February 9, 1943 - The end of the six-month-long sea, air, and land Campaign at Guadalcanal comes when the Japanese evacuate their remaining force of 10,600 men. Although it ended with the first significant victory by Allied land forces, it also started with one of the worst defeats of the US Navy after Pearl Harbor, the Battle of Savo Island. It was expensive in men and material on both sides.
On August 7, 1942, 14,000 Allied forces, predominantly United States Marines, landed on Guadalcanal, Tulagi, and Florida Islands in the southern British-controlled Solomon Island chain, southeast of Indonesia. The objective was denying their use by the Japanese to threaten Allied supply and communication routes between the United States, Australia, and New Zealand; powerful American and Australian naval forces supported these landings.
Two days later, the Japanese Navy, in response to the landings, attacked with a task force of seven cruisers and one destroyer and troop ships carrying needed reinforcements. This task forces had sailed from Japanese bases in New Britain and New Ireland down New Georgia Sound (also known as "the Slot"), intending to interrupt the Allied landings by attacking the landing ships and screening force and cutting supplies to the landed forces. The Japanese thoroughly surprised and routed the Allied naval forces, sinking one Australian and three American cruisers, while suffering only light damage in return. The battle, named the Battle of Savo Island, has often been cited as the worst defeat in a fair fight in the history of the United States Navy.
On Guadalcanal, the Marines managed to complete an airfield already under construction by the Japanese later named Henderson Field. Surprised by the Allied offensive, the Japanese made several attempts between August and November to retake Henderson Field. Three major land battles, seven massive naval battles (five nighttime surface actions and two carrier battles), and almost daily aerial fighting culminated in the decisive Naval Battle of Guadalcanal in early November, with the defeat of the last Japanese attempt to bombard Henderson Field from the sea and to land with enough troops to retake it. In December, the Japanese abandoned their efforts to retake Guadalcanal, and by 7 February 1943, in the face of an offensive by the U.S. Army's XIV Corps.
The Guadalcanal campaign was a significant strategic Allied combined-forces victory in the Pacific theater. While the Battle of Midway, fought June 4-7, 1942, was a crushing defeat of the Imperial Japanese Navy, it did not stop Japanese offensives, which continued both at sea and on the ground. The victories at Milne Bay, Buna–Gona, and Guadalcanal marked the Allied transition from defensive operations to the strategic initiative in the theater, leading to offensive campaigns in the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, and the Central Pacific.
Allied ground personnel losses were 7,100 dead, 7,800 wounded, and four captured. Japanese ground personnel losses were 19,200 dead, of which 8,500 were killed in combat, and 1,000 captured.
Allied naval forces lost 29 ships including two carriers [USS Wasp (CV-7) and the USS Hornet (CV-8)], six cruisers and 14 destroyers and 615 aircraft lost. Japanese material losses were 38 ships, including one light carrier, two battleships, three heavy cruisers, 13 destroyers, and 683 aircraft.
Sources: Naval History and Heritage Command, Wikipedia, and Navsource.
Via U.S. Naval History BuffsIMAGES:
1. Marines rest in the field on Guadalcanal
2. The carrier USS Enterprise (CV-6) under aerial attack and burning during the Battle of the Eastern Solomons
3. A U.S. Marine patrol crosses the Matanikau River on Guadalcanal, September 1942.
4. The U.S. carrier Wasp (CV-7) burns after being hit by Japanese submarine torpedoes on 15 September.
5. The wreck of one of the four Japanese transports, Kinugawa Maru, beached and destroyed at Guadalcanal on November 15, 1942, photographed one year later, color version.
