12 minute read
GUADALCANAL FIRST OFFENSIVE
GUADALCANAL FIRST OFFENSIVE
As General Vandegrift studied his crude maps of the area, he could vividly see the emergency that prompted the Joint Chiefs of Staff to order an amphibious assault so precipitously. New aerial photographs revealed ominous evidence of Japanese construction troops busily carving a long runway out of Guadalcanal’s jungles.
Japanese bombers flying out of Guadalcanal would jeopardize tenuous American positions for hundreds of miles, from New Caledonia to New Guinea. Such a forward base would create a giant “bulge” in the vital sea-lanes between the United States and Australia, further constricting the flow of war materials being shipped to the South Pacific.
Vandegrift’s division, the cutting edge of the Fleet Marine Force, would go into combat equipped with World War I weapons and equipment – the same Springfield ’03 rifles, tin hats, and crude gas masks that their fathers may have worn at Belleau Wood.
The Imperial Navy had suffered an irreversible defeat at Midway, but the Combined Fleet still commanded the sea and air in the South Pacific. Attaining strategic surprise in launching the attack would be crucial to the Marines’ success since the unsuspecting Japanese currently maintained only modest forces in Guadalcanal and Tulagi.
The problem was this: The islands could be reinforced rapidly by the Imperial Navy forces steaming down a line of islands (The Slot) from the great naval fortress at Rabaul. Likewise, from its welldeveloped circle of tactical airfields around Rabaul, the Japanese air arm could launch day and night attacks throughout the Solomons.
Rabaul also served as headquarters for the Seventeenth Japanese Army, commanded by Lieutenant General Haruyoshi Hyakutake. The Seventeenth Army contained many veterans of the conquests of Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, currently the best jungle fighters in the world.
The 1st Marine Division in August 1942 included about one man in ten who had seen previous combat, typically in Central America. The great majority of the Marines were green recruits or newly commissioned lieutenants who had joined the Corps in the wave of patriotism that swept the nation at the news of Pearl Harbor.
Vandegrift figured to divide his landing force on D-Day. The 1st Marines and most of the 5th Marines would seize Guadalcanal’s airfield. The 1st Marine Raider Battalion, 1st Parachute Battalion, the 2d Marines, and the remainder of the 5th Marines would capture Tulagi and the nearby islets of Gavutu and Tanambogo.
The airfield became the first and final key to the battle for Guadalcanal, and Vandegrift never wavered in his appreciation of its operational value. He would hold on to the grassy strip against the howling forces of hell.
Shortly after 6 A.M. the cruisers and destroyers opened a noisy fire against both sets of landing objectives.
Eight months to the day after Pearl Harbor, the United States Navy and Marines had launched a major amphibious offensive against the startled Japanese garrisons in the southern Solomons.
The 5th Marines led the way at Guadalcanal, splashing ashore at 9:09 A.M. from their hodgepodge assortment of landing boats. An eerie silence prevailed. So total had been the surprise that only a handful of rikusentai guarded the whole island.
The 5th Marines, hardly trusting their good fortune, pressed on, crossed the river by means of an improvised bridge thrown along the broad backs of LVT-1 Alligators, then headed guardedly toward the airfield.
First Division Marines storm ashore across Guadalcanal's beaches on D-Day, Aug. 7, 1942, from the attack transport Barnett (AP-11) and attack cargo ship Fomalhaut (AK-22).
National Archives
The 1st Marines soon landed, crossed the bridge, and followed in trace. “Hot damn – a cakewalk!”
Things were much different to the north across Sealark Channel. Edson’s Raiders had landed smoothly on Tulagi, but soon the shocked rikusentai of the 3rd Kure Special Naval Landing Force began a grim defense, fighting the Marines with all they had. Gavutu and Tanambogo proved even harder nuts to crack. Coral reefs channeled the landing boats into one predictable approach. Naval gunfire proved inadequate and insufficient. The Japanese allowed the first wave to touch down to mask the supporting shipboard fires, then cut loose on the succeeding waves.
The parachutists scrambled ashore and bravely fought uphill to the fortified caves, but this was a small, lightly-equipped battalion, and the job was too much for them. Reinforcements from the 2d Marines helped, but the Japanese machine guns still swept the beaches and ravines.
It took another battalion of the 2d Marines and point-blank fire from destroyers before the landing force could overwhelm the diehard defenders on the second day.
The savage fighting on Tulagi and the islets contrasted markedly with the quiet progress experienced by the bulk of the 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal. By the second day the 5th Marines had seized the airfield intact.
Admiral [Frank Jack] Fletcher had greater concerns. He worried – some would say obsessively – about the vulnerability of his carriers.
On the second day he startled the amphibians by announcing his decision to withdraw his force out of range “to refuel.” [Amphibious Task Force Commander Admiral Richmond Kelly] Turner and Vandegrift protested. Debarkation of the Marines and their combat cargo was still far from complete – the thin-skinned amphibious ships were terribly exposed in their anchorages. Fletcher reminded them that the Marines still had the protection of the four large cruisers (three American, one Australian) in Sealark Channel.
Even before Henderson Field on Guadalcanal was secure, it was already becoming a thorn in the side of the Japanese. Several Marine aces made their names here, including Joe Foss. Joe Foss’ Wildcat, First Lieutenant Howard Hugh Laidman, USMCR, 1943, watercolor on paper.
Collection of the National Museum of the Marine Corps
On the night of August 8-9, a Japanese naval force under Vice Admiral Gunishi Mikawa moved undetected down The Slot, caught the American screening force by surprise, and launched a violent attack.
Within half an hour, all four of the Allied cruisers sank in flames.
Admiral Turner, now truly defenseless, had no choice but to evacuate his amphibious ships hundreds of miles to the southeast, out of harm’s way, his transports still holding thousands of troops and tons of critical materiel. The Marines were ominously alone.
The situation demanded a major reorientation of landing force objectives. Instead of pushing aggressively through the jungle to expand the beachhead perimeter, Vandegrift would conserve his thin forces along the ridges and beaches surrounding the airfield.
Vandegrift’s engineers worked night and day to make the 2,000-foot grass strip suitable for flight operations.
In a simple flag-raising ceremony, the captured and dearly guarded airstrip became “Henderson Field,” in honor of Major Lofton Henderson, USMC, killed while leading his dive-bombers against the Japanese carriers at Midway.
Less than two weeks after D- Day, two squadrons of MAG-23 flew ashore to stay: Captain John Smith’s fighter squadron of Grumman F4F-4 Wildcats and Major Richard Mangrum’s scoutbombing squadron of Douglas SBD-3 Dauntless dive-bombers. They would cover the island with Marine glory.
Marine pilots … learned that the sturdy Wildcat’s best tactic for coping with the more maneuverable Zeros was to climb high and wait – helped immeasurably by the early warnings of the Coast Watchers – then dive on the approaching Japanese formations from above.
Some help started to trickle in for the tireless Marine aviators.
Army Air Force P-400 Bell Airacobras reinforced the Marine squadrons on August 22. Assorted Navy fighters came ashore, many “orphaned” when their carriers were sunk in the great sea battles taking place all around Guadalcanal. Soon Army medium bombers and more fighters arrived.
“Cactus,” the radio call sign for the island, led the aviators to dub their interservice ad hoc group the Cactus Air Force.
The Cactus Air Force did not take long establishing its composite lethality in the air. The number of
Japanese day raids dropped drastically. So did the willingness of Imperial Navy surface commanders to approach Guadalcanal in broad daylight.
Surface task forces would race down The Slot to seek battle with U.S. ships, or, finding none, they would lay off the island and pummel Henderson Field in the darkness. But, like vampires, they had to exit the scene by dawn when Henderson Field sprang to life.
The Japanese at Rabaul soon recognized that Henderson Field represented an unholy thorn in their side. When nightly pounding by air and surface units failed to take it out, they concluded that an amphibious counterlanding would have to do the job.
Hyakutake selected the crack 28th Infantry, commanded by Colonel Kiyono Ichiki, to recapture Henderson Field. He accompanied his assault force of about 900 men equipped with light weapons and minimal rations. His follow-on echelon of 1,200 men would join him on turnaround shipping.
The truncated 1st Marine Division was about to face its first major trial by fire. The division stood on full alert. At 1:30 A.M. the silence turned to sheer bedlam as Ichiki’s veterans came screaming out of the jungle with fixed bayonets.
The brunt of the assault fell on Lieutenant Colonel Edwin Pollock’s battalion of the 1st Marines. Pollock’s men stood their ground, cutting loose with everything they had.
Very few of the first wave of attackers survived this charge.
Colonel Ichiki screamed at his troops, directed a barrage by his 70mm howitzers and 50mm “knee mortars” (technically: grenade throwers) against the Marine lines, then ordered out his next assault force. These soldiers fared worse than the first wave. The Marine machine guns maintained their disciplined fire, now reinforced by their M3A1 37mm antitank guns, versatile little weapons that proved ideal for Pacific combat. This night the gunners used canister rounds against Ichiki’s clustered attackers, blowing great holes in their ranks.
At daylight, Colonel [Clifton] Cates sent another battalion across the Ilu upstream to catch the Japanese in the flank. And above them came a cloud of Marine Wildcats, roaring over the treetops and raking Ichiki’s positions with a terrible fire.
Later in the afternoon Vandegrift sent five Stuart light tanks across the river. The remnants of Ichiki’s force knocked out two of the attacking vehicles, but on their heels came hundreds of yelling Marines. Colonel Ichiki could only shake his head at this inexplicable disaster, burn his regimental colors, and shoot himself in disgrace.
In the two-day Battle of the Tenaru, the Americans had virtually annihilated his force, killing 800, capturing 15, scattering the stragglers into the jungle.
Vandegrift strengthened his thin lines around Henderson Field by transferring Edson’s Raiders, the parachutists, and the detached battalion of the 5th Marines back from Tulagi.
These reinforcements proved critical. General Hyakutake, baffled at the fate of the Ichiki Detachment, ordered another, larger, veteran outfit, the Kawaguchi Brigade, to recapture the aggravating Henderson Field.
On the night of August 31 they landed undetected at Taivu Point, the same location where Ichiki had come ashore so arrogantly less than two weeks before. There Kawaguchi assimilated the recently arrived (but now leaderless) second echelon of Ichiki’s regiment, and took off into the jungle.
He himself would lead the largest force, some 3,000 men, against the vulnerable southern perimeter of the Marines.
Vandegrift worried most about his weak southern perimeter and placed Red Mike Edson in charge of a composite force of Raiders and parachutists. Edson deployed his meager forces along a grassy ridge south of the airfield and waited for the night.
This lively spot was about to take a permanent place in Marine fighting history as “Bloody Ridge,” although some would prefer “Edson’s Ridge” after the battle machine who would lead the defense.
Shortly before 10 P.M. on September 12, Kawaguchi’s howling infantry surged forward in a massive charge. The Raiders and parachutists, their backs to Henderson Field and under terrific stress, opened fire at the thousands of oncoming Japanese. All knew that loss of the ridge would doom Guadalcanal.
Edson’s left flank took the first blow, wavered, then fought back, often at bayonet point. The battle dissolved into hundreds of individual duels and skirmishes.
Heeding Edson’s calm assurances, the Marines stayed low, teamed up, and drove the attackers back. Twice more Kawaguchi’s men came boiling up the slopes. Each fight seemed more desperate than before. But by 2:30 A.M. Edson advised Vandegrift that he thought he could hold. Kawaguchi pulled back to regroup.
At 6:30 P.M. on the thirteenth, Kawaguchi’s main force swept forward in a renewed, more powerful assault. This was a near-run thing.
Wave after wave of frenzied Japanese fell upon the Marine lines.
The Japanese lapped near, through, and sometimes over the Marines on the ridge like a tidal wave.
[Colonel Pedro del Valle’s 11th Marine 75mm pack howitzers] fired throughout the hellish night, delivering such devastating fire that the surviving Japanese marveled at the Marines’ “automatic artillery.”
Kawaguchi had lost well over half his main force in the desperate fighting, but Bloody Ridge remained in Marine hands. Two uncoordinated Japanese supporting attacks became sideshows – but so thinly were the Marine lines stretched that both nearly broke through in their sectors.
As ferocious as were the irreplaceable combat losses, the troops were suffering just as badly from the effects of malaria and malnutrition and exhaustion. They needed reinforcements as badly as any Marines ever had.
Then, at last, Kelly Turner boldly managed to run in a small convoy with the 7th Marines, finally relieved from Samoan defense duties.
Vandegrift would need all the fighters he could get. Intelligence sources advised that General Hyakutake had finally realized the nature of the American Marines defending Guadalcanal and was now committing his major combat force, the elite Sendai Division.
The advent of October brought the full weight of the Imperial Navy as well.
The battleships Kongo and Haruna steamed into Ironbottom Sound the night of October 13, anchored leisurely, and for the next eighty minutes delivered hundreds of fourteen-inch shells against the field, its workhorse planes, and the troops in their bunkers and foxholes.
Yet somehow, Marines and soldiers endured, survived, and rose up with the dawn to shake it off and strike back. General Roy Geiger had only a handful of operational aircraft left, but these he dispatched with a vengeance to catch and punish the Japanese ships still delivering the Sendai Division up the coast.
As the battles continued, Marine fighter pilots of the Cactus Air Force continued to earn their spurs the hard way, wrestling the utmost performance from their tubby Wildcats, respecting but not fearing the vaunted Zeros.
Now the Sendai Division landed with 150mm guns. These had the range to punish the Marine and Army perimeter around the clock. More Japanese cruisers and destroyers steamed in at night to pound the field. The U.S. Navy was still fighting for its life. Ironbottom Sound claimed more victims each week.
Admiral Chester Nimitz stepped in quickly. He flew to Noumea, sacked Admiral [Robert L.] Ghormley from command of the South Pacific Area, and replaced him with the aggressive [Admiral William] “Bull” Halsey. Marines on “the Canal” whooped for joy at the news.
The great sea battles of October and November 1942 were bloody and costly and not altogether victorious for the Americans, but Halsey kept the pressure on his Imperial Navy counterparts.
The fighting ashore grew in intensity as the whirlwinds of sea and air battles swept nearby. The Sendai Division proved an abler opponent than the Ichiki and Kawaguchi forces. General Hyakutake, observing the situation firsthand, rued his earlier piecemeal attacks. Now Halsey’s ships and Geiger’s planes made the delivery of reinforcements to Guadalcanal extremely hazardous. Thousands of Imperial Army troops drowned; many more straggled ashore minus their heavy weapons or rations. “Starvation Island” now applied more to the attackers than the “Raggedy-Ass Marines.”
The Sendai troops were seasoned combat veterans, and the battles that raged in late October were as bloody and desperate as those of the preceding assaults.
The climax of the ground battles for Guadalcanal occurred during October 24-26. This was jungle nightfighting at its most brutal.
Major General Masao Maruyama chose to lead the bulk of his Sendai Division, some 7,000 strong, against the same distinctive landmark that had broken the back of the Kawaguchi Brigade in September – Edson’s Ridge. Now the 7th Marines guarded the sector – specifically the battalions of [Lewis “Chesty”] Puller and [Herman “Hard Head”] Hanneken – plus the new but gutsy 164th Infantry.
The Sendai troops sprang out of the jungle in the pitch black of night during a driving rainstorm. Puller’s men swept away the first attack with steady marksmanship, but the battalion commander could tell by the discipline and numbers of his attackers that he was in over his head.
Puller did not hesitate to call in the National Guardsmen of the 164th Infantry, whose rifle squads integrated quickly with their Marine counterparts along the fire-swept crest of the ridge.
Soldiers and Marines fought with equal tenacity, the Marines more than a bit envious of the GI’s new M-1 Garands – this was a night when a clip of eight rounds fired semiautomatically proved far superior to the fiveround, bolt-action Springfields of the Marines.
Among the most courageous of the many brave Marines on Guadalcanal was Sgt. John Basilone, who with his machine gun section anchored a vital part of the line. Medal of Honor, Sgt. John Basilone, United States Marine Corps, Cecil Calvert Beall, 1944, mixed media on illustration board. Gift of Miss Mary Basilone, 1983.
Collection of the National Museum of the Marine Corps
Maruyama continued these sudden, large-scale assaults against the strategic ridge for two bloody nights.
In several threatened sectors the thin margin of victory came only through superhuman exertions of rocksteady Marine NCOs, who simply refused to retreat in spite of all the furies of hell.
Bravest of all the brave were two machine gun section chiefs who distinguished themselves on successive nights. Sergeant “Manila John” Basilone of the 1st Battalion 7th Marines, proved to be the unshakable anchor of Puller’s sector the first night. Then it became the turn of Platoon Sergeant Mitchell Paige of Hanneken’s battalion. Virtually the last man alive at his post, Paige kept firing, then climaxed the night by cradling the red-hot weapon in his bare arms to lead a charge down the slope to clear the last toehold of Sendai troops.
General Maruyama had to retreat back down his jungle trail, now missing half of his assault force, nearly 3,000 slain. The Marines and soldiers lost but a tenth that number.
The Japanese were now on the ropes, but so was the 1st Marine Division. On December 9, after four months of constant combat, the “Old Breed” stood down.
Early in February 1943, after a dogged pursuit, Army and Marine patrols reached the western end of the island to find that General Hyakutake and 11,000 of his soldiers had been spirited away by the resourceful “Tokyo Express.”
The American victory at Guadalcanal, dangerously risked and dearly bought, was more of a turning point in the Pacific War than even Midway.
At Midway, the Japanese could blame the fates for their carriers being caught while rearming the air groups. But at Guadalcanal, in a half-year campaign, the best of the Empire’s veteran soldiers, sailors, and aviators had been fought to a standstill and eventually overwhelmed by the inexperienced American forces.
