IN THE COURSE of 1942, Admiral Wenneker had observed the developments in the Pacific War with mounting pessimism. In April, he had been invited on an extensive tour of the areas in East and South-East Asia occupied by victorious Japanese forces and already observed that they appeared to be resting on their laurels and to be unaware of the stiffness of combat arising in Europe by comparison with the cheap victories in which the Japanese populace was currently basking. Although reports back home about what was really happening in relations with Japanese officials were occasionally being filtered through by individuals such as the war reporter Lüddecke and the captains of blockade-running vessels, which emphasised the Japanese obsession with secrecy, their aggressive responses to criticism and a general lack of commitment to joint endeavour as allies. Until September 1942, over half the blockade-runners equipped and despatched to Europe successfully reached there with cargoes of valuable raw materials such as rubber, wolfram and tin, all of which were of outstanding importance for the German war economy.

At first, these voyages were somewhat less hazardous because the Japanese occupation of South-East Asia made it possible for blockade-runners to take materials on board directly from producing areas and utilise gradually improving facilities in such ports as Saigon, Djakarta and Singapore. For some time, however, these vessels operated with limited fuel resources and over time found it difficult to obtain access to refined fuel seized on Sumatra. But because Sumatra was controlled by the Japanese Army, Wenneker offered in return for fuel supplies the use of some of his supply vessels to ship Japanese cargoes from South-East Asia in view of the Japanese Navy's dominant control of civilian ships, which began to decline through serious losses to the growing threat from the US submarine fleet. In the course of the following months, however, the Germans were faced with steadily increasing Allied attacks in the Atlantic, primarily from the air but also from surface warships equipped with radar and aided by greater knowledge of German naval ciphers.

The wider strategic picture, too, began to deteriorate seriously both from the increasing resistance to German offensives in Russia and North Africa and in a growing awareness that the chances of an allied meeting in southern Asia from German and Japanese forces breaking through together in the Indian Ocean were fast diminishing.