Guadalcanal 1942 43

The campaign for Guadalcanal, which stretched from August 1942 until February 1943, centered on Henderson Field. The airfield was captured by the US on 8 August and placed into operation by 20 August. As long as the airfield was kept operational and stocked with sufficient striking power, the Japanese could not run convoys with heavy equipment and large amounts of supplies to the island. Instead, they were forced to rely on night runs by destroyers which could not carry enough men or supplies to shift the balance decisively against the American garrison on the island. The American air contingent on the island, named the 'Cactus Air Force', comprised Marine, Navy and Army Air Force units. It had the challenging mission of defending the airfield against constant Japanese attacks, and more importantly, of striking major Japanese attempts to reinforce the island. The mission of neutralizing Henderson Field fell primarily to the Imperial Navy's Air Force flying out of airfields in the Rabaul area. The units charged with this mission were among the most accomplished in the entire Imperial Navy with a high proportion of very experienced pilots and a superb air superiority fighter (the famous 'Zero'). However, the distance from Rabaul to Guadalcanal handicapped Japanese operations and their primary bomber was terribly vulnerable to interception. This book traces the air campaign from both sides and explores the factors behind the American victory and the Japanese defeat. The text is supported by full-colour illustrations and contemporary photography.

Using black and white contemporary photographs, illuminative maps and stunning battle scene illustrations, this comprehensive, detailed account completes the story of the Guadalcanal campaign - possibly the most important of the whole Pacific War. The Guadalcanal campaign began with an amphibious assault in August 1942 – the US's first attempt to take the fight to the Japanese. It escalated into a desperate attritional battle on land, air, and sea, and by the time the Japanese had evacuated the last of their forces from the island in 1943, it was clear that the tide of the war had turned. The inexorable Japanese advance and the myth of Japanese invincibility shattered. In this study of the campaign, Pacific War expert Mark Stille draws on both US and Japanese sources to give a balanced and comprehensive account of a crucial, brutal conflict. Analyzing the three Japanese attempts to retake the island in the face of ferocious American resistance, this book shows how the battle was won and lost, and how it affected the outcome of the Pacific War as a whole.

A highly illustrated account of the series of naval battles around the embattled island of Guadalcanal in late 1942. The battle for Guadalcanal that lasted from August 1942 to February 1943 was the first major American counteroffensive against the Japanese in the Pacific. The battle of Savo Island on the night of 9 August 1942, saw the Japanese inflict a severe defeat on the Allied force, driving them away from Guadalcanal and leaving the just-landed marines in a perilously exposed position. This was the start of a series of night battles that culminated in the First and Second battles of Guadalcanal, fought on the nights of 13 and 15 November. One further major naval action followed, the battle of Tassafaronga on 30 November 1942, when the US Navy once again suffered a severe defeat, but this time it was too late to alter the course of the battle as the Japanese evacuated Guadalcanal in early February 1943. In this compact, engaging volume, Mark Stille examines the contrasting fortunes experienced by both sides over the intense course of naval battles around the island throughout the second half of 1942 that did so much to turn the tide in the Pacific.

On August 7, 1942, a scant nine months after Pearl Harbor, the Marine Corps struck back against Japan on a small island half a world away: Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands. The stakes were high. The Japanese had been running roughshod across Asia and the Pacific and even into the Indian Ocean. If the Marines failed in the Solomons, New Guinea would almost certainly fall, mortally threatening Australia. The victory of the 1st Marine Division at Guadalcanal, told here in pictures for the first time, ranks with the most heroic, dramatic, and enduring of military history. The six-month long Guadalcanal campaign was by far the longest and most complicated operation the Marines faced in the Pacific War. It began with the weapons and tactics of the Marine Corps 1918 combat in France and ended with the revised weapons and tactics that would sweep aside the Japanese defenders of numerous formidable bases all across the wide Pacific--bringing the United States armed forces to total victory in the Pacific in World War II. This book is a fitting tribute to the men who sacrificed so much in winning this first stepping stone on the path to Tokyo Bay and victory over Japan.

Unlike some of those on Guadalcanal in the fall of 1942, Richard Tregaskis volunteered to be there. An on-location news correspondent, he lived alongside the other soldiers: sleeping on the ground -- only to be awoken by air raids -- eating the at times meager rations, and braving some of the most dangerous battlefields of World War II. He more than once narrowly escaped the enemy's fire, and so we have this incisive and exciting inside account of the initial landing of U.S. troops on Guadalcanal -- the significance of which cannot be overstated, for as a colonel told Tregaskis on the eve of the invasion: "It's the first time in history we've ever had a huge expedition of this kind accompanied by transports. It's of world-wide importance. You'd be surprised if you knew how many people all over the world are following this". Our new edition of Guadalcanal Diary will allow the world to continue to follow this amazing story. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

• A straightforward, gripping tale from the Marines that stormed ashore on Guadalcanal in World War II • Told with humor and honesty in a no-holds-barred approach that only a Marine who was there could tell Excerpt on firing a rifle grenade: "I jammed the rifle stock tight against my shoulder, raised myself up off the ground to a kneeling position, and squeezed the trigger. The rifle went bang! and the recoil jarred it loose from my grip. The rifle smacked me hard in the jaw. With that, I went down on my face while the little bluebirds started going tweet, tweet, tweet around my head.--'Did I hit it?' I asked.--'Yeah, you hit it,' Flash said. 'The damn thing just didn't work.'--We finally ran into somebody from another unit, a guy who really understood how the new style grenade was supposed to work. We explained our misfortune to him, and he asked us did you pull the firing pin out . . . The god damn pin!"

Vivid firsthand accounts of a secret organization whose existence was denied during the war. Maps pinpoint coast-watching locations.