On December 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a massive carrier-based air strike against the United States Pacific Fleet, which lay at anchor in the naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The attack was intended to prevent the Pacific Fleet’s interference with Japan’s conquest of colonial territories belonging to Great Britain and the Netherlands. At the same time, the American territories of Guam, Wake Island and the Philippines were targeted for invasion to guard the Imperial Japanese Army’s flanks during these operations and to also prevent their use as forward bases for any subsequent Allied counterattacks.
The primary Japanese targets were the oilfields of the Netherlands East Indies, an immense colony that had been controlled by the Dutch for 300 years. Japan had waged a war of aggression on the Chinese mainland since 1932. A direct result of this prolonged conflict was a ban on all oil, petroleum and raw material exports to Japan from the United States, Great Britain and the Netherlands East Indies. As an island nation with few natural resources, Japan desperately needed these materials to continue the war. Without them, her military would almost certainly be forced into a premature peace with China—or worse yet, be forced to withdraw entirely.
When the Dutch East Indies government refused to resume oil shipments to Japan, even after intense diplomatic pressure throughout 1940 and 1941, the Japanese military drew up invasion plans to take by force what they could not obtain peacefully. Weak and isolated since the occupation of Holland by Nazi Germany in May 1940, Dutch colonial forces in the East Indies could not realistically hope to stand on their own. Yet, unwilling to bow to Japanese pressure and become a Japanese protectorate, they chose to fight.
When the Japanese did invade the East Indies in December 1941, they clashed with forces of the Royal Netherlands East Indian Army (Koninklijke Nederlandse Indische Leger or KNIL) and Royal Netherlands Navy (Koninklijke Marine or KM). Both Netherlands forces were extremely weak, and in an attempt to prepare for the coming Japanese invasion, they undertook a crash program to build their strength. With most of the world’s major industrial powers already at war in 1940, only neutral America offered a viable source of military equipment. However, much of its defense industry was already committed to meeting the needs of its own last-minute rearmament programs. Most of what little production capability remained was dedicated to meeting the needs of Britain, which at the time stood alone against Germany.
As a result, Dutch efforts to procure weapons after the fall of Holland were not entirely successful, and its military was often forced to make do with equipment already rejected by U.S. forces. Although the majority of this material was of excellent manufacture, smaller firms that were sometimes undercapitalized produced much of it and many could not meet the large production demands and short timetables of the Dutch. When the Japanese invaded in December 1941, much of the equipment purchased and paid for in gold in advance by the Netherlands East Indies government had not yet arrived.
While the KM could obtain only small patrol boats from American firms, its supporting air arm was more successful at acquiring equipment it needed. The Marine Luchtvaart Dienst (MLD), or Naval Air Force, would play a dominant role in the early months of savage combat following Pearl Harbor. But while its American counterpart—Patrol Wing 10 of the United States Navy—has received ample recognition for its exploits over the years, accomplishments of the MLD have remained obscure.
While much of this oversight can be attributed to the language barrier (there are a number of strong sources on this subject available in Dutch), one can also look to historians who ignore the role of the East Indies in the volatile period leading up to Pearl Harbor. Others simply view the Dutch as a “minor power” that made little or no contribution to the Pacific War. Then there are those who seek to put blame (for which there is plenty to go around) for the early Allied failures immediately following Pearl Harbor on the shoulders of the Dutch, thus lessening their own accountability in the cold light of the postwar years.
But few realize the substantial role the MLD played in the first three months of combat in the Pacific War. With approximately 175 aircraft of all types, it greatly outnumbered both the American and British naval air reconnaissance forces combined in Southeast Asia. In fact, not only would the MLD play an active role in the Netherlands East Indies campaign, but the Dutch would also supply their American and British allies with generous amounts of spare aircraft, parts and equipment. Despite these facts, few English-language sources credit the MLD with the dominant role it played.
This volume seeks to rectify these omissions. Although it deals primarily with the MLD and its accomplishments, truncated operational histories of both American and Commonwealth forces have been inserted where relevant and necessary to present a full picture. Nonetheless, my primary goal is to set the record straight by presenting a factually accurate, but not necessarily politically popular, view of the proper role the MLD played in the defense of the Netherlands East Indies, Malaya and the Philippines.
Going a step further, this volume also seeks to dispel myths that the Dutch did not fight, that they passively gave up their immense empire, or that they simply stuck their heads in the sand and let their allies do the fighting. For however brief the East Indies campaign, the Dutch refused to simply “roll over” in defense of what for many Dutch colonials was the only home they had ever known. In the process, the MLD lost 75 percent of its force in barely 90 days of intense combat and preserved for itself a place in history, a history that is now being told—much of it for the first time.