Pacific Counterblow - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Pacific
Counterblow
The South Pacific, Summer 1942
P EARL HARBOR secured for the Japanese the initiative in the
Pacific. They chose first to strike southward. By March 1942
the Netherlands East Indies, and with them any opportunity
of reinforcing the Philippines, had largely disappeared in the maw
of Nippon's war machine. March and April a successful but less
precipitate foe devoted to the initial digestion of his gains and the
extension of his forces along the flanks of Australia. Already Australian
security had thus become the first charge of U. S. forces in the
South Pacific, and defense of Australia meant defense of the last
remaining reinforcement route to the subcontinent-the 7,o00 miles
of island-studded Pacific seas lying between San Francisco and
Sydney.
Twice more the enemy moved offensively. A thrust in early May
against either Port Moresby or the Free French isle of New Caledonia,
bastion of the supply route from the United States, was smashed
in the Coral Sea. And after 6 June, with its ambitious two-pronged
offensive against Midway and the Aleutians crushed at Midway, the
Japanese fleet retired westward to lick its wounds. For the first time
in the Pacific war, America possessed the initiative-a limited, precarious
initiative, demanding the earliest possible, exploitation.
How this initiative was employed is the history of the operation
against Guadalcanal and Tulagi in the Solomon Islands. Primarily
it was an operation to safeguard Australia's supply line, threatened
The ranks of officers mentioned in this booklet are those which they held at the time of the
events described herein.