Great Pacific War: A History of the American-Japanese Campaign of 1931-33 Read Online Free PDF

Philippines, there to await further orders. The political situation, he was informed, was serious enough to justify the taking of special measures for the safety of his command. Not until long afterwards was it known that the issue of these orders to Admiral Ribley had occasioned a serious dispute at the Navy Department, and led to the retirement of Captain Appleton, the Assistant Chief of Naval Operations, an officer of brilliant attainments, whose appointment to this important post a year earlier had evoked some heart-burnings, it being usually held by a flag officer.
    The Asiatic fleet was less of a fighting organisation than a squadron for “showing the flag”; excepting the destroyers and submarines it was composed of obsolete ships with limited military value. Besides the flagship Missoula , an armoured cruiser more than twenty years old, it comprised the Frederick , an older and smaller vessel of the same type; three slow and ancient light cruisers — Galveston , Denver , and Cleveland ; the small airplane-carrier Curtiss ; ten destroyers, three light mine-layers, twelve submarines, and various non-combatant auxiliaries. As the larger ships of this squadron could offer no serious resistance in case of attack by the Japanese fleet, and must inevitably be destroyed if they were brought to action, Captain Appleton urged their immediate recall to Hawaii. The destroyers and submarines he proposed to leave in the Western Pacific, as they were well fitted to co-operate in the defence of the Philippines. But this plan did not commend itself to Admiral Morrison, the Chief of Naval Operations, who rated the military power of the Asiatic fleet more highly than his subordinate and believed that, if concentrated, it could put up a good fight against anything short of the Japanese battle fleet.
    Declining to accept responsibility for orders which he regarded as the forerunner of certain disaster, Captain Appleton resigned his post and applied for a sea command. This, however, he did not receive till some time after, when events had fully vindicated the accuracy of his judgment. His successor as Assistant Chief of Operations was Rear-Admiral Hubbard. On March 2 a message was received from Admiral Ribley acknowledging the Department’s orders, but requesting the prompt dispatch of reinforcements for his fleet, and indicating deficiencies in reserve ammunition and other warlike stores. This proved to be the last communication from him. A day later the cable ceased to work, and repeated radio messages, both direct from the high-power stations on the West coast and relayed from Samoa, failed to elicit an answer. Nor could contact be made with Guam, though in normal circumstances the radio plant at that island could send over a distance of ten thousand miles.
    From the silence that now descended on the Western Pacific it was only too plain that some radio installation of maximum power was being used to jamb all signals from the American stations, nor could there be any doubt as to who was responsible for this interference. The only conclusion possible was that Japan had cast her vote for war and was already engaged in acts of hostility. This belief was universally held at Washington on the evening of March 3. But it was not until March 5 that the Japanese Ambassador, Count Sakatani, applied for his passports, and by that time things had happened which made the Japanese declaration of war a somewhat superfluous formality.
    Late in February, when the gravity of the situation could no longer be ignored, the majority of the warships then in the Atlantic and Caribbean had been ordered to join the flag of the Commander-in-Chief in the Pacific, Admiral Robert J. Dallinger. Needless to say, these orders were not made public, but the volume of naval traffic through the Panama Canal showed clearly enough that a big concentration of strength in the Pacific was in progress. Ordinary commercial traffic still went on, however, as the United States