U.S. assault on Guadalcanal began 65 years ago today

[thedrifter]

U.S. assault on Guadalcanal began 65 years ago today
Originally posted on August 07, 2007

Guadalcanal was the landmark battle of the Pacific War, along with being the longest single military campaign in U.S. history.

The campaign marked the first significant strategic combined arms victory by U.S. forces over Japan in the Pacific theatre and is often referred to as a "turning point" in the Pacific War. It marked the beginning of the transition by allied forces from defensive operations to the strategic offensive, while the forces of Japan were forced to focus on defense. The campaign was code-named "Operation Watchtower" and was the genesis of the U.S. Pacific offensive, involving land, sea and air forces along with six major naval engagements, two of which involved primarily aircraft.

Guadalcanal is located in the lower half of what was known prior to Japanese occupation as the British Solomon Islands Protectorate, Southwest Pacific Area. The island and the airfield (under construction by the Japanese) brought the sea-lanes, linking the United States, Australia and New Zealand within easy reach of land-based aircraft.

Control of these sea-lanes would result in control of all of Southeast Asia. The American Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) issued a directive which included a most succinct order: "Assault, take and secure Guadalcanal, followed by a landing on the nearby island of Tulagi. Take Tulagi and the Japanese-held airfield at Lunga Point on Guadalcanal."

Guadalcanal, 2,500 square miles in area, is mountainous with most of the population concentrated along the north coast. The southern coast is known as the Weather Coast as rainfall here is very heavy. Guadalcanal is infested with mosquitoes, and malaria is an endemic disease. Access to the Weather Coast is on foot, or via boat or helicopter.

Its climate is abominable; the heat, humidity and torrential rains are never-ending and malaria-bearing mosquitoes and a host of tropical diseases thrive in its lush, dank jungles. An English-owned plantation engaged in raising copra was the only reason that any Europeans lived there. Yet the waters around this island for six months were to be the scenes of an almost constant struggle between the Japanese and the U.S. fleets. The island was aptly descried by U.S. Marines as a "Hellhole, forgotten in time... 90 miles long and 25 miles wide, a rainforest, stinking malarial swamps, thick grasslands and undergrowth among with steep, treacherous mountains."

The initial assault by U.S. forces on Guadalcanal Island (code-named "Cactus") took place on Aug. 7, 1942, by the 1st Marine Division. Maj. General Alexander Vandergrift, commanding.

The strategic airfield at Lunga Point, Guadalcanal, was secured on Aug. 8 and renamed Henderson Field after Maj. Lofton Henderson, a marine torpedo bomber squadron commander.

Tulagi is an island approximately 2 miles long and a half-mile wide lying just south of the larger Florida Island. The Tulagi landing force, commanded by Brig. General William B. Rupertus, comprised several Marine Raider battalions with the assault taking place on Aug. 7. Tulagi and Florida Islands were also secured the following day.

Regardless of these two rapid and successful assaults on Japanese-held territory, the campaign was to take six more months of bitter, vicious and intense fighting before the island would be in American hands, by the end of December 1942. In terms of the human cost, the Japanese paid the higher toll overall, thought not in every category. The Imperial Japanese Army put 31,400 men on Guadalcanal and lost approximately 20,800 or two-thirds of them. The rifle units sustained severe losses. In one Japanese regiment alone, only 43 were able to walk at the time of the withdrawal, yet battles only accounted for 20 percent of the casualties. The Imperial Army total must be added approximately naval personnel who served on the island. American ground losses included 1,207 marines and 562 soldiers, for a total of 1,769 dead (out of approximately 60,000 committed). For every U.S. soldier or Marine shore who died, almost three sailors and Marines in ship companies perished (5,041). The combined total of killed and permanently missing on land, sea and air for the United States and allied forces reached 7,100. the Japanese total falls no lower than 30,343.

Japanese military strategists, early on, had felt that they could prolong the conflict and inflict sufficient casualties so as to grind down the Americans' will to prevail. They were wrong! The Guadalcanal Campaign clearly demonstrated that American marines, soldiers, sailors and airmen could meet the enemy in adversity and still succeed. The United States had triumphed in its first land offensive of the Pacific War.

—A.B. Cook, a resident of Lee county, Florida, served in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II and, as a historian, has authored more than 50 books on WWII.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

This day in History 1942 : U.S. forces invade Guadalcanal
History.com ^ | August 7, 2007 | Staff

1942 : U.S. forces invade Guadalcanal

On this day in 1942, the U.S. 1st Marine Division begins Operation Watchtower, the first U.S. offensive of the war, by landing on Guadalcanal, one of the Solomon Islands.

On July 6, 1942, the Japanese landed on Guadalcanal Island and began constructing an airfield there. Operation Watchtower was the codename for the U.S. plan to invade Guadalcanal and the surrounding islands. During the attack, American troops landed on five islands within the Solomon chain. Although the invasion came as a complete surprise to the Japanese (bad weather had grounded their scouting aircraft), the landings on Florida, Tulagi, Gavutu, and Tananbogo met much initial opposition from the Japanese defenders.

But the Americans who landed on Guadalcanal met little resistance-at least at first. More than 11,000 Marines had landed, and 24 hours had passed, before the Japanese manning the garrison there knew of the attack. The U.S. forces quickly took their main objective, the airfield, and the outnumbered Japanese troops retreated, but not for long. Reinforcements were brought in, and fierce hand-to-hand jungle fighting ensued. "I have never heard or read of this kind of fighting," wrote one American major general on the scene. "These people refuse to surrender."

The Americans were at a particular disadvantage, being assaulted from both the sea and air. But the U.S. Navy was able to reinforce its troops to a greater extent, and by February 1943, the Japanese had retreated on secret orders of their emperor (so secret, the Americans did not even know it had taken place until they began happening upon abandoned positions, empty boats, and discarded supplies). In total, the Japanese had lost more than 25,000 men, compared with a loss of 1,600 by the Americans. Each side lost 24 warships.

The first Medal of Honor given to a Marine was awarded to Sgt. John Basilone for his fighting during Operation Watchtower. According to the recommendation for his medal, he "contributed materially to the defeat and virtually the annihilation of a Japanese regiment."

Ellie

[thedrifter]

This author is now considered to be the definitive historian of the battle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_B._Frank

Little known is the great combat art at Guadalcanal done by Marines like Major Dickson and Tech Sergeant Laidman.

One of my favorites is “Listening Post.” showing a sentry with his tools - hand grenades, a Reising gun, binoculars and compass to calculate the position of enemy gun emplacemnts.

The artwork is chronicled in “Marines at War,” 1943.


Ellie

[thedrifter]

On the night of October 24, 1942, the weapons man of the hour was
“Manila John” Basilone, the platoon sergeant of the heavy .30-caliber
machine-gun platoon attached to Co. C, 7th Marines, 1stMarDiv.
Basilone was everywhere at once, clearing jams, calming nervous
gunners, replacing parts, and repositioning guns. John Basilone
inspired all who saw him that night: he became the glue that bound
Co. C together, and for that he earned the Medal of Honor

October on Guadalcanal by Eric Hammel...Leatherneck Oct 1992

But newspapers and radio told millions of another D-Day loss
[on Iwo Jima] - Gunnery Sergeant John Basilone. Already a Marine Corps
legend as the first Leatherneck to be awarded the Medal of Honor in
World War II, “Manila John” was leading his machine gun platoon through
the fury of Red Beach II when a mortar cut him down.

In 1942, on a black October night in the steaming jungles of
Guadalcanal, Basilone had single-handedly wiped out a company of
Japanese trying to overrun his position on the Tenaru River. With a
Colt .45 pistol and two machine guns - one cradled in his arms after the
other was knocked out - he stopped a screaming banzai attack and held
out until dawn, when reinforcements came up. Nearly a hundred sprawled
enemy dead were around his cut-off outpost.

Basilone was dark complexioned and handsome, had big ears like Clark
Cable, and a wide grin. His Italian parents beamed with pride on a very
special afternoon in 1943 when 30,000 well-wishers honored him at a gala
celebration on the 2,000-acre estate of tobacco heiress Doris Duke near
Raritan, New Jersey, his hometown.

“Manila John” blushed when photographers snapped his picture while
being kissed by a Hollywood starlet, smiled broadly when an oil portrait
was unveiled in the tiny brick town hall, and was shyly grateful for the
$5,000 was bond neighbors gave him. He turned down the bars of a second
lieutenant. “I’m a plain soldier,” he said, “and I want to stay one.”
From earliest memory, Basilone had wanted to be a professional fighting
man. He had done a hitch in the Army before joining the Marines in
1940, and had served in the Philippines - hence his nickname.

To millions, Basilone was a hero, one of the first of the war, and
could have remained stateside training troops and selling was bonds.
Instead, he said farewell to his new wife, also a Marine, and joined the
Fifth Division. Staying behind, he told buddies, would be “like being a
museum piece.” And it wouldn’t seem right, he said “if the Marines made
a landing on the Manila waterfront and ‘Manila John’ wasn’t among them.”

Now, with the invasion ninety minutes old, the intrepid sergeant had
one thought. “C’mon, you guys! Let’s get these guns off the beach!” he
yelled at the gunners just behind, backs hunkered low and straining
under the heavy loads of weapons and ammunition amid the blistering
fire. The wasplike whir of an incoming mortar sounded its eerie
warning; then a shattering blast.

Basilone lunged forward in midstride, arms flung outward over his
head. He and four comrades died in that instant. On his outstretched
left arm was a tattoo: “Death before Dishonor!” ‘Manila John” wouldn’t
see Dewey Boulevard again, but he had won the Navy Cross, The Marine
Corps’ second highest decoration for valor.

IWO JIMA - Legacy of Valor by Bill D. Ross

Ellie

[thedrifter]

THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE
Number 96, October 30, 2000
Two Dates Worth Noting

Autumn, 1942: It Came Down to One Marine, and One Ship

by Vin Suprynowicz
Vin_Suprynowicz@lvrj.com

Special to TLE

Oct. 26 falls on a Thursday this year.

Ask the significance of the date, and you're likely to draw some puzzled looks—five more days to stock up for Halloween?

It's a measure of men like Col. Mitchell Paige and Rear Adm. Willis A. "Ching Chong China" Lee that they wouldn't have had it any other way. What they did 58 years ago, they did precisely so their grandchildren could live in a land of peace and plenty.

Whether we've properly safeguarded the freedoms they fought to leave us, may be a discussion best left for another day. Today we struggle to envision—or, for a few of us, to remember—how the world must have looked on Oct. 26, 1942. A few thousand lonely American Marines had been put ashore on Guadalcanal, a god-forsaken malarial jungle island which just happened to lie like a speed bump at the end of the long blue-water slot between New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago—the very route the Japanese Navy would have to take to reach Australia.

On Guadalcanal the Marines built an air field. And Japanese commander Isoroku Yamamoto immediately grasped what that meant. No effort would be spared to dislodge these upstart Yanks from a position that could endanger his ships during any future operations to the south. Before long, relentless Japanese counterattacks had driven supporting U.S. Navy from inshore waters. The Marines were on their own.

World War Two is generally calculated from Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939. But that's a eurocentric view. The Japanese had been limbering up their muscles in Korea and Manchuria as early as 1931, and in China by 1934. By 1942 they'd devastated every major Pacific military force or stronghold of the great pre-war powers: Britain, Holland, France, and the United States. The bulk of America's proud Pacific fleet lay beached or rusting on the floor of Pearl Harbor. A few aircraft carriers and submarines remained, though as Mitchell Paige and his 30-odd men were sent out to establish their last, thin defensive line on that ridge southwest of the tiny American bridgehead on Guadalcanal on Oct. 25, he would not have been much encouraged to know how those remaining American aircraft carriers were faring offshore.

(The next day, their Mark XV torpedoes—carrying faulty magnetic detonators reverse-engineered from a First World War German design—proved so ineffective that the United States Navy couldn't even scuttle the doomed and listing carrier Hornet with eight carefully aimed torpedoes. Instead, our forces suffered the ignominy of leaving the abandoned ship to be polished off by the enemy ... only after Japanese commanders determined she was damaged too badly to be successfully towed back to Tokyo as a trophy.)

As Paige—then a platoon sergeant—and his riflemen set about carefully emplacing their four water-cooled Brownings, it's unlikely anyone thought they were about to provide the definitive answer to that most desperate of questions: How many able-bodied U.S. Marines does it take to hold a hill against 2,000 desperate and motivated attackers?

The Japanese Army had not failed in an attempt to seize any major objective since the Russo-Japanese War of 1905. Their commanders certainly did not expect the war to be lost on some God-forsaken jungle ridge manned by one thin line of Yanks in khaki in October of 1942.

But in preceding days, Marine commander Vandegrift had defied War College doctrine, "dangling" his men in exposed positions to draw Japanese attacks, then springing his traps "with the steel vise of firepower and artillery," in the words of Naval historian David Lippman.

The Japanese regiments had been chewed up, good. Still, the American forces had so little to work with that Paige's men would have only the four 30-caliber Brownings to defend the one ridge through which the Japanese opted to launch their final assault against Henderson Field, that fateful night of Oct. 25.

By the time the night was over, "The 29th (Japanese) Infantry Regiment has lost 553 killed or missing and 479 wounded among its 2,554 men," historian Lippman reports. "The 16th (Japanese) Regiment's losses are uncounted, but the 164th's burial parties handle 975 Japanese bodies. ... The American estimate of 2,200 Japanese dead is probably too low."

Among the 90 American dead and wounded that night were all the men in Mitchell Paige's platoon. Every one. As the night wore on, Paige moved up and down his line, pulling his dead and wounded comrades back into their foxholes and firing a few bursts from each of the four Brownings in turn, convincing the Japanese forces down the hill that the positions were still manned.

The citation for Paige's Congressional Medal of Honor picks up the tale: "When the enemy broke through the line directly in front of his position, P/Sgt. Paige, commanding a machinegun section with fearless determination, continued to direct the fire of his gunners until all his men were either killed or wounded. Alone, against the deadly hail of Japanese shells, he fought with his gun and when it was destroyed, took over another, moving from gun to gun, never ceasing his withering fire."

In the end, Sgt. Paige picked up the last of the 40-pound, belt-fed Brownings—the same design which John Moses Browning famously fired for a continuous 25 minutes until it ran out of ammunition at its first U.S. Army trial—and did something for which the weapon was never designed. Sgt. Paige walked down the hill toward the place where he could hear the last Japanese survivors rallying to move around his flank, the gun cradled under his arm, firing as he went.

The weapon did not fail.

# # #

Coming up at dawn, battalion executive officer Major Odell M. Conoley first discovered the answer to our question: How many able-bodied Marines does it take to hold a hill against two regiments of motivated, combat-hardened infantrymen who have never known defeat?

On a hill where the bodies were piled like cordwood, Mitchell Paige alone sat upright behind his 30-caliber Browning, waiting to see what the dawn would bring.

One hill: one Marine.

But that was the second problem. Part of the American line had fallen to the last Japanese attack. "In the early morning light, the enemy could be seen a few yards off, and vapor from the barrels of their machine guns was clearly visible," reports historian Lippman. "It was decided to try to rush the position."

For the task, Major Conoley gathered together "three enlisted communication personnel, several riflemen, a few company runners who were at the point, together with a cook and a few messmen who had brought food to the position the evening before."

Joined by Paige, this ad hoc force of 17 Marines counterattacked at 5:40 a.m., discovering that "the extremely short range allowed the optimum use of grenades." In the end, "The element of surprise permitted the small force to clear the crest."

And that's where the unstoppable wave of Japanese conquest finally crested, broke, and began to recede. On an unnamed jungle ridge on an insignificant island no one had ever heard of, called Guadalcanal. Because of a handful of U.S. Marines, one of whom, now 82, lives out a quiet retirement with his wife Marilyn in La Quinta, Calif.

But while the Marines had won their battle on land, it would be meaningless unless the U.S. Navy could figure out a way to stop losing night battles in "The Slot" to the northwest of the island, through which the Japanese kept sending in barges filled with supplies and reinforcements for their own desperate forces on Guadalcanal.

The U.S. Navy had lost so many ships in those dreaded night actions that the waters off Savo were given the grisly sailor's nickname by which they're still known today: Ironbottom Sound.

So desperate did things become that finally, 18 days after Mitchell Paige won his Congressional Medal of Honor on that ridge above Henderson Field, Admiral Bull Halsey himself broke a stern War College edict—the one against committing capital ships in restricted waters. Gambling the future of the cut-off troops on Guadalcanal on one final roll of the dice, Halsey dispatched into the Slot his two remaining fast battleships, the USS South Dakota and the USS Washington, escorted by the only four destroyers with enough fuel in their bunkers to get them there and back.

In command of the 28-knot battlewagons was the right man at the right place, gunnery expert Rear Adm. Willis A. "Ching Chong China" Lee. Lee's flag flew aboard the Washington, in turn commanded by Captain Glenn Davis.

Lee was a nut for gunnery drills. "He tested every gunnery-book rule with exercises," Lippman writes, "and ordered gunnery drills under odd conditions—turret firing with relief crews, anything that might simulate the freakishness of battle."

# # #

As it turned out, the American destroyers need not have worried about carrying enough fuel to get home. By 11 p.m. on Nov. 13, outnumbered better than three-to-one by a massive Japanese task force driving down from the northwest, every one of the four American destroyers had been shot up, sunk, or set aflame, while the South Dakota—known throughout the fleet as a jinx ship—managed to damage some lesser Japanese vessels but continued to be plagued with electrical and fire control problems.

"Washington was now the only intact ship left in the force," Lippman writes. "In fact, at that moment Washington was the entire U.S. Pacific Fleet. She was the only barrier between (Admiral) Kondo's ships and Guadalcanal. If this one ship did not stop 14 Japanese ships right then and there, America might lose the war. ...

"On Washington's bridge, Lieutenant Ray Hunter still had the conn. He had just heard that South Dakota had gone off the air and had seen (destroyers) Walke and Preston "blow sky high." Dead ahead lay their burning wreckage, while hundreds of men were swimming in the water and Japanese ships were racing in.

"Hunter had to do something. The course he took now could decide the war. 'Come left,' he said, and Washington straightened out on a course parallel to the one on which she (had been) steaming. Washington's rudder change put the burning destroyers between her and the enemy, preventing her from being silhouetted by their fires.

"The move made the Japanese momentarily cease fire. Lacking radar, they could not spot Washington behind the fires. ...

"Meanwhile, Washington raced through burning seas. Everyone could see dozens of men in the water clinging to floating wreckage. Flag Lieutenant Raymond Thompson said, "Seeing that burning, sinking ship as it passed so close aboard, and realizing that there was nothing I, or anyone, could do about it, was a devastating experience.'

"Commander Ayrault, Washington's executive officer, clambered down ladders, ran to Bart Stoodley's damage-control post, and ordered Stoodley to cut loose life rafts. That saved a lot of lives. But the men in the water had some fight left in them. One was heard to scream, 'Get after them, Washington!' "

Sacrificing their ships by maneuvering into the path of torpedoes intended for the Washington, the captains of the American destroyers had given China Lee one final chance. The Washington was fast, undamaged, and bristling with 16-inch guns. And, thanks to Lt. Hunter's course change, she was also now invisible to the enemy.

Blinded by the smoke and flames, the Japanese battleship Kirishima turned on her searchlights, illuminating the helpless South Dakota, and opened fire. Finally, standing out in the darkness, Lee and Davis could positively identify an enemy target.

The Washington's main batteries opened fire at 12 midnight precisely. Her new SG radar fire control system worked perfectly. Between midnight and 12:07 a.m., Nov. 14, the "last ship in the U.S. Pacific Fleet" stunned the battleship Kirishima with 75, 16-inch shells. For those aboard the Kirishima, it rained steel.

In seven minutes, the Japanese battleship was reduced to a funeral pyre. She went down at 3:25 a.m., the first enemy sunk by an American battleship since the Spanish-American War. Stunned, the remaining Japanese ships withdrew. Within days, Yamamoto and his staff reviewed their mounting losses and recommended the unthinkable to the emperor—withdrawal from Guadalcanal.

But who remembers, today, how close-run a thing it was—the ridge held by a single Marine, the battle won by the last American ship?

In the autumn of 1942.

When the Hasbro Toy Co. called up some years back, asking permission to put the retired colonel's face on some kid's doll, Mitchell Paige thought they must be joking.

But they weren't. That's his mug, on the little Marine they call "GI Joe."

And now you know.

Ellie

[jetdawgg]

An uncle of mine who married into the family was one of the Marines who fought at Guadalcanal. He used to live in Conn and now resides in NC.:usmc: