Pensacola convoy
The Pensacola convoy was assembled on the American west coast at the end of November 1941, shortly before the start of the Pacific War , to protect the USA from colonial rule over the Philippines , which was threatened by Japanese expansionist efforts and which the USA had under colonial rule through its victory in the war against Spain of 1898 had brought in with additional aircraft, weapons, ammunition and soldiers to strengthen. The convoy is named after its lead ship, the heavy cruiser Pensacola .
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In addition to the Pensacola and the patrol boat Niagara as escort, the convoy also included the transporters Willard A. Holbrook , Republic , Meigs , Chaumont , Admiral Halstead , Coast Farmer and the Dutch Bloemfontein . They were loaded with 18 Curtiss P-40 fighters, 52 Douglas A-24 dive bombers, 20 75-mm artillery pieces , ammunition for anti-aircraft guns , 2,000 bombs and 340 different vehicles, 9,000 barrels of fuel and other equipment. The total number of soldiers brought on board was 4,600 men.
President Roosevelt himself devised the plan for Operation Plum , which provided for a military convoy to reinforce General Douglas MacArthur's troops in the Philippines. On November 14, 1941, the President gave the go-ahead to implement the plan.
The ships were loaded on the west coast and arrived at Pearl Harbor , Hawaii on November 24th . Three days later the convoy set sail for Manila .
On December 7th, when news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor reached the convoy, all ships were painted gray by the crews and soldiers on board. An adequate defense system was installed on the ships with the weapons carried. Soldiers immediately posted themselves on the masts of the ships as lookouts to keep an eye out for Japanese warships , submarines and aircraft.
In the United States, Admiral Richmond K. Turner concluded that it would be cheaper to retrieve the convoy to defend Hawaii. General Leonard T. Gerow even went so far that the ships had to be ordered back to the west coast. But General Marshall had given MacArthur a promise to supply him with military equipment in the Philippines. At a meeting in the White House on December 10, the decision was made to divert the convoy to Brisbane , Australia .
From then on the convoy followed a zigzag course that was oriented towards the slowest ship. So the schedule got completely mixed up. In order to stretch the rations on board, they were divided into two daily servings. The weather was very warm and the humidity relatively high. The drinking water began to taste salty and the soldiers wondered where the journey was going.
Meanwhile, the command staff around Admiral Thomas C. Hart , who was in command of the Asian Fleet , thought about how the convoy could be directed from Brisbane to Manila. The development in the Philippines was now so advanced that an immediate blockade by the Japanese could not be ruled out. General MacArthur was not pleased with this news and responded emphatically that the convoy could very well reach Manila with appropriate escort by warships and air support. But the situation changed dramatically since December 22, the Japanese in reaching as the convoy Brisbane, Lingayen Gulf , the landing in the Philippines began. Alternatively, the convoy was considered to support the Allied Dutch and British who were now defending Malaya and the Dutch East Indies . But the convoy could only reach this area at great risk.
In Brisbane, the Americans were greeted with great cheers by the population. Not only because they were the first US soldiers on Australian soil, but because the Japanese were advancing towards Australia from the north and a major part of the Australian army was currently fighting in North Africa .
The soldiers were housed in tents on the Ascot racetrack, where they were to await further orders. In the meantime, Admiral Hart had received orders to air transport essential equipment to Manila. General George H. Brett was therefore sent to Australia to set up an air force base there. The aircraft, packed in boxes, were taken from the ships and assembled. It turned out that important parts, such as self-sealing fuel tanks, aiming devices and trigger motors were missing. The circumstances that led to the missing parts were never clarified. It is unclear whether it was an act of sabotage or just human error during loading.
On December 28, the two artillery battalions boarded the Holbrook and Chaumont to sail for Manila under the escort of the Pensacola . The Bloemfontein went to Surabaya on Java with another battalion . But just one day later the order came to turn off for Darwin , as the convoy could no longer safely reach the Philippines. The Japanese had hastily set up air bases on Sumatra , Java and Borneo . So the promised weapons and soldiers never reached the Philippines.
The fighters and bombers were eventually used by the ABDA forces to defend Java and were lost there. The artillery battalion transported from Bloemfontein to Java was taken prisoner of war there after the Allied defenders surrendered. Most of the remaining artillery was stationed in Australia. In February 1942 an attempt was made to bring one of the battalions on the Meigs as part of a convoy to Timor for reinforcement , where another Japanese invasion was imminent. However, after Japanese air raids, the convoy had to return to Darwin. There the Meigs with the guns still on board was sunk on February 19 during the Japanese air raid on Darwin .