Islands of Destiny: The Solomons Campaign and the Eclipse of the Rising Sun Read Online Free PDF

were concentrated among the carrier attack squadrons. The Imperial Navy would train about 2,000 new pilots in 1942. That summer, when the Solomons campaign began, it is estimated that over 85 percent of naval pilots still met the expert standard of more than 600 flying hours.
    In other categories of naval strength the Combined Fleet was well off. The light carrier
Shoho
had been lost at the Battle of the Coral Sea in May. Until the sinking of cruiser
Mikuma
and the carriers
Akagi
,
Kaga
,
Soryu
, and
Hiryu
at Midway, she had been the biggest Japanese combatant to go down. Only a few other vessels had been sunk, fleet auxiliaries mostly, and nowarship larger than a destroyer. Until now Japanese luck had held. They remained powerful. Admiral Yamamoto would need all his strength to meet the test of the Solomons.
    Among those who made the pilgrimage to flagship
Yamato
was Rear Admiral Matsuyama Mitsuharu, who visited with Ugaki on June 17. Matsuyama was on his way to Truk in the Central Pacific to assume command of Cruiser Division 18. While it was customary to touch base with top leaders when taking posts under them, Matsuyama was closer to Admiral Ugaki than that. They had graduated together from Etajima in 1912. The three-year course there threw midshipmen into close proximity, playing sports and in classes. Over the years they had risen through the ranks, with the brilliant Ugaki promoted to captain first, but perhaps gazing longingly at the gunner Matsuyama, who had skippered a succession of cruisers and other vessels, where Ugaki advanced mostly through staff and school billets. Ugaki had been master of a cruiser and a battleship but spent only two years at sea. Then he had made admiral and been drawn away to yet more staff assignments. Matsuyama sailed the Pacific. It was a measure of their relationship that ten days before Pearl Harbor, with the press of fleet business so intense, Ugaki took the time to visit Matsuyama at Kure naval base, where his comrade supervised the barracks and guard unit. Matsuyama’s return drop-by was a reunion of old associates, marking his first unit command. Admiral Ugaki had once led a cruiser division, but only for a few months. Now Matsuyama would lead a cruiser division too—but into battle. Ugaki wished him good luck.
    Cruiser Division 18 was hardly the Imperial Navy’s cutting edge. It comprised a pair of the oldest light cruisers on the active list, assigned to the “South Seas” (
nanyo
)—what the Japanese called the islands they had taken from Germany in World War I—and had then been mandated by the League of Nations. But Matsuyama’s would be a seagoing command, and he expected, with the FS Operation impending, to play an important role.
    It is not clear whether Admiral Ugaki told his friend that that endeavor stood in jeopardy. Less than a week later, two of Combined Fleet’s key staffofficers went to Tokyo to present fresh objections, including that the
Kido Butai
should not be expected to engage air bases, only warships. Concerned about the weather, Ugaki was relieved that his officers took the train. More important, however, was that the staffers would oppose a fully agreed IGHQ project. An appraisal filed at the end of June by the land-based air command the Eleventh Air Fleet deepened doubts. The air fleet argued that numbers of Zero-type fighter aircraft were insufficient and that Allied strength in New Guinea had to be neutralized. Admiral Tsukahara Nizhizo of the air fleet advocated delaying the invasions to begin with the New Hebrides in late September, New Caledonia and Fiji in October, and landings on Samoa only in November 1942.
    There were renewed consultations during the second week of July. It now seemed the FS Operation could not be carried out even with a delayed schedule. The NGS first cut back the Samoa component to provide only strikes against that island; then it proposed indefinite postponement of the entire endeavor. On July 9, Combined Fleet agreed