Thomas McKelvey Cleaver, Under the Southern Cross (Osprey, 2021)
The port of Rabaul in New Guinea was crucial to the war in the Pacific. Japanese possession from January 1942 posed a significant threat to Australia and Allied operations. Both sides knew the stakes and threw everything into a battle that lasted for over two years and controlling the skies over the Solomon Islands in Rabaul’s shadow lay at the heart of that. Thomas McKelvey Cleaver narrates that story in this riveting book.
Cleaver begins with the US on the back foot even after their victory at Midway. The Japanese had better resources and were fighting closer to home, yet the Americans had to take the offensive to stop Japanese expansion in the South Pacific. They began at Guadalcanal in August 1942. Cleaver describes the aerial and naval actions in detail, following individual pilots on both sides into combat while reminding readers of the operational context on land and sea. He maintains this structure through his chapters as the story develops to incorporate many of the iconic battles of the Pacific War: Savo Island, Cape Esperance, Santa Cruz, and the pivotal naval engagements off Guadalcanal in November 1942. Cleaver also devotes a whole chapter to the mission to assassinate Admiral Yamamoto. By summer 1943, the tide had firmly turned against the Japanese; as their fighting capabilities reduced, America’s increased, and the end was all but inevitable, though not without more hard fighting, particularly over Rabaul.
The air above the Solomon Islands was filled with Zeros, Wildcats, Bettys, Vals, Dauntlesses, Kates, B-25s, Corsairs, Kittyhawks, Hellcats, and P-38s among others. Cleaver describes aerial combat, but also bombing, anti-ship missions, and ground support actions such as those on Guadalcanal by P-400s that were seemingly quite useless in every other function. Cleaver highlights the advantages and deficiencies those planes possessed and also the disparity in pilot losses that affected the Japanese so badly as the war dragged on. In the course of the book, Cleaver stresses the importance of veteran pilots through his recurrent biographies of the top American aces; although he acknowledges that the Japanese had aces too, their numbers certainly thinned in the losing war effort. He also highlights the contributions of other American servicemen to their success.
Cleaver concludes that the South Pacific campaign was the cornerstone of the Allied victory over Japan, and on this evidence, it is difficult to argue with him. His book is full of action in a well-written narrative that offers considerable insight into how the campaign was fought mostly by the US Navy and its air force with a nod to their allies in the region. Readers who are familiar with the campaign might complain about a lack of new material, but I don’t believe that was Cleaver’s purpose in bringing this less heralded campaign to the public. All in all, this is an absorbing story that deserves the wider audience it will undoubtedly receive.
