TheAmerican-British-Dutch-Australian (ABDA) Command, orABDACOM, was the short-lived supreme command for allAllied forces inSouth East Asia in early 1942, during thePacific War inWorld War II. It consisted of the forces ofAustralia, theNetherlands,United Kingdom and theUnited States.
Led by GeneralSirArchibald Wavell,[1] the command's objective was to maintain control of the "Malay Barrier" (or "East Indies Barrier"), a notional line running down theMalay Peninsula throughSingapore and the southernmost islands of theDutch East Indies. ABDACOM was also known within the British military as the "South West Pacific Command" (not to be confused with the laterSouth West Pacific Area command established in March 1942).
Although ABDACOM collapsed only in eight weeks without achieving its aims, it provided some useful lessons for combined Allied commands later in the war and is still studied by contemporary military analysts.[2][3]
Efforts to organise the ABDA Command began soon after war between the Allies and Japan commenced, on 7 December 1941. Army Chief of StaffGeorge C. Marshall and Secretary of WarHenry L. Stimson were anxious to establish unity of command over the Allied forces in all theatres after observing Allied defeats in theBattle of France, theMediterranean and Middle East theatre, and theattack on Pearl Harbor.[4]
Despite objections from the British military establishment, the scheme was finalized at theArcadia Conference in Washington. On December 27 Marshall and Admiral Ernest King proposed an ABDA Command led byArchibald Wavell toCharles Portal,Dudley Pound, andJohn Dill. The British were skeptical and believed the Pacific theatre was too geographically large to be controlled by a single commander.Winston Churchill warned Marshall about the difficulties faced byFerdinand Foch as Supreme Allied Commander while simply trying to coordinate operations across theWestern Front ofWorld War I. Marshall rebuffed this and other historical analogies from Churchill, telling him that he "was not interested inDrake andFrobisher, but I was interested in having a united front against Japan." Churchill reluctantly telephoned hisWar Cabinet in London advising them to accept the arrangement despite their concerns.[5] On December 29,Winston Churchill said that it had been agreed Wavell would be supreme commander in order to assuage British concerns.[6] Wavell then held the position of BritishCommander-in-Chief, India. Churchill added:
It is intended that General Wavell should have a staff in the south Pacific accessible asFoch'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.
Following the declaration by the four nations on 1 January 1942, the Allied governments formally appointed Wavell. The formation of ABDACOM meant that Wavell had control of a huge but thinly spread force covering an area fromBurma in the west, toDutch New Guinea and theCommonwealth of the Philippines in the east. Other areas, including theBritish Raj and theTerritory of Hawaii, remained officially under separate commands, and in practice GeneralDouglas MacArthur was in complete control of Allied forces in the Philippines. At Wavell's insistence,North West Australia (see map) was added to the ABDA area. The rest of Australia was under Australian control, as were its territories ofPapua and New Guinea.
ABDA was charged with holding the Malay Barrier for as long as possible in order to retain Allied control of theIndian 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 ofBurma to the command; the difficulties of coordinating action between forces of four nationalities that used different equipment and had not trained together; and the different priorities of the national governments. British leaders were primarily interested in retaining control ofSingapore; the military capacity of theDutch East Indies had suffered as a result of thedefeat of the Netherlands byNazi Germany in 1940, and the Dutch administration was focused on defending the island ofJava; the Australian government was heavily committed to thewar in North Africa and Europe, and had few readily accessible military resources; and the United States was preoccupied with the Philippines, which at the time was aU.S. Commonwealth territory.
Wavell arrived inSingapore, where theBritish Far East Command was based, on 7 January 1942. ABDACOM absorbed this British command in its entirety. On 18 January, Wavell moved his headquarters toLembang nearBandoeng onJava. On 1 February the air force portion of ABDA moved its headquarters from Lembang to Bandoeng when it became clear that the former place lacked sufficient accommodation. This made cooperation between air and naval forces difficult.[7]
The first notable success for forces under ABDACOM was the U.S. Navy'sattack at Balikpapan,Borneo, on January 24, which cost the Japanese six transport ships, but had little effect on them capturing the prized oil wells of Borneo.[8]
The governments of Australia, theNetherlands andNew Zealand lobbiedWinston Churchill for an Allied inter-governmental war council, with overall responsibility for the Allied war effort in Asia and the Pacific, based inWashington, D.C. AFar Eastern Council (later known as the Pacific War Council) was established inLondon on February 9, with a corresponding staff council in Washington. However, the smaller powers continued to push for a body based in the United States.
In the meantime, the rapid collapse of Allied resistance to Japanese attacks in Malaya, Singapore, theDutch East Indies, the Philippines and other countries had soon overwhelmed the Malay Barrier.[9]The fall of Singapore on 15 February dislocated the ABDA command, which was dissolved a week later.[10]
Wavell resigned as supreme commander on 25 February 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 theBritish Indian Army and reassumed his previous position, as Commander-in-Chief India.
Following the destruction of the ABDA strike force under Rear-AdmiralKarel Doorman[11] at theBattle of the Java Sea,[12] in February–March 1942, ABDA effectively ceased to exist.
As theImperial Japanese Army closed in on the remaining Allied forces in the Philippines, MacArthur was ordered to relocate to Australia. On 17 March, the U.S. government appointed him as Supreme Allied CommanderSouth West Pacific Area, a command which included Australia andNew Guinea in addition to Japanese-held areas. The rest of the geographic area of thePacific Theater of Operations remained under thePacific Ocean Areas command, led by Commander-in-Chief AdmiralChester Nimitz of theU.S. Navy.
The inter-governmentalPacific War Council was established in Washington on 1 April, but remained largely ineffectual due to the overwhelming predominance of U.S. forces in the Pacific theater throughout the war.
Perhaps the most notable success for ABDA forces was theguerilla campaign in Timor, waged by Australian and Dutch infantry for almost 12 months after Japanese landings there on February 19.[13]
General SirArchibald Wavell,British Army (BA) –Supreme Commander
Land forces (ABDARM)
(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 (ABDAIR)
Naval forces (ABDAFLOAT)
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