- The US Navy took part in the New Guinea Campaign on a limited scale but its contributions were still very important, particularly in the field of amphibious warfare. Based upon those US naval forces that survived the disastrous Netherlands East Indies (NEI) campaign the "Naval Forces Southwest Pacific" command was established in late March 1942 as part of General Douglas MacArthur’s South West Pacific Area forces. The build up of US naval forces in Australia lagged behind other theatres due mainly to the fact that throughout 1942 and 1943 the decisive battles with the Imperial Japanese Navy were being fought in the Central Pacific and the Solomons. With this in mind the main objectives for the New Guinea theatre were to protect the supply lines from Australian east coast ports to Port Moresby, cut Japanese supply lines by intercepting Japanese coastal traffic and build up an amphibious capability to allow MacArthur to go on the offensive. The first two tasks were best carried out by destroyers, corvettes and PT-boats and these began to arrive in numbers after 1942. A year later enough specialised landing ships and craft had arrived to allow the formation of the "Seventh Amphibious Force". The addition of this formation to the now renamed "Seventh Fleet" finally gave MacArthur the superior mobility he needed to outmanoeuvre and isolate the Japanese 18th Army in New Guinea. Beginning with landing of the Australian 9th Division at Lae MacArthur embarked upon a series of amphibious operations designed to leap-frog Japanese strongholds which culminated in the seizure of the Vogelkop Peninsula in July 1944. The latter operation signalled the end of the US Seventh Fleet’s involvement in New Guinea as MacArthur withdrew his American forces from the theatre in preparation for his next goal, the liberation of the Philippines.
US Navy:
Overview text