US Marine Corps - The Black Vault

258 Amphibians Canze To Conquer
Minister, on 28 May 1942, in a despatch to the President stated that “certain
difficulties had arisen in the planning,” put in a plug for the occupation of
North Africa and stated that Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten was being
sent to Washington to discuss “a landing in the North of Norway.” 84
Lord Louis arrived on 3 June 1942, by which time the Army Air Force B-175
had already started making near-misses on Admiral Tanaka’s Transport
Group of the Japanese Midway Occupation Force,
However, on 1 June 1942, the President was telling Mr. Molotov, the
Soviet Union’s People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs, in Washington as a
special representative of Commissar Stalin, that he expected to establish a
Second Front in 1942, and giving him a strong commitment to do so.” If
the President’s word was to be his bond, it was apparent to the military
planning stafls that the priority build-up in England of United States troops
and landing craft must continue at maximum rate.
Elated by the Navy’s victory at Midway, on 4 June 1942, the whole
COMINCH Planning Staff was anxious that the United States seize the
Pacific Ocean initiative from the Japanese. This could not be done by sitting
back and congratulating each other on the first real major victory of the
Pacific War. Midway had to be promptly followed by new initiatives in the
Pacific Ocean, and this was the point Rear Admiral Turner stressed as in late
May and early June he progressively handed over his Chief Planner’s billet on
Admiral King’s staff to his relief, Rear Admiral Charles M. Cooke. The very
minimum effort necessary to retain the intiative, he believed, would be to
seize island positions essential for disrupting the flow of strategic materials
within the Japanese Co-prosperity Sphere.fifi
By late June 1942, the British Prime Minister was in Washington again,
depressed over the surrender of his 33,000-man garrison at Tobruk. He was
anxious for American help nearly everywhere except on the continent of
Europe. He was ready “to bury ‘SLEDGEHAMMER,’ which had been dead
for some time.” “
ADMIRAL KING STIRS UP A PESTILENCE—
LIGHTS UP A WATCHTOWER
Admiral King seized this moment, when it appeared that United States
U Churchill to Roosevelt, 28 May 1942, in Sherwood, Roosevelt ~nd Hopkins, p. 556.
= Matloff and SnelI, Strategic Planning, pp. 231–32.
mTurner.
mChurchill, Tbe Hinge of Pate, pp. 382, 433.