Episode 43: the End of the Solomons

On Halloween night 1943 the men of the First Marine Amphibious Corps were once again steaming toward enemy held beaches from their starting points at Guadalcanal for yet another island assault. This time they were  preparing to land on Bougainville, the north western most island of the Soloman chain. Leading the invasion was the now Lieutenant General Vandegrift. The marines were prepared for the operation to be difficult and costly, so much so that Halsey nearly decided to by-pass the island entirely but in the end concluded that Bougnainville provided invaluable locations for air bases from  which to strike at Rabaul.

Though the 3rd Marine Division constituted the main effort on the morning of November 1st the 2nd Marine Parachute Battalion had been making a stink on the island of Choiseul for two days already in an effort to distract General Hyakutake. Vandegrift had told the battalion’s commander, LTC Victor Krulak, to land and make as much noise as possible in order to draw the Japanese in and away from the upcoming landings on Bougainville. The feint worked and General Hyakutake dispatched both troops and aircraft to intercept the marine parachute battalion. With Japanese bombers preoccupied with actions on Choiseul the vessels carrying men toward bougainville remained relatively unmolested.

When the 14,000 men of the 3rd Marine Division arrived at their staging areas about two miles off the beaches of Bougainville in Empress Augusta bay on the western side of the island, American Cruisers were busy pounding the shore with their 6 inch guns. Roughly 300 Japanese Soldiers defended the landing zone from eighteen well prepared pillboxes. The 3rd Raider Battalion meanwhile seized Puruata island right off Cape Torokina that covered the left flank of the defenders in defilade. The Japanese did little damage to the invading force during the landing and within a few hours half the division was already ashore, busying itself with digging the defenders out in savage close quarters combat. 

For the men of the 3rd Marine Division, who had cut their teeth in the palm groves of Guadalcanal, the jungles of Bouginaville were beyond anything they had experienced before. They thought they knew jungle fighting but the neat and even rows of coconut plantations were like a well manicured garden compared to the dark, untamed jungle of bougainville which had never been cultivated by planters. Their first night on the island would be spent crouched in rain filled foxholes waiting for the expected Japanese counter attack. 

Unusually, rather than coming from the land the counterattack was coming from the sea. Hearing of the landing at Bougainville the Japanese dispatched 1000 troops in an attempt to dislodge the American beachhead. They were escorted by six destroyers, two light cruisers, and two heavy cruisers under the command of Rear Admiral Sentaro Omori. While cruising toward Bougainville Admiral Omori became worried that his task force had been detected and sent his slow moving transports back but retained his destroyers and cruisers in hopes of finding the American amphibious support force unprotected.

He was right to suspect he had been detected because allied aircraft had spotted him during the day. Admiral Stantan Merril’s Task Force 39, which had been conducting shore bombardment and been protecting the landing force, was ordered to intercept the Japanese. At 2:30 in the morning of November 2nd Admiral Merrill's Task Force found the Japanese on radar. Task Force 39 consisted of two divisions of four destroyers each, one division under the command of the infamous Captain Arleigh Burke, and a cruiser division of four light cruisers; the Denver, the Cleveland, the the Colombia, and the Montpillier. Despite the Japanese overmatch in guns, their heavy cruisers had 8 inch cannons against the American light cruisers 6 inchers, Admiral Merril elected to stay at long range to remain outside the reach of the Japanese Long Lance Torpedoes. The American’s mastery of radar controlled fire helped even the odds against the Japanese optical targeting systems. 

Having gained radar contact Destroyer Division 45 steamed forward to get within friendly torpedo range. Meanwhile the main body conducted a turn to the rear and waited for confirmation that torpedoes were in the water. When destroyer division 45 was within 5400 yards they released their fish toward a formation of four japanese ships and turned away. After three minutes the four Japanese ships turned to starboard indicating that they had detected the torpedoes and were maneuvering to avoid it and launched a torpedo spread of their own. When the cruiser division saw that the enemy would evade the torpedoes they opened fire under radar control. Seeing the cruiser's rounds impacting the destroyers began firing their main guns as well. 

 The battle quickly devolved into three separate engagements. The cruiser Sendai was hit then set ablaze, sending the destroyers Samidare and Shiratsuyu in a panicked retreat in which the two vessels collided with one another rendering all three ships combat ineffective.

The American captains then redirected their fire to another Japanese grouping centered on the Myoko and Haguro. As their main battery fire landed in and amongst the Japanese ships they attempted to evade resulting in yet another collision between the destroyer Hatsukaze and the cruiser Myoko. The Myoko received extensive damage and the Hatsukaze was nearly split in half effectively removing both vessels from action. 

Roughly thirty minutes after the engagement started the Japanese cruisers began laying accurate fire on the American cruiser force. The japanese cruisers launched flares ahead of the American cruiser division in an attempt to silhouette them but the lead vessel turned to port in order to pass behind the flares. At this time the Americans launched counter illumination while Japanese aircraft dropped red flares to indicate to their comrades that the American force contained cruisers. According to men who participated in the battle it was the most illumination they had ever seen in a night battle as the whole sky was filled with falling flares. 

In the exchange the Denver received three 8 inch shells but none detonated causing only superficial damage. The enormous geysers of water that rose up around the American cruiser division convinced Admiral Mori that he had delivered significant blows to his enemy though. Indeed, Japanese fire was landing all around the American cruisers surrounding them in great spires of water reaching hundreds of feet into the air but luck was with Merrill that night and his ships survived. Only the Destroyer Foote received significant damage when a torpedo hit her and killed her engine but she remained afloat. The destroyers Spence and Thatcher collided but remained in action. 

In light of the aggressive Japanese fire the American cruiser force now rapidly changed course and laid smoke after their own bracketing fire struck home in their third salvo. This combined with the low lying cloud and light rain significantly hampered Japanese firing. Being completely reliant on visual targeting methods the maneuver proved effective; the Japanese would not land any significant hits to the American task force and by 4:00 in the morning the battle was essentially over. Admiral Merril had repelled the Japanese and won the last naval engagement of the Solomons campaign in what would come to be known as the battle of Empress Augusta Bay. The Japanese lost one light cruiser and one destroyer as well as suffering damage to two more light cruisers and two destroyers. Having failed to deliver troops to shore or molest the American landing force the Japanese returned to rabaul to lick their wounds.

After having witnessed the spectacular light show of the naval battle overnight the men ashore began expanding their perimeter in the morning to make way for the Seabees as well the 21st Marines and the 37 Infantry Division. As the infantrymen proceeded to clear the Japanese out of the surrounding jungle the seabees set to improving the beachhead and constructing an airstrip along the coast. Despite the terrible terrain and vegetation as well as Japanese tenacity, establishing a perimeter proved relatively easy. The Japanese had not been expecting the American landings to take place at Torokina. In fact, American planners had chosen Torokina precisely because it was out of the way and difficult to reach.

After having fought so many destructive and bloody battles in the Soloman and New Guinea campaigns againsst prepared japanese defenses the americans now preferred to land not closest to established japanese positions but rather in areas where they believed they could land relatively unopposed and husband their strength for subsequent operations. Torokina was selected because it was remote compared to the center of mass of Japanese forces on the island and the American planner believed it would take months for the defenders to muster the strength to dislodge the invasion force. 

Despite the failure of the first relief force to make any impact on the allied landing, General Hyakutake and Admiral Koga were still committed to removing the Americans from Bougainville via landing force. Unfortunately their haste severely hampered their efforts. Rather than bide their time to gather a large enough force to drive an entire corps back into the sea they committed their troops piecemeal. After the failure of the first run another attempt was made, this time sending 3000 men down from Rabaul. 

Despite the relatively weak force, the Japanese would be outnumbered three to one in the immediate vicinity of Torokina, they had a respectable naval escort; seven heavy cruisers. Unfortunately for Hyakutake and Admiral Koga, Magic had deciphered IJN signals and informed Halsey of their plans to send reinforcements south to Bougainville. Halsey had limited options to respond however. Due to the divided nature of the theater, the South Pacific Command, or COMSOPAC, did not have access to the resources being committed to Nimitz drive toward the central pacific, at this time a massive force preparing to invade Tarawa. Knowing he did not have the sufficient surface strength to stop the Japanese cruisers he decided to use his naval air assets to interdict the Japanese while refueling at Rabaul. 

It was a risky decision, Halsey later said that this was “the most desperate emergency that confronted me in my entire term as ComSoPac.” Available to him he had the carrier air wings of the Princeton and Saratoga available which constituted a significant threat to ships at sea but Rabaul was a fortified harbor. Not since Pearl Harbor had a carrier strike been carried out against such a heavily defended target. Despite this he despatched the Carrier Task Force under Admiral Forrest Sherman under cover of Darkness on the night of November 4th. On the morning of November 5th the strike groups went aloft, 97 aircraft total following St Goerge’s channel between New Ireland and New Britain toward Rabaul, on the northern tip of the island of New Britain. The naval aviators arrived just after dawn and tore the cruiser force to pieces. The pilots were instructed not to go for death blows on wounded ships but rather to seek out unmolested ships in order to damage as much of the enemy force as possible.

On the japanese’ end they were caught completely unawares. Despite a defensive force of seventy fighters the Japanese only managed to shoot down ten American aircraft while suffering significant damage to their surface fleet. Though not a single cruiser was sunk, nearly all of them suffered critical damage. The heavies Takao, Magami, and Maya, and the lights Agano and Noshiro all were struck by bombs or tordedos rendering them combat ineffective until they could undergo significant repairs. Following the naval air strike twenty-four Liberators and sixty-seven lighting struck to destroy port facilities and land based infrastructure to cripple IJN operations out of Rabaul. 

The risk paid off and the raid was an enormous success. Admiral Koga’s surface fleet suffered significant damage yet the Japanese pressed on with their attempts to land troops on Bouganville. How could they still think it was safe to run troops south to Bouganville after the US Navy had demonstrated such a bold initiative that they were helpless to prevent? Well the answer once again lies in the Japanese penchant for exaggerating their own successes. In response to the November 5th raid the Japanese dispatched aircraft to search for the Saratoga and Princeton. According to their own reports they found the carriers and sank them along with two heavy cruisers. In reality they had stumbled upon an LCT, a gunboat and a torpedo boat, which they didn’t even manage to sink. Believing they had eliminated the proximate threat they saw no reason not to run small convoys of a handful of destroyers down the slot to bougainville. 

On November 11th Halsey launched another raid against Rabaul damaging yet more enemy ships and aircraft while also revealing to them that they had not, in fact, dealt a devastating blow of their own to the US Navy. Koga promptly launched a retaliatory strike that yielded no kills but rather cost him thirty five of his own aircraft. They followed these failures with another run of troops toward Torokina, this time to be intercepted by Arleigh Burke’s destroyer division the “Little Beavers.” After depositing their passengers the Japanese destroyers were ambushed by the beavers who sank two of the five ships. This finally convinced Koga and Hyakutake that the slot was closed and put an end to the Tokyo express.

As the Japanese thrashed at sea the battle continued on land. On November 7th 475 Japanese landed north of the American beachhead and immediately threw themselves at the left flank of the perimeter in Koromokina swamp. The marines successfully beat back the Japanese and the next morning launched an attack of their own killing roughly 300 Japanese Soldiers for a loss of 50 marines. As the days turned into weeks the Japanese continued to feed troops in the battle and the Americans slowly expanded their perimeter to roughly 7000 yards abreast by 5000 yards deep. By early December the airfield had been completed and on December 10th the first marine aircraft took off. 

By now 34,000 troops occupied the bougainville beachhead and the Japanese really had no chance of removing them. They would continue to throw aircraft adn ships at the allied lodgement usually to their own detriment. The Japanese would lose 121 of their 173 carrier based aircraft in the region to the Bougainville campaign and would suffer yet more naval losses to surface engagements and allied aircraft. Perhaps an overland campaign would have been effective but the Japanese did not want to weaken their garrison at their main bases on the northern and southern tips of the island. 

The Bougainville campaign would continue until the end of the war but the last major offensive action by the marines took place on December 21st when the 21st Marines attacked to occupy an inland ridgeline resulting in three days of heavy fighting in the dense upland jungle. Having secured the key terrain in the high ground Army’s XIVth Corps assumed the perimeter and the marines were withdrawn from the island for further campaigns elsewhere in the pacific. The job had been done though. Rabaul was not only isolated but severely weakened and its available forces horribly attrited at land, sea, and sky. IMAC had claimed roughly 2500 Japanese lives and taken 25 prisoners for a loss of only 423 dead and 1400 wounded.

After the army took over, heavy fighting would resume in march resulting in  yet more Japanese casualties. About 25,000 Japanese troops remained on the island and they would continue to put pressure on the Torokina perimeter. By late February large numbers of troops had amassed against the position and in early march they attacked with a force of roughly 12,000. Despite its ferocity the attack was uncoordinated and by the end of the month Japanese forces had culminated. The Japanese lost over 10,000 of their men to battle deaths and career ending wounds. 

In November 1944 the Australians took over the bougainville operation and attempted to aggressively root out the remainder of the defenders. They suffered heavy casualties themselves in their attempt but ultimately it was the end of the war that would remove the last Japanese from the island. 

The Solomons campaign was effectively concluded by January 1944. It would linger on the back burner for the rest of the war but the attention of MacArthur and Halsey would shift towards their next objectives, namely the Bismarck islands of New Britain and New Ireland. The Solomon islands had taught the Army, Navy and Marines many lessons they would carry with them into subsequent campaigns. The fighting in 1942 and ‘43 had been hellish but would pale in comparison to the scale and savagery of the coming campaigns in 1944 and 1945.

We’ve discussed some of the tactical lessons learned already including superior tactics for attacking surface vessels, improved radar targeting procedures, and updated jungle fighting techniques but the American armed forces were updating their methods at the operational level as well. Fighting expeditionary campaigns at the very limit of their logistical capabilities in exotic and unfamiliar climes meant finding new ways of organizing and supplying troops. 

One innovation in this regard was the creation of island commands responsible for supervising, supplying, and administering the tactical forces and defense of these newly occupied regions. In the aftermath of the battle for Guadalcanal General Griswold wound up in command of essentially every piece of land in the archipelagoes the allies controlled. This proved unwieldy so individual island commands were established as well as a forward area command which acted as a sort of Sustainment command for supplying the outlying garrisons. The individual island commanders were responsible for the defense of the island after occupation as well as all activities on them regardless of domain or service and reported to the commander of the south pacific area.  This method of establishing forward administrative and logistical headquarters would become formalized in later campaigns when island commands would be organized before even seizing the land itself. Rather than being a post hoc organization like in the early solomons they would be stood up as a part of the pre-invasion preparation.

Another critical development was the implementation of unity of command and methods of transferring command during operations. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had advocated for unity of command in their directives but the southwest pacific was one of the first places that the concept would be put to the test and Halsey organized his operations around the concept. Each service component had an overall commander of forces within the theater but individual operations always had an operational commander. During amphibious landings the senior naval officer had command until an agreed upon point during which command would transition to the ground forces commander, typically whichever service had the preponderance of forces whether that be the army or marine corps. Following the amphibious force the island command would eventually follow and begin administration of the island while the tactical commander continued fighting assuming enemy forces remained.

Air assets were also organized under a unity of command approach. All land based aircraft, regardless of service component, were the responsibility of commander air south pacific or COMAIRSOPAC. Naval aviation aboard aircraft carriers remained under the command of Admiral Halsey who directly controlled surface operations rather than appointing a subordinate commander of naval forces like he did with ground and air assets. All naval air assets, including marine aviation, assigned to shore facilities belonged to COMAIRSOPAC, Rear Admiral John McCain, grandfather of the one time presidential candidate of the same name. 

Perhaps most impressive were the systems for sustaining all of the men and machines brought to the South PAcific area. Unlike the North AFrican campaign and later European campaign, there was scant infrastructure to support ship to shore operations. At the outset of the campaign functional facilities could be found in New Zealand but beyond that only meager port infrastructure was present. Noumea and Fiji, which would serve as forward supply areas in the early campaign, required extensive expansion of not only wharves and docks but also of roads, warehouses to accommodate not only the size of the vessels using their harbors but also the volume of traffic. 

What little infrastructure was present in Fiji and Noumea was far beyond anything available in the Solomons. Not only were port facilities unavailable but ground infrastructure was woefully lacking as well. Once cargo and troops were unloaded there was rarely any kind of sufficient road system to transport supplies inland. This meant having to build not only port facilities but also vast interior networks of supply and communication usually very close to the forward line of troops. Compounding problems even more there really wasn’t any resident labor force. The native melanesians were, for one, scarce, and two, lacked any modern engineering education or training making them useful for little more than unskilled labor. Thus the leg work of developing brand new, bespoke logistics infrastructure fell on whatever troops happened to be in the area making work details an ever present burden on men who were not decisively engaged in combat operations. 

Over the course of the South Pacific Campaign the logistics function would improve dramatically. By the end of the campaign sufficient engineering sustainment assets would be brought forward to relieve combat troops of most service and construction details and what could be considered regular, as opposed to expeditionary, supply was established allowing not only combat classes of supply to be brought forward but for the establishment of post exchanges and recreational facilities.

In addition to the extreme logistical challenges faced by the South Pacific Command there was the ever present specter of disease. Chief of these was malaria which infected at least 70,000 men from the army alone from October 1942 onward. Malaria had an average infection rate of 17% per year though this could be get much higher and reached a peak rate of 79% in June 1943. Thousands and thousands of men came down with the disease. The extreme conditions were compounded in teh early campaign by the somewhat ad-hoc supply system which failed to deliver sufficient medical supplies. Fortunately, as the sustainment process improved and more medical supplies arrived the malaria rate fell substantially. Other diseases were present as well including fungal infections which thrived in the warm moist air and wreaked havoc on men who could not clean themselves or get dry for weeks at a time. 

Military hospitals and evacuation assets were among the support functions established with the improving sustainment effort. Navy hospitals were set up on Espiritu Santo and Efate which treated casualties from all services and nationalities. Army hospitals were created throughout the theater in conjunction with major headquarters. Along with sea-born evacuation aerial evacuation was used extensively. In February 1943 the 801st Medical Air Evacuation Squadron arrived in theater. The unit was notable for having a large number of female nurses and successfully evacuated 21,000 casualties to higher level care. 

Having reached the end of the Solomons campaign, I thought it helpful to illustrate that there were many thousands of men and women from not only the United States Military but also the New Zealand and Australian armed forces present in the theater doing a wide array of jobs to support combat operations. Two episodes ago I mentioned that there was a roughly two-to-one ratio of support troops to combat troops and I think this helps demonstrate why. Getting one man with a rifle all the way to the interior of a dense, malaria infested, pacific island with enough food and ammunition to fight for three days is a monumental task. Now multiply that by ten thousand and extend it to years and you understand the massive undertaking that the south pacific campaign was. 

All of the campaigns of the second world war, and really all military campaigns ever, were bruta;, but the solomon's campaign was unique amongst these. There are countless overland campaigns in history which is why armies are typically good at fighting them which is what makes the island campaign of the South Pacific so unique. It required close coordination between naval and ground forces as well as the brand new wrinkle that was military aviation. This was the first time that all three had to work in close coordination. There was no real doctrine defining how to fight this campaign so the leaders had to figure it out on the fly. I think this is an under-appreciated aspect of the war. Plenty has been written about the development of combined armed tactics in the European theater with regard to blitzkrieg and close air support. Much has also been written about the development of carrier air operations but I think the South Pacific and Solomons campaign is somewhat overlooked.

Yes, the battle of Guadalcanal is celebrated but mostly for the heroism of the marines in the first couple of months of the battle but the innovation in military operations that took place throughout the campaign is astounding. Ground forces mastered jungle fighting and rapidly established logistics networks. Air forces developed and refined tactics for attacking and destroying surface vessels as well as improving close air support. At sea there were dozens of small naval battles involving direct action between surface combatants sometimes involving larger vessels including heavy cruisers and Battleships. Typically we think of the pacific theater as being dominated by carrier engagements but in the confined waters of the solomons archipelago light cruisers and destroyers did much of the heavy lifting. In no other theater would sustained naval action happen in such close proximity to heavy ground fighting. All of this required developments and improvements in command and control as well as logistics techniques on a massive scale. 

The Solomon's campaign was an enormous 18 month undertaking at the absolute limit of allied logistical capabilities but it was a massive success. What began as an effort to seize a foothold at Guadalcanal turned into an enormous joint service enterprise to wrest control of the islands from the Japanese. Unfortunately I think it gets overshadowed by the events we will begin covering in subsequent episodes, the Central Pacific campaign beginning with bloody Tarawa.