<p>The contrast was strong between this lightning war waged by the Japanese and the relatively conventional pace of the seesaw war in the Middle East and above Europe, and it forced a harder look at the Pacific theater. The United States and Great Britain hardly were strong enough to wage war on one front, let alone two. The best hope was for a holding defensive action in the Pacific, and the building of a powerful offensive force in Europe to defeat Germany. For when the final analysis was made, Germany posed a greater threat to what both the Americans and the British thought of as the civilized world, namely their immediate areas. Thus it was that the emphasis in building the USAAF was placed on heavy bomber strength in England, to be launched against Germany in support of a planned landing in France in late 1942 or early 1943 (codename: Bolero).
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<p>It was a conscious decision: Europe first, and do only what had to be done in the Pacific. It is probable that no Allied military or government leader ever thought, in his darkest private moments, that the Japanese would ever move so far so fast. When they did, the major concern was how to get some forces to the Pacific to blunt the Japanese assaults that were proliferating.
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<p>The Pacific was to be a Navy show for several years. Carrier-based air power was used effectively by naval operations officers to soften the beachheads before invasions by the Marines and the Army. Carrier air pounded the best of the Japanese fleet units and commercial shipping, sinking an enormous tonnage and contributing in large measure to the eventual defeat of the Empire.
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<p>The USAAF also had its moments in that theater, bad ones at first, then gallant and costly defenses, and finally a vindication of the concept of strategic bombing. But at the end of December 1941, that was only a future hope.
