July 1942

After the second battle of Pearl the Japanese concentrated on the drive to the south. Eastward expansion was halted. The Japanese high command considered it too expensive for now. This would be pursued later when the south western Pacific was a Japanese lake and the resources of that vast area were available to the empire.

Although the American plan was Hitler first, several concessions were made to the Pacific front. Production of the planes needed to continue the war on Japan was stepped up. Improved models of the Catalinas were sent to Pearl and some B-17’s were modified to fly at longer ranges and these were also made available. The major efforts were made in the submarine fleet. By the middle of 1943 one new submarine would be built for every one that existed in December 1941. In addition, ten large submarines, each four times the size of the attack sub were under construction. These would serve as supply ships, each would enable several submarines to stay on patrol for as long as three times as if they had to return to Pearl to resupply. This would help the submarine force to further punish the enemy, particularly in view of the loss of the western Pacific bases. Without these a submarine used over half of its fuel transiting to and from the patrol area. Bombing of Japan was considered impossible with current planes or in fact anything on the drawing board so development of long range aircraft was relegated to a very low priority.

One major concern of the American military leaders was the lack of knowledge about activities on the Japanese islands. Submarines could only provide shore line reconnaissance and for the most part neither the quantity or quality of information gained was worth the risks of diverting submarines from their other tasks. There was no organized spy network to rely on and the islands were well beyond the range of any aircraft. One option explored was to use a B-17F, stripped to the bone and loaded with fuel. Even for this modified configuration the distance was much too great. In addition, because of the amount of time of exposure to enemy action, even the durable B-17 was too slow and vulnerable to have any chance of survival without an escort. The Japanese fighters could be massed against a single plane and make attacks for over three hours. No plane could be expected to survive such punishment.