The Americans strengthened their defenses at Henderson Field and launched aggressive jabs to keep the Japanese off-balance. When the Japanese Seventeenth Army launched the assault on October 23, , striking at multiple points along the airfield perimeter over four days, tenacious fighting by US Marines and soldiers threw back the attacks.
American losses were significant, but Japanese losses were devastating. The battle at sea also heated up in the fall of Japan secured a tactical victory, sinking the carrier Hornet, but paid a severe price in aircraft and skilled aircrew. The Solomon Islands Campaign cost the Allies approximately 7, men, 29 ships, and aircraft.
The Japanese lost 31, men, 38 ships, and aircraft. With each island taken from the Japanese, the United States moved closer to Japan. Growing superiority at sea and in the air, as well as in the number of fighting men, gave the United States increasing advantages. Following their rapid capture of the airfield the day after landing, the Marines seized large stores of Japanese rice. Rice became the main item on the menu until early November for the Marines ashore.
Combined with the hot, humid weather, the stress of combat, and the inadequate diet, the men ashore lost weight at an acute rate. The Marines ashore, children of the Great Depression, were already thin and soon became downright skinny.
It was not uncommon for men on Guadalcanal to lose as much as 40 pounds due to malnutrition and tropical diseases. Clouds of malaria-carrying mosquitoes were a constant threat for any man ashore. The men were instructed to take an anti-malaria drug called Atabrine in order to ward off the disease.
When taken regularly, Atabrine proved to be somewhat effective. However, rumors began to circulate among the men that taking Atabrine would make them sterile and render them sexually impotent. Malaria cases were rampant on Guadalcanal in the autumn of , so much so that having malaria became a sort of badge of honor among those who served on the island.
It is estimated that by the time the division was relieved in December , over 8, men of the 1st Marine Division had malaria. Tropical diseases, of which malaria was one of many, disabled nearly two-thirds of the division. Wounds caused by enemy fire accounted for only one-third of disabled Marines on Guadalcanal. Another unpleasant daily occurrence for the men ashore were Japanese bombardments. By night the Japanese would shell the Marine positions, specifically targeting Henderson Field.
Japanese destroyers and cruisers would send shell after shell at the Marines, causing men to scramble for dugouts and shelters. Most enemy shellings lasted only a few minutes and were relatively ineffective—more of a nuisance to the Marines than anything else. That description, however, could not be used for the Japanese bombardment on the night of October 14, On that night, the Japanese battleships Haruna and Kongo sailed up the slot and opened fire on Henderson Field with their inch rifles.
At hours, the battlewagons opened fire and for the next 83 minutes hurled heavy naval shells at Henderson Field and the surrounding area. During those seven months, 60, US Marines and soldiers killed about 20, of the 31, Japanese troops on the island.
The main objective of the fighting was a tiny airstrip that the Japanese were building at the western end of Guadalcanal, a speck of land in the Solomon Islands. The airstrip, later named Henderson Field, would become an important launching point for Allied air attacks during the Pacific island hopping campaign. Now check out these 7 interesting facts you didn't know about the battle.
The Army provided infantry to assist the Marines in the landings and sent planes and pilots to operate out of Henderson Field. The Navy provided most logistics, shore bombardments, and aviation support. The Marines did much of the heavy lifting on the island itself, capturing and holding the ground while their aviators provided additional support.
After the initial invasion, the US controlled the westernmost part of the island and the Japanese controlled the rest. A river ran between the two camps and neither force could get a foothold on the other side.
Lewis "Chesty" Puller ordered a force to move through the ocean and land east of the river. The Marines encountered little resistance at first but were then ambushed by the Japanese. Munro led a group of unarmored landing craft to pick up the Marines while under heavy fire from Japanese machine guns. Just as they were escaping the kill zone, Munro was shot through the head. Into the future, the U. Marine Corps will need to be able to construct and repair airfields. They'll also need to be able to use those locations as airplane, drone and missile bases to attack enemy forces.
In addition, those bases can block the enemy from using key terrain , and give the U. Those factors again raise the cost of conflict and competition for a potential adversary. A further lesson from the Guadalcanal campaign is that it's vital to integrate new technology into training, so Marines and sailors know how to use new capabilities. In early August , the U. Navy suffered one of its worst-ever defeats in the Battle of Savo Island.
American and allied forces lost four cruisers, while the Japanese Navy suffered little damage. Few ship captains and crews understood how radar worked, much less how to use it in battle. One captain, Howard Bode of the USS Chicago, ordered his ship's radar turned off , for fear it would reveal his position.
The Japanese used their searchlights to spot American aircraft at night, controlling the battle in the darkness and sinking one U. The lesson remains important in the 21st century: Failing to experiment with new capabilities, whether radar in the s or cyber operations and drone swarms today, diminishes battle readiness.
That's why the Marine Corps University created war-gaming fight clubs and training programs that let students imagine future conflicts and experiment with how to respond.
0コメント