Short History of World War II - James L. Stokesbury [133]
In spite of King’s power over events and resources, the American superiority, as noted, was only marginal. It was, however, going to grow immensely; the Americans were producing for war, the smaller Japanese industrial base still was not; but in midsummer of 1942 a limited operation with limited resources was all the Americans could manage. MacArthur wished to take over most of the navy and go straight for the main Japanese base at Rabaul. The navy, not wanting to gamble in confined waters, countered with a proposal that they advance step by step up the Solomons, while MacArthur did the same up the northeastern side of New Guinea. Then they would converge on Rabaul. Not until July 1 was the navy’s position adopted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff; they decided on a landing on Guadalcanal a month hence.
Overall direction of the area and the operation went to Admiral R. L. Ghormley in New Caledonia. The business end of the American expedition was the 1st Marine Division, commanded by General A. A. Vandergrift. Admiral R. K. Turner commanded the Amphibious Force. It in turn was protected by a screening force under a British admiral, V. A. C. Crutchley, and all of these were to be covered by a carrier task force under Admiral F. J. Fletcher which would operate southwest of the Solomons. The landing was to go in from the north between Savo Island and the flat Lunga Plain area of Guadalcanal where the airstrip was being constructed.
On the morning of August 7, after a predawn bombardment, the Marines clambered down the nets into their landing boats and made for the black-sand beaches. The Japanese forces did not contest the landing, and by nightfall there were 11,000 Marines ashore, spreading along the beaches and beginning to edge into the tropical jungle. Opposition was sporadic. Though the Americans did not know it, there were only about 2,000 Japanese on the island, most of them laborers. Only a few snipers and machine gunners contested the American advance, and they were soon overrun. For the moment all was well.
What might have happened was shown across the strait on Tulagi and a couple of neighboring islets. Here the small Japanese garrison was dug in and ready to fight. The intensive naval bombardment that preceded the landing achieved nothing, and it eventually took 3,000 Marines to overcome the 750 soldiers protecting the seaplane base.
The Japanese, who were concentrating their efforts and attention on Port Moresby, were initially slow to respond to the threat in the Solomons. But when they did, Guadalcanal and the battles for its approaches became the focal point of the Pacific war. The fight lasted for seven months, and included what one authority has called the most prolonged, intensive, and destructive naval campaign since the Anglo-Dutch Wars in the middle of the seventeenth century.
The key to the island was control of the water around it and the ability to land men and supplies to reinforce the ground troops. On the afternoon of the 7th the first Japanese planes showed up, and the amphibious force was subjected to a series of weak attacks all through the next day. Fletcher’s carrier planes accounted for most of the attackers, but with considerable losses himself, and feeling crowded in the waters off Guadalcanal, Fletcher decided to pull his carriers out late on the 8th; they were too valuable to risk at that stage, he thought. That decision left Turner with no air cover, so he announced he would withdraw his amphibious fleet as well, but he would stay one more day to unload further supplies for the Marines who were now settling into a defensive perimeter.
While Turner was making that decision, a Japanese surface squadron of seven cruisers and a destroyer came racing down “the Slot,” the channel inside the Solomon island chain. Crashing into Crutchley’s screen early in the morning of the 9th, it ran temporarily wild, then turned back, to get away before daylight. In half an hour’s good work the