Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

The Pacific and Far East
altering their tactics to barge hunting. Finding and sinking small boats can be
uneconomical, especially when fighters are needed to protect the B-25s. The
Allies therefore followed a campaign of attacking both Japanese airfields and
barges. This forced the Japanese to again change their pattern for supplying
their army in New Guinea. Supplies to Lae arrived more frequently by
submarine and were unloaded at night when Allied air patrols were ineffective.
Convoys sailed from Palau and landed farther west, at Wewak, the location of
a major collection of Japanese airfields. Sensing an increasing Allied threat, the
Japanese began reinforcing their main Army garrisons, primarily in the Wewak
area!3 The Allied pressure on Japan’s New Guinea positions, and Japanese
unwillingness to be forced into retreat, set the stage for major air, land, and sea
fighting in New Guinea and adjacent islands through the latter part of 1943 and
the first six months of 1944.
In the SOPAC theater during 1942, Navy domination of the interservice
command structure meant that AAF squadrons supported amphibious
operations, such as the fighting on Guadalcanal and later on New Georgia, as
pieces of a Navy task force. Later, the same task force organization continued
to pit AAF airmen against the Japanese in the Solomons, but under Navy
control, not as an integral Thirteenth Air Force.“ So different from the AAF’s
doctrine on air employment were the Navy’s ideas that Twining, as Thirteenth
Air Force commander, could not work like his counterpart Kenney. Twining felt
frustrated for some time, although he and Harmon worked diligently as good
team players. Relations between the AAF and the Navy remained good with the
AAF officers having a strong voice in decision making.45
During the summer of 1942, few AAF units were in the SOPAC. Those
present were stationed and organized in various fashions depending entirely on
the needs of the moment. A squadron of AAF P-39s and P-4OOs* moved to
Guadalcanal on August 22, once the Marines had secured and restored the
airfield. These aircraft lacked the performance needed to contest the skies with
the Japanese Zeros, so they assumed instead a largely ground-support role in the
fighting for the island.46
Beginning late in 1942, occasional intelligence information reached
Guadalcanal from the Navy in Pearl Harbor; much of it referred to Japanese
naval movements or air traffic into Rabaul as opposed to air operations
information having direct combat application. Air OB intelligence when
matched to aerial reconnaissance of the Japanese airfield complex on New
Britain allowed for continuing bomber attacks on Rabaul’s airdromes. Bombers
from both the SPA and SWPA attacked as part of an intertheater effort to beat
down the threatening Japanese air forces!’ On November 22, 1942, after
*An export version of the early model P-39, originally intended for Great
Britain.
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