Taken from Warfare History Network
Wake, the Early Days
Wake Island is a small speck of an island, 1,500 miles east of Guam and just shy of 2,300 miles west of Hawaii. It’s an atoll barely above sealevel and consists of three islets or miniature islands clustered around a central lagoon. The United States took possession of the islands in 1899 in the wake of the Spanish-American war. The island was, at the time, uninhabited and occasionally visited by both American and Japanese ships. This changed, however, in 1921.
Map of Wake defenses in 1941, Taken from Warfare History Network
The U.S. Navy and Pan Am
The U.S. Navy surveyed Wake Island in 1921 with the idea of turning the island into a coaling station to refuel warships in case of war with Japan. The results of this survey led to another expedition in 1923 and a detailed survey of the island. Soon, Pan Am became interested in the island and was interested in providing passenger air service to China. With aircraft technology being what it was in the mid-1920s, the aircraft would have to hop from island to island to make the trip. Wake was ideally located to be one of those waystations on the route to China. By 1935, the U.S. Navy gave Pan Am the go-ahead to begin construction.
Construction began on the Pan Am facilities in May 1935, with the first passenger aircraft landing in August. The facilities were expanded in 1936, and by 1937, Wake was a regular stopover for China-bound Pan-Am flights.
Modern Photo of 5" emplacement on Wake, Taken from Pintrest from user “Tom Williams"
The War Clouds Gather
With the likelihood of war with Japan increasing, construction began in January 1941 of a military base on the atoll. Wake was only 600 miles from the nearest Japanese base. Anyone who could read a map knew that in any war with Japan, Japan would try to take Wake. Thus, in February 1941, President Roosevelt ordered the Navy to create “naval defense areas” in the Central Pacific. One of those areas was centered around Wake. That August, 178 men of the USMC’s 1st Defense Battalion arrived to establish the permanent garrison. More Marines arrived that October along with Major William S. Deveraux, the Wake Marine garrison commander. Late November saw the arrival of VMF-211 (Marine Fighter Squadron 211) and its 12 F4F Wildcat fighters to help better defend the island.
Also at the defender’s disposal was a variety of light coastal guns and anti-aircraft pieces. However, the most important were six 5-inch naval guns that had come off the USS Texas after an overhaul. The guns were old, but as subsequent events would show, quite functional. As of December 7th, there were 450 marines, 68 U.S. Naval personnel, and 1,221 civilian construction workers left to face the Japanese onslaught.
But there were some issues with the defenders. First, the islands were flat, for the most part, which meant cover was whatever could be dug or constructed, and this was not easy with the low water table complicating matters. The other issue was the enmity between Commander Winfield Cunningham, USN, who was in overall command of the Naval Air Station, and Major William S. Deveraux, who was in overall command of the Marines. There was an additional fatal problem the defenders of Wake had. There was no radar. Early warning, such as it was, consisted of a Marine with a pair of binoculars ensconced on the water tower, which was the highest point on the island. The communications wire that was available was World War I surplus and rotted in the tropical conditions, and there weren’t even enough rifles for all the defenders. Not to mention that even as small as Wake was, there simply weren’t enough defenders to cover all the potential landing spots on the island.
Worse, the island’s primary defense against air attack was fragile, as the Wildcat fighters had no spare parts. This meant any kind of damage or even simple wear and tear that was easy to fix could render an aircraft inoperable. Worse still, the aircraft had arrived disassembled, and the manuals to reassemble them were missing, and the ground crews had no experience with the F4F. All of this was to conspire to have dire consequences.
But when war came, this small garrison would achieve things all out of proportion to their numbers and gave the American people a small measure of hope in the dark early days of World War II.
The Storm Breaks
VMF -211 after the battle. Taken from HistoryNet
December 7th, 1941 dawned on Wake as a clear sunny day. Deveraux had just held an exercise for his men the day before and had allowed them to take a break to catch up on their mail (it was coming close to Christmas) and other sundry tasks. The mood soon soured with word that Pearl Harbor had been bombed, but very few on the island believed it. A little before noon, it was Wake’s turn, as 36 Japanese Betty bombers from Japanese bases in the Marshall Islands appeared in the skies over Wake, with the lookout in the tower barely giving the Marines 15 seconds warning.
The Japanese caught the American fighters on the ground and destroyed seven of them (in a bit of a silver lining, an eighth damaged fighter, for a time, provided some spare parts for its functional brethren). Over half of the Marine aviation personnel were killed and wounded, and the Japanese hit the fuel storage, shot up the Pan Am hotel, and bombed the barracks facilities into oblivion. The Japanese had also targeted the Pan Am Clipper, which had just pulled in the day before, but she was still flyable. The American anti-aircraft fire was ineffective, and the Japanese suffered no losses.
G4M1 Betty Bomber, Image taken from Sprue Brothers
The Americans soon did what they could to repair their defenses and dug in the remaining aircraft. Using an American boat, they blocked the lagoon entrance to prevent a ground assault. But a ray of hope appeared when between 300-400 of the civilian construction workers volunteered to assist the Marines in defense of the island. They mostly manned some of the defensive positions the Marines didn’t have the manpower to occupy, operating the machine guns and coastal batteries to free up more Marines to act as infantry. Later that day, the Pan Am Clipper evacuated 27 employees to Hawaii, never to return. Wake was now cut off from the rest of the U.S. military, except by radio. Ironically, two passengers were left behind on the island, one a Pan Am mechanic, and the other a bureaucrat from the Office of the Budget (the precursor to the OMB) who had been sent on a fact-finding mission to Wake!
The good news was, even with the loss of the fuel storage, additional fuel was available to the defenders in hidden caches. Food and water were also plentiful in underground storage. Better was the news that defensive emplacements and the A.A. and coastal guns had not been hit during the raid.
On December 9th, 27 more Japanese Betty bombers launched another raid against Wake. This time, surprise was on the side of the Marines. Two of the four remaining F4Fs made a pass against a group of nine Betty Bombers, shot down one of them, and then zoomed away before any (presumed) fighters could interfere. While the anti-aircraft guns again failed to shoot down any Japanese bombers, they did spoil their aim a bit. However, the Japanese pummeled a warehouse, the naval radio station, as well as the hospital, and what was left of the Pan Am hotel.
"Cat and Mouse over Wake” by Old Glory Prints
The Japanese returned on the 10th, and this time bombed some of the gun positions, and, by chance, hitting a supply of construction dynamite. The Wildcats shot down two more Japanese aircraft, bringing Wake’s combined total to three. But this was a preliminary to the opening of the main event, one we’ll see in Part 2 next week.
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(This article is credited to Jason Weiser. Jason is a long-time wargamer with published works in the Journal of the Society of Twentieth Century Wargamers; Miniature Wargames Magazine; and Wargames, Strategy, and Soldier.)