Jeffrey R. Cox, Dark Waters, Starry Skies (Osprey, 2025)
The Pacific theatre in World War II was a sprawling mess, one which is difficult to describe accurately except in broad brushstrokes. We see the big picture, the main strategic thrusts and the major battles featuring carriers and battleships, but the nitty-gritty of the war fades into the background. To bring out a more detailed view of the theatre, we need to examine it under a magnifying glass. In Dark Waters, Starry Skies, Jeffrey Cox shines a light onto a slice of the Pacific war, the Guadalcanal-Solomons campaign from March to October 1943, revealing an intense tactical conflict on land, air, and sea.
Cox opens with European missionaries held captive then executed on the Japanese destroyer Akikaze, which he then follows into battle on escort duty around Guadalcanal. That widens out into the broader effort by Japan to resupply and seize control of Guadalcanal at the end of 1942. Cox almost gleefully describes the failure of this mission. The Japanese turned to retrenching in the Solomons and New Guinea, building intermediate airfields, which Cox argues should have already been done. The loss of Buna early in 1943 hampered this operation too as the Allies built airbases, which accompanied by rampant US submarines, would wreak havoc on the Japanese. Nowhere was this more true than in the Bismarck Sea that the US had turned into a shooting gallery. Such was the mayhem that the Japanese came to believe that missionaries on the islands were passing information to the Americans. That led to the war crime on the Akikaze, told in horrific detail by Cox.
Cox turns his attention to the US, beginning with their strategic considerations and allocation of commands. From there, Cox narrows in on the island of Guadalcanal and the stranding of the 1st Marine Division for them to protect a vital airfield. Cox notes that the naval and air action around Guadalcanal fluctuated between day and night, with the Japanese controlling the dark; meanwhile on land, the Marines mowed down reckless Japanese infantry assaults. The appointment of Admiral Halsey to command forces in the South Pacific galvanised Americans in all the services, and the war changed. The US navy took on the Japanese, sometimes at point-blank range: the tide was turning.
Having established a platform for both sides in this increasingly chaotic conflict, Cox embarks on a rollercoaster narrative of almost non-stop action, with two themes familiar to students of the Pacific War: Japanese deterioration and the inexorable rise of the US, though not without its complications. In February 1943, the Guadalcanal campaign ended, which was followed by a lull and reorganisation, then the two sides came to grips again in the Solomons. Cox notes that the US relied on airpower while building its naval forces. The Japanese suffered from navy-army infighting, which did not help them in either arena, and their air force suffered from irreplaceable losses. Under the waves, the submarine war did not all go the US’s way either, but again, they could replace losses while Japan increasingly could not. Cox argues that the US did win the intelligence war hands down, calling that the difference between victory and defeat. This dominance showed in the remarkable assassination of Admiral Yamamoto, which had little strategic effect but boosted US morale. Cox continues with blow-by-blow accounts of the fighting on and around New Georgia and New Guinea. Ultimately, the ‘domino’ theory the Japanese employed for its island hopping conquest worked against them, beginning with the loss of Guadalcanal. Cox closes by returning to the Akikaze war crime, who ordered it and why it was never investigated properly.
Jeffrey Cox has written a stirring and authoritative account of the Solomons campaign. His narrative is all-encompassing, from the highest levels of decision making to the bridges of the competing ships to the pilot’s cockpit and the infantryman’s foxhole. Cox is free with his opinions on it all, sometimes, maybe too often, sliding into sarcasm when hindsight reveals what he thinks should have been obvious to those dishing out the orders. That is a good thing because this is never a dry and dusty historical account but an action-packed narrative that puts Cox’s readers into the heart of the combat. For those readers interested in the experience of war, rather than the rivet-counters and tech obsessives, this is a stirring and illuminating book.
