US Marine Corps - The Black Vault

WATCHTOWER 245
My 062352 [Februar~] is to be. interpreted as requiring a strong and comprehensive
offensive to be launched soon against exposed enemy naval forces
and the positions he is now establishing in the Bismarks and Solomons.37
And again on 15 February:
Current operations of the Pacific Fleet, because of existing threat, should be
directed toward preventing further advance of enemy land airplane base development
in the direction of Suva and Noumea. . . .38
On 26 February CINCPAC was informed:
our current tasks are not merely protective, but also offensive where practicable.
. . .W
THE BRITISH URGE ACTION IN PACIFIC
The British also were in agreement with United States naval opinion,
and began to put political pressure on President Roosevelt and military
pressure at the Combined Chiefs’ level to give increasing protection to
Australia and New Zealand, and to step up American naval action in the
Pacific. Both of these were to be done at the expense of “American Army
action in the European Theater of Operations.
On 4 March 1942, Prime Minister Churchill advised President Roosevelt:
I think we must agree to recognize that Gymnast [the varying forms of intervention
in French North Africa by Britain from the east and by the United
States acrossthe Atlantic] is out of the question for several months.40
This despatch gave the Navy Planners a talking point, since the GYM-
NAST Operation had a tentative date of 25 May 1942, and was responsible
for overriding Army troop commitments to the European Theater.
On 5 March, Mr. Churchill advised the President:
. . . it should be possible to prevent oversea invasion of India unless the
greater part of the Japanese Fleet is brought across from your side of the
theater, and this again I hope the action and growing strength of the United
States Navy will prevent.”
The word “action” was needling in effect, whatever its intent. And again
in the same message:
mCOMINCH to CINCPAC, 122200 Feb. 1942.
= COMINCH to CINCPAC, 151830 Feb. 1942.
= COMINCH to CINCPAC, 261630 Feb. 1942.
a Winston S. Churchill, Tbe Hinge o} Fute, Vol. IV of The Second World W& (Boston:
Houghton Mif3in Co., 1950), p. 190.
4’Ibid., p. 192.