World War II Pacific: Battles and Campaigns from Guadalcanal to Okinawa 1942-1945 (WW2 Pacific Military History Series)

by Daniel Wrinn

  Onboard the transports approaching the Solomons, the Marines were expecting a tough fight. They knew little about any targets, even less about their opponents. The available maps were based on outdated hydrographic charts and information provided by former island residents. The maps based on aerial photographs were of poor quality and often mismapped.

  On July 17, a couple division staff officers, Lieutenant Colonel Merrill Twining and Major William McKean, joined the crew of a B-17 flying from Port Moresby on a reconnaissance mission over Guadalcanal. They reported that they saw no extensive defenses along the beaches of Guadalcanal’s north shore.

  Guadalcanal and Florida Islands

  The G-2 Intelligence officer, Lieutenant Colonel Frank Goettge, determined that approximately 8,400 Japanese occupied Guadalcanal and Tulagi. Admiral Turner’s staff concluded that the Japanese were around 7,000 men. In comparison, Admiral Ghormley’s Intelligence officer put the enemy strength at just over 3,000 men. He was the closest to the actual total of Japanese troops of 3,457 men. Over 2,500 of these men stationed on Guadalcanal were Korean laborers working on the airfield.

  The Marine Corps had overwhelming superiority over the Japanese. The Marine Division had 19,514 officers and enlisted. This included the Naval Medical and Seabee engineer units. The infantry regiments numbered exactly 3,168 and had a headquarters company, weapons company, and three battalions. Each infantry battalion (933 Marines) was organized into a headquarters company, a weapons company, and three rifle companies. The artillery regiment had 2,581 officers and men. They were organized into 105mm howitzer and three 75mm howitzer battalions. A special weapons battalion of antiaircraft and antitank guns, a parachute battalion, and a light tank battalion contributed to additional combat power. An engineer regiment (2,450 Marines) with battalions of pioneers, engineers, and Seabees provided a hefty combat and service element. The total was completed by division headquarters, battalion headquarters, military police companies, and the division’s service troops. The 1st Raider Battalion and the 3rd Defense Battalion had been added to Vandegrift’s command to provide more infantry and a much-needed coastal defense for supplying antiaircraft guns and crews.

  The 1st Division’s heaviest ordinance had been left behind in New Zealand. Limited ship space and time meant that the division’s big guns, 155mm howitzer Battalion, and all of the Motor Transport Battalion’s 2 1/2 ton trucks were not loaded. Colonel del Valle commanded the 11th Marines. He was distressed at the loss of his heavy howitzers. And equally concerned that the essential sound and flash ranging equipment necessary for effective counter-battery fire was left behind. There was not enough room for extra clothing, bedding rolls, and other supplies essential to support and reinforce the division for sixty days of combat. An additional ten days’ supply of ammunition also remained in New Zealand.

  In the opinion of several 1st Division historians and veterans from the landing, the men approaching the transports “thought they’d have a tough time getting ashore.” They were confident young men and sure that they would not be defeated, but most men were entering combat for the first time. While there were combat veteran officers and NCOs within the division, most men were going to their first battle. The 1st Marines commanding officer Colonel Clifton Cate estimated that over 90% of his men had enlisted directly after Pearl Harbor.

  The fabled fame of the 1st Marine Division from the later World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War, and the Persian Gulf War—the most highly decorated division in the US Armed Forces—had not yet established its reputation. The convoy of ships, with its protective screen of carriers, reached Koro in the Fiji Islands on July 26. The practice landings did little more than exercise the transports landing craft since reefs prevented an actual beach landing.

  The rendezvous at Koro gave the senior commanders a chance to have a face-to-face meeting. Turner, McCain, Fletcher, and Vandegrift got together with Ghormley, and Chief of Staff, Admiral Daniel Callahan. They learned that the 7th Marines on Samoa were to be prepared to embark on four days’ notice to reinforce Operation Watchtower. Admiral Fletcher added some bad news to this. Because of the threat of land-based air assaults, he could not “keep the carriers in the area for more than forty-eight hours after the landing.” Vandegrift protested he needed at least four days to get the division’s gear ashore. Fletcher grudgingly kept his carriers at risk for another day.

  On the 28th, the ships sailed from the Fiji Islands. They proceeded as if they were heading toward Australia. At noon on August 5, the convoy and its escorts turn north for the Solomon Islands. They were undetected by the Japanese. The assault force reached their target during the night of August 7 and split into two landing groups. The first was Transport Division X-Ray. They had fifteen transports headed for the north shore of Guadalcanal, east of Lunga Point. Transport Division Yoke followed with eight transports headed for Tulagi, Gavutu, Tanambogo in nearby Florida Island, which loomed over the other smaller islands.

  Vandegrift’s plans for the landing would put two of his infantry regiments—the 1st Marines and the 5th Marines—ashore on both sides of the Lunga River. They would be ready to seize the airfield and attack inland. The 11th Marines, the 3rd Defense Battalion, and most of the division’s supporting units, would land near Lunga and be prepared to take advantage of the beachhead. Twenty miles across the Sealark Channel, the division’s assistant commander, Brigadier General William Rupertus, would lead the assault forces to take Tulagi, Gavutu, and Tanambogo. The 1st Raider Battalion, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines (2/5 Marines), and the 1st Parachute Battalion would patrol the nearby shores of Florida Island. The rest of Colonel John Arthur’s regiment would await orders in reserve.

  They slipped through the channels on both sides of the rugged Savo Island. Heavy clouds and dense rain blinded the task force until the moon came out and silhouetted the islands. Onboard his command ship, General Vandegrift wrote to his wife: “Tomorrow morning at dawn, we land on our first major offensive of the war. Our plans have been made and God grant us our judgment has been sound. Whatever happens, I want you to know I did my best. Let us hope that will be good enough.”

  At 0641, on August 7, Turner signaled his ships to land the landing force. Just twenty-eight minutes before, Quincy started shelling the Guadalcanal beaches. When the sun came up that Friday at 0650, Marine assault troops touched down at 0909 on Red Beach, on Guadalcanal’s north shore. To the men’s surprise—and relief—no Japanese resisted the landing. The assault troops moved off the beach and into the surrounding jungle. They waded through the steep banked Ilu River and headed toward the enemy airfield. The 1st Marines that followed could cross the Ilu on a bridge the engineers had thrown up with an amphibian tractor bracing its middle. The silence was eerie. The absence of opposition worried the rifleman. The Japanese troops, mostly Korean laborers, fled to the west, terrified by a week’s worth of B-17 bombardments, naval gunfire, and the imposing sight of the ships offshore. The situation was not the same across the Sealark. The Marines on Guadalcanal heard echoes of a firefight across the channel.

  The Japanese on Tulagi would refuse to give up without a vicious, no surrender battle to the death. After the Marines landed, they moved inland toward the ridge that ran lengthwise through the island. The Marine battalions encountered pockets of resistance in the undergrowth of the island’s thick vegetation. They maneuvered to outflank and overrun the opposition. The Marine advance was steady but riddled with casualties. By nightfall, they had reached the former British residency overlooking the Tulagi harbor and dug in for the night. They were across from the hill that overlooked the Japanese position—a ravine on the island’s southern tip. The 2/5 Marines cleaned out its sector of enemy insurgents. By the end of their first day, the 2nd Battalion had fifty-six men killed and wounded. The 1st Raider Battalion’s casualties was ninety-nine Marines.

  During the night, the Japanese swarmed from hillside caves in four separate ambushes, trying to penetrate the raider’s lines. They were unsuccessful, and m
ost died in their suicidal efforts. At dawn, the 2nd Marines landed and reinforced the attackers. By the afternoon of August 8, the mop-up was completed and the battle for Tulagi ended. The fight for tiny Tanambogo and Gavutu, both little more than small hills rising out of the sea connected by a one hundred yard causeway, had fighting just as intense as that on Tulagi.

  The combat area was much smaller than the opportunities for fire support from offshore ships. Carrier planes were limited once the Marines landed on the beachhead. Naval gunfire began from the light cruiser San Juan. F4F Wildcats flying from the Wasp attacked enemy positions on the island. The 1st Parachute Battalion landed 395 men in three waves on Gavutu. The Japanese, with secured cave positions, opened fire on the second and third waves, pinning down the 1st Marines on the beach. Major Williams took a bullet in the lungs and was evacuated. Thirty-two Marines were killed under withering enemy fire. This time the 2nd Marines’ reinforcements were really needed. The 1st Battalion’s Company B landed on Gavutu and attempted to take Tanambogo. The attackers were driven to the ground and had to pull back to Gavutu.

  After a rough night of fighting with the defenders of both islands, the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines, reinforced the men already ashore and mopped up each island. The Marines’ butcher’s bill on the three islands was almost 150. The wounded numbered just under 200. The surviving Japanese fled to Florida Island, which had been scouted out by the 2nd Marines on D-Day and found to be clear of enemy soldiers. The Marine landings and concentration of shipping in Guadalcanal waters acted as a magnet to the Japanese at Rabaul. Admiral Ghormley’s headquarters was heard on D-Day, “desperately calling for the dispatch of surface forces to the scene” and to designate transports and carriers as targets for massive bombing. The messages were sent uncoded and emphasized the imminent danger of the threatened garrison. The Japanese response was quick and would be characteristic in the upcoming months of air and land battles to come.

  On August 7, an Australian coastwatcher warned of a Japanese airstrike that was composed of light, heavy, and fighter-bombers fast approaching toward the island. Fletcher’s pilots, whose carriers were positioned one hundred miles south of Guadalcanal, intercepted the approaching planes, twenty-five miles out, before they could attack Marine positions. This setback did not discourage the Japanese. Other aircraft and ships were en route to the inviting target.

  On August 8, the Marines consolidated their positions ashore, taking the airfield on Guadalcanal and establishing a beachhead. Supplies were unloaded as fast as the landing craft could make the turnaround from ship to shore. Still, the men allocated on shore to handle the influx of rations, ammunition, tents, and aviation gas were woefully inadequate. The beach became a dumpsite. Just as the supplies were landed, they needed to be moved to other positions near Kukum Village and Lunga Point within the planned perimeter. Luckily, the lack of Japanese ground opposition allowed Vandegrift to shift the supply beaches west to a new beachhead.

  Japanese bombers penetrated the American fighter screen on August 8. They dropped bombs from twenty thousand feet or higher to escape the antiaircraft fire. The enemy planes were inaccurate while they concentrated on the ships in the channel damaging several and sinking the destroyer Jarvis. In the fight to turn back the attacking planes, the carrier fighter squadrons lost twenty-one Wildcats.

  The Japanese targeted the Allied ships. The Japanese commanders at Rabaul underestimated the strength of General Vandegrift’s forces. They thought the Marine landings were made up of a reconnaissance force of 2,000 men on Guadalcanal. By the evening of August 8, Vandegrift had 10,900 troops ashore on Guadalcanal and another 6,075 on Tulagi. Three infantry regiments landed with supporting 75mm howitzer battalions—the 2nd and 3rd Battalions. 11th Marines on Guadalcanal and the 3rd Battalion, 10th Marines on Tulagi. The 5th Battalion, 11th Marines’ 105mm howitzers supported the assault.

  Later that night, a cruiser force of the Imperial Japanese Navy reacted to the American invasion with an intense response. Admiral Turner had positioned three cruiser destroyer groups to block the Tulagi approaches. During the Battle of Savo Island, the Japanese showed their superiority of night assaults and fighting at this stage of the war. They smashed two of Turner’s covering forces without any loss. Four heavy cruisers sunk—three American, one Australian—and another lost her bow. As the sun came up on what would soon be called “Ironbottom Sound,” the Marines watched with grim faces as Higgins boats swarmed out to rescue survivors. American casualties were 1,300 sailors dead and another 700 wounded. Japanese casualties were less than 200 men.

  The cruiser Chokai was the only Japanese ship to suffer damage in the encounter. The American cruisers Vincennes, Astoria, and Quincy, were sunk as well as the Australian HMAS Canberra. She was critically damaged and sunk by American torpedoes. Both the cruiser Chicago and the destroyer Talbot were damaged. Luckily for the Marines on shore, the Japanese force—five heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and a destroyer—departed before dawn.

  When the Japanese attack force leader, Vice-Admiral Gunichi Mikawa, returned to Rabaul, he had expected to receive the praise of his superiors. He got that, but he also found himself the subject of criticism. Admiral Yamamoto, the Japanese fleet commander, chided his subordinates for failing to attack the transports. Mikawa replied he didn’t know Fletcher’s aircraft carriers were that far off Guadalcanal.

  This disaster prompted the American admirals to re-examine naval support for shore operations. Fletcher was concerned for the safety of his aircraft carriers. He’d already lost a quarter of his fighter aircraft. The expeditionary force commander had lost a carrier at Midway and Coral Sea. He felt he couldn’t risk losing a third, even if it meant abandoning the men on the island. Before the Japanese cruiser attack, he got Ghormley’s permission to withdraw.

  The admiral told General Vandegrift that Fletcher’s impending withdrawal would have to pull out the amphibious force’s ships. The Savo Island battle was essential in reinforcing the decision to flee before Japanese enemy aircraft would strike. The next day the transports steamed away to Noumea. The unloading of ship supplies were interrupted while the ships fled. The forces ashore had seventeen days worth of rations—after counting Japanese food—and only four days’ supply of ammunition for all weapons. The naval ships fled with most of the supplies and with the majority of the 2nd Division Marines still on board. The Marines were left at the island of Espiritu Santo in the New Hebrides. Colonel Arthur and the Infantry Marines were distraught that they could not reinforce their comrades until they finally reached Guadalcanal on October 29.

  General Vandegrift ordered the remaining rations reduced to two a day for the Marines on the beachheads. Most of the Marines were smokers and now smoked Japanese brand cigarettes. The fast-burning tobacco scorched their lips because of the separate paper filters that came with the cigarettes.

  The withdrawing naval ships also took with them precious, valuable engineering tools as well as some of the empty sandbags. The Marines used discarded Japanese shovels to fill remaining sandbags. They strengthened their defensive positions along the beaches between the Tenaru River and the ridges west of Kukum.

  A Japanese counter landing was a distinct threat. Inland of the beaches, Marines in foxholes had defensive gun positions, and they lined the west bank of the Tenaru. They maintained higher ground over the hills that faced west toward the Matanikau River and Point Cruz. South of the airfield were densely jungled ridges and ravines. The beachhead perimeter was guarded by outposts manned by combat support troops. Frontline positions included the engineers and amphibious tractor battalions. In fact, any Marine with a rifle—virtually every Marine—stood a night defensive duty. No place within the perimeter could be counted safe from enemy infiltration.

  As Turner’s transport sailed away, the Japanese began a pattern of harassing air attacks on the beachhead. Sometimes the raids came during the day. But the 3rd Battalion’s 90mm antiaircraft guns forced the bombers to fly too high for effective bombing.
The erratic pattern of bombs meant no safe place near the airfield, the preferred target, and no place could claim it was bomb free. Japanese air attacks became the new norm and severely harassed Allied positions, dropping bombs and flares indiscriminately.

  The nightly visitors’ aircraft engines soon became well-known sounds. They were called “Washing Machine Charlie” and later “Louis the Louse” when they signaled Japanese bombardment. When “Charlie” was used, it meant a twin-engine night bomber. “Louis” was a cruiser floatplane that signaled to the bombardment ships. But the harassed Marines use these names interchangeably.

  Even though most of the division’s heavy engineering equipment had disappeared with the naval transports, the resourceful Marines soon completed the airfield’s runway with captured Japanese gear. On August 12, Admiral McCain’s aide piloted in a PBY-5 Catalina. A flying boat landed on what was now officially Henderson Field, named for a Marine pilot, Major Loftin Henderson lost at Midway. The Navy decided that fighters could use the airfield and flew off with several loads of wounded Marines. The first of 2,879 to be evacuated. Henderson Field was the centerpiece of General Vandegrift’s strategy. He would hold it at all costs.

  The tiny airstrip was only two thousand feet long and lacked a taxiway and adequate drainage. Torrential downpours riddled the runway with potholes. It was rendered unusable but was essential for the success of the landing force. With the airstrip operational, supplies could be flown in and wounded flown out. At least in the Marines’ minds, the lifeline of Navy ships was no longer available for the remaining Marines. General Vandegrift’s Marines were dug in on Henderson Field on the west and east.