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Introduction
In order to capitalize on the decisive American victory at the Battle of Midway in early June 1942, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a directive on 2 July for offensive operations in the South Pacific. It was an ambitious, well-conceived plan, ultimately aimed at denying the Japanese use of New Britain, New Ireland, and New Guinea. To this end, the Joint Chiefs directive outlined three objectives. The first, designated Task One, called for the seizure of “Tulagi and adjacent positions” in the southern Solomons. These adjacent positions included Florida Island, Makambo Island, and the twin islets of Gavutu-Tanambogo, which together served as an important seaplane base for the Japanese. An excellent deep-water harbor between Tulagi and neighboring Florida Island greatly enhanced the military value of the area. Overall command of Task One was given to VAdm. Robert L. Ghormley, the new commander of the South Pacific Area. The Joint Chiefs set D day for 1 August.
On 7 July the Joint Chiefs, in conjunction with Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief Pacific Ocean Areas, changed the principal target of Task One to Guadalcanal, a large island twenty miles south of Tulagi. There the Japanese had begun the construction of an airfield on the Lunga Plain capable of supporting bombers and fighters. The Allies needed to take this airstrip. If left unchecked, Japanese aircraft based on Guadalcanal could pose a serious threat to Allied bases in the Santa Cruz Islands and Espíritu Santo, vital strong points supporting Australia’s lifeline to the United States. The airstrip needed to be taken before the Japanese put it into use. Thus, the timing of Operation Watchtower, the code name of the Guadalcanal-Tulagi operation, became even more problematic; the operation would have to begin as soon as practical.
The multiple objectives of Watchtower required at least a division of trained amphibious troops, and the only such unit immediately available was the 1st Marine Division, under Maj. Gen. Alexander A. Vandegrift. Word of the division’s immediate employment came as a shock to Vandegrift. When he first learned that his division would take part in the Solomons operation, Vandegrift was still in the process of transferring his command from New River, North Carolina, to Wellington, New Zealand. Vandegrift’s command post, the 5th Marines, part of the 11th Marine Artillery Regiment, and support elements were already at Wellington. But the rear echelon, composed of the 1st Marines, the rest of the 11th Marines, and the rest of the division, was still at sea and not due to arrive until 11 July, only three weeks before D day.
Gathering his far-flung command was only one of the many problems with which Vandegrift had to contend. Because of the rapid expansion of the Marine Corps, division training was sorely deficient. Since its inception in February 1941, the division had been subdivided numerous times, like an amoeba, to provide cadres for new divisional and nondivisional formations. For example, an entire battalion of the 5th Marines was permanently detached from the division to create the 1st Raider Battalion. Similar deprivations were imposed on the division’s infantry regiments to man new divisional formations, such as the amphibious tractor, engineer, and pioneer battalions. Consequently, proficiency and unit cohesion suffered greatly. Moreover, too little time was available to effectively train the mass of new recruits filling out the division, some of whom were rushed through with only five weeks of basic training. Vandegrift hoped to remedy the division’s state of training in New Zealand, but Operation Watchtower wrecked his plans.
The recent loss of one of Vandegrift’s three infantry regiments, the 7th Marines, was another blow from which the general was still reeling. In April, the regiment and other divisional support units were detached by the Joint Chiefs to garrison Samoa, another vital link in the lifeline to Australia. Because he believed that this unit would see action first, Vandegrift gave the regiment some of his best officers, noncommissioned officers, and equipment. In a bit of irony, it was the division, not the 7th Marines, that was going to see action first. The loss of this regiment was a serious blow, but Vandegrift was not left wanting. In order to bring his division up to full strength, Vandegrift was temporarily assigned the 2d Marines of the 2d Marine Division. Vandegrift also learned that he would enjoy the services of the crack 1st Raider Battalion and the superb 3d Defense Battalion. Both would prove their worth in the months to come.
With less than a month before D day, time was a precious commodity for Vandegrift and his staff. Amphibious operations by their very nature are very complex and normally require months of painstaking preparation. Intelligence on the target areas must be gathered and communication, naval gunfire support, and landing plans must be drafted. Little was known about the Solomons, and most of the ships involved in the operation had not worked together before. And the time-consuming task of unloading and reloading his transports still needed to be done, since the transports used to move his supplies and equipment had been commercially loaded, not combat loaded. Thus, with so many important preliminaries remaining to be done, Vandegrift asked for and received a one-week postponement of D day to 7 August.
Faced with a lack of shipping, Vandegrift was also forced to make some tough decisions regarding the loading out of his division. Insufficient cargo space made it necessary to leave many of his vehicles and much of his equipment behind, including the powerful 155mm howitzers of the 4th Battalion, 11th Marines. Only a bare minimum of the items required to live and fight would be brought to the invasion. The haphazard nature of the planning and preparations, as well as the numerous obstacles, left few officers in Vandegrift’s staff optimistic. As the official Marine Corps history dryly states, “Seldom has an operation been begun under more disadvantageous circumstances.”
With the re-embarkation of the division complete, the convoy departed Wellington on 22 July and set sail for a rendezvous and rehearsal at Koro in the Fijis with the rest of the amphibious invasion fleet. The armada that gathered for Operation Watchtower was an impressive force, composed of more than eighty ships divided into two task forces. Designated Task Force 62, the invasion fleet, under the command of RAdm. Richmond K. Turner, consisted of eighteen transports and four destroyer-transports, six heavy and two light cruisers, and twenty destroyers. Air cover for the invasion was to be provided by the carriers Enterprise, Saratoga, and Wasp of Task Force 61, under the overall command of VAdm. Frank Jack Fletcher. The escorts and auxiliaries of Task Force 61 consisted of the battleship North Carolina, five heavy cruisers, one light cruiser, sixteen destroyers, and five oilers.
Operation Watchtower consisted of two separate landings, one to the south by some 11,000 troops of the division’s main body near Lunga Point on Guadalcanal, and the other to the north by approximately 6,000 men on Tulagi and “adjacent positions.” The landings in the north were comprised of two main assaults. Tulagi would be seized by the 1st Raider Battalion and the 2d Battalion, 5th Marines, while the 1st Parachute Battalion took Gavutu-Tanambogo. Although small elements of the 2d Marines would support the assaults against Tulagi and Gavutu-Tanambogo with landings on Florida Island, the bulk of the regiment would be placed on standby as a ready reserve. In the main landing to the south, the 1st Marine Division, consisting of only five rifle battalions (the 1st Marines and two battalions of the 5th Marines) and most of the division’s support units, was given responsibility for seizing and holding the Lunga airfield on Guadalcanal.
The invasion began early on the morning of 7 August 1942. The landings came as a complete surprise to the Japanese garrisons, who were mostly still asleep. Taking advantage of bad weather, the invasion fleet arrived off Guadalcanal and Tulagi undetected by Japanese aircraft and ships. Indeed, the surprise was so complete that the Japanese garrison on Guadalcanal, comprised of about 490 naval troops and 2,200 Korean construction workers, was unaware of the fleet’s presence until the ships had commenced their preinvasion bombardment. Panic-stricken by the suddenness and ferocity of the bombardment, the Japanese ignominiously retreated to the hills, resulting in the seizure of the airstrip on the following day without a single loss of life in combat. Never before had such an important objective been taken so effortlessly. It was a stunning achievement for General Vandegrift and his marines.
In contrast with Guadalcanal, the battles for Tulagi and Gavutu-Tanambogo were bloody hammer-and-tongs slugfests, lasting nearly three days. The Japanese defenders—approximately 400 naval troops and 550 naval aviation personnel and construction workers—fought from caves and pillboxes until the bitter end. Everything from tank-infantry attacks and short-range naval gunfire to grenades, explosives, and small-arms assaults were used to finish the job. Casualties on both sides were heavy, with few Japanese prisoners taken. About 120 American sailors and marines died to secure the islands of Tulagi and Gavutu-Tanambogo.
On 7 and 8 August, the Japanese 11th Air Fleet at Rabaul responded to the invasion with fierce air attacks. On the 7th, twenty-seven Mitsubishi “Betty” bombers and escorting fighters bombed the invasion fleet, but heavy cloud cover disrupted their aim and only one minor hit was scored on a destroyer. The next day, twenty-three torpedo-laden Bettys and fighters launched another attack but sank only one of Admiral Turner’s transports, the George F. Elliot. The Japanese lost thirty-two aircraft in these two raids, while the Americans lost nineteen to combat and operations. American aviators had proven, like they had at the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway, that they were more than a match for the elite Japanese aviators.
Then, the operation that began so favorably for the Americans went terribly wrong. On the night of 8 August, a Japanese naval surface force, under the command of VAdm. Gunichi Mikawa, which had been dispatched to destroy the invasion fleet, completely surprised two of Admiral Turner’s cruiser forces protecting the landing area. In the ensuing “battle,” the Japanese sank the Australian heavy cruiser Canberra and the American heavy cruisers Quincy, Astoria, and Vincennes in a stunning, one-sided victory. This engagement, known as the Battle of Savo Island, was a humiliating defeat, the worst ever suffered by the U.S. Navy in wartime.
As bad as this defeat was, however, the worst news was yet to come for the marines on Guadalcanal. Because of American fighter plane losses and the threat posed by Japanese land-based air attacks, Admiral Fletcher decided to withdraw the carriers, which were providing air support for the invasion. Faced with the prospect of no air cover and additional enemy air and surface attacks, Admiral Turner rightfully decided to follow suit with his transports. Unfortunately for Vandegrift’s marines, Turner’s transports still had most of their supplies and equipment aboard—only a small fraction of what the marines needed had been put ashore.
Vandegrift received the shocking news of the imminent withdrawal on the evening of 8 August, during a conference on Admiral Turner’s flagship, the transport McCauley. Faced with the prospect of being undersupplied and unsupported, one can imagine how Vandegrift felt as he returned to the island by small boat. Guadalcanal was only 600 miles from Rabaul in New Britain, the bastion of the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy in the South Pacific. Rabaul housed a magnificent harbor, where Admiral Mikawa’s Eighth Fleet rode at anchor, and airfields where the Imperial Navy’s Eleventh Air Fleet was based. The Japanese Seventeenth Army, a corps-size command, was also at Rabaul, overseeing the ground campaign in New Guinea. And the distance between Rabaul and Guadalcanal was a pittance—“a stone’s throw” by Pacific standards. Thus, if the Japanese wanted to bomb from the air, or shell and land troops from the sea, there was very little that Vandegrift could do to stop them.
