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Post by simon darkshade on Jul 12, 2020 20:27:31 GMT
History of the Aircraft Carrier Part 5: British Carriers 1942
1942 would see both the nadir of Allied fortunes across the world and the dawn of victory as the conflict, hitherto based in Europe, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, now truly became a global war. The main instrument of this transformation was the massive assault across Asia and the Pacific launched by the forces of the Empire of Japan, who now put into action their carefully laid plans of aggression against the United States, the British Empire and Commonwealth, France and the Netherlands in an effort to destroy their numerically superior military forces and establish a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The presence of the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet at Singapore was the most direct obstacle to Japan's plans for a successful centrifugal offensive down through the Philippines and Borneo and through Siam and Malaya to the key prize, the Dutch East Indies. Allied strategy called for the holding of the Malay Barrier with land, sea and air forces until such time as the United States Pacific Fleet could go onto the offensive. Japanese plans were based around the maximisation of their limited resources, particularly with regard to shipping and manpower, and the success of each stage would be instrumental in the overall success of the Southern Expeditionary Army Group. The build up of Imperial Japanese Army forces in French Indochina over the course of 1941 had been unmistakable to British Far East Command, which had formulated a plan for an advance into Siam to counter any Japanese invasion, in conjunction with naval operations to prevent amphibious landings on the vital Kra Isthmus in Northern Malaya. The arrival of the Grand Fleet provided the necessary force to accomplish this defensive mission and they were shifted onto high alert on the night of December 8th 1941 after reports of Imperial Japanese Navy warships leaving Cam Ranh Bay in Indochina.
In the early hours of the morning, 178 Imperial Japanese Air Force bombers struck the naval base, air bases and city of Singapore in an undeclared surprise attack, signalling the start of a long and terrible war. 27 Nakajima Ki-49s were shot down by the anti-aircraft guns of the fleet and Singapore itself, whilst a further 40 planes were downed by her two squadrons of RAF Gloster Reaper nightfighters, but moderate damage was inflicted on several airbases and ships of the fleet, with 3 cruisers and 5 destroyers being unable to put to sea. This would be the first of more than thirty nightly air raids by the IJAF over the coming months, in addition to the daring daytime attacks that would soon attempt to put Singapore out of action. Admiral Cunningham sortied the bulk of his fleet during the morning in accordance with standard war plans, joining the two carrier task forces already deployed at sea. Reports began to arrive rapidly of attacks on Hong Kong and the Philippines, of the invasion of Siam by a Japanese field army of over 250,000 men and then the disastrous news of a massive Japanese carrier raid on the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. Indications of damage were heavy, although details varied wildly, ranging from the destruction of all 12 battleships and several aircraft carriers to mere partial destruction. Whatever the facts of the situation, it was clear that the British Empire was at war with the Empire of Japan and that estimations of the latter's strength and capacity had been significantly inaccurate. Submarine reports of the presence of a Japanese convoy heading south off the coast of Indochina heading towards the Gulf of Siam lead Cunningham to take the fleet north along the Malay coast to intercept, adding the support of the Royal Air Force's fighters in Malaya to those of his alerted carriers. He planned to eliminate the amphibious threat and then attack Japanese airfields in Southern Indochina, which were already being struck on that night by Wellington heavy bombers of the Royal Air Force, even as Field Marshal Lord Ironside initiated Operation Lionheart, sending the 12th Army into Siam in force.
His attack was precluded by the first of many Japanese surprises of the Malayan campaign in the form of a large air raid being detected by RDF some 175 miles to the northeast. The carrier air groups of the Grand Fleet now swung into action, rapidly arming and launching every Supermarine Eagle and Hawker Firefly that could be spared, whilst five RAF and RNAS fighter squadrons moved to provide direct coverage to the fleet from Malaya. The range of IJN G4M naval bombers had long been a matter of keen interest for British naval intelligence and this indicated that it was markedly greater than even the most generous estimates. The first waves of Fleet Air Arm fighters were guided onto the IJN 5th Air Fleet by RDF, but the Eagles were met with the surprise presence of Japanese Mitsubishi A6M fighters. A total of 276 Eagles and 240 Fireflies would engage the Japanese force of 190 G4Ms and 157 A6Ms in a titanic naval air battle, which saw 68 G4Ms and 42 Zeroes shot down in exchange for 36 Eagles and 32 Fireflies, with the rate of losses being another unpleasant surprise for the Fleet Air Arm; Japanese bomber losses verged on the horrific, with many aircraft bursting into flames from the heavy firepower of the RN fighters. 122 torpedo bombers made it through the outer airborne defences of the fleet, but then found themselves engaged by two separate waves of fighters, firstly by 48 RAF Tomahawks and 24 Lightnings operating out of RAF Kota Bharu , and then by 42 RNAS Eagles that had been forward deployed to RAF Singora, resulting in a further 27 Zeroes and 29 torpedo bombers being shot down. The anti aircraft guns of the fleet’s cruisers, destroyers and battleships engaged the remaining bombers and shot down 36 before they were able to strike. The aircraft carriers Centaur and Illustrious were both struck by two torpedoes, St. Patrick was hit by four torpedoes and Emperor of India and Thunderer were each hit by three torpedoes. The cruisers Fife, Durham, Plymouth and Leicester were sunk along with seven destroyers, with two carriers, three battleships, three cruisers and five destroyers damaged. This represented a greater degree of damage than any previously inflicted on the Royal Navy during the war, but at a considerable cost in Japanese aircraft. The damaged carriers and battleships began to limp back to Singapore under strong RAF fighter coverage and heavily escorted by destroyers, whilst their air groups were directed back to Singapore or available Malay bases. Admiral Cunningham recovered his fighters and proceeded to launch his own airstrikes on the suspected Japanese invasion fleet and the airbases of Southern Indochina, inflicting significant damage on some facilities and destroying over 150 aircraft. The First Battle of the South China Sea was but the first of many engagements between the Royal Navy and the Japanese, with the damage to the Grand Fleet offset by the effective decimation of the IJN's land based bomber force deployed to the southern theatre.
Cunningham withdrew the Grand Fleet back to Singapore on December 10th, having suffered greater losses than expected in his clashes with IJN bomber forces and the fighter defences of the IJAF, but these were rebuilt rapidly from Fleet Air Arm reserve stocks preplaced in Malaya. A major reinforcement group drawn from the Home Fleet and Mediterranean was ordered to prepare for movement to the Far East, but would not be able to leave European waters before the end of December at the earliest; in the meantime, the Marine Royale forces in the Far East moved up to Singapore to augment the operational strength of the Grand Fleet. The immediate Japanese response was to move aircraft reinforcements to Indochina from China and the Home Islands, both in the form of two further IJN air fleets, the 8th and 12th, and four IJAF air groups in addition to scheduled follow-on forces; this would have the effect of curtailing some offensive operations towards Chungking. This was accompanied by a full sortie of the Combined Fleet to the south, where it would join up with its vanguard forces and the returning Kido Butai off the Philippines before bringing the Grand Fleet to a decisive battle. Upon this battle would rest not just the course of the Southern Offensive, but the very destiny of two mighty empires. The Japanese battle fleet arrived at its destination in Lingayen Gulf on December 20th, escorting a special reinforcement convoy of elite IJA troops drawn from crack units of the Imperial General Reserve Army, and were joined by the victorious returning aircraft carrier force nine days later, having been refueled off the Marianas. Long range British patrol aircraft and forward deployed submarines monitored the build-up of Japanese forces, whilst Admiral Cunningham prepared his own plans to counter them. The Admiralty had resisted increasing political pressure to mount any sort of relief operation to besieged Hong Kong, keeping its fleet concentrated for the engagement to come.
The opening moves of the largest naval battle that had been fought to date came on January 10th, as attacks were launched on Allied positions in Eastern Borneo and the highly trumpeted arrival of the Imperial Guard Corps and Samurai Division at Saigon drew the primary attention of intelligence assets in the Far East, when the bulk of the Combined Fleet was reported as moving southwestards off the northern coast of Palawan. Allied codebreaking had indicated that the Japanese were preparing for deploy and confront the Royal Navy in open battle, which gave the British a tactical advantage that allowed predeployment of certain assets athwart their route of advance. Admiral Cunningham sortied the Grand Fleet out from Singapore and authorised the execution of Operation Gauntlet. As the Japanese armada reached the Spratly Islands at midnight of January 11th, 25 Royal Navy submarines began a series of attacks from multiple directions in a carefully timed ambush, sinking five destroyers and the heavy cruiser Chokai and damaging two cruisers, the aircraft carrier Junyo and the battleships Omi and Yamato; the latter vessel, serving as Admiral Yamamoto's flagship, was hit by three 24" torpedoes by HMS Upholder and forced to retire on Manila as Yamamoto shifted his flag to Musashi. The high command of the Combined Fleet was aware that the British were at sea and that an engagement was likely at some stage in the next 24 hours, but their immediate preparations were disrupted by the nocturnal chaos of the submarine attacks, which had resulted in up to ten enemy submarines being suspected as sunk; only four RN boats were actually lost in the ambush. The second stage of Gauntlet came in the hours immediately before dawn, as a long-range strike force of 124 RNAS Beaufighters and 156 Beauforts struck at the Japanese vanguard with aerial torpedoes before rapidly withdrawing as the IJN carriers began launching fighters in response; a further five destroyers and two cruisers were sunk and three cruisers and two battleships damaged, comparatively light losses compared to those inflicted on the British the previous month. Admiral Chūichi Nagumo ordered the First and Second Air Fleets to prepare their strike aircraft for an anti-ship strike on the Grand Fleet, following up his initial wave of fighters with reconnaissance aircraft from his accompanying cruisers and battlecruisers.
Meanwhile, behind a heavy screen of destroyers and frigates 256nm away, the Grand Fleet was beginning to launch its aircraft, having painstakingly eliminated shadowing Japanese flying boats as they moved out from Singapore. Admiral Cunningham intended to hit the enemy carriers and battlefleet with a first strike and then seek a surface action with the Combined Fleet to force it back from the South China Sea, although he was ever cognizant of the threat of IJN land based bombers. To this end, over 380 RAF and RNAS bombers from Malaya had struck Japanese airfields in Southern Indochina overnight in their heaviest raid to date in order to provide the Royal Navy with a window to strike their enemy at sea. By 0529, the ten fleet carriers of the Grand Fleet had launched a maximum effort strike of 236 Fairey Swordfish and 254 Blackburn Buccaneers escorted by 176 Supermarine Eagles and 213 Hawker Fireflies, with their remaining fighters remaining to provide CAP over the fleet in conjunction with the air wings of the four light fleet carriers. The 108 IJN A6M fighters launched in pursuit of the RNAS bombers caught and inflicted substantial losses on the withdrawing Beaufighters and Beauforts, shooting down 36 and 42 planes for the loss of just 23 Zeroes, but in the process were open to engagement by the first wave of Fleet Air Arm carrier fighters at 0647. Upon receipt of the first garbled radio reports of hundreds of British aircraft, Admiral Chūichi Nagumo ordered his carriers to immediately begin launching their alert Zeroes and remaining air groups. In the resulting air battle, over 350 Zeroes engaged the F.A.A. fighter escorts, shooting down 44 Eagles and 58 Fireflies in exchange for 77 Zeroes, whilst 35 Swordfish and 32 Buccaneers were also downed. The coordination of the Royal Navy air strike was heavily disrupted by the intense Japanese resistance and their anti-aircraft fire proved substantially heavier than that of the warships of the European Axis powers, shooting down a further 55 strike planes, but enough planes broke through the enemy defences to strike at the Combined Fleet and the Kido Butai in two separate attacks over the next 32 minutes.
The newest Japanese super battleships put up extremely heavy defensive fire and avoided decisive damage, with Musashi hit by two torpedoes and two 1000lb bombs, Shinano struck by four bombs and a torpedo, Kai taking two torpedoes and three bombs, Mikawa and Settsu hit by two bombs apiece, Hitachi struck by one torpedo and two bombs and Iwami taking the worst damage from five bombs and two torpedoes. The three Kii class ships fortuitously avoided the attentions of the deadly Swordfish and only sustained minor bomb strikes from the enemy dive bombers, but at the cost of the smaller and slowest 18" super dreadnoughts being hammered - Nagato was struck by four torpedoes and six bombs, Hizen's steering was destroyed by a hail of bombs and Mutsu being hit by no fewer than three torpedoes and seven bombs, with its fires attracting attacks of opportunity by the diving Buccaneers. Nagumo's twelve operational fleet carriers were attacked by the larger Fleet Air Arm strike, but their rapid maneuvering and the presence of reinforcing Zeroes from the 7th and 8th Carrier Divisions prevented the scale of devastation from spiraling out of control. The converted liners Shoho and Kairyu were hit by four bombs each and set ablaze and Hiyo blew up after being struck by five bombs and four torpedoes, whilst Akagi, Zuikaku, Ryujo and Soryu all sustained moderate damage from bomb and torpedo hits. Their close escort battlecruisers bore some of the brunt of the Royal Navy attacks, with Asahi and Takao being left dead in the water after being struck by multiple bombs and torpedoes and Kongo and Hiei sustaining substantial damage to their upperworks, whilst the lighter vessels of the Japanese fleet were not spared, with 7 cruisers and 18 destroyers sunk and 11 cruisers and 27 destroyers suffering some degree of damage. The bulk of the Japanese carrier force remained operational and completed launching their retaliatory air strike at 0829, although its strength was noticeably depleted by the fighter losses and the damage caused by the Fleet Air Arm.
Admiral Cunningham, upon receiving initial reports of the air strike on the Japanese fleet, made the fateful decision to hold his battleline with his carriers to maximise his anti-aircraft defences rather than to immediately push for a daylight surface engagement, preferring to meet the Combined Fleet at night, where the Royal Navy's superior training would give him a stronger edge. He would also pull back towards Borneo and Malaya, aiming to draw the Japanese upon his land based airpower. The first wave of the IJN air strike hit the fighter defences of the Grand Fleet at 1002 and their 196 Aichi D3A Val dive bombers, 178 Nakajima B5N Kate torpedo bombers and 244 Zeroes met heavy opposition from 232 Supermarine Eagles, resulting in 45 Vals, 49 Kates and 73 Zeroes being shot down for the loss of 62 Eagles. The survivors were then intercepted by 60 Hawker Hurricanes flying out of Brunei, which further disrupted the raid, albeit at a severe cost, as the highly agile Zeroes proved to be superior to their RAF opponents, shooting down 29 Hurricanes for the loss of a further 10 Vals, 15 Kates and 11 Zeroes. The massed barrage of RDF guided anti-aircraft fire from the battleships, battlecruisers, carriers, cruisers and destroyers of the Grand Fleet inflicted devastating losses on the Japanese aircraft, with several of the newer battleships equipped with VT proximity fused shells to considerable effect, 38 Kates, 32 Vals and 20 Zeroes being shot down. The remaining IJN aircraft managed to inflict significant damage on the British ships, focusing on the largest carriers that stood at the front of the Royal Navy formation. Incomparable was hit by five bombs and four torpedoes and Inflexible by three torpedoes and six bombs, with their escorting battlecruisers St. David and Redoubtable struck by multiple heavyweight torpedoes and armour-piercing bombs and set on fire. Formidable and Indomitable also suffered significant damage, with both carriers struck by four bombs, whilst the battleships Temeraire, Duke of York and Black Prince were hit with two torpedoes and multiple bombs and 5 cruisers and 12 destroyers were sunk, with 6 cruisers and 21 destroyers damaged. Incomparable, Redoubtable and Inflexible had to be abandoned and sunk with torpedoes after being engulfed with flames, whilst St. David began to try and limp back to Singapore at 5 knots before being sunk by a Japanese submarine just 28 miles short of safety some four days later.
Both Yamamoto and Cunningham elected to withdraw their damaged fleets out of range of the other as the scale of the battle became clear in the late afternoon, both forces having spent much of the morning desperately trying to fight fires and recover their battered air arms. The Second Battle of the South China Sea had been an extremely bloody affair and a tactical stalemate, with both sides preferring to preserve their damaged carrier forces rather than pursue a surface action, but the Royal Navy had denied the Imperial Japanese Navy of its strategic objective of opening the Gulf of Siam and eliminating the Allied naval presence from South East Asia and inflicted greater losses in ships and aircraft. The Japanese held no clear advantage in numbers of fully operational capital ships, fielding 7 carriers to the 6 of the Royal Navy and 12 battleships to 11, whilst their losses of 370 aircraft to 286 constituted a sharper blow and the British could factor in further reinforcements soon to be dispatched from Europe and the additional strength of the French Marine Royale. By January 16th, both fleets were now able to plan their next moves; the Imperial Japanese Navy had fought its first Kantai Kessen, or decisive fleet battle, but it had not been as decisive as envisaged. After initial misgivings from Prime Minister Churchill in London when the results of the battle were still unclear, Admiral Cunningham's caution in acting to preserve his primary striking arm was seen as a wise step - this would not be a short or easy war.
Following on from the bloody draw in the South China Sea, both fleets adopted something of a circumspect approach over the next few weeks, with both having suffered enough losses to make decisive offensive action impossible to support. The Grand Fleet was further weakened by the necessity to dispatch a squadron of Invincible, Lion and Princess Royal to the Andaman Sea to support the increasingly beleaguered Twelfth Army in its retreat from Siam in the face of the strong Japanese and Siamese advance. Admiral Cunningham was limited to the rotational forward deployment of a single carrier task force in the Natuna Sea whilst he held the main body of his fleet in Singapore, where he had now been joined by the French Escadron d'Extrême-Orient. Control of this barrier sea, lying between Malaya and Borneo, was seen as vital in maintaining the crumbling Malay Barrier, which was being increasingly outflanked by the Japanese push southwards. The fall of North Borneo and Celebes in late January opened the next phase of the Japanese offensive into the Makassar Strait, Brunei and Sarawak. The strategically vital oil wells of Tarakan were captured by Japanese parachutists by coup de main on January 26th and their advance continued along the coastline under cover of land-based aircraft; the petroleum deposits of Borneo, equivalent to a yearly production level of over 12.8 million tons, were the lowest hanging fruit open to easy conquest after the initial advance through the Philippines. More significantly, Borneo offered the potential to break the Allied defences of the Dutch East Indies and Malaya asunder and neutralise the utility of the so-called Gibraltar of the East through the implementation of the 'circles around Singapore' strategy.
The exception to this circumspect course of action was the Battle of Brunei, where an IJN task force consisting of the light carriers Zuiho and Kaiyo, the battlecruisers Amagi and Atago, 4 cruisers and 18 destroyers would cover a fast invasion convoy as it fell upon the fabulously wealthy sultanate. Their secondary objective would be to subsequently outflank the outnumbered British defenders with a landing at Bintulu, which Field Marshal Prince Maeda saw as a key target in the conquest of Sarawak. Brunei itself fell after a short battle on February 9th, as the garrison of one battalion of the British Indian Army was overwhelmed by two IJA brigades, leading the Japanese force to push on through the night to Bintulu. They succeeded in landing their divisional sized force by the afternoon of February 11th, the carriers maintaining strong fighter cover over the beachhead. The presence of the Japanese naval force was detected by RAF reconnaissance flights out of Kuching and Singapore, but British land based airpower was too hard pressed against the numerically superior and newer IJAF aircraft in the air battle over Borneo to respond. Rear Admiral Sir Richard Osborne, commanding Force R aboard Hermes in the patrol bastion off the Riau Islands, ordered his squadron to head at full speed towards the Japanese force, intending to launch a strike against the enemy carriers before he could be located by land based bombers from Indochina. At a distance of 280nm, Hermes launched a total of 22 Swordfish, 18 Buccaneers, 12 Fireflies and 8 Eagles in two waves at 1026, holding back under cover of its remaining fighters and 12 Reapers out of Singapore, in addition to the protection offered by King George V, Retribution, Thunderchild, Belfast, Sheffield and 10 destroyers. They made contact with the IJN fighter CAP only 18 miles away from the Japanese ships, but the resultant aerial melee was decidedly one sided, 13 British fighters and 22 strike aircraft being shot down in exchange for only 6 Zeroes; the much reduced size of the Fleet Air Arm striking force highlighted the comparative edge in maneuverability possessed by the Japanese Zeroes and negated the British advantage in speed and firepower. The shattered strike did break through to the Japanese ships, hitting two transports and putting three torpedoes and two bombs into the aging Zuiho, putting her in a sinking condition at a cost of a further 6 planes before the survivors returned to Hermes. Rear-Admiral Osborne, having lost the majority of his offensive airpower, pulled back to Singapore in swift fashion under heavy RAF and RNAS air cover. The chief lesson of the Battle of Brunei was clear: the Fleet Air Arm could not operate in single carrier task forces and expect any kind of success at an acceptable cost, but rather, needed to refine its tactics and operational methodology in the face of an experienced, capable opposition with comparable aircraft.
By late February, the Japanese advance into the Dutch East Indies through the Makassar Strait and Celebes Sea had penetrated into the heart of the Allied defences and the Battles of the Java Sea and Sunda Strait had seen devastating losses inflicting on the ABDAF Striking Force by the Imperial Japanese Navy. The latter engagement effectively sealed off Singapore and Malaya from the mainstay of Allied resistance on Java and severed the Malay Barrier upon so much strategic concentration had been placed before the war. This had a significant impact on the orders issued to Admiral Cunningham by the Admiralty, with his priorities being the preservation of his own fleet, particularly the carriers, and the continuing attrition of Japanese forces. His latitude for seeking battle was severely constrained by the rapidly changing strategic situation, with his primary directive being to hold the Malay coast and Gulf of Siam against any enemy incursions or amphibious thrusts until such time as he was properly reinforced. Japanese land-based bombers remained a serious threat and fleet operations were increasingly constrained by the range of fighter air cover from Malaya and Singapore. The stark difference between the decisive victories in the North Sea and Mediterranean and the challenge provided by the Japanese had curbed the natural aggressive instincts displayed by Cunningham and his commanders, with the Admiralty in London highly conscious of the strategic disaster that would unfold should the Grand Fleet be decisively defeated. The adoption of an attritional strategy in January 1942 strained against the deteriorating Allied position in South East Asia, but was built on the emerging science of operations research, arcane divinations and more conventional economic and industrial intelligence analysis; several top secret analytical engines had determined that British and Commonwealth aircraft production, shipbuilding and munitions production would enable a successful offensive to be mounted in the last quarter of 1942 should the Japanese advance be held in Malaya and Burma. This drove the decisions of the Imperial War Cabinet to prioritise the defence of Malaya above that of Java and Sumatra, which lead to substantial disagreements with the Dutch government-in-exile.
In the face of this strategic caution, Yamamoto attempted to draw the Grand Fleet out into the South China Sea through a sortie of elements of the Combined Fleet from Luzon and Cam Ranh Bay on February 26th, forcing Cunningham to respond to the direct threat rather than divert substantial forces to the south; only Illustrious, Ethalion and Theseus could be spared on an ultimately fruitless sweep to the Karimata Strait to attack IJN surface forces. Admiral Cunningham sortied from Singapore with a large part of his available force - Ark Royal, Eagle, Indefatigable and Victorious, the light carriers Hercules and Achilles, 6 battleships, 3 battlecruisers, 28 cruisers and 72 destroyers. The two fleets engaged in a series of maneuvers and feints over the next three days without making direct contact, with 17 FAA aircraft being shot down in exchange for 10 IJN planes in the aerial skirmishes between the seven Japanese and six British carriers. On the morning of March 1st, the Japanese finally located the RN main body and launched a strike of 93 Vals, 84 Kates and 80 Zeroes, which was intercepted by 154 FAA fighters guided by RDF at a distance of 32 miles out from the fleet at 1124. 32 Vals, 30 Kates and 24 Zeroes were shot down in exchange for 25 Eagles and 21 Fireflies in this initial engagement before striking the dedicated interception force of 60 Eagles launched from the two light carriers, which were now being employed solely as fighter carriers for fleet air defence. This succeeded in largely breaking up the Japanese strike, shooting down a further 16 Vals, 15 Kates and 10 Zeroes for the loss of 19 RN planes, before the surviving aircraft were engaged by the concentrated AA gunfire of the Grand Fleet. Hermes was hit by two torpedoes and slowed to 18 knots, Victorious was struck by one 500lb bomb, King George V hit by three bombs, Iron Duke by two bombs and one torpedo and Vanguard by one torpedo; two cruisers and six destroyers were also damaged, with Castle and Demon later sinking. Having weathered the Japanese strike, Cunningham followed his own orders in response, withdrawing back towards Singapore and the security of friendly RAF and RN air cover, rather than launch his own counterstrike.
The naval balance shifted with the arrival of a large Royal Navy squadron from the Mediterranean and Home Fleets on March 5th, which escorted the crucial Cardinal reinforcement convoys of 4 divisions, 600 aircraft, 450 tanks, 1200 guns and over 1.2 million tons of supplies. The fast troop liners of Cardinal 1 had unloaded hastily at George Town under heavy aerial protection on March 4th-6th, with Cardinal 2 and Cardinal 3 made the increasingly dangerous journey to Singapore along with Force R, which consisted of the battleships Conqueror, Monarch, Majestic and Triumph, the battlecruisers Orion, Neptune, Jupiter and Ajax, the aircraft carriers Argus, Unicorn, Pegasus and Implacable, 16 cruisers and 48 destroyers. Their arrival and the gradual repair of ships that had suffered minor or moderate damage in the battles of December, January and February swelled the Grand Fleet. although there was no alteration of the general standing orders regarding its deployment. The much-trumpeted arrival of Cardinal and the growing threat presented by the raids conducted by the United States Navy on the Marshall Islands and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands pushed Admiral Yamamoto, having recently returned to the Combined Fleet from a heated meeting of the Supreme War Council in Tokyo and having consulted with Grand Admiral Togo, to make a further attempt to bring the Grand Fleet to a decisive battle.
The confined nature of the South China Sea provided for complications for both fleets, with the Japanese land based air fleets being treated cautiously by the Royal Navy and the increasing number of RN submarines in the region presented an increasing threat for IJN operations. Admiral Cunningham had three key weapons that gave him an advantage in the battle to come. First and foremost, Allied codebreaking gave the Grand Fleet a useful degree of operational warning of any Japanese fleet movements and general intentions. Secondly, the Royal Air Force’s strategic heavy bomber force in the Far East, Bomber Command’s No. 25 Group, had now been reinforced with additional Wellingtons and Handley Page Halifaxes, giving a potent long range punch to Far East Command. Finally, the Royal Naval Air Service strike force in Malaya had been substantially increased in firepower with the arrival of two wings of de Havilland Mosquito torpedo bombers with the Cardinal convoys. He aimed to use these to counteract the numerical edge of the Combined Fleet and, upon receiving indications that a Japanese sortie was imminent in March 23rd, he requested a maximum effort bomber attack on IJNAF airfields. Two major raids of over 300 bombers struck five airfields in Southern Indochina, inflicting considerable damage at the cost of 27 RAF aircraft being shot down.
Yamamoto ordered the Combined Fleet to sea on March 26th, aiming to draw out the Grand Fleet within range of Indochina by threatening the Gulf of Siam. This time, he elected to take a course to the west of the Spratly Islands and then head towards the Poulo-Condore Islands, bringing the Grand Fleet upon his land-based air and his own carriers. Cunningham took the Grand Fleet out from Singapore on March 27th in response, heading out to the east before breaking back towards the Malay coast, where he would remain, just out of sight of the shore of Kelantan, partially concealed by experimental cloaking magics. His plan was to keep his carriers within the cover of over 400 land based RAF and RNAS fighters, whilst augmenting its striking power through his amassed shore based bombers. Off to the south, halfway between Natuna and Singapore, a decoy force of surface vessels, dirigibles and skyships was to act as the Grand Fleet, utilising a variety of illusory and electronic means. This approach, should it fully succeed, would draw off the Japanese aircraft and leave their fleet open to British attacks. Ironically, the Japanese would also attempt their own use of subterfuge through the employment of a disguised diversionary force that aimed to lure the Grand Fleet to its doom. Yamamoto had kept the main body of his battlefleet between the vanguard and the Kido Butai further back off Saigon, whilst trying to draw out the British with the bait of own slower light carriers and striking them with the twin weapons of his fast carriers and remaining land-based bombers. The light carriers were disguised as their larger equivalents through ensorcelled markings and deception spells, which, whilst less sophisticated than the RN measures, were designed for a far more limited purpose. This tactical approach, whilst not fully splitting his forces per se, still presented a considerable difference to that used in previous battles. It consisted of the converted liner Shinyo, the light carriers Zuiho, Kaiyo and Taiyo and the seaplane carrier Nisshin, along with their escorts. Their defences would be swelled by 54 A6M Zeroes flying out of airfields in Central Vietnam which had been spared the attentions of the RAF bomber forces to date.
The Third Battle of the South China Sea began on March 30th, as the Japanese vanguard force was located by RN scouting aircraft off the southern tip of French Indochina whilst its own reconnaissance efforts continued to scour the seas for the Grand Fleet. The RN southern decoy force almost succeeded in drawing off Japanese attention with their electronic trickery, but the subterfuge was uncovered by a fortuitously located IJN submarine, which identified the true nature of the British ships and aircraft through direct observation; the submarine’s commander made the courageous decision to transmit his findings immediately, which resulted in the destruction of his vessel some nine hours later. His report did not include mention of the RN skyship HMSS Prometheus, which now moved northward, extending the range of its powerful new airborne RDF system. Faced with this, Cunningham ordered an air strike on the IJN vanguard, even though it would reveal his location; crucially, he chose to dispatch the air groups of only three of his carriers in addition to his land based strike bombers, keeping the other six carrier groups back in reserve. This was the northernmost group in the Grand Fleet, with the others moving away to the south, a factor that would be crucial in the development of the battle. 68 Swordfish and 76 Buccaneers escorted by 58 Eagles and 60 Fireflies and accompanied by 56 Beauforts were launched at 1042 on March 31st against the Japanese group south of the Poulo-Condore Islands. They were met by 98 Zeroes, which inflicted substantial losses on the FAA aircraft, shooting down 14 Eagles, 16 Fireflies, 13 Buccaneers, 15 Swordfish and 10 Beauforts in exchange for 25 Zeroes. The sheer weight of the RN airstrike blasted its way through the Japanese fighter defences, however, and hit Shinyo, still appearing for all intents and purposes to be Shokaku, with five torpedoes, whilst Taiyo and Nisshin were hit with six and eight bombs and three torpedoes apiece.
The initial reports reaching Admiral Cunningham were ecstatic, claiming the destruction of three Japanese fleet carriers, but this was swiftly cooled by the news transmitted from Prometheus - a force of hundreds of new aircraft was emerging off the coast of Southern Indochina, along with the surviving elements of the two bomber groups forming up inland. A vexsome choice was now presented to Cunningham - leave his northern task group of Implacable, Indefatigable and Unicorn to take the full force of Yamamoto’s eight fleet carriers and bombers whilst striking from the south with his remaining carriers; or pull his three task groups together and mass his defensive firepower under the cover of his land based fighters to preserve his fleet. If he chose the second course of action, he ran the risk of losing the opportunity to deal a decisive blow to the Japanese; if he chose the first, he ran the risk of losing a large part of the fleet, with all that entailed. Many naval historians from the United States in particular have subsequently criticised Cunningham for once again electing to take the more cautious approach, but even with the potential gains, his decision was plain: he would stick to the attritional approach and absorb the Japanese strike. Cunningham’s orders were enacted swiftly, pulling his carrier groups back into mutual supporting range of each other and allowing their reinforcement with his heavy surface ships, whilst swelling his defences with the RAF and RNAS fighters from Malaya. 579 IJN carrier aircraft (245 Zeroes, 164 Vals and 170 Kates) and the land-based force of 80 Zeroes and 125 G4M bombers were intercepted by a maximum effort fighter CAP of several layers - firstly the outermost group of 256 Supermarine Eagles and 70 Reapers, then the middle layer of 184 Spitfires and 78 RNAS Eagles and then the inner defence of 144 Hurricanes and 176 Fireflies. These coordinated waves of fighters split their attacks, with the Eagles and Spitfires focusing on the Zeroes and Reapers, Fireflies and Hurricanes going for the strike aircraft and bombers. The defence inflicted a high rate of attrition on the IJN attack planes, but the Japanese Zeroes maintained their impressive record of performance, despite the heavier armament of the British fighters taking a heavy toll; a total of 126 Zeroes, 61 G4Ms, 69 Vals and 73 Kates being shot down in the furious aerial melee in exchange for 91 Eagles, 54 Spitfires, 72 Fireflies, 39 Hurricanes and 23 Reapers. After breaking through what seemed to be the final layer of defence, the Japanese strike was then confronted by the Grand Fleet's ace in the hole in the form of the fighter groups of Invincible, Saint Louis and Henri IV flying in from the Andaman Sea; their 120 fighters shooting down a further 38 Japanese planes for the loss of 18 of their own number. It is a testament to the sheer numbers and skill of the Japanese pilots that the survivors were able to press home their attack on the Grand Fleet, flying through the most devastating AAA barrage they had yet faced from radar-guided guns of the hundreds of warships below, 36 bombers and 42 carrier attack planes being shot down in the process. The remaining Japanese planes concentrated their attacks on the Royal Navy carriers and battleships, resulting in extensive damage. Indefatigable was hit by four bombs and one torpedo, Illustrious by three bombs, Argus by two torpedoes and two bombs, Implacable by four bombs and two torpedoes, Monarch was struck by three bombs, Iron Duke and Triumph by two bombs and Conqueror by two torpedoes and two bombs, in addition to the sinking of 3 cruisers and 9 destroyers and various damage to 9 cruisers and 20 destroyers.
Cunningham ordered an immediate retirement of the Grand Fleet upon Singapore as dusk approached, given that half of his available carrier decks were now unusable and the prospect that launching a coordinated airstrike against the Japanese fleet would keep his remaining fleet within range of further air attacks. He had succeeded in preventing the Japanese from achieving a decisive victory and the sinking of the two light carriers could give some substance to characterisations of victory, but did not press forward to seek a night surface action against the Combined Fleet due to the threat of enemy submarines; in any event, the Japanese battlefleet had been untouched from the day's action, whilst he had several ships suffering from various degrees of damage. The final stage of the battle came as night fell and one of the RNAS Mosquito torpedo bomber wings took off from its Malay aerodromes. Guided by aerial RDF direction from Prometheus, they subjected the Combined Fleet to a surprise low-level attack, severely damaging the battleship Oshima and sinking the old light cruisers Yakumo and Nankan, which skillfully intercepted torpedoes aimed for Kaga and Mikawa respectively. The impact of the strike on the Japanese at sea was far more significant in its longer term consequences than any tactical losses, as it demonstrated that the Royal Navy too could threaten enemy surface forces at an unprecendented range and dissuaded the IJN from attempting further fleet advances into the Gulf of Siam.
Like the battles that were to come in the South and Central Pacific as 1942 wore on, those bloody frays that took place in early 1942 in the South China Sea increasingly demonstrated that threats from the air and below the waves were substantive limiting factors on the freedom of operation of the traditional battlefleet. The most significant consequence in April was Admiral Cunningham's decision to pull the remaining carrier task forces of the Grand Fleet back into the Andaman Sea from Singapore, interposing the Malay Peninsula between the Japanese and the Royal Navy. This was driven by the advance of the Japanese in Sumatra and the final collapse of Allied resistance in Java, which outflanked the stubborn defenders from the south. Singapore was now a fortress city under distant yet still very much effective siege, with the subsequent Singapore Blitz presenting significant problems for the full operational employment of the Grand Fleet from its long-time intended bases. To avoid any suggestion of panic or abandonment, considerable emphasis was placed upon the maintenance of the battlefleet, cruisers and destroyers at Singapore, in addition to the increasingly effective commerce-raiding campaign waged from its Brobdingnagian submarine pens. The deployment of the Grand Fleet's carriers would also prove decisive in breaking the Japanese line in Northern Malaya and the Kra Isthmus, even as land-based airpower was increasingly constrained by the imminent monsoon.
Yamamoto's failure to achieve a decisive victory in South East Asia was the first setback in the successful tide of conquest, but now, his attention was drawn away to a different front.
For, on April 4th 1942, USAF bombers attacked Tokyo.
With the exception of Malaya and Burma, Japan had achieved the main initial objectives by early 1942 and had neutralised the Grand Fleet of the Royal Navy as a decisive offensive force. However, it was unable to eliminate the last positions and forces of the British Empire in the Far East through direct assault and was also facing the increasing pressure of the recovering United States Navy across the Pacific. Intense discussions took place over the course of March amongst the members of the Imperial General Headquarters on the strategic priority for Japan in 1942, fixing upon the establishment of a firm defensive perimeter in the east and a build up of forces to push the Commonwealth forces back to India in the west. The movement of the Royal Navy's carrier forces to the Bay of Bengal served as a final trigger for this action, as it placed these vital assets beyond the immediate reach of the Combined Fleet. It was considered that the optimum means of achieving these aims in the short term would be through an oblique approach: the isolation and possible invasion of Australia. This would be carried out over the course of six months, after which time the IJN could prepare to execute its decades-old plan for the defeat of the advancing United States Navy through a process of gradual attritional battles through the Central Pacific utilising aircraft carriers, land-based bombers and submarines before a final decisive fleet battle at a time, place and circumstances of Japanese advantage.
The IJN South Seas Fleet had already taken New Britain during its initial sweeping offensive into the South Pacific in January 1942 and had landed substantial Imperial Japanese Army forces along the northern coast of New Guinea. This put Japanese forces in an optimum position to push down at take the remainder of New Guinea and occupy the key island chains that stood astride Australia and New Zealand's lifelines to the United States - the Solomon Islands, New Hebrides, Fiji and Samoa. Once this supply line was severed, Britain would be forced to redirect supplies, troops and ships away from its build-up in India and Malaya to the aid of its Commonwealth kith and kin, presenting an opportunity to eliminate its remaining naval power east of Suez. The IJN had presented an expansive plan for this concept to encompass the seizure of seizure of Northern Australia as a preventative measure. The Imperial Japanese Army was reticent to prepare full plans for an invasion of Australia, considering the troop and shipping requirements (some 20 divisions and 4.5 million tons at a minimum) being well beyond their actual capabilities, but supported a proposal by the Imperial Japanese Air Force for the neutralisation of Australian defences through a concentrated aerial campaign provided that its planned offensives in South East Asia and China received greater tactical air support.
The primary objective of the Japanese offensive would be the capital city of New Guinea, Port Moresby. With it and is surrounding airfields in Japanese control, large parts of Queensland and Northern Australia would be brought within range of IJAF bombers and the Allies would be effectively forced out of the Coral Sea. The secondary target would be Tulagi in the Solomon Islands, where a forward airbase would be built as part of the expanding defences around the South Pacific hub of Rabaul. Admiral Shiyegoshi Inoue had been taken aback by the intervention of US aircraft carriers in his early landing operations in the Lae-Salamaua area and had been reinforced by the arrival of two light carriers and four cruisers at Rabaul and the fast battleships Amagi and Atago at Truk in early April. He still regarded his force as lacking in naval airpower and urged Yamamoto to deploy heavier forces to cover the invasion force. The Combined Fleet had taken significant losses in the South China Sea campaign and the IJN lacked the infrastructure and oilers to support a full deployment to the South Pacific; additionally, a substantial battleship force was still required to be kept at Manila to cover the Grand Fleet at Singapore. Yamamoto compromised by agreeing on the deployment of two carrier divisions and supporting heavy surface elements as a covering force in mid April, enabled by the gradual repair of damaged ships and the availability of new vessels.
The Australian and New Zealand governments had been calling for reinforcements of their increasing parlous position since the outbreak of war and, by early April, these calls could no longer be ignored, particularly in the face of signals intercepts indicating a gradual move of Japanese ships from Manila to Truk and Rabaul and Japanese intentions for the invasion of New Guinea. The Australia and New Zealand Stations had been unified as the ANZAC Squadron in January under the command of Admiral Sir John Crace and reinforced by USN cruisers and certain surviving units of the ABDAF Strike Force, but its sole capital ship was the new Australian battleship HMAS Commonwealth and the elderly carrier HMAS Albatross was not considered as a frontline unit. The Imperial War Cabinet concluded that there was a clear need for reinforcement of Commonwealth naval forces in the South Pacific. This lead to the dispatch of a squadron of the Grand Fleet from Singapore to Australia based around the aircraft carriers Ark Royal and Victorious and the battleships Australia, New Zealand, Hood, St. George and Prince of Wales under the command of Admiral Sir Bernard Rawlings, considered an acceptable reduction of forces given that Formidable and Indomitable would be available for service by early May and Leviathan's imminent arrival from the Mediterranean alongside the Dutch battleships De Zeven Provincien and Willem van Oranje. Additionally, two infantry divisions and a Royal Marine Division and two Spitfire wings would be redirected from India to Australia in a convoy escorted by the East Indies Squadron. Upon their arrival at Sydney on April 24th, they were designated the British Commonwealth Pacific Squadron.
However, this major force for the defence of Allied position in the South Pacific would come from the United States Navy. The three carriers of Task Force 12, Enterprise, Wasp and Essex, escorted by Connecticut, Washington and Constellation, 6 cruisers and 18 destroyers had been engaged in the Doolittle Raid and were now returning to San Diego. Task Force 11 (Saratoga, North Carolina, 4 cruisers and 12 destroyers) was en route from Fiji to the new USN base in New Caledonia, Task Force 15 (Bonhomme Richard, Alabama, 3 cruisers and 9 destroyers) was covering a crucial convoy to New Zealand 400nm northeast of Samoa and Task Force 16 (Intrepid, Kearsarge, Michigan, Indiana, 10 cruisers and 36 destroyers) was operating from the still damaged base at Pearl Harbor in defence of the American position in the Central Pacific. In the South Pacific, Task Force 17 (a total force of Yorktown, Hornet, South Dakota, Massachusetts, 6 cruisers and 25 destroyers) were on station in the Coral Sea, having recently conducted air raids against Japanese landings on the northern coast of New Guinea. The utilisation of super battleships in fast carrier task forces had already proven successful in the USN raids on the Gilberts and Marshall Islands earlier in 1942, ironically being driven by a lack of sufficient large fleet oilers to support the operation of separate battlesquadrons; the same logistical limitations and the question of the location of the main IJN battlefleet and carrier force kept the 9 older battleships of the US Pacific Fleet to San Diego for the time being as a defensive measure.
Admiral Chester Nimitz, the new commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, had reviewed intercepted Japanese signals traffic between Yamamoto and Inoue and further intelligence regarding the movement of fleet oilers to Truk and Rabaul and began to form a picture of the scope and threat of Operation MO. A further intercept by British naval intelligence regarding the movement of the Fifth and Sixth Carrier Divisions to Rabaul lead to the conclusion that a major Japanese offensive would take place in the South Pacific in May with the probable objective of taking Port Moresby. On April 25th, Nimitz ordered the concentration of all his available carriers in the Coral Sea to counter the Japanese push in coordination with Commonwealth naval units in the area, providing a local tactical superiority over the planned IJN forces. The Allies planned to catch the Japanese forces in a pincer movement in the Coral Sea, utilising all three USN task forces from the east and the RN from the west. Japanese radio intercepts had placed six US carriers in the Central Pacific and their seaplane and submarine reconnaissance of the area around the Solomon Islands had failed to indicate the presence of any additional Allied forces in the area. It was agreed that, in line with previous staff talks and commitments, the Commonwealth Pacific Squadron would come under the operational command of the US commander in the area and the overall strategic command of Admiral Nimitz.
On April 27th, USS Gato detected the departure of a large Japanese force of four carriers and three battleships from Truk, followed by aerial reconnaissance reports of the sortie of the slower invasion fleets from Rabaul on May 1st. The Port Moresby Invasion Force consisted of 29 transports carrying 18600 troops, 2 light cruisers and 6 destroyers, covered by the light carriers Chitose and Chiyoda, the old battleships Echizen, Tajima, Shimose and Kazusa, 2 heavy cruisers and 5 destroyers, whilst the Tulagi Invasion Force consisted of 8 transports carrying 6800 troops, the light carriers Taiyo and Kaiyo, 2 light cruisers, 4 destroyers, 6 minesweepers and 4 gunboats. The overall heavy covering forces under Admiral Kondo consisted of the Vanguard Force commanded by Admiral Shirō Takasu (Kongo, Kirishima, Hiei and Haruna and 8 destroyers) the Carrier Striking Force commanded by Admiral Chūichi Hara of (Shokaku, Zuikaku, Junyo and Ryujo, the fast battleships Amagi and Atago, 3 light cruisers and 16 destroyers) and the Main Body Support Force commanded by Admiral Hiroaki Abe (4 battleships, 4 superheavy cruisers and 12 destroyers). Six Japanese submarines would form a picket line 500nm to the southwest of Guadalcanal to provide warning of the approach of Allied ships on May 4th, but the three USN task forces under Admiral Frank J. Fletcher had already entered the Coral Sea on May 3rd and the Commonwealth task group was moving up from its position off Brisbane. They would aim to draw the Japanese into a cleverly set trap.
The IJN South Seas Fleet began landing Imperial Marines and Special Naval Landing Force troops on Guadalcanal and Tulagi on the early morning of May 4th. Fletcher moved up Task Force 17 to strike at the landings early on the next day, attacking the Japanese ships and construction troops with a raid of 54 aircraft from his position some 210nm to the south, shooting down 13 Japanese planes and sinking five transports, three minesweepers and the old cruiser Kaimon for the loss of 5 US aircraft. As he had intended, this now drew the attention of the Japanese carrier force, which moved quickly towards San Cristobal to come around into the Coral Sea in pursuit. Fletcher now withdrew back to the southeast, joining up with the other two US carrier task groups. On May 6th, both the Japanese and American forces would endeavour to locate their enemy carrier groups, with fighter patrols from both sides shooting down a number of search aircraft. A USN strike from Saratoga succeeding in sinking Kaiyo and her two escorting destroyers off Malaita, whilst a large Japanese raid was launched against a suspected American carrier group which turned out to be the oilers Neosho and Rapidan, both of which were sunk by IJN dive bombers. The main Japanese carrier force was located late on the afternoon of May 6th, but Fletcher elected not to launch a strike that could not be recovered before darkness and kept his force intact under cover of sorcerously augmented overcast weather. As he did so, the next stage of the battle began with three IJNAF reconnaissance bombers out of Rabaul locating the vanguard of the Commonwealth squadron 119nm southwest of Tagula. Only a partial report could be made before they were shot down by fighters from HMS Victorious, but the garbled information came as a surprise to Kondo, who suspected that this new force could be the flanking elements of the elusive US carrier group rather than a new force. Rawlings pulled his scouting cruisers and his main fleet back southwards before resuming his advance northwards after dark, aiming to put his force in position to strike the invasion convoy once it reached the Jomard Passage through the Louisiades. Crucially for the events of the morrow, the Japanese main body linked up with the carrier striking force to add the firepower of their anti-aircraft guns to its defences, following on from the operational lessons of the South China Sea campaign.
May 7th would see the decisive phase of the battle. The Japanese had moved to the north overnight to a position 300nm southwest of Guadalcanal, whilst Fletcher's force had moved up to 260nm south of the Japanese and Rawling's Commonwealth Squadron was 150nm south of Samarai. Both the USN and IJN task groups launched search planes throughout the early morning, with the Japanese aircraft locating Task Force 17 some 239nm away at 0752, with an airstrike of 66 Zeroes, 87 Kates and 90 Vals being launched at 0832. At 0801, a USN SBD from Yorktown located the main Japanese carrier force and a strike of 54 F4F Wildcats, 85 TBM Avengers and 100 SBD Dauntlesses is launched at 0849. The Japanese strike was intercepted by the USN combat air patrol of 84 Wildcats at 0954, with 25 Vals, 19 Kates and 20 Zeroes shot down for the loss of 36 Wildcats and a further 17 torpedo planes and 21 dive bombers being shot down by the extremely heavy anti-aircraft fire of the escorting US battleships, cruisers and destroyers. Hornet was hit by three torpedoes and six bombs, lost power and set afire, Saratoga was hit by two torpedoes and four bombs and is slowed to 24 knots, Yorktown was struck by one torpedo and three bombs and has two 5” twin mounts destroyed and Bonhomme Richard was hit by two bombs. Alabama was struck by one torpedo and two bombs, North Carolina by one torpedo and three bombs, South Dakota by three bombs and Massachusetts by one torpedo, while the light cruiser Newark was hit by two torpedoes and three bombs and slowly sunk, the heavy cruiser Lansing blew up after being hit by five bombs and the destroyers Anderson and Wainwright were sunk by multiple bomb hits. The American aircraft hit the IJN carrier strike force at 1013, after fighting their way through the Japanese CAP of 72 Zeroes at a cost of 27 Dauntlesses, 22 Avengers and 31 Wildcats shot down in exchange for the loss of 20 Zeroes, with a further 16 Avengers and 19 Dauntlesses shot down by IJN anti-aircraft fire, which was particularly heavy from the escorting battleships. Shokaku was hit by one torpedo and three bombs, Zuikaku was hit by one torpedo and two bombs, Junyo evaded all but two bombs and Ryujo was smashed by five bombs and one torpedo, causing massive fires and leading to Commander Robert E. Dixon's famous radio transmission "Scratch one flattop! Dixon to carrier: Scratch one flattop.". The Japanese battleships drew considerable fire from the attacking USN strike planes, with Settsu and Mikawa being the worst hit with three bombs apiece, but none were significantly damaged, whilst the superheavy cruisers Shari and Warusawa were both struck by one torpedo and two bombs and three destroyers set afire or sunk. Both fleets proceeded to recover their aircraft and pull back away, leaving the US task groups with 233 operational aircraft compared to 248 Japanese planes and both forces having lost one fleet carrier, but with the US ships having taken greater damage and being effectively reduced to two operational flight decks.
As the major carrier battle unfolded, RN seaplanes spotted the Port Moresby invasion convoy west of the Louisiade Archipelago at a distance of 128nm from the Pacific Fleet . Admiral Rawlings ordered his 4 battleships to close at top speed whilst he launched an airstrike from Ark Royal and Victorious. 36 Swordfish, 32 Buccaneers, 30 Fireflies and 29 Eagles were launched at 1134 and RN strike arrived over the Japanese fleet at 1209, being were met by an IJN combat air patrol of 27 Zeroes. 10 Swordfish, 8 Buccaneers, 6 Fireflies and 10 Eagles are shot down for the loss of 12 Zeroes. The Japanese light carriers Chitose and Chiyoda are hit by two torpedoes and four bombs and two torpedoes and two bombs respectively and are left adrift and the heavy cruiser Furutaka capsizing after being hit by two torpedoes and five bombs. 4 destroyers are badly damaged, but the most grievous damage is done to the invasion fleet, with six transports sunk and four damaged. Admiral Kondo, upon hearing of the RN strike, ordered that his fast battleships move to the west at full speed to cover the invasion force and launched an airstrike at the Commonwealth ships, whilst the escorting Japanese cruisers formed a rearguard to defend the withdrawing convoy. At 1359 in the afternoon, Hood, Prince of Wales, Australia and New Zealand opened fire on the withdrawing Japanese invasion force at a distance of 52,376 yards. At 1410, Hood hit the Japanese armoured cruiser Izumo at a range of 42,589 yards with her eighteenth salvo. Prince of Wales scores her first hit at 1417 on Iwate. By 1445, the two old cruisers had been battered into smoking ruins and were slowly sinking, along with their two escorting destroyers, but their sacrifice had won crucial time for the withdrawal of the surviving troopships. The IJN airstrike of 56 aircraft launched by the Kido Butai attacked the Commonwealth battleships at 1502, with 7 Vals and 10 Kates shot down. Hood and Prince of Wales were hit by one torpedo and two bombs apiece, Australia by three bombs and New Zealand by one bomb, with the destroyer HMAS Voyager sunk by three bombs.
The Commonwealth battleships withdrew back towards their aircraft carriers south of New Guinea, with the Japanese forces headied north for Rabaul at 18 knots, with the two stricken light carriers being towed by cruisers. Fletcher, some 196nm to the southwest, ordered Washington and South Dakota, 2 cruisers and 10 destroyers to pursue the withdrawing Japanese and attempt to bring them to action overnight. The Japanese rearguard, consisting of the old battleships Shimosa and Tajima, 3 cruisers and 9 destroyers, was caught by the US battleship force at 0211. Washington hit Tajima with her third salvo, with the Japanese ship blowing up at 0234 with the loss of 897 lives, while South Dakota scored 13 hits on Shimosa, leaving her a fiery, battered hulk which sunk the next day. 3 Japanese and 2 American destroyers were sunk in the nighttime melee.The final acts of the battle the next morning on May 8th were brief but brutal. At 0726, the crippled light carrier Chitose was sunk by scouting USN Dauntless dive bombers from Bonhomme Richard. At 0845, five Japanese land based G4M torpedo bombers hit HMAS Albatross with three torpedoes; she sunk six hours later.
The Battle of the Coral Sea was a strategic Allied victory, with the IJN losing 1 fleet and 1 light carrier, 2 old battleships, 4 cruisers, 7 destroyers and 139 aircraft and the Allies losing 1 fleet and 1 light carrier, 2 cruisers, 5 destroyers and 185 aircraft and, most significantly, the invasion of Port Moresby being decisively defeated. The loss of the older Japanese battleships in the one-sided surface night action did somewhat obscure the true margin of victory, as they were certainly not frontline surface units by any meaning or interpretation, but they did provide an extremely valuable moral boost to the American public; as a result of the Coral Sea, the remaining IJN 15" superdreadnoughts were withdrawn from the South Pacific for duty with the China Area Fleet for the next 18 months and they would not see frontline combat again for some time. The cooperation between the Allied naval forces had been generally effective, although issues of signals, command and logistics would further hamper such efforts as 1942 proceeded. For the Japanese, the lesson of the battle was clear - the carriers of the United States Navy represented the greatest threat to the security of their newly conquered empire in the Pacific and only their elimination would pave the way for ultimate victory. Once they were removed from the equation, then the modern carriers and battleships of the Imperial Japanese Navy could crush the surface ships of their American and British foes without mercy and the Rising Sun would prevail across the world's largest ocean.
Following on from the decisive United States victory at the Battle of Midway in June, where three Japanese aircraft carriers were sunk for the loss of Yorktown, the strategic balance in the Pacific shifted dramatically towards the Allies. The defeat shattered any remaining illusions or victory disease among the IJN and Yamamoto's secondary contingency plan for the attrition and destruction of the USN in the South Pacific whilst preparing defences to counter their inevitable offensive were put into place. Even limited as they were post-Pearl Harbor, Japanese intelligence assets within the United States painted a stark picture of the scale of American naval construction. After Midway, Japan could deploy 7 fleet carriers, the elderly Hosho and 4 light carriers, with two Taiho class and three auxiliary conversions due to enter service in the second half of 1942, representing a not insubstantial force; however, the USN fielded 7 fleet carriers in Pacific alone with 4 Essex class ships and 4 Independence class light carriers entering service in the second half of the year and a further 24 fleet carriers laid down or ordered. The decision reached by Imperial General Headquarters was to defer planned offensives against Fiji, the New Hebrides and New Caledonia, where US forces were now established in strength, in favour of a concentrated defence of the Solomon Islands and a renewed land offensive in New Guinea. The main strength of the Combined Fleet, numbering 24 battleships once repairs from Midway were completed, would remain together and thus capable of successfully engaging either a British or American battlefleet, whilst fast coordinated task forces would rotate through Truk and the South Pacific front to counter the Allied threat from that direction.
In any case, before any Japanese action could take place in the form of a planned carrier raid on the New Hebrides, the long planned Allied offensive in the South Pacific began in early August 1942 with Operation Watchtower, the invasion of the Solomon Islands. It was the first part of a general push by land and naval forces against the Japanese in both New Guinea and the Solomons that aimed to take the key fortress at Rabaul. The Japanese airfields on Tulagi, Guadalcanal and San Cristobal were the primary objectives, to be occupied by the 1st U.S. Marine Division and the Marine Raiders. Supporting landings would be carried out on Rennell Island by a combined Anglo-Australian brigade to cover the southern flank of the Allied position. Watchtower was primarily supported by a large United States Navy fleet, which departed Fiji along with the 107 ships of the invasion convoy on July 23rd, whilst the Commonwealth Pacific Squadron, consisting of Ark Royal, Victorious, Australia, Princess Royal and Hood, 5 cruisers and 15 destroyers, escorted the Rennell Island force of 20 transports from Sydney; a task force of Prince of Wales, New Zealand and Commonwealth, 4 cruisers and 10 destroyers had earlier departed to escort a reinforcement convoy to New Guinea and subsequently conduct a diversionary attack at Milne Bay. On August 4th, 15,000 US Marines of the 1st Marine Division landed on Guadalcanal between Koti Point and Lunga Point, supported by a fleet of the carriers Enterprise, Intrepid, Wasp and Bonhomme Richard, the battleships Washington, North Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont and Massachusetts, the battlecruisers Congress and Constellation, 26 cruisers and 72 destroyers. 4000 Raiders and Paramarines took Tulagi, Gavutu and Tanambogo in six hours of bloody fighting, whilst 5000 Marines were largely unopposed on San Cristobal.
A Japanese surface force of six heavy, four light cruisers and 10 destroyers attacked US naval forces off Guadalcanal at 0129 on August 5th in a surprise night attack after moving down from Rabaul in four separate groups. The Japanese ships struck from the south, having come around Santa Isabel Island, catching the 9 US cruisers and 20 destroyers momentarily unaware and opening fire from a range of 15000 yards. The light cruisers Jackson and Pasadena and 6 destroyers returned fire immediately and closed for a torpedo attack, but came under heavy 240mm fire from the Japanese heavy cruiser force, which has extensive training in night fighting. In a short, brutal engagement, Jackson was hit by 19 rounds and Pasadena by 25 rounds, with two US destroyers sunk; the Japanese cruiser Ashigara was lightly damaged and one IJN destroyer exploding after being hit by 3 torpedoes. Pasadena sunk an hour later, with 142 of her crew going down with the ship. The US heavy cruiser force of Vincennes, Quincy, Tuscaloosa, Houston, Chicago, Louisville and New Orleans and 14 destroyers move to support the southern force, but are struck by a devastating 24“ Long Lance torpedo attack by the Japanese cruisers and destroyers. Quincy was hit by three torpedoes and begins sinking, with Chicago and New Orleans struck by one apiece. Japanese gunfire focuses upon Vincennes and Tuscaloosa, hitting each ship upwards of thirty times and reducing them to burning wrecks. Houston and Louisville succeed in engaging the cruiser Mogami, penetrating her belt at close range with extremely rapid fire and blowing up her X magazine. The destroyer forces engaged in a confused melee amid the smoke and fire, with 5 Japanese and 3 US vessels being sunk. The Japanese cruisers did not press their advantage by attacking the vulnerable US amphibious shipping, after coming under long range fire from South Dakota and Massachusetts, which were the closest US battleships. Admiral Mikawa was under explicit orders from Yamamoto to preserve his force and instead withdraw up 'The Slot' towards Bougainville at high speed to avoid the coming dawn and the retribution of US aircraft carriers and battleships. The damaged Abe founders along the way, being sunk the next day off New Georgia by Helldivers off Enterprise. The battle was a bloody Japanese tactical victory, with four US cruisers and five destroyers lost in exchange for two Japanese cruisers and 6 destroyers lost and 3 cruisers and four destroyers damaged.
The aftermath of the Battle of Savo Island saw the establishment of a regular pattern, where supplies would be delivered under heavy USN escort during the daylight hours and the fleet would withdraw out to sea at nighttime to prevent the reoccurence of the bloody Japanese surface strike. The Commonwealth Pacific Squadron had withdrawn back to Brisbane to refuel and resupply after the initial landings in order to cover the invasion convoy from Port Moresby to Milne Bay, where Australian troops would establish the first major airbase and bridgehead aimed at halting the inexorable Japanese advance in New Guinea and the South Pacific. This would be accomplished by a brigade of the 5th Australian Division, directly supported by the cruisers Canberra and Melbourne and four RAN destroyers. The initial landings on August 23rd proceeded without event and were followed directly by the next stage - the construction of an airfield on Goodenough Island as the first in a ring of supporting bases around Milne Bay. An Australian infantry battalion and engineers landed on September 1st and initial establishment operations proceeded successfully until the afternoon of September 3rd, when an IJNAS bomber force struck at the supporting naval group of Melbourne and two destroyers with devastating effect. They were detected on radar at a distance of 90nm by the RAN cruiser and fighter cover from the carriers of the Pacific Squadron, operating 125nm southwest of Milne Bay, was summoned with utmost urgency; the Eagles providing coverage over the main Australian bridgehead, however, were running low on fuel and the only available fighters, 832 Naval Air Squadron were still halfway out from Victorious. The race between the British and Japanese aircraft was a close one, but it was won by the 43 Mitsubishi G4Ms, which sunk HMAS Waterhen and HMAS Vendetta with a pair of torpedoes each and crippled Melbourne with three torpedoes, forcing it to be run aground. The arriving Fleet Air Arm fighters were met with the unpleasant surprise of a separate escort group of A6M Zeroes, which shot down 11 of the 22 Supermarine Eagles in exchange for just 5 Japanese planes in the brief but bloody melee. The Battle of the D'Entrecasteaux Islands indicated the clear primacy of naval aircraft over light surface warships and lead to a period of marked caution from Rawlings as he marshalled his strength, chiefly through the arrival of the newly commissioned Australian carrier, HMAS Adelaide, which joined the Commonwealth Pacific Squadron as it returned to Sydney on September 15th and it continued to work up with the fleet in a series of training exercises in the Coral Sea through early October, the battleship HMNAS New Avalon and the light carriers HMAS Theseus and Hercules. They were further scheduled to be joined by HMSAS Natal and HMCS Acadia by Christmas, allowing Ark Royal and Victorious to receive badly needed refits in Sydney and Melbourne after their protracted periods of frontline service.
Admiral Rawlings bought his fleet up towards Port Moresby on October 23rd and began a series of large scale raids on Japanese positions along the Kokada Track and around Buna and Gona on the northern coast of New Guinea, using his fighters and strike aircraft to inflict apparently heavy damage; the rugged conditions and thick jungle terrain did make accurate bomb damage assessment a decidedly difficult proposition. Just 17 aircraft were lost in Operation Banner out of over 250 committed to the seven days of air strikes, the majority being lost in the difficult operational environment of the Owen-Stanley Mountains. Following on from Banner, the fleet was held off the coast of New Guinea for almost a week as contingency measure to cover any Japanese retaliation to the chemical strikes on Gona before proceeding back to Espiritu Santo and the Solomons, where the USN had achieved a series of hard-fought and valuable triumphs over the IJN even as the US Marines won a famous victory on Guadalcanal. The combined American and Commonwealth naval task forces proceeded to conduct a series of rolling air strikes on Japanese positions on New Georgia and Bougainville in the first preparatory stages of the planned 1943 drive on Rabaul. These were coordinated with high altitude USN and USAF skyship operations over the Admiralty Islands, although the devices employed by Commander R.A. Heinlein's Special Experimental Projects Force did not have the same success as they would in the subsequent years of the war.
The impact upon the Royal Navy's general carrier doctrine was influenced in no small degree by the experiences of the Pacific Fleet in 1942, drawing from the USN's refinement of the task force concept and their own operational lessons. By placing the aircraft carriers at the centre of the task force, the defensive firepower of the group was focused most effectively on its longest range striking assets and coordinated their fighter groups with the superior RDF carried by capital ships. The anti-aircraft cruisers and Tribal class destroyers provided the most efficient close escorts, acting in a 'goalkeeper' role in the immediate proximity of the carriers, but super battleships and battlecruisers both provided sheer volume of light and heavy AA guns and ample direction capacity, permitting other cruisers to be stationed as the next outward layer of defence and destroyers to provide the outer screen. By the use of a common tactical concept, British and American carrier task forces could operate more effectively in combined Allied operations; the barriers of language and issues of command made a similar implementation by British and French squadrons a more difficult task.
Admiral Cunningham's decision to take the operational carrier task forces of the Grand Fleet, along with a substantial portion of his battlefleet, into the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal in April 1942 was not without controversy, with it being seen by several influential personages, including Prime Minister Churchill, as a strategic concession to the Japanese. The eventually successful argument presented by Cunningham and the Admiralty was that the movement of the fleet was simply a tactical maneuver rather than a retreat, bringing the flank of the Japanese forces in Southern Siam under mobile air attack. In the earliest stages of the Andaman Sea Campaign, the Japanese advance in Southern Burma was worn to a halt by Royal Navy air strikes and gunfire support before the onset of the monsoon ended their hopes for an early slashing victory. The Grand Fleet, even now gradually recovering its previous strength, then carried out Operations Alphabet, Boomerang, Capital and Dervish in late May and June, striking the Japanese frontline in Central Sumatra and their newly established fighter aerodromes around Palembang. It is estimated that petroleum output from the refinery complexes of Palembang were reduced by over ten percent in 1942 as a result of the Fleet Air Arm operations, which came at a cost of 117 aircraft.
The main effort of the Grand Fleet, though, would come in Malaya. General Yamashita's big push, supported by 10 reinforcing divisions, had pushed back Slim's Twelfth Army from the Ironside Line to the secondary Telak Line and bought Kelantan under long range artillery fire in early June before Field Marshal Wavell deployed his reserves and held the enemy unsteadily by June 15th. The combination of the Japanese advance through the jungle and the monsoon had curtailed the air support than could be supplied by the RAF and the resultant positional warfare was more akin to the combat of the Great War in many sections along the front. Naval intervention from the Grand Fleet therefore came as decisive in breaking the deadlock, particularly along the west coast of the peninsula. The most devastating raid on July 26th came in the build up to the coordinated counter-offensive by the Eleventh and Twelfth Armies, Operation Cavalier, when 586 carrier aircraft struck at two Japanese frontline divisions and one corps headquarters over the course of a day, flying over 2100 sorties and smashing the IJA positions with bombs, rockets, wildfire and skyblaze; the latter two arcanely enhanced incendiaries having been successfully introduced in Norway and the Western Desert the previous year. It played a notable role in the early success of Cavalier, allowing the considerable advance of 8 miles on the first day on August 1st. As Slim's forces continued their advance back up towards the Kra Isthmus, Admiral Cunningham launched a series of strikes on the road and railway networks of southern Siam. His success here would ironically prove to be the cause of considerable delay to the subsequent Allied land offensive, but had the effect of slowing the flow of supplies to the frontline Japanese forces quite substantially.
As the tide of the Battle of Malaya shifted, the swelling Allied naval forces maintained three separate mobile carrier task forces in support of operations in Burma, Malaya and Sumatra, whilst their other vessels were hastily refitted and repaired for the expected increased pace of operations that would come with the return of the Grand Fleet to Singapore. The plans for the new year would see at least 12 Royal Navy carriers lead the advance back into the Gulf of Siam, dependent on the continuing success in the Mediterranean and the potential re-emergence of the Kriegsmarine surface fleet. Yet this was far from a British fleet alone: Dutch and French squadrons sailed alongside the White Ensign, just as Australian, Canadian, New Zealand, Indian and South African vessels swelled the ranks of Cunningham's armada. The grand strategy of the Royal Navy in the Far East was to be gradual, rather than sweeping: Malaya would be made safe, then the Gulf of Siam sealed off, then the South China Sea closed. In Fremantle and Sydney, in Mombasa and Cape Town, in Alexandria and Aden, in Madras, Trincomalee, Bombay and Calcutta, the Grand Fleet mustered for what was to come.
In their first year of full combat, the light fleet carriers had proved versatile and effective in manners beyond the role they had been designed for. Whilst they were still employed as battlefleet fighter carriers in operations with the Home Fleet due to the particular tactical environment of the Atlantic and Norwegian Sea, their integration into carrier task forces in South East Asia and the Pacific had demonstrated their greatest utility in allowing the fleet carrier air groups to cover the strike role. Their anti-submarine and trade protection role was increasingly taken over by the cheaper, smaller and more expendable escort carriers, seeing a concentration on the air defence mission.Theseus even saw some employment as a night-fighter carrier in the Solomons Campaign in the final months of 1942, but the main threat was seen as Japanese strikes during daylight hours. The successful employment of Essex and Independence class fleet and light carriers operated by the USN in the South Pacific similarly reinforced the operational flexibility provided by multiple carrier task forces, although the vastly greater resources and scale of the American construction programme would soon see their replacement with a different solution. One facet of the light carrier design that elicited concern was their substantially lighter armament, given the intense aerial combat environment in the South East Asian theatre.
The longest battle of the war and most perilous for the Allied cause was the Battle of the Atlantic and 1942 saw the heart of deep war on this most crucial of fronts. In the aftermath of the the Axis attacks on the American Eastern Seaboard and the subsequent declaration of war, German U-Boats enjoyed decided success in Operation Paukenschlag, which hurled over fifty long range submarines at the masses of shipping off the coast of the United States. Sinkings in January and February rose sharply as the USN convoy escort system struggled to meet the tactical challenges of the U-Boat offensive despite having substantial numbers of destroyers; escort vessels better suited to the convoy role than the fast fleet destroyers were starting to enter service, but even the industrial might of the United States faced unavoidable bottlenecks. Naval air cover began to constrict the operational environment available to the German and Axis submarine forces and the implementation of a strict blackout of coastal cities went some distance towards reducing the early losses which topped 450,000 tons in each of the first two months, but Grand Admiral Donitz's Ubootwaffe proved flexible, shifting its attacks to the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea in the spring. The combination of US escort production, shore based air cover of convoys and the provision of British and Canadian escort vessels in Reverse Lend Lease would gradually stem the tide of losses, but for the U-Boats, this seemed indeed a 'Second Happy Time', particularly in light of what was to come.
In the mid-Atlantic, the battle was taking on a different complexion. The entry into service of further escort carriers added to the mobile air cover provided by the previous auxiliary conversions, allowing consistent air cover for the whole trans-Atlantic journey for key convoys, firstly on the fast HX routes. This initial defensive employment, in conjunction with increasing numbers of USN SB-24 Liberators and RNAS Short Sterling patrol bombers, would hamper the ability of U-Boats to operate effectively against convoys on the surface throughout the summer months. However, it would be the shift to offensive use of escort carriers in the second half of 1942 that would be most decisive in the turning of the tide in the North Atlantic, with the Escort Groups of surface vessels now being joined by task forces made up of destroyers and fast frigates and destroyer escorts based around escort carriers and dedicated anti-submarine airships. The new formations, known as Hunter-Killer Groups in the United States Navy and Support Groups in Royal Navy parlance, were aggressively directed against known U-Boat operational areas and pursued their quarries with the significant aid of signals intelligence intercepts. This increased tempo of offensive operations did result in a costly price, with Audacity, Asperity, Avenger and Cormorant being sunk by U-Boats, but by the end of 1942, Royal Navy and Royal Canadian Navy escort carriers attached to Support Groups alone had been responsible for the sinking of 32 U-Boats out of 184 total losses in the Atlantic Ocean; the United States Navy's corresponding vessels accounting for 24 enemy submarines. As the year wore on, the Allies were firmly getting the upper hand in the Battle of the Atlantic, but 1943 would bring with it a dramatic new tactical and strategic challenge.
As the anti-submarine campaign in the North Atlantic proceeded to twist and turn, the most innovative British response began to gather pace. The construction of a 5000 ton small-scale model of the iceberg carrier concept was completed in Alberta in February and the particular merits of pykrete were demonstrated to a number of Allied officers and officials in a quite innovative experiment where blocks of both ice and pykrete were subjected to gunfire and combat spells. Production of a larger 60,000t test model on Hudson Bay followed in the summer of 1942 and testing successfully demonstrated the nominal utility of the vessel as at least seaworthy; carrier trials and experiments were to prove more difficult until the development of an innovative alchemical solution that solved the issue of deck operations. After lengthy and at times contentious debate and in the looming light of growing German success, the Chiefs of Staff Committee recommended that the Imperial War Cabinet approve the design and construction of two full scale vessels in Canada at a cost of £36.5 million apiece, or the price of four modern super battleships. This considerable cost was to swell as the requirements of the bergship were expanded, with the final specifications calling for aircraft hangars to be protected against bombs of up to 2000lb, a defensive armament of 50 twin 4.5" anti-aircraft gun turrets and over 300 smaller guns and an air group of up to 20 twin-engine combat aircraft; final displacement was to be over 2.5 million tons. To provide some measure of concealment of the nature and purpose of the project, it was given the codename Habakkuk and ostensibly intended as a measure to provide for the mass storage of aviation and naval fuel for the expanding escort carrier forces operated by the United States and British Empire. The exact circumstances of the decision to approve Habakkuk are still subject to the restrictions of official secrecy, but there has been some speculation amongst historians that a clandestine agreement was reached between the Admiralty and Air Staff regarding support of Bomber Command's contentious '5000 Plan' in light of strong representations against the same by the British Army. In any case, the project would continue, even as the war at sea began to shift and evolve.
The major carrier operations in the European theatre of operations in 1942 took place in support of two great amphibious invasions, firstly in the Atlantic and then in the Mediterranean. Allied fortunes on the Iberian peninsula had taken a decided turn for the worse since the German invasion of August 1941, being driven back to the Andalusian Pocket by November and barely managing to establish a strong front over the wintertide. Thereafter in early 1942, the German, Italian and Fascist Spanish forces controlled over nine tenths of Spain and Portugal and the British lead Fifth Army was effectively pinned down by a numerically inferior foe in a manner similar to the Salonika Front in the Great War, with the Axis forces benefiting from the advantage of interior lines of supply and communication. Gibraltar had been neutralised as a fleet base for all but light combatants, with the bulk of the Royal Navy Atlantic Fleet operating out of Casablanca and Madeira. Turning the enemy's flank through an amphibious landing had begun before the entry of the United States of America into the war and a definitive decision was reached at the ARCADIA Conference in Washington D.C. in January 1942. A landing in Portugal was decided upon, utilising US forces deployed directly from East Coast ports and troops from the British Isles.
After substantial build-up and planning, Operation Torch was launched on July 10th 1942, with two major naval task forces landing six U.S. and two Commonwealth divisions at Lisbon, Sines and Lagos. The Southern Task Force from the USN Atlantic Fleet of 7 battleships, 14 cruisers, the aircraft carriers Ranger, Hornet, and Independence and the escort carriers Long Island, Nantucket, Belle Isle, Sangamon, Bogue and Santee and 68 destroyers performed successfully off the Algarve in the role of direct air support and the provision of long range naval gunfire. Its aircraft in particular demonstrated the strong performance of the TBF Avenger and SB2C Helldiver, whilst the F4F Wildcat fighter acquitted itself effectively against older German Bf-109s. The Northern Task Force, drawn from the RN Home and Atlantic Fleets, supported the landings around Lisbon with their 5 battleships, 11 cruisers, 37 destroyers, the carriers Ocean, Albion, Perseus and Hector and the escort carriers Bold, Dasher, Vindex and Citadel, providing considerable reach inland with their new Firefly Mk IVs and Eagle Mk VIIIs. The latter aircraft in particular demonstrated considerably improved low-altitude maneuverability and performance and its improved 25mm cannon proved particularly effective, albeit against older model German fighters. However, it was the operation of US-produced Lend Lease Wildcats from the escort carriers that provided the most significant jump in performance compared to the older British fighters previously employed and this was to lead to greatly increased orders.
In the Mediterranean, the Regia Marina had taken virtually the whole of the remainder of 1941 to recover from the devastating blow of the Battle of Cape Matapan. The impact of the RN submarine campaign against Italian shipping and the vital maritime link to the Axis armies under Field Marshal Rommel in North Africa began to show decisive results in early 1942, as the fuel supplies available to the Italian battlefleet were increasingly constrained. Now a combined British, American and French fleet mustered in Gibraltar, Oran and Alexandria that vastly outnumbered the Regia Marina and, even as fighting continued in the Western Desert, the grand design for the invasion of Italy was underway, building on planning that had begun back in the dark days of 1940. In the first half of 1942, the capital ships of the Regia Marina were mainly kept back in the relative safety of La Spezia and Livorno, with only lighter forces based at Naples and Taranto, and attempts to draw them out into the range of Allied carriers and battleships were unsuccessful. The grand Allied triumph at the Battle of El Alamein in June 1942 and the subsequent fall of Tripoli on August 4th was the harbinger of the next stage in the Battle of the Mediterranean, the invasion of Sicily, codenamed Operation Husky. The speed of the Axis collapse in North Africa brought forward the invasion to November 5th 1942, coordinating it with the planned Soviet counteroffensive around Stalingrad.
All Allied naval forces in the Mediterranean theatre came under the overall command of Admiral Somerville at Malta. To prevent the Regia Marina from interfering with the landing, a huge covering fleet under the command of Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser that dwarfed that assigned to Torch would deploy between Malta and Pantalleria, capable of reacting to sorties from either Taranto or La Spezia and supporting the landing forces. It would consist of 24 battleships (Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Delaware, Dragon, Trafalgar, Superb, Magnificent, Nelson, Rodney, HMSAS South Africa, HMSAS Good Hope, HMCS America, HMNS Newfoundland, Gloire, Soleil Royale, Victoire, Majesteux, Orient, Superbe, Chile, Brasil, La Argentina and México), 8 battlecruisers, 13 carriers (Albion, Bulwark, Courageous, Glorious, Ranger, Océan, Suffren, Charles Martel, Brennus, Perseus, Belleau Wood and San Jacinto), 35 cruisers and 84 destroyers, operating alongside the Red Navy's Mediterranean Squadron. The landings themselves on would be supported by three task forces under the overall command of Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsey deploying 16 older battleships, 12 monitors, 29 cruisers, 20 escort carriers and 67 destroyers, in addition to smaller gunboats and rocket-equipped landing craft. In the face of the overwhelming force deployed off Sicily, the major units of the Regia Marina stayed in their ports, secure for the moment. Husky would see the most concentrated use of aircraft carriers to date and was the largest Allied fleet deployed to that point of the war. The end of the threat of the Regia Marina and broader Axis surface menace in the Mediterranean would come in 1943, not with a last defiant roar, but with a whimper.
The operational lessons drawn by the Royal Navy from the European campaigns in the first half of the war were mixed. Firstly, the prewar design philosophy of the fleet carriers of both the Ark Royal and Illustrious class had been successful, with the combination of armoured decks, substantive air groups and efficient anti-aircraft gun defences allowing the fleet to operate within range of land-based opposition. Secondly, carrier based airpower had been successful in opposing land-based opposition, particularly when it could best use its advantages of mobility and flexibility. Thirdly, the greatest successes had come from a narrow range of operations that had been the result of considerable prewar planning and training and this night strike capacity could not be easily applied to broader circumstances. Fourthly, the general capability and quality of carrier fighters had begun to dip in comparison with their land-based opponents, but the developments of the latter half of 1942 had begun to ameliorate this. Finally and perhaps most significantly, the aircraft carrier had proved to be the absolutely essential component of any major fleet operations.
The Fleet Air Arm had been well-served by its four main aircraft in the first three years of the war, but by the end of 1942, all were beginning to show their prewar vintage. The Supermarine Eagle was considered to have the most growth potential within its sizeable airframe and capacity to take the new developments of the Rolls Royce Merlin, but the development of a multi-role high performance fighter powered by the new Rolls Royce Eagle was initiated in February 1942 as its putative replacement. In the interim, the Mark VIII Eagle entered service in March, bringing considerable agility to the formidable platform, increased range, greater hitting power with its advanced 25mm cannons and a higher top speed of 425 mph. All of these characteristics combined to give it a number of advantages in clashes with the Japanese A6M Zero in the second half of the year, although the latter aircraft remained the most nimble fighter in the world; information from captured Zeroes would be incorporated into the Mark X in 1943. The Hawker Firefly Mk IV constituted an improvement, but as a naval fighter, it lacked the true performance edge to be fully competitive with the IJN and as a strike aircraft, it could not quite compete with its dedicated counterparts. Replacement of the Firefly with a derivation of the Hawker Light Fighter under development since mid 1941 was seen as the best option, but this would take some time to bear fruit. The Swordfish torpedo bomber and Buccaneer dive bomber had soldiered on manfully through the battles of 1942 and their replacements were well on their way in the form of the Fairey Spearfish and Blackburn Firedrake, both of which represented a substantial increase in performance. Testing of a carrier-based variant of the de Havilland Mosquito began in November 1942, promising a range of capabilities currently not matched by any aircraft in service.
Along with new aircraft, the Fleet Air Arm would also field new weapons throughout the course of 1942 as the development efforts of the first years of war came to fruition. The most radical of these would be the 60lb Rocket Projectile, which gave attacking aircraft significant striking power, albeit at a certain cost in accuracy. These entered service from May 1942 onwards in the fighting off the coast of Malaya and Burma and were used to great effect in the Sicily campaign at the end of the year. The 2500lb heavy armour piercing bomb arrived with the Grand Fleet too late to see service in the Battles of the South China Sea, but provided a devastating capacity capable of penetrating the largest enemy vessels, proving its mettle in the Guadalcanal campaign. The Royal Navy had generally employed 18" aerial torpedoes for its strikes against enemy fleets up to 1942, but prewar efforts to develop a heavy counterpart capable of sinking enemy capital ships had finally resulted in the operational availability of the 24.5" Mk V in December 1942. Finally, parallel to Barnes Wallis' project for a large bouncing bomb for employment against German hydroelectric dams, development of an innovative spherical weapon suitable for deployment on carrier aircraft continued at considerable pace.
By the end of 1942, the tide of the war had begun to shift towards Allied victory, after the year had begun with such portent of disaster. The Royal Navy had begun the year as the most powerful navy in the world, yet by Christmas, the changing of the guard had definitely occurred and now the United States Navy was unquestionably the mightiest force on the seven seas. The Grand Fleet now gathered its strength once again at Singapore and in India for a new offensive against the Empire of Japan in conjunction with the United States Pacific Fleet what was to be the greatest pincer movement of the war. In the fighting of this hardest year of deep war, the aircraft carrier had been the indispensable weapon of the Royal Navy.
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However I doubt they would bother. 
However I doubt they would bother.