Guadalcanal and Tulagi

Hi! This is Lieutenant Hopkin again, and this time i'm posting about the Marine Corps first battle in WW2- the Solomons.

I have always wondered if the Japanese were preparing beach defences on the coast of Guadalcanal, and were only disrupted by pre bombardments. If they were, do you think the Japanese could have halted the invasion?

I am also interested to hear about relatives who fought in WW2 as a whole, not just this small band of islands in the middle of nowhere.


Hope to here from you soon,

Lieutenant Hopkin

 

Not to be a nudge; but, I think that the garrison at Wake and Mar Det. Peking might argue that they were the first.

 

From what I've read, the Japanese staff officers, both army and navy, based in the South Pacific (Rabaul and Truk) didn't think it was possible for the Allies to carry out any offensive land actions before mid-1943. Therefore, very few, if any, Japanese garrisons in the South Pacific area prepared beach defenses prior to August '42.

The fact that the Japanese navy infantry units on Guadalcanal broke and ran for the hills as soon as the pre-invasion bombardment began shows that they were taken completely by surprise. The Tulagi and Gavutu garrisons performed better, but they didn't have any beachside defenses prepared either. Instead, they had fallback positions inland planned and that is what they did. Being heavily outnumbered, their plans were not adequate.

 

Thanks to all of you, guys. Your info has really helped me out, much appreciated. :unhelmet::aa_japan: :soldat::soldat::soldat::soldat::soldat::ac_p51b::afv_sherman::afv_sherman::afv_sherman::soldat::soldat:

 

Haha! That was my little Marine Corps in my last post!

 

Sorry about that! You are right! I never have been an expert at the early land battles in the Pacific until Tarawa.


Thanks,

Lieutenant Hopkin


:aa_usa::aa_usa::aa_usa:
:aa_usa::aa_usa::aa_usa:

:flag_USAwave:

 

I suppose I meant to write: "The Marine Corps first offensive action in WW2"

 

Nah...that would be inaccurate as well. Maybe "First Amphibious Assault of the War" might be more accurate.

You have to remeber that VMA-211 was taking the fight to the Japanese Task Force trying to capture Wake.

I think the Japanese found him pretty offensive

 

Yeah, you're right again...

 

Thanks for all this info!

 

My Father served WWII with the 25th FA
He never talked to me individually about the War , however I overheard enough to verify that he fought on Guadalcanal-Central Pacific-Southern Philippines-Luzon as stated on Enlistment/ Separation paper . He was WIA
April 13 , 1945 - shrapnel from a grenade blast-and -or-a motor blast . I’ve heard him talk about this and believe it to have been a grenade . His scars from this were visible, if he was wearing a shortsleeved shirt . They were deep wounds and he died having some of that shrapnel still in his body . So the list of Battles and Campaigns would mean he was somewhere on Luzon when this took place . You know I’ve listened to videos of WWII Veterans that followed the path of the 25th Infantry Division or attached to this outfit to know it was pure hell on earth .
Thank you for your post , T.O. CurlySue

 

And in some ways not readily obvious. My dad was wounded in the face by shrapnel during the April 1967 Hill Fights at Khe Sahn. He recovered enough to return to duty, had some nasty scars for a while, one across the bridge of his nose, and one diagonally across his forehead and brow between his eyes were the most prominent, but was lucky he didn't lose his eyes. He returned to his unit which was battling the NVA around Con Thien and there were some nasty fights in the area around the base. The 9th Marines, especially 1/9 picked up the nickname "The Walking Dead" around this time, the NVA trying to wipe out a battalion for propaganda purposes, was hit continually. In July an NVA regiment ambushed and severely damaged two companies from 1/9. The Marines committed tanks and the other two companies in the battalion to rescue them. 3/9 was sent to join the fight and as things escalated over the following days, 1/3 and 2/3 from the SLF (Special Landing Force) offshore helicoptered in to join the fight. To give you an idea as to the intensity of the fighting, the first day the US dropped 90 tons of aviation ordinance, artillery fired 453 fire missions, US destroyers fired 142 rds of 5" in support and the NVA hit the area with 1,065 rounds of artillery, over 700 hitting the companies of 1/9. The fighting named "Operation Buffalo" lasted from 2 to 14 July, 1967. His tour ended and he came home late in 1967, (this was his second tour) he'd had enough, and he applied to be a Radar Intercept Operator in the F-4, figured it beat fighting on the ground. We moved to Pensacola, and he attended flight school. Academics were hard, I remember him sitting up late at the kitchen table figuring stuff with a slide rule. The hard work paid off and he stayed in the upper part of the class academically, then flight training started, and he did well. Towards the end of the course at altitude and high G's he started experiencing excruciating pain. He was told possibly a sinus infection. The pain continued and he went to medical and after tests they determined he had bits of shrapnel in the bones and mucosa of his sinus'. There was nothing they could do, and he would always be bothered by them. He was determined to be physically unable to complete the court and was sent to Camp Pendleton to train troops up for commitment to the war. It was 1968 and casualties were heavy. He avoided flying thereafter because of the pain.
So, shrapnel can be an issue with flying in more ways than setting off the metal detector.

 

To the OP...

At the time, the IJA which was the service on Guadalcanal--the IJN bases were over at Tulagi--hadn't put much thought or effort into building really heavy coast defenses pretty much anywhere in the Pacific. The IJN was largely the same way. The actual IJA combat troops on Guadalcanal amounted to about a reinforced battalion when the landings happened. There was a construction regiment there to build the airfield and other infrastructure, mostly by hand, but these 'soldiers' were really for the most part impressed Korean laborers with little or no motivation to fight for Japan.

At Tulagi, the IJN had brought in an SNLF that was a large battalion sized unit of sailors being seconded to function as naval infantry. They were primarily engaged in setting up port and seaplane operations and a base for that.

Neither force had much cooperation going with the other. Neither had heavy coast defense guns or even field artillery with them. Interestingly, the IJA did bring in two radar stations for early warning that would have worked with the airfield to defend the island from air attack.



The base mount in concrete is still there today

 

Ha ha haaa - - Hi

 

Is this your Father you speak of that was hit in the face with shrapnel ? I didn’t know- -
I’m Sorry …are you upset with me ??

 

When I went to Amphibious Warfare School at Little Creek, VA., they had a First Sergeant that everyone was afraid of, he was a terror. He'd been awarded a Navy Cross in either Korea or Vietnam, I don't know/remember which, he had a jacked up or artificial leg. At the time we were staying in old wooden barracks, probably pre-WWII vintage. You could hear him as he came walking through the squad-bays, clip-CLOP, clip-CLOP, so it was easy to avoid him if you were doing something you weren't supposed to be doing. All the officers and senior NCO's were in awe of him and were extremely deferential. Story goes his unit was in a fight for its life, he was running around managing the fight, keeping the wolves at bay, then an explosion. It smashed him to the deck and his troops thought he was dead. His leg was shredded, his body covered with shrapnel wounds from head to toe, covered in blood, he lay sprawled out. He growled, struggled to his feet, looking like some gore covered ghoul, propped himself up using a rifle as a crutch and started directing the fight again. The corpsman came up, started checking him out, applied a tourniquet to the leg, tried to check him out as best he could and told him his jugular had been severed and it needed to be addressed immediately. He said, he wasn't going anywhere until the fight was over, stuck his fingers in the wound, pinched it closed, and continued the fight.
Some people are just hard as woodpecker lips. Like a great white shark you can tell by looking at them they're dangerous and an apex predator.