About Opentopia
Opentopia Directory Encyclopedia Tools

American-British-Dutch-Australian Command

Encyclopedia : A : AM : AME : American-British-Dutch-Australian Command

ABDACOM Area
Enlarge
ABDACOM Area
The American-British-Dutch-Australian (ABDA) Command, code name ABDACOM, was a short-lived, supreme command for all Allied forces in South East Asia, in early 1942, during the Pacific War. The main objective of the command, led by General Sir Archibald Wavell, was to maintain control of the "Malay Barrier" (or "East Indies Barrier"), a notional line running down the Malayan Peninsula, through Singapore and the southernmost islands of Dutch East Indies. ABDACOM was also known in British military circles as the "South West Pacific Command", although it should not be confused with the later South West Pacific Area command (see below).
Although ABDACOM was only in existence for a few weeks, and it presided over one defeat after another, it did provide some useful lessons for combined Allied commands later in the war.

Contents

History

Efforts to organise the ABDA Command began soon after war between the Allies and Japan commenced, on December 7, 1941. On December 29, Winston Churchill said that it had been agreed Wavell would be supreme commander.[link] Wavell then held the position of British Commander-in-Chief India. Churchill added:

It is intended that General Wavell should have a staff in the south Pacific accessible as Foch's High Control Staff was to the Great Staffs of the British and French armies in France [during World War I]. He would receive his orders from an appropriate joint body who will be responsible to me as the Minister of Defence and to the President of the United States who is also Commander-in-Chief of all United States forces.
Wavell (left) is met by the Dutch commander, General Hein ter Poorten (soon to be appointed the ABDA land commander), at Batavia in 1941.
Enlarge
Wavell (left) is met by the Dutch commander, General Hein ter Poorten (soon to be appointed the ABDA land commander), at Batavia in 1941.

Following the Declaration by the United Nations on January 1, 1942, the Allied governments formally appointed Wavell. The formation of ABDACOM meant that Wavell had nominal control of a huge, but thinly-spread force, covering an area from Burma in the west, to Dutch New Guinea and the Philippines in the east. Other areas, including India and Hawaii remained officially under separate commands, and in practice General Douglas MacArthur was in complete control of Allied forces in The Philippines. At Wavell's insistence, north western Australia (see map) was added to the ABDA area. The rest of Australia was under Australian control, as was the Territory of New Guinea.

ABDA was charged with holding the Malay Barrier for as long as possible in order to retain Allied control of the Indian Ocean and the western sea approaches to Australia. This was a nearly hopeless task, given the Japanese supremacy in naval forces in the western Pacific. The task was further complicated by the addition of Burma (Myanmar) to the command; the difficulties of coordinating action between forces of four nationalities that had not trained together; and the different priorities of the national governments. Britain was primarily interested in protecting convoys to Singapore; the Dutch were most concerned with defending the island of Java; the Australians were concerned with thwarting an invasion of the island continent; and the Americans were not much interested in committing significant resources to defending European colonies.

Wavell arrived in Singapore, where the British Far East Command was based, on January 7, 1942. ABDACOM absorbed this British command in its entirety. On January 15, Wavell moved his headquarters to Bandung in Java and assumed control of Allied operations.

The governments of Australia, the Netherlands and New Zealand lobbied Winston Churchill for an Allied inter-governmental war council, with overall responsibility for the Allied war effort in Asia and the Pacific, based in Washington D.C.. A Far Eastern Council was established in London on February 9, with a corresponding staff council in Washington. However, the smaller powers continued to push for a body based in the US.

In the meantime, the rapid collapse of Allied resistance to Japanese attacks in Malaya, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines and other countries had soon overwhelmed the Malay Barrier. The fall of Singapore on 15 February dislocated the ABDA command, which was dissolved a week later.

Japanese attacks along the Malay Barrier December 23, 1941 – February 21, 1943.
Enlarge
Japanese attacks along the Malay Barrier December 23, 1941 – February 21, 1943.

The only notable achievement of the command was the American strike at Balikpapan, which cost the Japanese four transports but failed to set back their timetable more than a day.  A strike at Bandung Strait on 22 February went wrong and cost the Dutch a destroyer with no loss to the enemy.


Wavell resigned as supreme commander on the February 25,1942 handing control of the ABDA Area to local commanders. He also recommended the establishment of two Allied commands to replace ABDACOM: a south west Pacific command, and one based in India. In anticipation of this, Wavell had handed control of Burma to the British India Command and reassumed his previous position, as Commander-in-Chief India.


Following the destruction of the main ABDA naval force under Rear-Admiral Karel Doorman, at the Battle of the Java Sea, in February-March 1942, ABDA effectively ceased to exist.


As the Japanese closed in on the remaining Allied forces in the Philippines, MacArthur was ordered to re-locate to Australia. On March 17, the US Government appointed him as Supreme Allied Commander South West Pacific Area, a command which included Australia and New Guinea in addition to Japanese-held areas. The rest of the geographic area of the Pacific Theater of Operations remained under the Pacific Ocean Areas command, led by Commander-in-Chief Admiral Chester Nimitz of the US Navy. 


The inter-governmental Pacific War Council was established in Washington on April 1, but remained largely ineffectual due to the overwhelming predominance of US forces in Asia and the Pacific throughout the war.



Official command structure


General Sir Archibald Wavell, British Army (BA) — Supreme Commander


Land forces
(MacArthur was technically subordinate to Wavell, but in reality many of the chains of command shown here operated independently of ABDACOM and/or existed only on paper.)


Air forces


Naval forces


References



See also



External links














 





From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.














Search Titles









0123456789
ABCDEFGHIJ
KLMNOPQRST
UVWXYZ?










E-mail this article to:



Personal Message: