On August 7, 1942, on Guadalcanal Island in the Solomon Sea, the US First Marine Division landed on Guadalcanal like a divine soldier, and the stunned Japanese defenders scattered, and the US army immediately attacked the newly built airfield of the Japanese army. The Guadalcanal landing operation met with only sporadic resistance and occupied the island effortlessly.
Guadalcanal is the most important island in the Solomon Sea, controlling Guadalcanal can control the air supremacy of hundreds of kilometers of the surrounding sea, there is no air supremacy in naval battles, and even the largest ships and aircraft carriers will be sunk by aircraft. This small island in the Pacific Ocean is of vital importance to both the United States and Japan, both sides are determined to win, and a bloody war is about to break out.
The Guadalcanal landing was the first amphibious operation of the U.S. Military, and in order to seize the mission of this operation, MacArthur of the Army and the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Nimitz, had a fierce quarrel, which was finally resolved with the intervention of President Roosevelt, and it was decided to carry out the task with the newly formed First Marine Division.
More than 19,000 men of the 1st Marine Division assembled in San Francisco and then transported via New Zealand to the waters off Guadalcanal via New Zealand. The U.S. military has mobilized nineteen large ships, including three aircraft carriers, to provide strong fire support for the landing operations of the First Land Division.
The 1st Division set the date of landing as August 7. At four o'clock in the morning of the 7th, the huge guns on the US warships shook the earth and violently shelled the Japanese troops on Guadalcanal, and most of the Japanese fortifications and warehouses on the island were damaged under shelling. Then the carrier-based aircraft took off and fired low-altitude strafing at the Japanese troops on the island, and the soldiers of the First Land Division changed to landing craft and prepared to land on the island for combat.
At nine o'clock on the same day, two battalions of the US army began to rush to the beach to land, and the scene where the US army originally wanted to fight a bloody battle did not appear, and the landing of the two battalions was surprisingly smooth. At eleven o'clock, the follow-up troops of the US army went to the island in batches, along with a small amount of supplies. After the U.S. army occupied Guadalcanal, it immediately built a strong fortification and waited for the rabbit to sneak in. This was followed by the stationing of aviation units, and the newly occupied airfield was named "Henderson Airport." ”
In the months that followed, this Henderson airfield became the focus of contention between the U.S. and Japanese militaries, and the Japanese Navy learned that the U.S. troops had landed on Guadalcanal and that they would lose their air superiority. On the evening of August 9, Japanese Navy Vice Admiral Junichi Mikawa led seven cruisers and one destroyer to the strait near Guadalcanal to counterattack.
The combined fleets of the United States and Australia moved randomly, sending six cruisers and four destroyers to intercept them. Due to the advantage of the Japanese sailors over night battles, 4 heavy cruisers of the American army were sunk in the artillery battle, and only 1 light cruiser of the Japanese army was sunk by the American submarine on the return voyage. Known in the history of warfare as the First Battle of Solomon, the Naval Battle was the last large-scale naval victory of the Japanese Army in the Pacific War.
When the japanese naval top brass learned of the great victory of the Mikawa fleet in the night attack, they were immediately full of confidence. In addition, the intelligence of the Japanese army was not accurate, thinking that there were only more than 2,000 Us troops on the island, so the same trick was repeated, and they wanted to sneak attack the US First Marine Division on the island with night fighting. On the night of August 18, Ichiki Kiyonoda led a leading force of more than a thousand men in six destroyers and landed about thirty kilometers east of Henderson Airfield on Guadalcanal.
The Japanese did not have a special landing craft for the American army, and after coming down from the destroyer, they had to land with a small sampan, so they could not carry heavy weapons. Kiyoshi Ichiki was a well-known hawk in the Japanese army, who repeatedly served as the vanguard of the war in the war of aggression against China, and it was this person who first commanded the attack on the Chinese army in the July 7 Incident.
The unit he led was called the "Ichiki Detachment", and the Ichiki detachment fought in all directions after the outbreak of war, and Ichiki had a lot of military achievements, which made Ichiki always think of himself very highly. The arrogant Kiyoshi Ichiki committed the mistake of light enemy, and this time the light enemy directly caused him to die under the indiscriminate gunfire of the US army. In the early hours of August 21, Ichiki led a team with only machine guns, rifles, and grenadiers to attack the American positions at the mouth of the Tenaru River, in a vain attempt to take the airfield in one fell swoop and make a great achievement.
To Ichiki's surprise, his attack encountered an unprecedented powerful fire net, the light and heavy weapons of the American army opened fire at the same time, a dead fire net flew towards the Japanese army with teeth and claws, and Ichiki's men suffered heavy casualties. The commander of the US army also sent a battalion around the back of the Japanese army to carry out a pinch attack, and the Ichiki detachment was attacked by the enemy on its stomach and back, and the people immediately turned over on their horses. The remnants of the Japanese army had to retreat to the seashore, the American army chased after the light tanks, and the Japanese troops who ran on only two legs were annihilated, and the indispensable Kiyono Ichiki also died under the tanks of the American army.
After the battle, U.S. medical personnel tried to provide humanitarian relief to the Japanese wounded. What made the US military extremely angry was that some Japanese wounded soldiers pulled and hid grenades and died with the approaching US troops. The shamelessness of the Japanese army completely angered the Americans, so the American army ordered that the Japanese wounded on the battlefield would not be treated in the future, and those who fell to the ground would be crushed with tanks or replaced with a few shots. In this battle, the American army only lost thirty-five people and wounded seventy-five people, but the Japanese army left more than 800 corpses on the battlefield, and the rest fled to the dense forest to fight with rats and mosquitoes.
