The Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. 1 (archived PDF)

C H A P T E R 11
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T H E DEFENSE OF
AUSTRALIA
N THE rapid southward thrust which by the opening days of
March 1942 had placed Japanese forces in control of the Malay
I Peninsula, of the Netherlands East Indies, and of the BismarckArchipelago, and which had brought them to the very doors of
Australia, the enemy had given effective demonstration of the type
of amphibious warfare that until the B-29’s began full-scale operations
would dominate the struggle in the Pacific. Operating under a plan
to throw overwhelming force against strategic points, Japanese land-
ing parties had moved forward in leaps of several hundred miles a t
a time, preceded by submarine and flying boat reconnaissance and by
light air raids mounted from the nearest land bases, and then by
heavier bombing attacks with escort provided as the occasion required
by carrier-borne or land-based fighters. An immediate objective of
the landing parties, while overcoming such local opposition as might
be met, was seizure of an airfield on which a prompt basing of fighters
for defense of the invading forces was merely preliminary to the
bringing in of bombers in preparation for the next move forward.
Within a week of the landing, the Japanese usually had repaired or
extended the facilities with the aid of local labor to permit their use
by two-engine bombers.’
T h e enemy’s tactics, which included the device of passing by cer-
tain points of resistance in accordance with a plan to reduce them at
leisure or merely to leave them to the ultimate penalties of isolation
and blockade, resembled those that were to be employed later by
Admiral Nimitz and General MacArthur in their offensives of 1943
and 1944. Indeed, General MacArthur had been the war’s first victim
of a type of warfare he subsequently would make peculiarly his own.
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