Book Review - War at the end of the World by James P. Duffy

 War at the end of the World: Douglas MacArthur and the Forgotten Fight for New Guinea, 1942-1945

by James P. Duffy

New York: NAL Caliber, 2016                                                                          ISBN 9780451418302

This is a well-written and well-balanced account of the New Guinea campaign of World War II. James Duffy has not broken any new ground with this book, but what he has done is tell - side-by-side - the American, Australian and Japanese stories of this arduous campaign, in a simple narrative of the battles and decision making involved in winning (and losing) them.

The New Guinea campaign lasted from almost the beginning of the Pacific War to almost the end, and traversed the entire island from East to West. From early 1942 to late 1944 the Allied forces, through a strategy of targeted battles and bypassing large enemy bases, comprehensively defeated the Japanese forces. One stark statistic - in New Guinea the American forces lost 7,000 men, and the Australians a similar number. The Japanese lost over 200,000 men killed in the campaign.

The stark difference in deaths can be sheeted home to a few reasons: the overwhelming technological and materiel advantage of the Allies, the flawed battle tactics of the Japanese, and the inability of Japan to supply its troops with enough materiel (particularly food and medicine). As Duffy points out, MacArthur was also frugal with his troops, reluctant to attack large Japanese bases if he could avoid it. 

Rabaul was the first instance of where this tactic was used. Initially, from necessity owing to lack of troops, MacArthur constantly tried to avoid set-piece battles with large Japanese forces. What MacArthur wanted was hard ground for airfields. Although he was an Army man, MacArthur fully understood the crucial nature of air power, especially in a war that was fought over water and islands.

So, MacArthur's first thought when looking at the next Japanese conglomeration was "does it have an airfield suitable for my bombers, and is that airfield in the right strategic spot?" If the answer was no, the Allies moved on to the next area. Sometimes, if the Japanese force around a suitable airfield was too large, MacArthur sometimes found a suitable place where the Japanese weren't, and built his own airfields. In some cases an airfield could be up and running a couple of days after construction started. The construction companies, both the Australian and the American Seabees, were the unsung heroes in this forgotten war.

I imagine some Australian readers might quibble about the phrase "forgotten war" being applied to the New Guinea campaign, but I think that Duffy's term is apt. Certainly Australians generally know about the Kokoda campaign, and maybe Buna and Gona, but how many of us know much about the early campaigns in New Britain and New Ireland, the Markham Valley, Kalopit, Finschhafen, Manus Island and Los Negros, Hollandia and Aitape, Biak and Morotai?  

War at the end of the World is a great resource to understand these lesser-known battles, and at the same time to understand the Japanese viewpoint, which quite often gets lost in histories such as these. That the Japanese high command let so many troops wither on the vine is hard to understand, even with the difficulties that they had in moving troops as the war tipped in favour of the Allies. So many times Duffy writes of Japanese formations that were frittered away in piecemeal attacks, or suicidal defences of areas of little strategic value.

What I liked about this book was Duffy's even-handedness in describing the Australian and American contributions to victory. While we Australians might think we did it all, the reality is that the Americans did most of the heavy lifting. Duffy gets the balance right in my opinion - clearly pointing out the holding operations of the Australians at Kokoda, and how their preponderance of skill and battle experience led the way through the early battles at Buna and Gona, and then giving way to the greater numbers of Americans as they arrived in the theatre. 

As the subtitle of this book suggests, Duffy also has a focus on MacArthur throughout this book. He makes us aware that his one aim was to get back to the Philippines, and writes well on his constant battle with the Navy and Chiefs of Staff to get the men and material he required to prosecute the war. Duffy alludes to the politics surrounding his command, and how astute MacArthur was in managing the men around him, above him and below him as well.

With one caveat, I can recommend this book as a very good and detailed overview of what in many ways has become a forgotten part of the Pacific War.

The caveat is that the maps are appalling - too few, too lacking in detail, and too poorly printed to be of any use. This is inexcusable in a book describing a campaign that covers one of the World's largest islands. The blame for this can't be laid at the feet of the author, but it really lets the book down. The bibliography and index are serviceable.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I picked this book up, but found it a readable and relatively comprehensive narrative of this long and complex campaign.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Whirlwind: the Air War against Japan 1942-1945 by Barrett Tillman

 Whirlwind: the Air War against Japan 1942-1945 by Barrett Tillman

New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2011          ISBN 9781416584414

This was an interesting and informative book. It was also a frustrating and annoying one. While it does describe the American air war against Japan, and does have some interesting historical information to impart, it focuses too much on the American side, not enough on the Japanese, and the style is so cliche-ridden it takes away not only from the information Tillman is trying to impart, but also from the pleasure of reading.

The book starts with a brief survey of the development of strategic thinking around air power, and specifically strategic bombing, which is a useful entree into what comes later. We then move on to the Doolittle raid, before moving into the main part of the story, and the book.

The main part focuses on the B29 - its development, initial use from China, and then the raids engendered from the Marianas, before the two atomic bomb missions that ended the war. Tillman covers the initial arduous missions that originated from China, flying their bombs, fuel and equipment "Over the Hump" from India - it took seven journies over the Himalaya to transport enough fuel for one 'plane's bombing mission.

The results from these sorties were underwhelming, partly because the B29 could only reach the south of Japan, and because the American bombing strategy was not effective with the new bomber. Precision daylight bombing, which was the American way, achieved poor results in Japan. One of the issues was that, from 32,000 feet, the B29 was flying in the jetstream, which affected the fall of the bombs, the first time any 'plane had this problem. The lack of numbers of aircraft over the target was a problem as well. Before Curtis LeMay turned the whole B29 operation around, the poor serviceability of the fleet meant that many bombers never made it to the target.

Curtis LeMay, young and focused, was not satisfied with the poor results the B29s were achieving, and so he completely changed how they operated after a blitz of training and maintenance fixed the problems of navigation and serviceability. From high-altitude precision bombing, he changed to low altitude carpet bombing with incendiaries which, over the course of a few months, destroyed about 40% of the urban area of Japan's main cities. This bombing, while terrifying to the victims, was much more effective in crippling the industrial capacity of Japan than the previous strategy.

Tillman spends some chapters on the Naval contribution to the campaign - by 1945 the Japanese ability to defend against mass incursions of aircraft was limited, and so Carrier task groups could sail close enough to any part of Japan and wreak havoc, which they did mainly against airfields and naval assets. Tillman writes about the futility of some of these attacks, especially against the Japanese Navy in the Inland Sea, which had been effectively bottled up by the B29s that mined many of the waters around Japan, apart from the fact that Japan's stocks of fuel oil were practically exhausted.

The books final chapters deal with the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which covers all the bases of that story, from an American viewpoint.

So, as a work of history, Whirlwind covers the bases, and if you know nothing about the history of the Pacific War you will learn something. The main issue I have with this book is the style that Tillman has chosen to use in writing this book. It's a bit too tabloid for the kind of serious history I think he intended, and some of the metaphors and similies he's used are quite jarring and occasionally border on the offensive. Another annoyance are the seemingly endless non-sequiters which leave the reader scratching their heads trying to work out the point that Tillman was trying to make.

I was looking forward to this book, but finished it feeling underwhelmed. It could have been much more than it is. I'll keep looking for a definitive tome on this subject.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell