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

T H E B A T T L E L I N E I N T H E P A C I F I C
shipment to the Fijis were 1,660 Army service troops, naval forces
totaling 1,800 (1,500 for an air base detail, including personnel for
one aircraft carrier group and for twenty-five PBY's, and 300 for
local defense of ships and installations), and the flying echelon of the
70th Bombardment Squadron (M), which was expected to arrive in
July.24Already the ground echelon of the squadron had sailed from
Brisbane on 17 May.z5
With the gradual establishment of strong American forces in New
Caledonia, in the adjacent New Hebrides, which once had been con-
sidered as an alternate to New Caledonia, and in the Fiji Islands, the
prospects of holding the lines of communication between Australia
and the United States-and consequently the outlook for the forces in
Australia-became much brighter. In order to make the Allied position
even more secure, a joint Army-Navy plan was instituted for re-
inforcing Tongatabu, 500 miles southwest of Samoa and the southern-
most island of the Tonga group. So long as the line New Caledonia-
Fiji-Samoa was maintained, it was improbable that Tongatabu would
be attacked by a major enemy force; but the base could be of
extreme strategic importance as an alternate staging point between
the United States and the Southwest Pacific Area, and as an outpost
to prevent enemy attacks upon the Fijis and Samoa from the south.*'
It was therefore planned that Army troops totaling 292 officers, 6,189
enlisted men, and 52 nurses, and naval forces totaling 83 officers and
1,689 enlisted men who would be withdrawn upon completion of
the air base, would sail from the United States about 6 April, while
air force units totaling 58 officers and 606 enlisted men were to be
taken from the American forces in Australia and dispatched in order
to arrive at Tongatabu by 1 5 May. In conformance with this plan, the
68th Pursuit Squadron sailed from Brisbane on 8 May, disembarking
at Tongatabu on the 17th; seventeen days later, the last of the squad-
ron's twenty-five P-40Es had been assembled and test-flown."
T h e Qziestion of lsland Defense
As the ground, naval, and air forces moved to their stations along
the island chain, it was apparent that there was no clear agreement
in Washington as to the ultimate strength necessary to hold these
bases. This confusion over the statistics of defense arose from a larger
disagreement over the relative importance of war in the Pacific with
respect to the global war. Even prior to the Japanese attack which
435