WANTED: A MAJOR NAVAL BASE
SEELY, Lt. Comdr. C. S.
Wanted: A Major Naval Base By LT. COMDR. C. S. SEELY EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first of two articles by Commander Seely on our problems in the Orient. The second will appear in an early...
...Such islands as Truk, Guam, Palau, Yap, Papua, Celebes, and Borneo do not meet this requirement...
...These are at Kure, Yokosuka, Sasebo, Hong Kong, and Singapore...
...The Japanese can take Vladivostok whenever they choose, and they certainly will do it before we have a chance to occupy it...
...And it must also have a large supporting civilian population such as is found only in highly populated industrial areas...
...Northern Australia does not either...
...The minimum requirements of a major naval base is that it must be able to drydock our largest battleships and aircraft carriers, and repair any damage any of them can sustain and still remain afloat...
...There are only five major naval bases in the entire Orient...
...It is obvious that our problems and difficulties in the Orient are still great...
...The opinions and assertions expressed above are the private ones of the writer and are not to be construed as official or reflecting the views of the Navy Department or the naval service at large...
...Before we can bring our great naval superiority to bear effectively on Japan's main sea defense line we must secure a major naval base much closer to it than Pearl Harbor, the closest major naval base to Japan now available for our use...
...Such a base must contain a vast and complicated machine shop and power system, a huge oil and general supply base, and many thousands of especially trained naval workmen...
...But all of them except Sydney (too far from Japan to be of much value) and Vladivostok (not ice free and therefore useless in Winter) are also in the hands of the enemy, and almost certainly will be completely destroyed before they fall into our hands...
...The second will appear in an early issue...
...But we must take at least one of these bases before we can really press the Japanese hard...
...All of these bases are, of course, in the hands of the enemy, and with the possible exception of Singapore will be hard to take...
...Singapore may be taken without a fight if we cut through Burma, Siam, and French Indo-China to China proper...
...In fact, of all the Japanese occupied islands, only Luzon, Mindanao, Java, Sumatra, and Singapore do, and even in these eases only Singapore could be developed in time to be of much use to us in this war...
...OUR NAVY is now very much larger and stronger than Japan's Navy, but this does not mean we will become superior at sea in all the Orient...
...There are a number of minor naval bases in the Orient, including Sydney, Surabaya, Cavite, Olongapo, Saigon, Shanghai, Tsingtao, Port Arthur, and Vladivostok, close enough to Japan to be of some value to us...
Vol. 8 • May 1944 • No. 20
