#java sea campaign

Today in History

When reconsidering the debacle that befell on the Allied forces in the Netherlands East Indies in early 1942, it is hard not to feel as if one is viewing a colossal tragedy that no Western military commanders might have eluded, let alone overcome. There one must concede that ABDAFLOAT’s limited naval forces would have produced no better results in the final analysis, whether commanded by Bill Halsey, Raymond Spruance, Frank Jack Fletcher, James Somerville, or Andrew Cunningham.

The butcher’s bill for the campaign was especially high on ships long associated with the Asiatic Fleet: Houston, Pope, Pillsbury, Peary, Perch, S-36, Edsall, Stewart, Asheville, Langley, and Pecos were lost. Upward of 1,800 Americans gave their lives. The majority of these deaths occurred under Helfrich’s command, which troubled Hart, King, and others. Hart alluded to these casualties in his postwar “Supplementary Narrative,” comparing them to U.S. casualties at Tarawa, which (unlike the navy’s losses) had received extensive, and heartbreaking, press coverage. In this comparison Hart understood that the Java campaign’s travails were similar to those suffered later by the USMC at Tarawa. Those losses marked the end of the Java campaign for the forces of the U.S. Navy.