Case Studies in the Achievement of Air Superiority - Air Force ...

AIR SUPERIORITY
highly trained Japanese pilots was not large, and as war took its toll, Japan
was never able to replace them. The United States did not have nearly as
many military pilots in combat units in December 1941 as did the Japanese,
but an effective training program that would redress the balance was
already in operation.E
Once the Japanese began winning, momentum was on their side, and
they took full advantage of it. The small size of the ground units they
deployed appeared at first glance to have constituted almost a reckless
gamble, but they had air and naval superiority, and only in the Philippines
did they encounter significant ground opposition. The Japanese, once ridiculed
in the American press, became for a short time almost supermen, and
their air arm seemed, at least to the public and the beleaguered soldier or
sailor who suffered under its attacks, a superior air force. However, this
was not actually the case. All the Allies had to do was to mobilize and to
adapt. The Japanese advance was checked less than six months after it
began, and from mid-1942 onward, though there would be many anxious
moments, the tide of war flowed in favor of the Allies. The achievement of
air superiority and its retention were a vital part, perhaps the most essential
part, of the Allied effort to check Japan’s military ambitions and then effect
her complete defeat.
Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway
Victories had come so easily and with such light losses that the Japanese
high command decided to speed up the timetable for establishing an
expanded defensive perimeter, with the intention of making American
attempts at a counterattack more difficult and prompting a decisive engagement
with the U.S. Navy. The Japanese plan was first to take Tulagi in the
Solomon Islands and Port Moresby on the south coast of New Guinea,
bringing northern Australia under the threat of invasion; then to occupy
Midway Island and eventually Samoa, Fiji, and New Caledonia so as to cut
off communications between the United States and Australia.
In attempting to achieve the first part of their plan, the Japanese
became embroiled in the Battle of the Coral Sea, the outcome of which
provided a strategic victory for the United States. The Japanese force
ordered to occupy Port Moresby eventually turned back with its mission
unaccomplished. Land-based Japanese planes from Rabaul in New Britain
and land-based Allied planes from northern Australia and Port Moresby
had a slight role in this battle; basically it was a contest between Japanese
and American carrier aircraft. Japanese bombers sank the carrier Lexington,
and the Japanese lost a light carrier. Japanese plane losses were somewhat
greater than those suffered by the Americans, and probably a greater
proportion of the American airmen were rescued. The Japanese Navy had
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