugging it out. And then they have to embrace as the war actually gets closer, this notion that actually the ships themselves are kind of going to be bases. And they're going to launch raids of these aircraft. They're going to fly over the horizon. And the actual conflict is going to be a raiding. Like at the tactical level, it's going to be an exchange of raids back and forth over the horizon. I mean, Philippines see the battles at this point. The major set pieces are enemy ships generally speaking don't cite each other, correct?

I mean, it's all aviation. Not at all. No, it's very much. Also, you've got carriers suppressing bases as well. Again, the smothering thing is land-based airplanes. versus carrier air power. And it kind of demonstrates the mobility of the carriers, which is, what tends to happen is almost in every case.

The Americans wipe out the Japanese air bases. I mean, they neutralize them, and there is nothing the Japanese can do. And repeatedly, and they're not being caught by surprise. They can't prevent that. The other thing I'd say, you know, according to, in addition to what you mentioned, about the fast carriers, and it's quite a big part of the book is about logistics. Right, and it's the ability to, well, you know, replenishment at sea. I didn't know this quite recently.

There's a recent article, I think, by Marine about the Japanese actually pioneered a relationship to sea before the war and actually had quite a good tanker force. But the Americans do it in a really serious way. I mean, the British don't do it because one of the reasons being they have a large colonial system, so they have lots of ports they can use overseas. But the Americans know, in particular, if they want to fight a campaign in the Central Pacific, that they're going to need a very long-range attacks. And so they begin in 1939, but they begin to build a very large oiler, what the Navy calls tankers.

They're different from tankers, in that they're capable of doing replenishment at sea. They're heavily manned. They have some ornament and so on. But what's built up there is gives the Americans a kind of mobility that the, the Japanese didn't imagine was possible over a long range of time. So by early 44, the Americans can send forces, task forces out, supported by oiler forces, and they can replenish themselves at sea. It's very, very complicated, very sophisticated, very impressive.

It is what happens partly is that the oilers to refuel the battleships and the battleships to refuel the destroyers, but it's more complicated. than that. But in addition to that, in addition to the replenishment sea side of things, is maintenance. So they are able to create bases out of nothing, you know, where there is, you know, basically the, the Carolines are, there are a series of Japanese colonies. And they have quite a harbors, but they're natural harbors. There's nothing much there. And there isn't much of a population. There's no workforce. There's like a water. Everything has to be brought in. And so the fleet chain is created in 1942-43 to make that kind of mobility possible.

So I think if you think of just the carrier force, then I think what makes advanced possible is the ability to refuel those carriers, both the carriers and their aircraft, both of which are, you know, in climate terms, in climate change terms are a really bad thing. They use a lot of oil. They're very carbon fuel demanding. War is pretty bad for the climate as a... It is very bad for the climate in so many ways. But yeah, so I think that's...

But I would say that's an additional thing. But that is a skill which the Americans have mastered. And so their logistics are very good. That would have been true. Even if there hadn't been carriers, because a battleship force would have required being refueled as well. That does give them a big edge. And I suppose that's also a factor.

today, if you're operating, you know, if you want to operate extensive forces in the Western Pacific, you need to have adequate bases there. I mean, there are, there are, the base situation is different from what it was back then because of the Philippines and Japan, but it's, you know, it's obviously a factor to be borne in mind. But the sophistication of the logistics and then just the potency of, of the air capacity meant in practice, the sort of the Americans needed fewer bases than they might otherwise have needed. And so when they do go ashore, whether it's, you know, in the Gilbert's before the main phase that you cover in the book

or later in the Marianas, places like Saipan and Guam, it really is because they need their own base. Like, that's the main rationale. Other than if you don't have that rationale, there's no need to go ashore. You can just pummel the place from the air. Is that basically correct? No, that's right.

I mean, even in the case of Tarawa, I mean, the reason why the Tarawa was not to grant territory to create air bases. So once they held Tarawa and the Gilberts, they could get better air support for the invasion of the marshals. So that's why that takes place. The Marianas is slightly different.

I think Admiral King, who's the kind of overall commander of the Navy, is interested in the Marianas as an advanced base for taking the ward in Japan and locating Japan. But what the Marianas don't have is good natural harbors.

So you need nearby places like Ulythi, which I think is the Carolines, which is, you know, which can act as a fleet base. But in the case of the Marianas, the bases that you want are actually strategic air bases. The reason why, for a long time, they were, for a long time, the Americans weren't keen on taking the marianas because they seem to have no real purpose. The, you know, the, the southern area is more important. But in fact, once the Air Force, once the Air Force has developed, out the B-29 force and they can realistically think about deploying them against Japan. And in addition, once the Chinese basing idea doesn't work, then this becomes valuable territory in a kind of joint sense. You know, it's actually, the Air Force swings in behind it because

it's going to give the U.S. Army Air Force the bases to it to attack Japan, the nearest bases they can get. Obviously, in the end, ultimately, including their final atomic attacks, are Bacentenian in the Marianas. So there's this element there. And in fact, there are only two major landings in the Central Pacific campaign. One is in Kajalien, which is relatively bloodless, not relatively, but it's, yeah, it's relatively bloodless. A lot of lessons are learned at Tarawa, and they're applied at Kajelan. And the second landing score, come six months later, really, when the, at least in terms of the Central Pacific, when the Marines and an army land on Saipan. The Japanese actually think that the Japanese army thinks

it's possible to hold the Marianas without the Navy, you know, that in fact they can, because the army is so strong, there is so much deployed by the Japanese army from China into the Marianas that they can hold out on their own, even without naval support. That isn't true, and in fact, they are, they are defeated. But it's, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a. It was a bloodier battle in Tarau, but it was longer. It lasted longer, but like it involves armor. It's more of a, of a complicated, complicated ground battle than had been the case before.

But yeah, yeah, yeah, this, this need to capture real estate's for the important and, of course, Guamas is still very important now. Well, it's still, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's reminiscent of what's going on in across the world at the same time that i mean one of the major compelling rationales for the italian campaign right certainly that persuades otherwise skeptical americans is the ability to use the plains of southern italy to position strategic bombers that can then go after germany right so it's it's the same phenomenon of of your your logistical needs for future operations and basing needs for future operations driving your driving your present operations

as you move towards the enemy homeland. Yeah, I think it's seen that way. In addition, I think it's hoped to do it with relatively low losses. I think that's an important factor. And it's a feature of the Central Pacific Campaign. I mean, after Tarawa, I mean, there was some thought that, well, we can't do this again. You know, this is really, very expensive. And the American population won't tolerate such, such heavy losses.

Fortunately, from the point of view, the American War effort, that changes. The other element, which we haven't talked about, but is of interest, is the, you know, as I think you mentioned at the very beginning, is there is this other campaign going on in the Pacific under General MacArthur, which is going through in the Admiral Nimitz commands, one command in Hawaii, General MacArthur commands, another command in Australia, which is fighting mostly in New Guinea. And there are different objectives that the Navy, the U.S. Navy is not terribly interested in taking the Philippines back. whereas General MacArthur is. So there's this odd kind of strategic division which is going on there and which is, which is eventually

resolved, I think, by my President Roosevelt, but also it's resolved by the fact that the Japanese are clearly crumbling, you know, and I think that it becomes possible that things that didn't seem workable in

in 1943 are workable in 1944. But even so, there's a big debate about, you know, where do we go after the Mariamos? Do we go to the Luzon in the Philippines, or do we go to Taiwan? You know, at the end, go to Luzon, kind of for political reasons. Anyway, that's successful, but it's kind of, it's almost that that doesn't really relate to what happens to the rest of the war, because the war is basically won by air power, well, not solely won by air power, but it's, it's ultimately the strategic B-29 campaign is what has a very devastating effect. on the Japanese. Admiral Spruence, when he's talking about the war, says he's tried to

argue. Arborosprudence was a battleship sailor, but in no means a kind of soft touch. He was a very sharp guy. He argued that the fact that the war with Japan is won before any soldier lands in Japanese territory was a sign of the importance of sea power. I think that's right. But on the other hand, it is also true that air power played a very big role in the final outcome of the war. By the way, what I don't talk about in the book very much is that I don't talk about the American submarine campaign going out at the same time. And I also don't talk about, and this would be relevant from your point of view, I don't talk about amphibious warfare. And both of those are exceedingly important and demonstrate that this American mastery of the military struggle by 1943, 1944. Yeah, we could have an interesting philosophical debate about whether air power is more an extension of land power or sea power, its own independent third thing, and what the lessons actually are.

I use the term, I use the term, C, oblique air power, okay, as a kind of mix. Because I think that, you know, you can't talk about C power. I mean, it's ridiculous. Yeah, I mean, and you do it in 1914 or in 1905, but once you get to 1941, it's clear that. that air power is, airplanes flying over the sea are playing a crucial, a crucial role. So, but, I mean, the term air is sea power,

you know, air oblique sea power versus sea versus air power is a tricky one. But I mean, fundamentally, it's about control of the seas. So, you know, and it's being done, it's being done above the sea by aircraft. It's being done below the sea by submarines. It's being done on the coast by amphibious forces. It's being done by battle fleets.

But it's about the sea. It's maritime. So one of the things that, you know, what of your themes at the center of which you're chronicling here is the, you know, the success of the campaign and the relatively inexpensive success of the campaign compared to other efforts. And to your point about Terawa, I think it's in your book. I think this is where I came across this. I did recently.

It was, you know, in something like six months on Guadalcanal, you know, there had been 2,000 Americans killed in action. And that's, you know, 1,000 Americans are killed in action in Taraa over the course of, you know, basically a couple of days. I know they're putting that is two days on Taraa was the save of six months in the Solomons. So it was, it was hugely costly. Yeah. And so obviously, I mean, if I were sitting there, I would conclude the same thing that this is not sustainable. And that's that you're playing into the Japanese hands, right?

I mean, ultimately the fundamental plank of Japanese strategy is we're going to seize all this. stuff. We don't really have the industrial base to hold it, even with Manchuria. Like, it's, the Americans, if they really put their back into it, have advantages that we don't have. But the American people will give up. We're going to draw a line in the ocean and we're going to trick them. And they're just, they're going to throw in the towel. They're not going to be willing to pay the bill for what's going to cost to achieve, you know, imperialism that the Americans have always rejected, you know, in their democracy. That's their bet. And if you can charge them a Tarawa every couple of weeks. I mean, maybe you'll, maybe you'll be right. But in the end,

this is, in a way, this is what your book is about is, is this American campaign that doesn't have to pay that kind of bill and achieves extraordinary results. Maybe if you would, just talk a bit about Spruance and also Mitcher and these task force tactics that they employ. Like, what is the, what is the, what is the sauce here, the operating concept sauce that they are using over these critical months. Yeah, I got very interested in the kind of doctrinal documents of the U.S. Navy, you know, the planning for operating task force and task groups, which kind of develops in 1943 before these forces actually arrive. They're thinking about how to use them. I've got a whole chapter, which is about, well, most of it, it's about Spruence and Mitcher, who are very, very different

people. They are new contemporaries. Spruins did very well in Annapolis. Mitcher did very badly in Annapolis. Spruins had no experience. New, had lots of experience, but he had no experience whatever with aviation until the spring of 1942. Basically, Mitcher never commanded a ship until 1938, 39, when he commanded a seaplane tender. So he had no experience as being an admiral of a fleet. And yet these two guys got on pretty well. I think they, it's a different story, but basically Spruence and Mitcher were both involved at Midway. And Spruence thought that Mitcher had had performed badly at Midway, and he was kind of parked in nowhere after the battle.

He was running flying boat commands after Midway, and he only comes in later on. But once Spruent actually, after the first couple of operations, first of all, the operations around the marshals, and then the radon trook also in February 1940, 44, convinced Spruins that the aircraft carriers are the key element and that they should proceed separately. So what you've got is this kind of three-tier command. You've got Nimitz who's in command of the whole thing, north, central, south. You've got Spruens, who's in command of the whole Central Pacific Force, which actually includes also Army and Air Force elements. And then you've got Task Force 58, which is subordinate to Spruance, and that's under Mitter. And the Mitter has under him for task groups. So basically, each of these task groups

is about the same size as the U.S. Pacific Fleet in 1942. And they're capable of operating independently far apart from one another, that under centralized control. And that concept is one that really no one objects to. Certainly, I mean, Spruence, I think Spruence in his heart of hearts would have liked for there to be a battleship element to some of this, you know, that he would have liked the battle fleet to have got involved. They have eight brand new battleships and they're not doing an awful lot.

And I think he's disappointed by that. But equally, I think he recognizes that air power is the key. And the way in which that campaign is fought in the Central Pacific between January and June is really done by, I mean, the term C air power, C slash air power is really the only way in which you can describe it. But again, you know, when the way, when the way. war began, the aviators were, they were a minority. You know, most people had been indoctrinated in terms of the Battle of Jutland and the role of battleships. And so it's really only quite late, really like the late 1930s. And then the early experience of the Second World War before America enters the war, that they can see this other other implication. But I think, I think

pretty much, once the war starts, certainly after Pearl Harbor, when they lose all the battleships, no one has a lot of a lot of problems with giving the carriers this key role. And unlike the Japanese, under Admiral Yamamoto and Admiral Koga, who is his successor, both of them are quite big on air power. But it's not sustainable for them. You know, one of the things about America, and you mentioned American industrial power, was the ability to outproduce the Japanese. It's not a well-known fact is that Japanese air production peaks in February.

in September, 1944, you know, very late in the war. But it's dwarfed by what the Americans achieve. And the Americans are fighting a second war in Europe as well. So it's quite extraordinary. The Philippine Sea coincides with D-Day, and it coincides with the invasion of Rome being captured in Italy. And it coincides with the first air raids on Japan based in China. So all over the world, the Americans are able to have this material advantage to do it.

to achieve, you know, quite remarkable things. Talk a bit about the Japanese view of what's going on in these months and mistakes that they make. I mean, perhaps their position is just untenable, given the broader strategic and industrial factors that you were just pointing to. But what did they think the Americans are up to over the course of this six-month period? I mean, there's a bit of ambiguity about what the objective of all this is, right? And it interacts with MacArthur's campaign. And maybe it's more in support of that campaign. Maybe it's going for the jugular.

it's not totally clear. It could be anything. How are they thinking about it? How are they reacting? Why do they fail? Yeah. I would say there's a kind of caveat at the front of the book saying this is not about Japan. Sure, sure, sure, yeah. It's very much about American. No, no, no, no, it's going to go. I was coming to that. Yes. So if you're really kidding, read the appendix first.

It's about 10 pages long, and it's about Japanese strategy. And I would say that one of the, although it's true that what I write is merely about America, one of the interesting things that I kind of was able to use, which I don't think had been used very much before, was Japanese doctrinal documents from late in 1943. early 44, which is how do the Japanese plan to respond to the American counteroffensive when it comes? And those plans are, we normally know them as the Zed plans, we British call them, or the Z plans, if you're with an American pronunciation. But they're like nine different campaign plans for doing, if you imagine a periphery, a circular

periphery across the Pacific. And it goes from the Curial Islands. to Dutch East Indies. It's quite the opposite of the inner island chain, of the second island chain. Anyway, it's a Japanese defensive chain. They work out plans and what will they do if the Americans attack any of these points, any of nine points on the periphery. So they do have a plan for each eventuality.

And probably the most important one is the Central Pacific plan. You know, what do they do if the Americans advance from Hawaii? towards the marshals and so on. And these plans begin to be worked out at the end of 1943, which is before the Central Pacific Campaign begins. But they do plug it into interaction, and they do try to respond. But they're never able to generate enough force to respond fully anywhere.

And they haven't got a strong enough carrier force to deploy that force anywhere along the peripheries. They're trying to use air power to do it. They're trying to use a rapid rebasing of ground-based naval air groups forward into the Pacific. And it's quite an impressive thing to do. But they are reluctant to use the Navy because the Navy is so weak. In terms of carriers, the Japanese Navy is still weak by time to get to 43, 44. They only have three big carriers left, maybe half a dozen small or converted carriers.

but, you know, they know they have a small force. And so when the Americans are thinking about what's going to happen, this is Admiral Nimitz and Admiral Spruents. This is in April and March, April and May, 1944, before the invasion of Saipan is that their guess is the Japanese won't come out. They think the Japanese aren't going to risk the fleet to defend against Saipan because they're so heavily outnumbered that such an operation would be suicidal.

And it was suicidal. So they were sort of right, but it was certainly suicidal in terms of loss of air power. So what happens in the Battle of the Philippine Sea is the Japanese so archie their carrier force. They take advantage of the longer range of their carrier planes over the American carrier planes. And they launch long-range strikes against the Americans. And those strikes are unsuccessful in the face of superior American air power. They don't succeed in breaking through to the American. you know, carrier force.

So no, no forces are lost. And that air battle, as your listeners will know, was a famous Marianas Turkey shoot when the Japanese lost over 300 planes and the Americans lost about 30. So, but the Japanese conception, I mean, the Japanese, the Japanese knew the war was not going well.

The Navy knew the Japanese was not going well. The Japanese Navy, the Japanese Navy knew the Japanese army thought that the Japanese Navy wasn't pulling its weight and that it had to do something to indicate, to indicate that it was prepared to fight. The Japanese Army thought maybe we can hold the Marianas without any naval help at all, that would have been a huge loss of face for the Japanese Navy.

So in the end, they decide that we will go out and fight. And what we'll try to do, basically, we'll try to do what the Americans said at Midway, that the Americans are going to, one side is going to seize an island, and the other side is going to counterattack and catch the enemy by supply. So they're hoping to outflank the Americans.

They're hoping to use certain range advantages to help them and so on. But it doesn't work. It's really only, I think only in 1945 when they change tactics and go over to the kamikazes that they're able to cause significant losses. But even that would not have, I mean, that comes about partly because of the Marianas Turkey shoot. They realize that whatever you do, you're going to lose your planes. So you might as well hit some American targets before you lose them. I mean, that doesn't actually work in the sense that the Japanese kamikaze's don't successfully destroy any major American warship.

They sink some escort carriers and they cause serious damage to American fleet carriers, but they aren't capable of changing the nature of the battles. So this Japanese desire to fight a dominant naval battle, you know, a war for control of the seas, like Jutland, or like the Battle of Tsushima against the Russians in 1905. That's what they hope to do, but that's physically impossible, given the balance of strength on the two sides. I want to close with a question about any further thoughts you have about parallels or relevance to the present day. I'll share one thought with you that it's a novel thought that I've just had listening to you lay this all out. I'm curious to know how you would respond and then anything else you want to reflect on. But, you know, it's relatively commonplace, not that it's been sufficiently studied, but it's hardly novel to say that the American failures leading up to 41 and into 42, the grand strategic level and strategic level in terms of managing the rise of Imperial Japan, its ambitions, you know, preparing for what's coming, et cetera. That's an enormous American failure in the end and that we ought to pay attention to that if we want to understand or shed some light on our current situation in the Pacific. But the additional thought that

I've had listening to you is there's an alarming way, an uncomfortable and quees-inducing way in which the American strategic situation today bears some resemblance to the Japanese strategic situation in 1943. That is to say, we have a lot of the Pacific in terms of the placement of our assets, you know, our treaty allies, things like that. We are, we are all over the Pacific. The Chinese are somewhat more limited. They feel encircled and hemmed in by the first island chain and the second island chain beyond that. But they have the industrial base advantage, and we do not. And our operational plans are, I mean, understandably defensive. We're not going to start a war. But as you were pointing out, you know, the Z plans go through. Well, what if they attack here?

What if they attack here? That's the conversation that we have, I assume. And I don't know. It's an echo. It's a parallel. And it doesn't work out well for the Japanese. But I'm just curious, your response to that and just any general thoughts you've got. Yeah, general thoughts. I mean, one of the things, one of the things about the book, right, is I'm arguing that. This is the point at which there's a handover of global naval control from Britain to the United States. And I mean, I personally think that in 1939, Britain was in a stronger position in maritime terms of the United States. By 1944, for a range of reasons, that isn't the case anymore. And America is stronger.

And I think that, you know, what you then have is 80 years of American maritime supremacy. You know, when America, you know, I mean, that hasn't been a kind of. of fleet versus fleet naval action since over that period of time, leaving aside the Falklands. But, I mean, aside from that, you know, on the whole American carriers have been used for power projection. There's ever been a kind of peer war between, you know, an enemy carrier force and an American carrier force.

So, so I think we are at a time of we're saying, okay, is this a new era coming up? You know, is this changing? Is this, that's what we are now? I'm actually thinking about a new book on the Cold War. This is kind of a long-term project, but I think taking 1945 as a start. starting point, you know, and thinking about, okay, this is America has naval supremacy, and it's challenged. It's challenged once by the Russians, and that challenge really begins to essentially in the 1970s, but the Russians are kind of blown away. I mean, they can't

sustain that. I'm very, very interested in the Chinese Navy, in a realization where the Chinese are doing what the Russians couldn't do. The Russians, you know, the Russians actually succeeded in building one major aircraft carrier, which was about seven months before the Soviet Union collapsed. That's the Admiral Kuznissal, right? That's that which is, I think, now finally out of action forever. But the Chinese clearly have a major naval program underway. The biggest Navy in the world. Well, it's biggest, yeah, I mean, it's biggest, but it's biggest in personnel terms, you know, as biggest in, what you have is two rather differently balanced navies.

You have one Navy which I think is fundamentally coastal and is composed of relatively small aircraft and has, even now, has only limited oceanic range. You have another Navy which is far superior to the Chinese Navy in terms of carrier air power. You can see it as a descendant of Task Force 58. A lot of the ship names are the same. And Phoebus Force carriers have the same name as Essex Class carriers from the Second World War. But it's kind of unbalanced in that the smaller units are weaker. I mean, I would go into submarines and so on. I mean, I would tend to take the, I mean, having lived through the experience of the Russian naval buildup,

I'm slightly more relaxed about the Chinese naval buildup. You know, the Russian one couldn't be sustained. I mean, China is obviously in a different situation. But the Russians had a bigger naval tradition, I think, than the Chinese did. You know, the Chinese Navy is very, very new. It essentially dates from the 1890s and for maybe the first decade of this century. So we're still a very early day. And to see how much the Chinese really care about sustaining that kind of a force given their own interests.

But I don't know. I'm really, really interested. And there's a lot of very interesting stuff coming out about the Chinese Navy and about how the America will react to it. But I think it does kind of, you know, I think to understand it, you have to go back to 1944, which is when, you know, when America does emerge as a force with a very strong Western Pacific dimension. And that's that links to the Philippines. It's linked to Japan. It's linked to Taiwan. And think to Australia, you know, so I think that's, I think that's really interesting. Evan Maudsley, author of Supremacy at Sea, Task Force 58 and the Central Pacific Victory.

Really, really interesting conversation. I appreciate you coming on the show. Thank you. Thank you very much for having any other show, but it's really interesting too, for me. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.