NOTES ON THE WAR NEWS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 87, 14 April 1942, Page 4

NOTES ON THE WAR NEWS

NAVAL STRATEGY

JAPAN TAKES RISKS

While the presence of a powerful Japanese fleet in the Bay of Bengal, an arm of the Indian Ocean, revealed by Mr. Churchill in the House of Commons, and the advance of Japanese land forces in Central Burma threaten India, and with that the Middle East, there is another side to the picture in the tremendous extension of risks to Japan in operations so far away from her bases.

Commenting on these latest adventures of Japan, H. C. Ferraby, the well-known writer and broadcaster on naval affairs, says in the "Nineteenth Century":

"The widely dispersed military adventures of the Japanese in the South China Seas have met with small check and there is little sign so far that their freedom of movement by sea is seriously disputed. Indeed, the fall of Singapore and the possible consequences of the opening of the Malacca Straits to their raiding cruisers might even foreshadow a wide extension of their activities. The supply lines of the Allied Forces in the Middle East pass through the Indian Ocean. They form a very obvious object of attack and the Malacca Straits are the gateway into that ocean from the Far East. ,Since the United Governments have obligingly told the Japanese in an official statement that the Indian Ocean defence has been committed solely to the British Navy, our enemy j is in a very good position to estimate approximately what opposition his raiding forces would encounter in that zone. It is telling him nothing new to say that the already overdriven and over-extended British naval units will I be hard put to it to provide escort and patrol flotillas along the 5000-mile stretches between the Cape of Good Hope, Aden, Calcutta, and Fremantle. j We are indeed fighting the two-hemi-sphere war against which the Admiralty warned us in 1936, and. trying to do it with a half-hemisphere Navy. In the Indian Ocean. "That this outlook in the Indian Ocean is no mere fantasy born of depression at the fall of Singapore can be seen in the outbursts of the Japanese Press. They refuse to regard Singapore as anything more than a stepping stone to Calcutta, Bombay, and Ceylon, which, they say, 'ought to pass economically and militarily under our absolute control if the capture of Singapore is not to be a half-measure. Our right wing in. the war stretches logically as far as Aden.' Building on Sand. "Yet," says Mr. Ferraby, "with all their appearance of triumph in the Far Eastern war the Japanese are really building on sand. They are exploiting a local and temporary command of the sea to the utmost, choosing to ignore the fact that that command may at any time be disputed by naval forces numerically superior, and superior to a crushing extent. - The causes of the delay in movement towards the South China Seas of the American Fleet are well known. Those causes are now being removed. The American fleet has already shown what it can do in its raids on the Marshall and Gilbert Islands and that fleet is constantly growing, well ahead of schedule. "Unlimited Conquest," "The Japanese invasion of the East Indian islands must ultimately collapse under the pressure of superior sea-power. All these spectacular moves have been carried out in defiance of a fundamental law of naval- strategy. Like Hitler, the Japanese have thought to defy the experience of generations of fighting seamen. Their East Indian campaign resembles tHe strategic blunders of Pitt, Dundas, and Spencer in the opening years of the Napoleonic Wars. Then a 'sugar-island snatching policy' in the West Indies failed to curb France as it was expected to do. Barham, the outstanding naval strategist of the age, was forced to resign from the Admiralty because he opposed it. 'It is this system of unlimited conquest that cripples us everywhere,' he said, 'and diverts the Fleet from its natural use.' It was only when Barham was recalled to office, when Pitt had abandoned his West Indies policy, that Britain recovered her position. 'Unlimited conquest' exactly fits the Japanese policy and completes the comparison. Dissipated Strength. "Japanese naval strength, never excessive for a war against the United States, has been dissipated in the lust for conquest. The damage done to her warships which have been used as escorts to the military expeditions has put out of action more than fifty units, some sunk, many damaged, and 2000 miles or more away from dockyards in which they can be repaired. She lost one-fifth of the strength with which she started the war within eight weeks. The capture of places does not materially alter the position for places cannot be moved into action against fleets. It is only ships on the sea that ultimately decide, that ultimately exercise, the pressure of sea-power."

It might be added to Mr. Ferraby's comment, written in February, that the latest Japanese naval excursion into the Indian Ocean illustrates the risk of dividing the main fleet, for in the Bay of Bengal, according to Mr Churchill, the Japanese squadron included three battleships, one with ]6in guns, five aircraft-carriers, a number of heavy and light cruisers, and destroyer flotillas. Had the rest of the Japanese fleet in the China Seas—or wherever it was—encountered the mam American Pacific Fleet, it would have gone hard with the enemy. This is one of the perils of "unlimited conquest."