Latest / Generals of WWII: The Art of Command / Battle of Guadalcanal: the momentum shifts in the Pacific War (with Trent Hone) | Ep 18

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Battle of Guadalcanal: the momentum shifts in the Pacific War (with Trent Hone) | Ep 18 · Generals of WWII: The Art of Command

• 0:09
  Welcome to generals of World War 2, the art of command.
• 0:13
  I am your host, John Viscardo. And back with me once again is
• 0:16
  the great, brilliant, fantastic Trent Hone.
• 0:21
  For those of you not familiar with Trent, he's been in our
• 0:23
  podcast a few Times Now and he has a few books out that's kind
• 0:26
  of related to our topic today, which is the Battle of
• 0:28
  Guadalcanal. You have two that kind of delve
• 0:32
  into this. One is Nimitz Mastering the Art
• 0:34
  of Command, and the other one is called Learning War, which both
• 0:38
  can be found on Amazon. What is that second book about?
• 0:41
  So that second book is about the evolution of the US Navy's
• 0:46
  tactics and doctrine from the end of the Spanish American War
• 0:49
  up through the end of World War 2.
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  And one of the reasons why Guadalcanal is so important to
• 0:54
  it is that's where the US Navy, primarily from a surface warfare
• 1:00
  perspective, learned how some of their pre war techniques going
• 1:03
  into World War 2 weren't adequate for the challenges that
• 1:07
  the Japanese presented. And they learned that in a
• 1:09
  series of night battles off Guadalcanal.
• 1:12
  OK, so yeah, it's a interesting book.
• 1:14
  I recommend my audience to check that out.
• 1:16
  Again, Learning a War by Trent Hone and we're going to dive
• 1:19
  into the battle Guadalcanal at this time, But I'm not going to
• 1:22
  get into the whole background of how it got here.
• 1:24
  Let's just say it's not going well for the Americans after
• 1:27
  Pearl Harbor and the battle Guadalcanal is kind of like, do
• 1:31
  we take the momentum back a little bit here?
• 1:34
  So the way I like to think about it is you're right, things
• 1:38
  aren't going well or early in 1942 and the opportunity to turn
• 1:43
  that around is created by the Battle of Midway.
• 1:46
  A lot of times Battle of Midway is seen as a turning point, but
• 1:49
  really what that does is sort of more even things out.
• 1:52
  It eliminates the bulk of the Japanese carrier striking fleet,
• 1:59
  but it doesn't give the initiative wholesale to the
• 2:02
  United States and the Allies. Instead, the initiative is, is
• 2:05
  hanging in the balance. I I liken it to, you know, a
• 2:09
  fumble in football, right? So now the ball's in the field
• 2:12
  and whoever gets there first, whoever grabs that ball is now
• 2:15
  going to have the initiative and have the momentum.
• 2:18
  And Guadalcanal can be seen as that, a fight for the initiative
• 2:22
  in the Pacific, and victory there gives the initiative to
• 2:26
  the United States and its allies.
• 2:29
  The Battle of Guadalcanal takes place between August 1942 and
• 2:34
  February 1943 marked the first major ally defensive against
• 2:39
  Japan in World War 2. So why was Guadalcanal, of all
• 2:42
  places, chosen as the Allies first major offensive target?
• 2:48
  Well, it's in the the Southwest Pacific.
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  It's at the southeastern end of the Solomon Islands chain.
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  And there had been a tension drawn to that area earlier on.
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  You remember the Battle of Coral Sea is fought not too far away.
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  And, and So what the Japanese are trying to do, one of their
• 3:05
  offensive thrusts, is to try to sever the line of communications
• 3:09
  between the US West Coast and Australia.
• 3:12
  And even after Midway, they're still considering this.
• 3:15
  There are plans to advance toward New Caledonia to
• 3:19
  potentially occupy Fiji. And capturing those islands
• 3:22
  would have made it much more difficult for the United States
• 3:25
  to resupply and reinforce Australia as it had been doing.
• 3:29
  And this was something that was high on the mind of Admiral
• 3:33
  Ernest King, who was the Navy's commander in chief.
• 3:35
  And by this time, that also the chief of naval operations.
• 3:38
  And so he had been planning an offensive through the Solomons
• 3:44
  toward the base at the ball, which is the Japanese had seized
• 3:48
  earlier in the year for several weeks, almost months by the time
• 3:54
  Midway happens. And so when Midway creates the
• 3:57
  opportunity to go on the offensive, he very quickly moves
• 4:01
  to, you know, direct Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander, chief
• 4:04
  of the Pacific Fleet in the Pacific Ocean areas.
• 4:06
  Theaters take the offensive, seize the base.
• 4:10
  So there's an anchorage at Tulagi across the sound from
• 4:13
  Guadalcanal. And initially, that's the target
• 4:15
  because it can be a fleet anchorage, can be a base.
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  But once they learn the Japanese are building an airfield on the
• 4:21
  northern shore of Guadalcanal, it becomes the major target.
• 4:24
  Yeah. And this isn't to say that the
• 4:26
  Americans didn't take losses at Midway.
• 4:27
  They did big ones. But like you said, you want to
• 4:30
  keep the pressure on when the momentum's kind of you're in
• 4:33
  your court. Exactly, Yeah.
• 4:37
  OK, let's get into logistics on each side.
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  How many troops, ships and planes that each side have kind
• 4:43
  of maybe at the height of the battle?
• 4:45
  And who are the commanders? Well, the logistical piece here
• 4:48
  is really crucial because it's, you know, this is the, the South
• 4:53
  Pacific that's far away from Japan, is far away from the US
• 4:56
  East Coast. So the fact that you mentioned
• 4:58
  logistics, I think is, is gives valuable insight into, you know,
• 5:03
  what kind of fight was this? It's at the end of these supply
• 5:06
  lines. And so, you know, initially the
• 5:10
  United States undertakes this offensive with the the First
• 5:12
  Marine Division and some, some supporting forces.
• 5:15
  There's about 22,000 Marines. I hesitate to call them
• 5:20
  soldiers. They would get upset at me if I
• 5:22
  did that. And powerful naval forces.
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  So Admiral Nimitz sends the bulk of of his naval units to the
• 5:31
  South Pacific to support this. The initial landing operation is
• 5:34
  supported by three carriers. There's a powerful surface
• 5:38
  Action Group of Allied cruisers. Some ships are borrowed from
• 5:41
  General MacArthur's Southwest Pacific area.
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  And so commanding the operation itself there in the South
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  Pacific is a Vice Admiral Robert Gormley.
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  And there are some naval commanders subordinate to him
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  that are very important to the initial effort, one of which is
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  Vice Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, who fought at Coral
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  Sea, fought at Midway, and now is commanding the carrier forces
• 6:04
  initially at Guadal Canal. And then Rear Admiral Richmond
• 6:08
  Kelly Turner, he leads the amphibious assault.
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  The First Marine Division is commanded by the General
• 6:15
  Alexander Vandergriff, who has, you know, been luminary, maybe
• 6:21
  too strong, but definitely a rising star in in the US Marine
• 6:27
  Corps. And this is going to be, you
• 6:29
  know, an exemplary opportunity for him.
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  On the Japanese side, of course, there's Admiral Yamamato
• 6:36
  Irasoku, who commands the combined fleet.
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  So he's got oversight into, you know, what the Japanese fleet is
• 6:43
  going to do here. And one of his chief
• 6:45
  subordinates in the area is Vice Admiral Mikawa Gunichi, who
• 6:49
  commands the Eighth Fleet, which is based admirable.
• 6:53
  He's going to play a very important part early on in the
• 6:56
  campaign. And then the Imperial Japanese
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  Army officer who's responsible for this area, initially, both
• 7:03
  New Guinea and Guadalcanal, is the commander of the 17th Army,
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  Lieutenant General Hayu Kutaki Harukuichi.
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  I may have pronounced that wrong, but later on, as the
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  fighting sort of reaches its height, command of the Imperial
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  Japanese Army divides and I Kotaki moves his headquarters to
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  Guadalcanal so that the 17th Army can can fight there and to
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  try to kick the Marines and then the US soldiers from the America
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  Division that eventually reinforced the Marines trying to
• 7:37
  kick them off the island. Yeah, you have numbers on the
• 7:41
  Japanese land forces. They have more of a trickle.
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  They initially start with a detachment, the soldiers, the
• 7:51
  special naval landing forces that they were going to send to
• 7:53
  to Midway. So that's, you know, like 1600 I
• 7:57
  think, or something like that. But it's some small force
• 8:00
  compared to what Vandergrift could bring to bear.
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  And then eventually they send multiple divisions to the
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  islands. So you're talking, you know,
• 8:07
  4050 thousand men, something like that overtime.
• 8:13
  Yeah, this battle went on for 6-7 months.
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  So it's hard with people feeding forces into a continually to get
• 8:18
  like a final number on how much was on each side.
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  So the US Marines land on Guadalcanal in nearby islands to
• 8:24
  Loggy and Florida Island to deny Japan a strategic airfield.
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  Why did controlling the airfield give whichever side held it an
• 8:34
  advantage? Because it seems like, well,
• 8:36
  they both have aircraft carriers.
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  What do they need this landing strip for?
• 8:40
  Who they do they both have aircraft carriers, but aircraft
• 8:43
  carriers have a have a temporary presence, right?
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  It's sort of common go. It was not in the habit of, of,
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  of either Navy to, you know, park an aircraft carrier in a
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  fixed location for any period of time because they're vulnerable.
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  They can be damaged, especially at this time before carrier air
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  defenses increase to what they're going to be several
• 9:05
  years later in mid 1944. So the carriers are a common go.
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  And yeah, the the Japanese had considered Guadalcanal sort of
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  like in the next the next waypoint on their series of air
• 9:18
  bases that will allow them to extend to the South and to to
• 9:21
  the east. But their closest air base
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  initially to Guadalcanal is back at Rabal.
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  And so they have to go a long way.
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  Their fighters can reach it. Their bombers can can make the
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  journey, at least their their two engine ones.
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  But they don't have a lot of loiter time.
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  And So what the air base at Guadalcanal, which is ultimately
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  named Henderson Field after a Marine aviator who lost his life
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  at Midway, they get local aerial superiority.
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  Coast watchers who are in the islands farther to the north and
• 9:55
  West can report the fact that Japanese planes are coming.
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  It gives the aviators there, both, you know, Army, Marine
• 10:02
  and, and even New Zealanders an opportunity to get into the air
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  and then fight the the Japanese planes that come over.
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  So it gives a significant advantage.
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  And what this then leads to is driving Japanese reinforcement
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  efforts over the sea to nighttime, to nocturnal attempts
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  because they don't want to be off guac now in daylight because
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  then they'll get attacked. They'll get bombed by the
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  airplanes that are at Henderson Field.
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  So it really sets the tenor for for the whole campaign, for the
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  whole fight. It's that airfield.
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  And Vandergriff realizes that relatively quickly.
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  You know, the first batch of planes comes, I think it's about
• 10:40
  a week after the airfield was seized.
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  They fly off from a Navy escort carrier.
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  And, and once he's got that, it's like, OK, I've got land
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  force, I've got a small Air Force.
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  As long as I hold the airfield, we can succeed.
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  Yeah, the whole thing is interesting because the Japanese
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  are the ones originally constructing it.
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  It's seized by the Americans called Henderson Field, which
• 11:01
  I'm sure caused damage to it. Then the Americans have to turn
• 11:04
  around and rebuild it real quick.
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  So how important was surprise to the initial American success in
• 11:11
  capturing this field? Oh, I think it's extremely
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  important. It catches from a strategic
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  perspective. It kept captures the the
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  Japanese very much off guard. They had assumed that, you know,
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  ultimately there would be an American offensive and that they
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  would have to deal with it. This had been part of their war
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  planning for decades. But they didn't expect it to
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  happen so fast. You know, they thought, they
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  thought they had at least till the end of 1942, maybe early
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  into 1943 before they would have to deal with something like
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  this. So strategically it's a great
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  surprise, but also tactically, the Japanese Long Guadal Canal
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  itself are not prepared for the assault of the Marines.
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  The few there who can fight are either overwhelmed quickly or
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  they disappear into the jungle. Now across the sound at the
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  islands near Tulagi, they they fight, you know, tenaciously the
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  same kind of way that they will, you know, later in the Pacific
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  War that the Japanese soldiers and Marines get famous for.
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  But on Guadalcanal itself, they sort of fade into the jungle,
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  and Vandergriff and company are able to seize the airfield right
• 12:16
  away. Yeah, Japan responded with
• 12:19
  repeated attempts to retake the island, launching fierce ground
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  assaults. So why were they determined to
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  recapture it at all costs? Well, first, the part of the
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  building off of the surprise component, initially the the
• 12:32
  Japanese completely underestimate what they're
• 12:35
  facing. You know, they assume
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  Vandergriff's group there is, you know, small, you know, like,
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  you know, a regiment or a couple battalions, not a division.
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  And so the forces that they send initially to Guadalcanal are
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  inadequate for the task that they are confronted with.
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  And the first one that a cheeky detachment, which is, you know,
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  was originally going to be landed at Midway, you know, they
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  advance confidently. They don't wait for
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  reinforcements. And they attack the Marine
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  perimeter in in August. And they're just wiped out
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  because, you know, they're met with a firepower that is far in
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  advance of what they can bring to the fight.
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  And so then you get sort of a trickle of additional
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  reinforcements. Part of this tempered by the
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  fact that the Japanese are trying to do this at night,
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  right, because of the airfield. So what they resort to usually
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  are like destroyers or other high speed ships that can make
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  that run into the island at night, drop off the troops and
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  then escape before the sun comes up and they can be subjected to
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  air raids. So you get, you know, a couple
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  100 or a couple 1000 Japanese soldiers showing up at a time.
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  And it takes a while for them to build up sufficient fighting
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  force on the island. And then once they do, it's very
• 13:57
  difficult for them to, to maintain it.
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  But yes, they, they recognize the, the airfield is the key.
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  They've got to try to take it back and they make several
• 14:05
  attempts to to do so. Yeah, We'll come back to that
• 14:09
  Tokyo Express here in just a minute.
• 14:12
  So, yeah, you mentioned that the dense jungle environment, you
• 14:15
  know, the troops will kind of recede into the jungle.
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  What environmental challenges were impacting combat
• 14:22
  effectiveness in this tough terrain?
• 14:24
  Oh, yeah. So the jungle malaria, it is not
• 14:30
  a, it's not a pleasant place. You know, it's, it's wet, it's
• 14:35
  humid, it's difficult to preserve things.
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  You know, there are several accounts of either foodstuffs or
• 14:42
  supplies, building materials, you know, these things rotting
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  away in the South Pacific, heat and humidity.
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  And so it's, it's not just difficult to fight and it's
• 14:53
  difficult to sustain an armed force in.
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  And the Japanese really confront this because, you know, they,
• 15:01
  they get a good sense of where the airfield is, the perimeter
• 15:05
  surrounding it and so on. And what they often try to do is
• 15:10
  land at some distance and then March overland, you know,
• 15:13
  through the jungle to try to attack the Marine positions, you
• 15:18
  know, from an unanticipated location off in the rear.
• 15:21
  And there's a a ridgeline that runs along this southern portion
• 15:26
  of the the perimeter that the Marines established and the
• 15:30
  Japanese tried to attack this after one of these overland
• 15:33
  marches in mid-september 1942 leads to the battle of some
• 15:38
  accounts, we'll call it Bloody Ridge.
• 15:40
  Others will call it Edson Ridge after Merritt Edson, who
• 15:44
  commanded the Marine Raiders that defended the Ridge during
• 15:47
  that battle. They, the Japanese come at the
• 15:49
  Ridge two nights in a row and never succeeded in breaking
• 15:53
  through. But it is from the accounts,
• 15:56
  touch and go for a while. You know, if some of the
• 15:58
  Japanese soldiers make it through, make it past the
• 16:00
  perimeter, end up, you know, in headquarters locations have to
• 16:03
  get shot by Marines with their sidearms, their pistols.
• 16:07
  So a very deer run thing according to some of the
• 16:10
  accounts. Yeah, and while this slugfest is
• 16:13
  going on, this land battle all around Guadalcanal, there's
• 16:16
  naval battles going on, including the Battle of Tsavo
• 16:19
  Island, which resulted in heavy Allied losses.
• 16:23
  What were mistakes were made here?
• 16:26
  Oh yeah, Salvo Island is Vice Admiral Makawa's great victory.
• 16:30
  So the Japanese are caught off guard by the landings, but then
• 16:34
  very quickly they're determined to try to kick the Americans
• 16:38
  out. And so they try to do this with
• 16:40
  aerial attacks. Makawa grabs a scratch team so
• 16:45
  it's the cruisers and one supporting destroyer that are
• 16:48
  available to him, grabs the mineral ball head South Down
• 16:54
  through the Solomon Island chain and is determined to attack the
• 16:58
  evasion forces. Now.
• 17:00
  Mistakes. So one of the significant
• 17:03
  mistakes is his force is sighted along the way by reconnaissance
• 17:07
  aircraft. It takes a long time for that
• 17:10
  message to make it through the various communication channels
• 17:14
  to reach Rear Admiral Turner and the others who are there off the
• 17:18
  island. So that's one mistake.
• 17:21
  Another mistake is Macawa's force.
• 17:24
  Its composition is reported incorrectly.
• 17:27
  It allegedly contains, or according to the scouting
• 17:30
  report, contains 2C plant tenders.
• 17:32
  So Turner and others sees on that like, oh, these are C plant
• 17:35
  tenders. I mean, those are combatant
• 17:37
  ships, but they're not going to fight with those.
• 17:39
  They're going to find a base and then use that, use the sea
• 17:44
  planes that those tenders can support to bomb us.
• 17:48
  So he's more concerned with that than he is with the possibility
• 17:52
  of a nice surface attack. Another mistake is the
• 17:55
  disposition that they've arranged to protect.
• 18:00
  The anchorage where the invasion forces are is much more geared
• 18:04
  toward protection against submarines.
• 18:07
  You know, the idea of being a Japanese submarine might sneak
• 18:09
  into the anchorage and torpedo some of the the combatant ships
• 18:13
  there or some of the transports. That's the primary orientation
• 18:18
  of the defense that Turner and his subordinates have arranged.
• 18:21
  And Makawa is not a submarine. He doesn't have seaplane
• 18:26
  tenders. And so he comes right toward the
• 18:30
  the sound sort of this narrow body of water that is between
• 18:34
  Guadalcanal, Tulagi and Tsavo Island, which is ultimately what
• 18:39
  the battle is named for, which is sort of a small round island
• 18:43
  and steams on the southern portion to to the South of Tsavo
• 18:47
  Island, goes right by a radar picket destroyer.
• 18:51
  So this is another mistake. That picket destroyer is, you
• 18:55
  know, the lookouts are looking the wrong way.
• 18:56
  They're looking more toward where the ship is going, not
• 18:58
  where the ship has been. Makaba passes behind them and
• 19:02
  they're tired. They've been subjected to air
• 19:04
  attacks of the past two days. And for whatever reason, the
• 19:08
  radar does not does not pick up, Macaw was approached.
• 19:13
  That may be because the operator is tired.
• 19:15
  That may be because of interference from land and rain.
• 19:19
  Rain clouds will often show up on the radar.
• 19:23
  And also it's not a very sophisticated radar display.
• 19:25
  It's a very early radar display, a little bit more difficult to
• 19:28
  make sense of than what we all think of with the bird's eye
• 19:32
  view that we familiarize or are familiar with, with radar today.
• 19:37
  So Makawa enters the sound unopposed.
• 19:39
  There's no warning, and still he starts shooting.
• 19:42
  He damages cruiser Chicago. He sinks, or made it, mortally
• 19:47
  wounds the Australian cruiser Canberra and then turns to fight
• 19:52
  the other allied cruiser group, which has the US heavy cruisers
• 19:55
  Quincy, Astoria and Vincennes. And you know, before they really
• 20:00
  know what's happening, the shells are falling around them.
• 20:02
  Then the torpedoes start to hit them and each of them sinks.
• 20:07
  So just to recap, delayed intelligence reports,
• 20:10
  incorrectly interpreted intelligence reports, bad
• 20:13
  positioning of ships and then bad century work because they
• 20:16
  were tired kind of led to this disaster.
• 20:19
  Yeah, Yeah, it's a, it's a commingling effect.
• 20:21
  It's all added to not a mistake, but something that I think
• 20:26
  sometimes people who look at these accounts fail to realize.
• 20:30
  It's just how decisive a few minutes or seconds of surprise
• 20:36
  can be in a battle like this. Because these ships, you know,
• 20:40
  they're shooting at 10,000 yards or less.
• 20:42
  And at that range with the fire control equipment they had in
• 20:46
  1942, you know, if you've got 30 seconds or a minute of
• 20:51
  uninterrupted fire, that's it. It's game over.
• 20:55
  You are going to sink the other guy.
• 20:58
  Yeah. Despite early naval setbacks,
• 21:00
  though, the US Navy gradually gained control of the
• 21:03
  surrounding waters. How did naval spirit shift over
• 21:09
  the course of the campaign? Well, looking at it from the
• 21:13
  perspective of these night actions, you know, the next one
• 21:15
  happens in October. It's the Battle of Cape
• 21:18
  Esperance. And there the circumstances are,
• 21:22
  are a little bit different because Vice Admiral Gormley has
• 21:26
  been apprehensive after this initial defeat at Tsavo Island.
• 21:30
  He's he's hesitant to risk surface ships off Gall Canal.
• 21:35
  He's goaded by Admiral Nimitz and and others to, you know,
• 21:40
  we've got to try to control the waters off the island here.
• 21:43
  And so there's a surface Action Group formed under Rear Admiral
• 21:47
  Norman Scott, and he is covering the approach of some additional
• 21:53
  reinforcements to the island. The Japanese are making their
• 21:56
  own reinforcement effort. And so these two covering forces
• 21:59
  run into each other. But this time it's the Japanese
• 22:02
  that are surprised, you know, and initially they think they're
• 22:04
  being fired upon by their own forces.
• 22:07
  You know, the Admiral in charge of the Japanese formation
• 22:09
  basically dies assuming he's a victim of of friendly fire as
• 22:13
  his flagship is being, is being hit.
• 22:15
  It doesn't sink, though one of the Japanese cruisers in the
• 22:18
  formation does his limps back and is able to survive.
• 22:23
  And a third one remains concealed in the darkness and
• 22:26
  engages in a duel with, with Scotch, the Scotch ships.
• 22:30
  But it is a it is a clear victory for the United States.
• 22:35
  Unfortunately, very soon thereafter, the Japanese conduct
• 22:39
  their most impactful and substantial bombardment of the
• 22:42
  campaign. Rather than taking cruisers into
• 22:46
  the waters Alcoholic Canal, they bring 2 battleships and they
• 22:49
  bombard Henderson's field for quite some time and they wreck
• 22:53
  most of the aircraft that are there.
• 22:55
  And this prompts Admiral Limits and his planners to Washington
• 23:01
  to basically say, like, the situation's not lost, but it is
• 23:04
  really, really dire. We've got to do something.
• 23:08
  We, we do not control the waters of Guadal Canal.
• 23:10
  One of the things Nimitz does is he relieves by Samuel Gormley.
• 23:15
  Nimitz had come down to Gormley's headquarters to, you
• 23:18
  know, basically size them up and then had flown on to Guadalcanal
• 23:21
  to visit with Vandergrift. Gormley appeared defeatist.
• 23:26
  Vandergrift had a very positive attitude.
• 23:28
  Basically, you know, support me, give me what I need, and we can
• 23:30
  win here. Nimitz tried to encourage
• 23:33
  Gormley, didn't feel like Gormley was doing enough, and so
• 23:37
  took Vice Admiral William Halsey, who was coming to the
• 23:41
  South Pacific to command the carrier forces, and told Halsey,
• 23:46
  look, you're going to take charge of the area, the South
• 23:48
  Pacific. You relieve Gormley, do it.
• 23:52
  And so Halsey does. And Halsey's attitude toward
• 23:54
  surface actions is very different.
• 23:56
  He believes it's acceptable to lose ships as long as they are
• 24:01
  contesting the waters off Guadalcanal.
• 24:04
  And so he does that. There's a carrier battle that's
• 24:06
  fought, the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands soon after Halsey
• 24:09
  takes over that more or less ends in a draw.
• 24:13
  Then the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal occurs in November
• 24:17
  and that's where Halsey pushes surface ships forward to prevent
• 24:21
  a similar bombardment from the one that happened in October.
• 24:24
  The Japanese tried twice to bombard the airfield again with
• 24:27
  battleships and they fail both times and they lose 2
• 24:30
  battleships in the two fights. Yeah, you and I have talked
• 24:33
  about this in previous episodes and I don't fault Gormally
• 24:37
  because they they do tell you like, you know, we want you to
• 24:39
  be aggressive but don't lose any ships.
• 24:42
  And then if you look at the Japanese side of it, sometimes
• 24:45
  they don't put all their chips in, They kind of get half
• 24:48
  hearted and then they end up losing the banner because it
• 24:50
  didn't go all in. It's hard to find that balance
• 24:53
  of when to put your chips in the middle and when to be cautious.
• 24:56
  Yeah, Yeah, it is. It is.
• 24:59
  That's a criticism that I think you could voice.
• 25:01
  Is, is the Japanese, you know, they do push.
• 25:05
  They don't push with the same emphasis that that Halsey does.
• 25:10
  You know, in that second fight he doesn't have really any
• 25:14
  cruisers left. And so he sends Rear Admiral
• 25:17
  Willis Lee into the narrow waters off Guadalcanal.
• 25:22
  And that Tsavo sound it's called with two battleships.
• 25:26
  And I've read all the, the pre war doctrine and, and plans and
• 25:32
  exercises, and this is just not a thing that you're supposed to
• 25:37
  do. You don't put battleships in
• 25:39
  water like that because you know, they're going to be very
• 25:42
  vulnerable, you know, to this sort of close range rapid fire
• 25:45
  of smaller ships. They're going to be very
• 25:47
  vulnerable to torpedoes. And, and Lee is able to to do
• 25:51
  it. One of his battleships gets
• 25:54
  rendered data, a mission kill effectively South Dakota.
• 25:59
  Her electronics are are wrecked, her superstructure gets shot up,
• 26:03
  and she doesn't hit much in the Lander faces of the battle.
• 26:06
  His other battleship, Washington, his flagship, has to
• 26:08
  has to win and his Mace mostly fighting alone by the end of
• 26:11
  things, but he succeeds. Yeah, yeah.
• 26:15
  Sometimes you got to no risk it. No biscuit, right?
• 26:19
  Yeah, I did. Well, you mentioned earlier the
• 26:21
  Tokyo Express, which is Japan's nighttime resupply effort using
• 26:26
  fan ships to reinforce troops. Why did they have to do this
• 26:31
  night time operation to resupply?
• 26:33
  Were they just that scared of American air power or what was
• 26:36
  going on here? Yeah, yeah, it's, it's a, it's a
• 26:40
  problem with air power because they do have transport.
• 26:43
  They do have, you know, the kinds of ships that are, are
• 26:46
  designed and built to, you know, provide the supplies and the
• 26:50
  troop reinforcements to an installation like this.
• 26:53
  But the problem is they're too slow.
• 26:54
  They can't get inside the air umbrella, then unload and they
• 26:59
  get back out from underneath the American air umbrella in time
• 27:02
  without being attacked. And the times that they try it,
• 27:05
  these transports are are often seriously damaged.
• 27:08
  So the the fights, those naval battles in November are prompted
• 27:14
  by this Japanese attempt to get a major reinforcement convoy to
• 27:18
  the island. You know, so the whole point of
• 27:20
  trying to bombard the airfield with battleships was to wreck it
• 27:24
  so that this troop convoy could arrive safely.
• 27:28
  And when the first attempt fails, they send some cruisers
• 27:33
  to bombard the next night. That doesn't really do enough.
• 27:37
  And so the next day, the transports are coming on.
• 27:40
  They're approaching Guadalcanal. And Halsey uses his last
• 27:45
  available carrier, Enterprise. He keeps it out of Japanese
• 27:49
  range, but planes are able to to go from it toward the convoy or
• 27:53
  shuttle from it to Henderson Field and then attack the
• 27:56
  convoy. And they, they damage or sink
• 27:59
  most of the transports that day. They keep coming, but the ones
• 28:04
  that make it to the island are pretty quickly damaged once,
• 28:07
  once they once they do. And so most of the Japanese
• 28:11
  supplies don't make it. So This is why they revert to or
• 28:15
  throughout the campaign, mostly employ this Tokyo Express
• 28:18
  approach because you can send destroyers down and they can
• 28:21
  make it. They could drop off some small
• 28:23
  number of troops or some small number of supplies and then get
• 28:26
  back out of the air umbrella before daylight, but the
• 28:29
  transports can't. Yeah, interesting.
• 28:31
  So yeah, we also kind of, we mentioned earlier there's a
• 28:34
  major land battles such as the Battle of Edson's Ridge which
• 28:36
  you talked about. Can you kind of talk us through
• 28:40
  how how the allied forces gain the upper hand in the land
• 28:43
  battle? Yeah, a lot of it has to do with
• 28:47
  just being able to reinforce and resupply at a rate that keeps
• 28:55
  the combat effective, the number of combat effective fighters on
• 29:00
  the island hire for Vandergrift and then the general patch to
• 29:06
  ultimately relieves him, the Army general.
• 29:10
  And so unlike the Japanese, you know, who have real trouble
• 29:13
  bringing transports to the island, have to rely on this
• 29:15
  trickle from the Tokyo Express, Gormley and then later Halsey
• 29:20
  can actually send transports to the island, you know, and, and
• 29:23
  they're covered by Henderson Field, They're covered by the
• 29:26
  movement of of these Navy ships. And so you can send additional
• 29:32
  regiments, like for example, the 7th Marine Regiment makes it to
• 29:39
  Guadal Canal in September 1942. Now its movement is also sees a
• 29:49
  significant loss. Carrier Wasp is part of the
• 29:52
  covering group for that movement, and she's torpedoed by
• 29:55
  a Japanese submarine and sunk. And then there's another
• 29:59
  reinforcement. This is the 164th Infantry
• 30:03
  Regiment, part of the America Division from New Caledonia that
• 30:08
  arrives in October around the same time that the Japanese are
• 30:11
  bombarding Henderson Field with their with their major
• 30:14
  bombardment. So part of the way in which the
• 30:18
  US forces gain the upper hand is by being able to resupply and re
• 30:23
  reinforce more efficiently. But part of it also is
• 30:27
  Vandergriff's initial concept is, well, I need to hold the
• 30:30
  airfield. That's what I need to do.
• 30:32
  I will let the Japanese come to me.
• 30:34
  So while he can operate from a base that is getting reinforced
• 30:40
  and resupplied and operate on interior lines, the Japanese are
• 30:44
  trying to come at him. And many times these are through
• 30:49
  these overland tracks, through the jungle where soldiers will
• 30:53
  get lost, they'll get tired, they'll not have, you know,
• 30:57
  sufficient food, enough calories to really make this journey
• 31:01
  effectively. And then they're attacking at
• 31:03
  the end of that, of that March. They're taking at the end of
• 31:06
  that journey. And although the Japanese
• 31:09
  display, you know, their typical enthusiasm for battle of their
• 31:14
  energy, they are just unable to overcome the defenses that the
• 31:20
  the soldiers and Marines have established.
• 31:22
  That happens. It's Ridge that happens again at
• 31:26
  sort of the Battle of Guadalcanal.
• 31:28
  It's called that. That occurs then in October.
• 31:32
  They're the the soldiers of the 164th Regiment in the, in the
• 31:37
  Marines, They, you know, they fight together because the
• 31:39
  soldiers come in and rather than relieving an entire section of
• 31:45
  the Marine line, they just, they just filter in with them.
• 31:49
  And it creates a bond that at least for those, for those units
• 31:53
  now, goes back to that, to that time in 1942.
• 31:56
  Yeah. I was going to ask you about
• 31:58
  this because by late 1942, Japanese forces were weakened by
• 32:02
  attrition. So basically a platoon doesn't
• 32:05
  have its full complement, A battalion doesn't have its full
• 32:08
  complement starvation and constant combat pressure where
• 32:12
  you just you just can't get sleep and you can't focus
• 32:15
  anymore because you're always under attack.
• 32:17
  So which of these factors contributed most to Japan's
• 32:20
  declining strength? I think it to be their challenge
• 32:23
  getting supplies. I mean, the combat is, is
• 32:26
  difficult. The combat is imposing
• 32:27
  casualties of course, but the thing that is really wearing
• 32:30
  them down is that they, you know, they can't get the kind of
• 32:35
  nutrition that they need. They can't get the calories that
• 32:37
  they need. They cannot overcome the kinds
• 32:41
  of diseases, exhaustion and other things that combat on the
• 32:45
  island imposes upon them. And so they they start to wear
• 32:49
  and waste away. And when Vandergrift feels like
• 32:53
  he's got enough forces, he starts to, you know, anticipate
• 32:57
  this. Let's let's, you know, push
• 32:58
  them. He can't conduct like serious
• 33:01
  offenses. The the first Marine Division
• 33:02
  never, never gets there. But later on, you know, once you
• 33:06
  get to December of 1942 and Vandergrift is is relieved and
• 33:11
  the soldiers come in to to dominate the American presence
• 33:14
  there, they start doing. That I think that's a great call
• 33:17
  out. I mean, you think of the
• 33:19
  calories, well, they need if you want to launch a flanking attack
• 33:23
  or if you want to maneuver your troops or even any kind of
• 33:26
  attack, you need calories for them, food to have energy and,
• 33:29
  and equipment to have ammunition and all these little things.
• 33:33
  We talked about the beginning with the logistics.
• 33:36
  And if you don't have that, all you can do really is stay in
• 33:38
  place and fight a defensive battle.
• 33:41
  Yeah, yeah. And so, so the Japanese
• 33:43
  eventually, their last major attempt to reinforce the island
• 33:46
  is in November 42 when those those battles that I spoke
• 33:50
  about, the battleships fighting off of Guadal Canal.
• 33:54
  After that, they're they're still there's a time, there's a
• 33:57
  period of a couple weeks where they're still interested in it,
• 34:00
  They're still planning on it. They, they want to make another
• 34:02
  attempt to reinforce the island, but ultimately they give up
• 34:06
  because they can see there's enough, you know, reconnaissance
• 34:10
  flights, they can see how strong the US position is becoming.
• 34:13
  How many? I don't think they have a good
• 34:15
  count of the number of troops that are on the island, but they
• 34:18
  can see how many transports are coming, how consistently they're
• 34:21
  unloading, and they know they can't match it.
• 34:24
  But it's, it's interesting to me because in early 1943, they
• 34:27
  decide to evacuate the remaining troops rather than continue the
• 34:30
  costly fight. Why do they choose evacuation
• 34:32
  over continued resistance? Because later in the war years,
• 34:35
  like at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, they just say, hey, you're going
• 34:37
  to fight it out here to the end. But they actually pull these
• 34:39
  troops out. They do, they do, they conduct a
• 34:42
  very effective withdrawal from Guadalcanal.
• 34:46
  It's, it's impressive. It's Operation KE, I think it's
• 34:50
  called, if I remember right. There's a, there's a book
• 34:53
  focused on it, which is, is good.
• 34:57
  So yeah, they, they set it up to appear to U.S. intelligence as
• 35:02
  if it's going to be another attempt to reinforce the island.
• 35:06
  So Halsey assumes that, Nimitz assumes that.
• 35:09
  But instead what it is is it's this withdrawal.
• 35:11
  So while U.S. forces are anticipating the next major
• 35:15
  attempt to take the island, they're not in position to
• 35:18
  prevent the withdrawal, which is what the Japanese actually do.
• 35:22
  And the difference between, you know, this time period, late
• 35:25
  1942, early 1943 and what we see in late 1944, early 1945, when
• 35:32
  you know, as you said, the Japanese are sort of, you know,
• 35:34
  fighting to the last is their the underlying premise of their
• 35:39
  theory of victory is still the same, right?
• 35:41
  They they know they need to convince the American people the
• 35:45
  war isn't worth fighting. But the mechanism that they're
• 35:49
  going to try to to execute to do that is, is different.
• 35:53
  So they're still thinking in terms of delay make, make, make
• 35:59
  the advance slower, but they have more room to to slow an
• 36:05
  allied advance down with in early 1943.
• 36:08
  So they're going to withdraw to New Georgia and the islands
• 36:11
  beyond it and just say, OK, we will, we won't fight you on
• 36:14
  Guacanal anymore. We'll fight you on the next
• 36:16
  island. And so, you know, your advance
• 36:19
  through the Solomon Islands is going to be slow.
• 36:22
  It's going to be costly. And that is going to slowly wear
• 36:26
  down the patience of the populace with with the war.
• 36:30
  And and that's going to create the conditions, You know, this
• 36:32
  is the Japanese mindset that is going to create the conditions
• 36:35
  where we can secure negotiated peace and still be dominant in
• 36:39
  western, in the Western Pacific and Asia.
• 36:42
  It's interesting you've set it up, though.
• 36:44
  I didn't think about that. Like they have such a large
• 36:47
  sphere of influence in 1942 that it's OK to shrink it down a
• 36:50
  little bit because the homeland is still safe for the most part.
• 36:54
  So they do have some room to play with.
• 36:55
  But it it's odd that Japan gave up on something they don't
• 36:59
  usually surrender. I mean, not and, and, and we'll
• 37:02
  get to it. Like the casualties here were
• 37:05
  were pretty horrific on both sides, right?
• 37:07
  Oh yeah. Well, especially for the
• 37:09
  Japanese, you know, if the Japanese lose a large number of
• 37:12
  of the soldiers that they send among the Allies, they aren't,
• 37:16
  they aren't as they aren't as terrible.
• 37:18
  I mean, certainly the the First Marine Division has to spend a
• 37:21
  lot of time recovering and recuperating from malaria cases
• 37:24
  and so on. But but the Marines in terms of
• 37:26
  casualties lose well fewer dead certainly than the Navy does in
• 37:32
  the fights offshore. You know that Tsavo Island is
• 37:36
  extremely costly because those, those 3 cruisers are lost.
• 37:39
  And I think in that fight, I may be remembering it wrong, but I
• 37:43
  think in that fight, a low, the Navy loses more sailors than the
• 37:47
  Marines on the island. Yeah, the Allied American forces
• 37:52
  lost 7100 killed plus 7700 wounded.
• 37:56
  The Japanese lost 19,000 dead and interesting only 8500 were
• 38:02
  killed in combat so that kind of shows the starvation and the
• 38:05
  disease part. That's right, yeah.
• 38:07
  I mean, there's a significant number of combat losses, of
• 38:10
  course, but most of it is just, you know, wasting away because
• 38:14
  they're not getting the food that they need and they succumb
• 38:16
  either to disease, starvation or, or something else like that.
• 38:19
  And then on the the Navy side, the Americans lose 29 ships,
• 38:23
  including two fleet carriers, 6 heavy cruisers and two light
• 38:26
  cruisers, along with 17 destroyers and 615 aircraft
• 38:30
  loss. Meanwhile, the Japanese lost 38
• 38:34
  ships, including one leg carrier, 2 battleships, 3 heavy
• 38:38
  cruisers and 11 destroyers and 683 aircraft loss.
• 38:42
  So it's it's a big loss for Japan.
• 38:46
  Yeah, I, I know they talk about this later.
• 38:49
  I'm not, I don't recall if, if Navy officers talk about this at
• 38:53
  the time of the Guadalcanal campaign, but but they're doing
• 38:57
  a sort of a cold calculus like we can sustain losses.
• 39:03
  The Japanese can't, you know, because we've, because US
• 39:06
  shipbuilding, we will have more destroyers, we will have more
• 39:09
  battleships, we will have more aircraft carriers.
• 39:11
  They will join the fleet. The Japanese will build some but
• 39:14
  they won't keep pace and so if we are are breaking even off
• 39:19
  Guadalcanal then we're winning. Let's finally talk about the
• 39:24
  legacy here. The Allied victory Guadalcanal
• 39:26
  marked a big turning point in the Pacific War, shifting
• 39:29
  momentum heavily towards the US. In what ways did Guadalcanal
• 39:34
  change the direction of the war in the Pacific?
• 39:39
  Well, it, it, it gives, you know, like I mentioned at the
• 39:42
  beginning, right, if the initiative is like a football
• 39:45
  bouncing on the ground, well, the allies, the United States
• 39:47
  sees it now. They've got the initiative and,
• 39:49
  and they can control the, the timing and base of future
• 39:52
  operations. Initially, Admiral King's
• 39:55
  assumption was that there would be sort of this quick movement
• 39:57
  of the Solomon Islands toward Rupal That of course doesn't
• 40:00
  happen. You know they they fight for
• 40:02
  Guadal Canal until early 1943 and then.
• 40:06
  After the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, the the allies,
• 40:11
  you know, agree well, we'll keep executing an offensive in the
• 40:15
  Pacific. So they they think about the
• 40:16
  next phase. Well, Canal was initially
• 40:18
  supposed to be the first task in a series of three tasks which
• 40:23
  would ultimately get back to her ball.
• 40:25
  Tasks 2 and 3. The leadership shifts away from
• 40:29
  Admiral Nimitz to General MacArthur.
• 40:31
  And So what you see in early 1943 is the negotiation between
• 40:37
  MacArthur and his planners and the planners of Washington.
• 40:41
  How many forces can I have? How am I going to execute this
• 40:44
  next phase of the offensive? How am I going to get not just,
• 40:47
  you know, onto the northern shore of New Guinea, but then
• 40:50
  ultimately toward toward revolve?
• 40:53
  And they can't give him everything he maybe wants, but
• 40:56
  they give him enough. And so he and Admiral Halsey
• 40:59
  work together to advance up the Solomon's advance through New
• 41:02
  Guinea and keep the Japanese focused on the South Pacific.
• 41:08
  And so that's sort of like, you know, the the holding arm that
• 41:11
  is keeping Japanese attention. And meanwhile, the US Navy is
• 41:16
  building up, the US Army is building up.
• 41:19
  The Marines are getting larger. And so Nimitz is essentially
• 41:23
  cocking his, you know, sort of solid right hook, which is going
• 41:28
  to be the offensive through the Central Pacific.
• 41:30
  And that starts unleashing in in November 43.
• 41:34
  So Guadalcanal gives the initiative to the United States.
• 41:38
  They maintain it. They keep the Japanese focused
• 41:42
  and then, you know, unleash another parallel, extremely
• 41:46
  powerful offensive in the Central Pacific later of the
• 41:48
  year. Yeah, just amazing what the
• 41:51
  battle did and and kind of altered the strategic, you know,
• 41:55
  outlook of the battle. But yeah, I mean, to your point
• 41:57
  earlier, during World War 2, workers at the Henry Ford
• 42:01
  aircraft factory built a staggering 8600 B 24 bombers in
• 42:07
  three years, and at its peak, they produced AB 24 every hour.
• 42:12
  So it's hard to keep up with that production.
• 42:15
  It yes, yes, it is. It is hard, Yeah.
• 42:18
  That that Willow Run plant is really something.
• 42:21
  But what what I think I mean, yeah, that's sort of like the
• 42:25
  pinnacle of of aircraft building what that kind of industrial
• 42:29
  capacity is being unleashed across the United States, right.
• 42:33
  They're building Liberty ships very quickly, building destroyer
• 42:36
  escorts, all these other things, building tanks and all that
• 42:42
  industrial capability in terms of, you know, transportation,
• 42:46
  logistics, firepower, etcetera. It starts to starts to be
• 42:50
  unleashed. That's, that's one of the things
• 42:52
  that I think is important to keep in mind when thinking about
• 42:55
  Guadal Canal is, you know, a lot of the times our attention is
• 42:58
  drawn to the, to the later fights where you know, there's
• 43:02
  more, there's more footage, you know, you have, you have movies,
• 43:05
  some of the later battles in the Pacific and all that industrial
• 43:09
  capacity is being brought to bear that that doesn't happen at
• 43:14
  Guadalcanal, right. The means are fighting with
• 43:17
  really like old light tanks, you know, MMM, 2 Stewart's, M3
• 43:22
  Stewart's and they have Springfield rifles, you know,
• 43:26
  not the M1 Grand, which is a semi automatic.
• 43:28
  They have the bolt action Springfields, which are
• 43:31
  comparable to the rifles that the Japanese had.
• 43:34
  They have old artillery pieces, you know, old pattern 150, five
• 43:39
  105mm guns. And so it's a, it's almost like
• 43:45
  it's a pre war sort of capability that the the Navy and
• 43:51
  the Marines bring to Guadalcanal and they they succeed with it.
• 43:55
  It's a great call because like our success at Iwo Jima and
• 43:58
  Okinaw, even though there's a tough battles, they stood on the
• 44:01
  shoulders of Guadalcanal. Yeah, and of course, you know,
• 44:05
  there's the, you know, the Marines will look to it, right?
• 44:07
  I mean, the first first divisions patch, you know, it's
• 44:10
  got glocadel on it and, and the Southern Cross on it because of
• 44:14
  this. This was their, this, this was
• 44:16
  their fight. This is what they traced their
• 44:18
  their lineage to. And so it's it's now caught up.
• 44:22
  It's now caught up in the ethos of, of the Marines and, and how
• 44:26
  they identify themselves, how they think about themselves
• 44:29
  accomplishing it largely in, in their argument.
• 44:32
  I mean, we've talked about all the other things that came
• 44:34
  together to make this successful.
• 44:35
  But in their view, you know, after Salvo Island, the Navy
• 44:38
  left and they were alone. They had to win.
• 44:42
  The Navy comes back, but but they did win.
• 44:45
  And so they that's sort of etched into Marine lore now.
• 44:49
  Well, good stuff as always my friend.
• 44:50
  Thank you Trent. Again, Trent has a couple books
• 44:53
  out, Nimitz Mastering the Art of Command, which is a nice play on
• 44:57
  words at jazz with our podcast and then learning War, which I
• 45:02
  can learn more about the battle of Guadalcanal.
• 45:04
  We thank you Trent for your time.
• 45:05
  Wrapping up, we have also started a new Patreon page.
• 45:09
  So if you'd like to support our podcast financially, I would
• 45:11
  appreciate it of course. And please give our YouTube and
• 45:15
  Facebook page a follow when you have time.
• 45:18
  And thanks everyone for listening.