Guadalcanal, an island in the Solomons archipelago in the South Pacific, was the scene of the first U.S. offensive land action against Japan in World War II. American Marines landed on Guadalcanal in August 1942 and were later supported by U.S. Army troops. The Japanese defended Guadalcanal tenaciously, and the Americans did not declare the island secure until February 1943, and the victory was a turning point in the Pacific War. Numerous naval battles occurred off the shores of Guadalcanal as well.
Guadalcanal
Eugene Sledge knew a thing or two about combat fatigue. It was September 15, 1944, on a tiny spit of land called Peleliu: the Japanese opened up with heavy mortar fire just as the Marines moved off the beach and started inland. Read more
Guadalcanal
“Colonel, there’s about 3,000 Japs between you and me.” Sergeant Ralph Briggs telephoned the command post of the 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment at about 9:30 on the night of October 24, 1942, to report what he had just seen. Read more
Guadalcanal
Historical controversy has famously surrounded Admiral Richmond K. Turner. In his responsibility as Director of the War Plans Division, he was to inform Admiral Kimmel, Commander of the Pacific Fleet, of Japanese diplomatic threats alluding to military retribution for souring political relations. Read more
Guadalcanal
U.S. portable flamethrowers were first used in combat during the Guadalcanal campaign in January 1943. It quickly became apparent that the exposed flamethrower operator was vulnerable to Japanese small arms fire. Read more
Guadalcanal
Scanning over the maps unfolded before him in the division operations room, Colonel Gerald C. Thomas, 1st Marine Division G-3 officer, turned and muttered: “They’re coming.” Read more
Guadalcanal
Two weeks after Pearl Harbor, coast watcher Cornelius Page, a plantation manager on Tabar Island 20 miles north of New Ireland in the South Pacific, reported by teleradio that Japanese planes were making reconnaissance flights over New Ireland and New Britain. Read more
Guadalcanal
The Grumman F4F Wildcat is usually described as chunky, “square,” squat, or stubby—not exactly adjectives that suggest grace or elegance. Read more
Guadalcanal
Lieutenant David C. Richardson spotted the four-engined flying boat silhouetted against the ocean by the late morning sun. Read more
Guadalcanal
By June 1942, the military might of Imperial Japan threatened Australia. The string of spectacular Japanese conquests in the South Pacific menaced lines of supply and communication between the United States and its allies and bases in the region. Read more
Guadalcanal
The bogey man of the U.S. Navy during the Guadalcanal campaign was not the Zero fighter or the I-class submarine. Read more
Guadalcanal
Admiral Ernest King could not believe what he was reading. The graying 63-year-old chief of U.S. naval operations had been awoken from his sleep. Read more
Guadalcanal
“One large, two small vessels, one six miles from Savo off northern beach, Guadalcanal. Will investigate closer.” Read more
Guadalcanal
Rear Admiral Keiji Shibasaki, commander of the elite Japanese garrison entrenched on tiny Betio Island in the central Pacific Ocean, boasted in mid-1943 that his heavily fortified island redoubt could hold out “against a million Americans for a thousand years.” Read more
Guadalcanal
In November 1941, the U.S. Asiatic Fleet weighed anchor in Shanghai, China, for the last time. Alarmed by the growing hostility and aggressiveness of the Japanese, Admiral Thomas Hart ordered the outnumbered and outgunned American vessels moved to the relative safety of Manila Bay in the Philippines. Read more
Guadalcanal
World War II gave us many stories of aerial warfare, men and their machines fighting their way to victory and glory in the name of humanity. Read more
Guadalcanal
Just before dawn, the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise turned into the wind to launch her planes. Nervous and excited pilots roared into the darkness of the vast Pacific toward the unsuspecting Japanese. Read more
Guadalcanal
The Kokoda track campaign involved a trail that leada south along the western side of the Eora Creek Gorge and through the villages of Deniki and Isurava to a trail junction at Alola. Read more
Guadalcanal
The popular conception of the struggle in the air over northern Europe during World War II is of squadrons of sleek fighters racing over the German heartland to protect contrailed streams of lumbering bombers stretching beyond sight. Read more
Guadalcanal
On the eve of the turning point of World War II in the South Pacific, the U.S. Navy’s most experienced aircraft carrier commander, Admiral William F. Read more
Guadalcanal
Marine Captain Frank Farrell stood in the open door of the Army Air Corps C-47 waiting for the “green light,” the signal to leap into space, on a mission that could mean life or death for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people. Read more
