Lessons from Defeat

Admiral Thomas Charles Hart, just back from the Pacific, last week conducted a post-mortem in Washington. His subject was the Battle of the far Pacific. Admiral Hart had some significant things to say about why the Allies had lost the battle and most of the western Pacific. By inference, his remarks also conveyed some advice on how to win the war. His main points:

> The Allies must wrest air control away from the Japanese.

> The Allies never had enough warships at any one point to match the Japs.

> Submarines were the most effective vessels in the U.S. Asiatic Fleet. Admiral Hart told how one of his submarine commanders spotted two Japanese ships at anchor without air protection, picked them off with torpedoes, then surfaced in the harbor. Said the Admiral: "He was the envy of everyone because he was able to see his game die."

> How much chance have the Allies got to drive the Japs from the East Indies by frontal assault from Australia? Admiral Hart grinned at his questioner and said: "A frontal attack is always the most difficult--a flank attack always easier."

> "The U.S. Asiatic Fleet has been involved in the loss of a campaign. But the war continues and much of that fleet . . . remains to assist in carrying it on."

Thirteen to Seven. The Navy bleakly told how much of the Fleet did not remain. In the battle of Java the Japanese destroyed 13 Allied warships: five cruisers, seven destroyers, an armed sloop.

In terms of the total Allied naval strength available in the combat area, it was a worse disaster than Pearl Harbor. Bleakest fact of all: the known Japanese losses in no way compensated for the Allied losses. The Navy carefully qualified its report that one Japanese cruiser and one destroyer were probably sunk, two other cruisers and three destroyers may have been put out of action. At best, the score was 13 to 7, the wrong way, in the battle of Java.

In the Java action itself the U.S. navy lost only the heavy cruiser Houston, which had carried President Roosevelt some 25,000 miles through the Atlantic, Caribbean and Pacific, and the old (World War I) destroyer Pope. The British lost the heavy cruiser Exeter, which by skillful maneuver drove the Admiral Graf Spee to her ignoble end in 1939, and four destroyers (Encounter, Stronghold, Electra, Jupiter). The Dutch lost two light cruisers (Java and De Ruyter), two destroyers (Kortenaer and Evertsen). Australia's Navy lost its light cruiser Perth, the armed sloop Yarra. Probable loss of life: about 800 on the Houston, 125 on the Pope, 4,000 in all.

Not All Bad. The Navy's post-mortems were not pleasant, but they were not all to the bad. Admiral Hart, schooled by black experience, breathed a definite air of conviction that the U.S. can yet win its Pacific war. No submarine losses were reported in the U.S.-British summary of the battle of Java. Of five U.S. destroyers referred to in the communique, only one was reported lost. The Houston was the only cruiser of at least 52 which the Navy admitted losing in any theater. Comforting to Navy men was one point which seemed academic to laymen: of all the warship losses in the battle of Java, not one was attributed to air attack.

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