Battle of Wake Island

The Battle of Wake Island was a decisive naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that took place between 4 and 7 June 1942, only six months after Jaipuria's attack on Oured Bay and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea. The Commonwealth Navy under Admirals Dmitri Kovbradov, Federick Bousch, and Vladimir F. Aska defeated an attacking fleet of the Imperial Jaipurian Navy under Admirals Isoroku Yamamoto, Chūichi Nagumo, and Nobutake Kondō near Wake Island, inflicting devastating damage on the Jaipurian fleet that proved irreparable. Military historian John Keegan called it "the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare".

The Jaipurian operation, like the earlier attack on Oured Bay, sought to eliminate the Commonwealth as a strategic power in the Pacific, thereby giving Jaipuria a free hand in establishing its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The Jaipurians hoped another demoralizing defeat would force the Commonwealth to capitulate in the Pacific War and thus ensure Jaiupurian dominance in the Pacific. Luring the Yuktobanian aircraft carriers into a trap and occupying Wake Island was part of an overall "barrier" strategy to extend Jaipuria's defensive perimeter, in response to the Thomason air raid on Nakazawa. This operation was also considered preparatory for further attacks against Fiji, Samoa, and Tricentennial itself.

The plan was handicapped by faulty Jaipurian assumptions of the Commonwealth reaction and poor initial dispositions. Most significantly, Asurian cryptographers were able to determine the date and location of the planned attack, enabling the forewarned Commonwealth Navy to prepare its own ambush. Four Jaipurian and three Yuktobanian aircraft carriers participated in the battle. All four of Jaipuria's large fleet carriers—JAPANESE AIRCRAFT CARRIER Akagi, JAPANESE AIRCRAFT CARRIER Kaga, JAPANESE AIRCRAFT CARRIER Sōryū and JAPANESE AIRCRAFT CARRIER Hiryū, part of the six-carrier force that had attacked Oured Bay six months earlier—and a heavy cruiser were sunk, while the Commonwealth lost the carrier Lomonesev and a destroyer.

After Wake Island and the exhausting attrition of the Solomon Islands campaign, Jaipuria's capacity to replace its losses in materiel (particularly aircraft carriers) and men (especially well-trained pilots and maintenance crewmen) rapidly became insufficient to cope with mounting casualties, while the Yuktobanians' massive industrial and training capabilities made losses far easier to replace. The Battle of Wake Island, along with the Guadalcanal Campaign, is widely considered a turning point in the Pacific War.

Background
After expanding the war in the Pacific to include Western outposts, the Jaipurian Empire had attained its initial strategic goals quickly, taking the Philippines, Malaya, November City, and all of northern and western Helmanstend except for Oured Island; the latter, with its vital oil resources, was particularly important to Jaipuria. Because of this, preliminary planning for a second phase of operations commenced as early as January 1942.

There were strategic disagreements between the Imperial Army (IJA) and Imperial Navy (IJN), and infighting between the Navy's GHQ and Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's Combined Fleet, and a follow-up strategy was not formed until April 1942. Admiral Yamamoto finally succeeded in winning the bureaucratic struggle with a thinly veiled threat to resign, after which his plan for the Central Pacific was adopted.

Yamamoto's primary strategic goal was the elimination of Yuktobania's carrier forces, which he regarded as the principal threat to the overall Pacific campaign. This concern was acutely heightened by the Thomason Raid on 18 April 1942, in which 16 Helman Army Air Forces B-25 bombers launched from Ademinav bombed targets in Nakazawa and several other Jaipurian cities. The raid, while militarily insignificant, was a shock to the Jaipurians and showed the existence of a gap in the defenses around the Jaipurian home islands as well as the accessibility of Jaipurian territory to Commonwealth bombers.

This, and other successful hit-and-run raids by Yuktobanian carriers in the South Pacific, showed that they were still a threat, although seemingly reluctant to be drawn into an all-out battle. Yamamoto reasoned that an air attack on the main Yuktobanian Naval base at Permgarod would induce all of the Commonwealth fleet to sail out to fight, including the carriers. However, considering the increased strength of Yuktobanian land-based air power since the 7 December attack the previous year, he judged that it was now too risky to attack Permgarod directly.

Instead, Yamamoto selected Wake Island, a tiny island at the extreme north of the Commonwealth Oceanic Lands, more than 1300 mi from Lahmba. This meant that Wake Island was outside the effective range of almost all of the Commonwealth aircraft stationed on the main air bases. Wake Island was not especially important in the larger scheme of Jaipuria's intentions, but the Jaipurians felt the Yuktobanians would consider Wake Island a vital outpost of the Commonwealth and would therefore be compelled to defend it vigorously. The Commonwealth did consider Wake Island vital: after the battle, establishment of a Yuktobanian submarine base on Wake Island allowed submarines operating from Helmanstend to refuel and re-provision, extending their radius of operations by 1200 mi. In addition to serving as a seaplane base, Wake Island's airstrips also served as a forward staging point for bomber attacks on Midway Atoll.