Many of these, and much special equipment, especially radar, were placed at our disposal to help our own industry, and American naval and air forces joined in the battle everywhere.

Although in the face of the harsh facts Admiral Doenitz was forced to recoil, he continued to maintain as many U-boats at sea as ever, but their attack was blunted, and they seldom attempted to cut through our defences. He did not however despair. On January 20, 1944, he said: The enemy has succeeded in gaining the advantage in defence. The day will come when I shall offer Churchill a first-rate submarine war. The submarine weapon has not been broken by the setbacks of 1943.

On the contrary, it has become stronger. In 1944, which will be a successful but a hard year, we shall smash Britain’s supply [line] with a new submarine weapon.

This confidence was not wholly unfounded. At the beginning of 1944, a gigantic effort was being made in Germany to develop a new type of U-boat which could move more quickly underwater and travel much farther. At the same time many of the older boats were withdrawn so that they could be fitted with the “Schnorkel” and work in British coastal waters. This new device enabled them to recharge their batteries while submerged with only a small tube for the intake of air remaining above the surface. Their chances of eluding detection from the air were thus improved, and it soon became evident that the Schnorkel-fitted boats were intended to dispute the passage of the

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English Channel whenever the Allied invasion was launched.

A retrospect is necessary here to remind the reader of the stirring far-flung operations which had changed the whole scene in the Far East in 1942.

While British sea-power was deployed mainly in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, the United States was bearing almost alone the whole burden of the war against Japan. In the immense ocean spaces from India to the western coast of America itself, we could give little support except with slender Australian and New Zealand naval forces. Our depleted Eastern Fleet, now based in East Africa, could do no more for a time than protect our convoys. In the Pacific however the balance had turned. The naval superiority of the United States was reestablished, and the Japanese, while trying to consolidate their gains in the East Indies, had nothing to spare for incursions into the Indian Ocean. Much had happened in the Pacific since the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway Island in the summer of 1942. Admiral Nimitz, with his headquarters at Pearl Harbour, controlled the North, Central, and South Pacific. General MacArthur, who had reached Australia from the Philippines in March 1942, commanded the Southwest Pacific, extending from the China coast to Australia, and including the Philippines, the Bismarck Archipelago, New Guinea, all the east coast of Australia, and the Solomon Islands.

The Imperial Japanese Navy, deeply conscious of defeat in the Central Pacific, turned once more to the Southwest.

Here, more remote from the main sources of American power, they hoped to renew their triumphant advance. Their first thrust, towards Port Moresby, in New Guinea, having

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been foiled by the Battle of the Coral Sea, the enemy resolved to attack by land across the Owen Stanley Mountains. Thus began the struggle for New Guinea.

Simultaneously they determined to seize the Solomon Islands. They already held the small island of Tulagi, and could quickly set about the construction of an air base in the neighbouring island of Guadalcanal. With both Port Moresby and Guadalcanal in their possession, they hoped the Coral Sea would become a Japanese lake, bordering upon Northeastern Australia. From Guadalcanal Japanese airmen could reach out towards other and still more distant island groups along the main line of sea communications between America and New Zealand.