Missing Pieces: - Royal Australian Navy

70 Missing Pieces
As 1942 dawned Australians confronted for the first time in their history the very real
prospect of direct attack by a foreign power. In facing up to this threat, the Australian
Government and its armed forces were also confronted by a second issue — that of
fighting alongside a coalition partner other than the United Kingdom. This was without
precedent in the experience of all officers of the RAN (and the other services) and
held out the spectre of a clash of military cultures, traditions, procedures, tactics,
command relationships and reporting responsibilities, not to mention differences in
combat experience and the military hardware used by the Allies.
Furthermore, despite its strenuous insistence on being party to decisions that affected
the security of Australia and the employment of her armed forces, the Australian
Government had been singularly unsuccessful in gaining an effective voice in the war
councils of the Allies. 198 To the British, Australian concerns were of lesser significance
than the survival of the British Isles and the forging of an effective alliance with the
United States. Churchill did not necessarily see Australia’s plight as irrelevant, but it
was certainly peripheral to the worldview that he fostered with President Roosevelt
— the first Allied priority was to defeat Germany. Indeed he had no option but to leave
the Pacific War in the hands of the Americans
Australia, however, began to loom larger in US strategic plans. 199 With the loss of the
Philippines, Malaya and Netherlands East Indies, Australia would provide the only
reasonable springboard from which to mount a counter-attack, at least in the initial
stages of the campaign. There were far-reaching strategic implications in this for the
US armed forces that would become apparent as the Japanese resumed their offensive
after April 1942, but the South West Pacific Area (SWPA), as it was later designated,
was seen to be primarily a responsibility for the US Army and its air force. 200 The
President ordered General Douglas MacArthur to leave the Philippines in March 1942
and to take command of Allied forces based in Australia.
MacArthur was not sent to defend Australia: his task was to make Australia a base from
which to strike back at the Japanese in keeping with the ‘Beat Hitler First’ strategy.
He made this clear to Prime Minister John Curtin in Melbourne on 1 June 1942. In a
little-quoted section of the minutes of this meeting is the statement:
The Commander-in-Chief added that, though the American people were
animated by a warm friendship for Australia, their purpose in building
up forces in the Commonwealth was not so much from an interest in
Australia but from its utility as a base from which to hit Japan. In view of
the strategical importance of Australia in a war with Japan, this course of
military action would probably be followed irrespective of the American
relationship to the people who might be occupying Australia. 201