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

AIR SUPERIORITY
Sooner or later in the course of the neutralization of an air base, antiaircraft
defenses were targeted. At Rabaul and Wewak, this came fairly late
in the battle. At Hollandia, part of the first daylight attack was directed at
suspected antiaircraft emplacements. As these defenses were destroyed,
the bombing improved; it was only natural that a pilot or bombardier
who was not being shot at could concentrate better on his work. Moreover,
as the antiaircraft defenses were eliminated, the big and comparatively
slow heavy bombers could come down to medium altitude. Bombing
from 10,000 feet was far more than twice as accurate as bombing from
20,000 feet.
Missions not directly aimed at the base being neutralized could contribute
much. The first carrier strike at Truk was almost certainly instrumental
in persuading the Japanese to give up the aerial defense of Rabaul.
The fact that Rabaul was faced with two separate forces operating in different
directions was a major factor. Had the Japanese commander at Rabaul
been able to concentrate all his air power against either New Guinea or the
Solomons, the battle to neutralize Rabaul would have been longer and costlier.
If South Pacific forces had not been able to take over the Rabaul campaign
almost totally in early 1944, the neutralization of Wewak and
Hollandia would have been much more difficult. Darwin, in northwestern
Australia, was a great distance from New Guinea, but strikes from there
against the East Indies almost certainly kept reinforcements away from
New Guinea.
Maintenance crews were just as essential as pilots to an effective air
campaign. The Allies developed a marvelously inventive and efficient
depot system in Australia, but it was the ground crews at the airfields that
kept the bombers and fighters flying. Probably Japanese maintenance was
as good as American at the beginning of the war, but by 1944 this was certainly
not true. As the Allied troops moved forward, the maintenance men
at the Japanese airfields they captured were either killed or fled into the
jungle. Those stationed at the bypassed airfields were not harmed, but
they had been eliminated from the war just as effectively as if they had
been killed. After the war, the Deputy Chief of the Japanese Army General
Staff estimated that not more than ten percent of the Army aircraft sent
from Japan to the Southwest Pacific ever got into combat. They were
grounded by mechanical problems, and then, presumably, destroyed on the
Engineers were just as essential as aircraft, aircrews, and maintenance
men in the neutralization of Japanese bases and the resulting achievement
of air supremacy. From Guadalcanal to Bougainville, from Port Moresby
to Gusap, the Seabees and engineers built the wharves, the pipelines,
the roads, and the runways that were essential to air base operation.
Sometimes, as at Munda, they had an abandoned Japanese base to
work with. But more often, as at Bougainville and at Dobodura, they
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