[rmlew]

What blew my mind in reading about the Pacific War was that by FEBRUARY of 1942 we were already launching carrier-based air attacks on some of the Jap-held islands. I thought we didn't start to bounce back until the Coral Sea in May '42.
Bounce back? Those were desperate operations to keep the Japanese distracted and off balance. The closest we got to any serious confrontation was the abortive campaign to rescue Wake Island. The operations were useful in giving us tactical experience and learning things like the poor quality of our 5" anti-aircraft ammunition.

[Oatka]

Bounce back? Those were desperate operations to keep the Japanese distracted and off balance.
I used that term as, from many books I had read, I got the impression that we were flat on our backs after Pearl Harbor and couldn't do anything to stop the Jap rampage.

. . . and learning things like the poor quality of our 5" anti-aircraft ammunition.
Boy, that period was a litany of how unprepared we were. When the USS Langley was under horizontal bomber attack in early '42 their WWI 3" couldn't reach higher that 15,000 feet. The Japs quickly recognized that, came in at about 17,000 and used the attacks as a training session for the green pilots and bombardiers.

On Bataan, we had WWI Stokes mortars that had an 80% misfire rate. The few times we retook a position, the contemptuous Japs had left flowers stuck in the tubes. I also understand that the Filipinos were issued M1917 Enfields that were missing cartridge case extractors, so they had to carry a wooden ramrod to knock out the cases.