The Guadalcanal campaign was an air, sea and land battle that raged for six months to determine who would control an obscure hot, humid, disease-ridden mountainous jungle-clad tropical hell-hole. It claimed thousands of lives, mostly Japanese, who died mainly of fever and starvation.  The Guadalcanal Patch The campaign also killed several thousand Americans, many of whom were also struck down by disease and the climate. Naval losses were considerable, each side losing 24 warships each as well as many hundreds of aircraft. Guadalcanal is an island in the Solomons group directly to the east of New Guinea, and due north of the New Hebrides. At the outbreak of World War II, it was a colonial possession of Britain inhabited mainly by native Melanesians, with a handful of British colonial officials and other British nationals. Many of these took to the bush when the Japanese arrived and stayed there as "Coastwatchers" to observe and report Japanese movements and activities as part of the organisation.  Guadalcanal's only significance was its location. In 1942, the Japanese Empire was expanding across the Pacific and South-East Asian regions with dramatic speed, winning almost every battle it fought. Japan had set up a major air and naval base at Rabaul, on New Britain in the northern Solomons. Taking Guadalcanal would enable the Japanese to threaten supply lines to Australia and New Zealand, preventing them from acting as forward bases for future Allied advances. The significance of Guadalcanal from an operational point of view was that it provided an opportunity to compare the performance of the US and the Japanese on the land, the sea, and in the air. The lessons learnt during the campaign would be put to good use later on in the war. The struggle to take Guadalcanal had its beginnings when the US Joint Chiefs of Staff began organising a counter-offensive to prevent further Japanese moves. Using available resources, they intended to capture Guadalcanal as the opening move in efforts to push the Japanese out of the Solomon Islands.  Weary Marines march back from the front lines after being relieved by the US Army US air reconnaissance and Coastwatchers reports had by 6 July 1942 confirmed that, besides the seaplane base on Tulagi (one of the small islands just north of Guadalcanal), the Japanese had also begun building an airstrip on Guadalcanal itself. 3,100 Japanese were estimated to be on Guadalcanal and that by 15 August the airfield would be complete. Speed was of the essence, to take the island before the airstrip became fully operational. A plan - codenamed "Operation Watchtower" - was improvised and put into effect. The operation was mounted in haste, which meant that preparations that would become hallmarks of later amphibious operations could not be carried out. |
