Vice Admiral Fletcher, the Operation Watchtower expedition commander and overall commander of Task Force 61, which included the all important aircraft carriers, was operating on Nimitz’ principle of “calculated risk”, “which you shall interpret to mean the avoidance of exposure of your force to attack by superior enemy forces without good prospect of inflicting, as a result of such exposure, greater damage on the enemy”. And Fletcher’s carriers, at the time America’s most precious military capability, were dangerously exposed in the waters off Guadalcanal.

From an intelligence point of view, Operation Watchtower was “a stab in the dark”, and the Allies had no real idea what was waiting for them in the Solomons. If the remaining Japanese carriers were at Rabaul when the landings began, their planes could appear at anytime from any direction beginning on the 9th of August 1942. And it wasn’t like the Saratoga, Wasp, and Enterprise could hide: the Japanese knew exactly where they were.Two weeks previously, off Fiji on the Saratoga at the final commander’s conference prior to Operation Watchtower, Fletcher announced that the carriers would only remain off Guadalcanal until the 9th, and this infuriated both RearAdm Kelly Turner, the commander of the invasion force, and MajGen Vandegrift, the commander of the 1st Marine Division. The gentlemanly southerner Vandegrift almost lost his cool as he calmly explained that they would need more than two days to unload the transports, especially since there were no docks or port facilities available. Everything would have be manhandled over the beaches. Turner, a protege of the gruff Adm King who was no fan of Fletcher, did lose his cool as he complained the Watchtower timeline left him no chance to reconfigure the transports from a commerce load, i.e. packed for efficiency, to a combat load where the critical items e.g. food and ammunition, can be off loaded first. In a conversation in a passageway during a break, Turner was overheard calling his nominal superior “yellow” if the carriers departed before the 11th of August.

But Fletcher had fuel on his mind among many other things. There weren’t enough oil tankers in theater and America couldn’t produce them fast enough. None of the resurrected battlewagons damaged on 7 December were in the South Pacific precisely because they hogged the available fuel. Furthermore the US Navy’s proficiency in underway replenishment was poor at best and operationally detrimental at worst. The Watchtower task forces might as well have been tied to a post like a dog. That post was Noumea, Caledonia, and the chain only extended as far as Guadalcanal, and then only for a few days.

On 8 August, 1942, Fletcher’s carriers had five days of fuel left at cruising speed (15kts) or two at battle speed (25 kts). The fast battleship North Carolina, which was of the newest class and much more fuel efficient that her predecessors, had less than that, due to an unfortunate staff error involving a chart with an incorrect marking for the Intl Date Line, which forced the North Carolina to be late to the rendezvous and unable to top off.

But it wasn’t just fuel, in defending against the Japanese air attacks over the past two days, Fletcher’s carriers had lost nearly 20% of their planes, and they hadn’t even come across any Japanese carrier borne aircraft yet. Fletcher had two carriers sunk from underneath him previously, the Lady Lex in the Coral Sea in May, and the Yorktown at Midway in June. He was tired of getting his feet wet and the losses were fueling rumors that he was senile and incompetent. He wasn’t going to stick around for a third time. He only had two days of fuel for battle then he’d be forced to retire in any case. If the Japanese did show up on the 9th or 10th, he’d rather engage them on the 11th with a full belly. The Japanese carriers weren’t going anywhere once they were off Guadalcanal. This wouldn’t endear him to the Marines taking the brunt of the air attacks, especially after the Navy abandoned Wake Island in similar circumstances earlier in the war. Marines have long memories.

In the end Fletcher’s departure on the 9th was probably for the best. Any Marine casualties on Guadalcanal due to the air attacks would be a tragedy, but a local one. The loss of the carriers would be a national tragedy. In the cold logic of war, there were more Marines in training and in the pipeline to the South Pacific. This was not true for aircraft carriers. The next American carrier scheduled to come out of a shipyard wouldn’t be ready for another six months at best (the USS Essex would be commissioned in December 1942 and then the Bonhomme Richard in April, 43). Until then, Fletcher’s carriers were the only thing standing between Japan and wherever they decided to strike next. 

Fletcher made his final decision on the night of the 8th to depart Guadalcanal the next morning, despite vehement protests by Turner and Vandegrift. The transports weren’t even close to being unloaded, though there is some evidence that the unorganized Marines on the beach were just as much to blame. Nevertheless, with heavy carrier fighter losses beating back the numerous Japanese land based planes, low fuel, and his escort ships clearly out fought in night surface actions, Fletcher took his ships, and by default Turner’s, out of the confining straits off of Guadalcanal and into the open ocean where they could be more easily defended and refueled.

The Marines securing the beachhead and airfield on Guadalcanal were on their own.

With rare exceptions, the Japanese were surprised but completely unconcerned with the American landings in the Solomons. When Emperor Hirohito inquired, he was told that it was “nothing worthy of your majesty’s attention”. The thinking went that once Port Moresby and Papua/New Guinea were captured, which seemed inevitable in early August 1942, the Japanese could retake the southern Solomons at their leisure. The one exception to the blasé Japanese attitude to the landings was the newly appointed commander of the 8th Fleet at Rabaul, Vice Admiral Gunichi Mikawa.

Mikawa was Japan’s premier surface warfare officer, but in the 30s, he was quick to recognize the primacy of naval air power. He concluded that future surface warfare would be conducted when and where carrier air power would be limited: at night, in bad weather, and in confined waters. For a decade, he promoted and demanded Japanese perfection in navigation, surface torpedo operations, and most importantly, night gunnery. His efforts would pay off in the early morning hours of 9 August 1942.

Unlike his peers and superiors, Mikawa was gravely concerned with the American landings. On first report from the garrison on Tulagi, Mikawa gathered every surface combatant available, and within hours, his ad hoc squadron was refueled and headed down the St George Sound (soon to be nicknamed “The Slot”) to engage the vulnerable transports unloading onto Guadalcanal from the Savo Sound. Mikawa had only five heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and a single destroyer to attack the vast Allied armada in the area, but an attempt had to be tried: once the transports were unloaded, the Americans would be exponentially harder to dislodge. There were reports of an American battleship in the area (the new and fast USS North Carolina) but Mikawa was more concerned with the carriers. He needed to quickly strike at night and be back up the Slot out of range of their aircraft before dawn.

Mikawa’s ships were almost immediately spotted speeding down The Slot by a Kiwi search plane from New Guinea. Unfortunately, the young pilot mistook the two largest cruisers as seaplane tenders, and Fletcher’s analysts, when they received the report many many hours later, assumed the Japanese were attempting to replace the seaplane base destroyed at Gavutu with another farther up the island chain. They dismissed the report. About 0130 on 9 August 1942, Mikawa skillfully approached Savo Island unhindered and undetected by the Allies.

The evening before, Adm Turner’s escorts of eight American and Australian heavy cruisers and eight destroyers under Australian Rear Admiral Victor Crutchley were deployed in three groups to protect the vulnerable transports. One each east, north, and south of Savo Island with a two destroyer radar picket northwest of the island. About midnight, Crutchley was called to confer with a furious Turner, after Turner and Vandegrift had been informed that Fletcher planned to depart the Guadalcanal area with the carriers and the North Carolina to refuel. With Crutchley’s departure to confer with Turner, command of the escorts fell to Capt Howard Bode of the Chicago in the southern group. However, he didn’t tell the other groups.

(The reasons for Fletcher’s departure is another entire post. However, one point needs to be brought up – In one of those quirks of fate, the North Carolina, the most powerful surface vessel in the South Pacific at that moment, should not have needed to refuel and should have been present for the upcoming fight. However two weeks before, Fletcher’s tactical commander, in direct command of the carriers and battleship, arrived at Fiji a day late because his chart had an incorrect location for the Intl Date Line. This meant the thirsty North Carolina had to spend one less day in port and couldn’t fully refuel. By 8 Aug, she was running on the capital ship equivalent of fumes, and had to depart the area, thereby missing the battle. Whether or not that chart cost a lot of lives is a matter of speculation, but “The Showboat’s” nine 16″ guns, 20 5″ guns, and more importantly her powerful search radar, were almost certainly missed that night.)

Capt. Bode at the time was more concerned with a submarine threat in the confined waters of the Savo Sound. Furthermore, like everyone else in the task force and on Fletcher’s staff, he didn’t take into consideration Mikawa’s initiative and audacity, and assumed that any Japanese surface response would require at least another day. Moreover, he was an old school surface warrior, and like most American senior naval officers at the time, didn’t really understand the capabilities and limitations of the new fangled radar systems recently installed on their ships. Bode assumed that radar would give away his position (he was right, but years too early as the technology to do so hadn’t matured yet) so he forbade the use of the search radar, and allowed only a single sweep of the fire control radar, which missed the Japanese. He relied on the picket destroyers’ radar to give early warning, but their radars were seriously degraded by echoes from the nearby islands and had but 1/4 the range briefed by the manufacturer. Even so, the southern picket came within 2km of Mikawa’s force and failed to sight them. The much more vigilant northern picket spotted them at 0143, but by that time Mikawa’s torpedoes were already in the water. Minutes later, his cruisers’ big guns were raking Bode’s southern group.

The watch officers of the HMAS Canberra and USS Chicago in the southern group barely had a chance to sound general quarters. Lookouts spotted flashes in the distance that they thought were lightning or fires on Savo Island. A few seconds after the northern picket reported “strange ships” – Mikawa’s float planes dropped flares, powerful search lights illuminated the two ships, and ranging shots and torpedoes littered the water around them.

Almost immediately the Canberra was dead in the water and burning, and the Chicago was holed below the water line, battered up top, and steaming west out of the fight. Neither fired their weapons, nor even reported contact. Mikawa then turned on the unsuspecting northern group.

“Unsuspecting” may be the wrong word: There were certainly indications of what was going on to the south. “Disbelieving” may be better. The northern picket’s warning of “strange ships” was missed amongst the “administrivia” chatter of the midship watch. The sounds of gunfire was dismissed as fire support for the Marines. The light show and flares were assumed to be star shells fired by destroyers, fires on the beaches, or lightning. The sound of planes overhead were believed to be non threatening. One radar operator, convinced he was seeing Japanese in his scope, was relieved and threatened with a stay in the brig for falsely reporting “echoes” on his scope. Together the clues paint a picture of incompetence, but after 48 hours of constant battle stations and air attack, there was just enough possibility for a benign explanation of each isolated report that the exhausted crews could excuse them away, especially since surface contact wasn’t expected til the next evening. The only ship in the northern group at general quarters was the Astoria, and then only because a defiant young lieutenant pulled the alarm lever in front of his incredulous captain. The young man was still standing tall getting his ass chewed by his furious superior when the first Japanese shells slammed amidships. His “mutinous actions” saved more than a few lives that night.

American crew battle drills at this point in the war were still rooted in peace time operations, in particular the move to general quarters. It was akin to a massive “game of musical chairs”. Each crew member had a watch station for normal cruising, and a battle station in the event of general quarters. Since battle stations required positions for the entire crew, chances were likely that these positions were different because the senior crew member always occupied the important positions during battle stations. If during the watch a junior crew member occupied a position, say navigation for example, during battle stations he would be replaced by a more experienced crew member. This requires a quick “change over” brief to pass the position’s responsibilities, then the junior crew member would go to his own assigned position, where it was very likely he’d be senior to the person already there, which would require another brief. This process of moving from normal watch stations to battle stations could take several minutes in the best of circumstances. In peacetime this was acceptable; in wartime when seconds mattered and the first combatant to put steel on target usually won, this was a death sentence.

Mikawa would say later that he was impressed with the tenacity and potential firepower of the northern group, especially the Astoria, and had the Americans had any warning the battle would have been much different. But the Japanese surprise was effectively complete and they were simply quicker to put ordnance on target. It didn’t help that American fire prevention and damage control were non-existent or woefully antiquated. By 0215, all three cruisers of the northern group, the Vincennes, Quincy, and Astoria, were on fire and sinking.

In less than 35 minutes, one Australian and three American capital ships were out of action, the rest scattered, more than a thousand sailors were killed, and thousands more wounded and floating in the shark infested waters. The rout of the invasion force’s escort task force was complete. Adm King in Washington would call the Battle of Savo Island “the blackest day of the war” for the US Navy. Only two American cruisers remained: the anti aircraft cruiser Juneau in the eastern group, who had no gun larger than 5″, and Crutchley’s HMAS Australia which was intermingled with Turner’s transports. The Japanese suffered only two hits and a few dozen casualties.

But most disconcertingly, Turner’s transports lay naked and exposed under the harsh phosphorescent glare of the flares dropped by Mikawa’s scout planes. They were at the mercy of the Japanese.

Of the two hits suffered by the Japanese, one struck Mikawa’s flagship, the Chokai, and nearly killed him and his staff. In the confusion of that hit from the Astoria, Mikawa assumed the rest of his ships were suffering as badly. This however was not the case. Furthermore, Mikawa commanded escorts at Pearl Harbor, Coral Sea, and Midway, and had a very healthy respect for naval air power. He did not want to be caught in range at first light. He calculated that he needed to commence the engagement of the transports no later than 0130 in order to be safely away by dawn. It was almost an hour later and he was still twenty miles from them and getting father away by the minute. Finally, he had no idea of the disposition of the remaining escorts, including the battleship and the carrier escorts. He felt he couldn’t risk almost certain destruction of the only Japanese fighting ships in the Solomons. So he continued back up the Slot.

The battered and confused Americans were astonished when it became clear that Mikawa was continuing north, away from the vital transports.

Turner’s transports were saved, but they wouldn’t do Vandegrift’s Marines any good, at least in the short term. Unbeknownst to Mikawa, Fletcher’s carriers were already headed in the opposite direction to refuel. With no air cover, and most of his escorts sunk, Turner had to follow.

As the sun rose, the Marines on Guadalcanal gazed out into what the Navy was now calling “Iron Bottom Sound”, they saw empty ocean.

The 1st Marine Division was all alone.

In mid July, Admiral Frank Fletcher’s Task Force’s 61 and Rear Admiral Kelly Turner’s Task Force 62 began sailing for the Solomon Islands. Task Force 61 consisted the American aircraft carriers USS Wasp, Enterprise and Saratoga and Task Force 62 consisted of the transports carrying the invasion force. By the end of the month, the 75 ships of both Task Forces finally finished picking up the scattered Marine garrisons sent to the islands of the South Pacific to defend against the threatened Japanese invasions of New Zealand, Australia, and American Pacific possessions such as Samoa and Fiji; the threat of which ended with the Japanese loss at Midway.

On 31 July 1942, off the island of Fiji, both Task Forces did a full dress rehearsal of the future landings in the Solomons. Radio traffic for the rehearsal was picked up by Japanese signal’s intelligence. However, the Japanese assumed the Americans were going to reinforce the Australians in New Guinea, who were hard pressed defending against the recent offensive along the Kokoda track leading to Port Moresby. The rehearsal was absolute chaos, so much so that the Marines never actually landed on the beach.Nonetheless on 1 August 1942, the ships carrying Maj General Alexander Vandegrift’s 1st Marine Division left Fiji for their objectives of the Florida islands and the islands of Tulagi and Guadalcanal.

On 7 August, 1942, 2/5 Marines and the 2nd Raider Battalion splashed ashore unopposed on the island of Tulagi. The island was the Japanese administrative center for their forces in the area, and the Marines occupied the northwest half of the island as the surprised Japanese withdrew to the hills and caves of the southeast. With darkness approaching, the Marines settled in to wait for the morning to continue the assault. The admin personnel of the Yokohama Air Group, reinforced by a detachment from the elite Japanese Special Naval Landing Force didn’t wait.

Starting around 2230, five successive banzai charges hammered the Marine lines, breaking through twice, and infiltrators spread out behind the Marines’ main line of resistance. The Raider battalion’s headquarters saw significant hand to hand combat throughout the night. However, the Japanese took massive casualties, and after landing a third battalion on the island, Tulagi was secured by the night of the 8th. The Marines got their first taste of what was to come over the next year. A short distance away in the Florida Islands, they’d get a taste of what to come for the rest of the war.

Gavutu and Tanambogo were two islets in the Florida Islands connected by a causeway and located about three miles east of Tulagi. These two mutually supporting islets contained a seaplane base and were heavily defended by the bulk of the Yokohama Air Group personnel and Special Naval Landing Force. But unlike Tulagi, there was no room for banzai charges and infiltration tactics on what was essentially two giant mounds of coral. So the Japanese blasted deep bunkers in depth that covered every possible landing approach, from which they were determined to die in place inflicting as many casualties as possible.

U.S. Navy cruisers and destroyers really worked over the seaplane base, but in their zeal destroyed the only covered landing zone, the supply pier, which was shielded from interlocking Japanese fields of fire by buildings. The Marines would have to approach and land on the exposed beaches.

At noon on the 7th, the the 1st Marine Parachute Battalion, in landing craft, assaulted into the teeth of the alert and awaiting Japanese. The paratroopers (Parachutists? Paramarines?) were massacred as they assaulted the beaches of Gavutu. Barely establishing a beachhead, what followed was a day long knife fight involving flamethrowers and satchel charges with every single covered and concealed Japanese machine gun as they advanced south to capture the island, all the while receiving accurate fire to their rear from Tanambogo.

Vandegrift ordered a company sized landing on Tanambogo that evening to clear the machine guns, but there were 600 Japanese packed on the tiny islet. The Marine company was slaughtered. Only 12, including the company commander, managed to even set foot on the islet. When darkness fell they were sure to be killed. Recognizing his dilemma, the captain led his men in a mad sprint in the twilight down the causeway to Gavutu. The astonished Japanese never fired on them.

The next day Vandegrift ordered his reserve battalion to Tanambogo, and the fighting mimicked Gavutu. However, with the threat to their rear distracted, the Parachute Battalion was able to reorganize and systematically reduce the remaining defenders. Tanambogo fell shortly thereafter.

Compared to Tulagi, Gavutu, and Tanambogo, the main landings by the 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal were easy. The Japanese construction battalion that was slowly building an airfield there (the soon-to-be renamed Henderson Field) abandoned their equipment and supplies, and fled into the jungle. They left engines running, teapots boiling, and food on the tables, such was their haste. The Marines pushed inland and were greeted by a joyous former British colonial official and a Melanesian Sergeant Major who both worked for the Australian Coast Watchers. A defensive perimeter was established and Turner brought his transports closer in to expedite unloading.

The successful American landings in the Solomon islands were a strategic, operational, and tactical surprise to the Japanese. To their credit they responded immediately. The first Japanese air attacks from bases farther up the Solomons arrived on the evening of the 7th. However they were uncoordinated, spotted early by coast watchers, and easily defeated by the anti aircraft fire from the escorting cruisers and destroyers. It was a far cry from the Japanese destruction of Prince of Wales and Repulse under similar circumstances earlier in the war.

The Americans around Guadalcanal had fought a tough battle in trying circumstances against a determined and spirited enemy and had come out on top, with all objectives secured. Fletcher was feeling pretty confident as American forces settled in on the night 8 August 1942.

Vice Admiral Gunichi Mikawa (We will hear his name again) would shorty disabuse him of that notion.

In late May 1940, German panzers unexpectedly broke through, and even though the British and French armies gave a good account of themselves when they had the opportunity to fight, they were cut off in Belgium and northern France. When the Germans reached the channel coast, Allied command and control had completely broken down and widespread panic infected every command echelon above division. Reacting to French chaotic political leadership, the new British Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered the British Expeditionary Force to fall back to the port of Dunkirk, even though only about 40% had actually come into contact with the Germans. The British withdrawal completely unhinged what was left of the Allied line and would force the surrender of the Belgian Army to the north (something the Belgians still haven’t forgiven them for). The troops were needed to defend against any German invasion of the British Isles.

After their lightning quick advance across France, the German panzers needed time to resupply and reorganize, so Hitler stopped them and turned the destruction of the BEF at Dunkirk over to the Luftwaffe. This fateful decision gave the British and French much needed time to organize a defense of the port by sixteen British infantry battalions, which they defended with a tenacity and aggressiveness they had not exhibited so far in the campaign. Furthermore, this time allowed them to coordinate doomed last stands by outliers, such as the defenders at Calais and the French First Army at Lille, that could buy the Royal Navy time to evacuate the 400,000 troops that packed the area around Dunkirk. The British, French, and Belgian soldiers maintained their discipline for the most part. They calmly, if resignedly, sat in formation on the beach waiting for The Word on whether they would be rescued or ordered to surrender. Though there was a cloud of about 35,000 stragglers, mostly in the town where fires raged out of control. Nonetheless, that many troops in so small an area with little food, water, or medical care made the sandy Dunkirk beaches on the 25 and 26th of May crowded and chaotic. Additionally, a choking pall of smoke blanketed the area from a nearby burning oil refinery. This made life uncomfortable, but helped with the daylight air attacks on the exposed men on the beaches. However, it did not prevent them. Most disconcertingly though, the port was wrecked from Luftwaffe bombing and its docks and quays in shambles. Churchill ordered the men evacuated, but the Royal Navy estimated they would only be able to get 40,000 off the beaches, just 10% of the troops waiting at Dunkirk.

On 26 May, 1940, the Royal Navy and Air Force launched Operation DYNAMO to evacuate as many troops as possible from the port and off the beaches around Dunkirk. That afternoon, Capt. Bill Tennant landed with 16 officers and 160 sailors to organize the evacuation on the beach. To do this they had to coordinate the troops on the shore with over 150 ships packed into the harbor. However, the drafts of most of the ships were too deep to get close to the beach. To mitigate this, the Royal Navy confiscated or requisitioned every small boat on the Thames and on the southeast coast of England. The 700 “Little Ships of Dunkirk” were yachts, fishing boats, lifeboats (British for coast guard cutters), trawlers, tugboats, ferries, paddle steamers, and shipping steamers, and mostly crewed by naval personnel but many by civilian owners and their crews. The smallest was the Tamzine, a 15 ft fishing boat that brought off over 100 soldiers (it’s in the Imperial War Museum in London). Over nine days the Little Ships brought the soldiers off the beach and ferried them to the larger ships off shore, while the bigger ships rotated past the East Mole.

To Tennant’s surprise, he discovered the East Mole still intact later that night. The East Mole was a breakwater for the harbor, and extended nearly a mile into the Channel. It should say something about the state of confusion on the beach that it took him nearly seven hours to discover a mile long breakwater that could be used as dock. Nevertheless, with the East Mole available, ships could be loaded directly. There was a glimmer of hope for remainder that the Royal Navy didn’t plan to evacuate.

Under constant air attack, about 250 of the 900 ships that took part in “The Miracle at Dunkirk” were sunk. Furthermore, German shore batteries up the coast forced the remaining ships and boats to take a much longer bypass that circumvented the fire. Despite these obstacles, between 27 May and 3 June 1940, the Royal Navy rescued 330,000 much needed troops so they could fight again another day.

After the horrible news of the last three weeks, the British population was jubilant at the unexpected success of the evacuation. “The Spirit of Dunkirk” still refers to the idea of British courage, solidarity, and triumph in the face of overwhelming odds and adversity.

But amidst all of the celebration, Winston Churchill, ever the pragmatist, would remind the country, “We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations.”

The Battle of the Coral Sea temporarily checked a direct seaborne invasion of Port Moresby on the southeastern coast of Papua. The Battle of Midway, whose magnitude of defeat the Japanese Imperial General Staff only publicly acknowledged in the beginning of July, made any seaborne threat to Port Moresby highly unlikely. With no air cover from the remaining Japanese carriers (the Zuikaku and Shokaku were still in port until mid-July, 1942), any invasion force would be at the mercy of land based bombers. Moreover, it was obvious MacArthur would attempt to build airfields on the north coast of Papua to extend their reach (He would. However, the never fully realized Operation Providence didn’t get out of the reconnaissance and security phase). For Lieut Gen Harukichi Hyakutake (we will hear his name again) the commander of the Japanese 17th Army in Rabaul, New Guinea and Papua needed to be secured by any means possible.

The Japanese decided to assess the feasibility of seizing Port Moresby by land. A Japanese reconnaissance pilot detected what he thought was a road connecting Port Moresby in the south with Buna on the north coast of Papua. However, the Kokoda Track was nothing but a slippery and sodden 60 mile trail that turned into a morass of deep mud whenever it rained, which was often. To complicate matters further, the Kokoda Track snaked over the Owen Stanley Range. The Owen Stanley Range is some of the harshest and most forbidding terrain on the planet: steep and tall mountains with jagged cliffs covered in dense jungle and moss covered upland swamps. Furthermore, he reported the Track as much wider than the overblown hiking trail it was. The staff of the Japanese 17th Army in Rabaul was skeptical of its the actual size, but there were no other options: the Japanese needed to secure Port Moresby as part of their outer perimeter. So Hyakutake requested the Japanese 4th Fleet land troops on northeastern Papua at Buna and Gona to secure a beachhead and recce the “road”.The defense of Port Moresby was the only reason preventing a Japanese invasion of northern Australia. And that the Kokoda Track was the only remaining way to get there was not lost on the Australians. This made Buna the next obvious Japanese target. 

On 25 June 1942, the newly formed Australian New Guinea Force launched Operation Maroubra (named after a Sydney suburb) to defend Buna, and prevent the Japanese from seizing the village of Kokoda and its airfield in the northern foothills of the Owen Stanley Range.

On 12 July, the Australian 39th Battalion of the 30th Brigade, a militia unit formed just after Pearl Harbor that so far spent the war as Port Moresby’s garrison, arrived in Kokoda after a grueling, if uncontested, two week march on the trail. With the Papuan Infantry Battalion at Buna, another militia unit with native Papuans and Australian officers, the 39th Battalion was referred to as the ad hoc “Maroubra Force” to distinguish them from other 30th Brigade units on the southern side of the Owen Stanley Range. They arrived none too soon.

On 21 July 1942, the Japanese launched Operation Ri, and landed the South Seas Force at Buna. The South Seas Force was a brigade sized naval landing force consisting of an infantry battalion, elite marine company, and an independent engineer regiment with native laborers from Rabaul. The Japanese commander, a well-connected lieutenant colonel, appropriated the engineers to act as infantry. Together, they quickly overwhelmed the reinforced Papuan battalion at Buna, and on the 25th broke through the 39th‘s defenses at the entrance to the Kokoda Track. Despite their men being used as infantry, the engineer officers surmised that it would take six porters to supply every soldier on the track. This was a ludicrous requirement even by the shoestring standards of Japanese logistics.in response, the aggressive and proud commander just had the engineers augment the native porters, and attacked south, determined to take Port Moresby.

With the loss of Buna and Kokoda, the Maroubra Force was not off to an auspicious start. But they came into their own in their dogged delaying actions and fierce counterattacks at bayonet point back down the Kokoda Track. The diggers made the Japanese pay dearly for every ridge and every blood soaked meter of trail. On 8 August, the 39th actually retook Kokoda briefly, and even buried their commander, who had been killed there the week before. When the Japanese landed, the rest of 30th Brigade began the march up the track and reinforced the 39th and the remaining Papuans. But the casualties were heavy, and the supplies over the track only came in trickles. The brigade commander was killed and the Maroubra Force fought on under the newly arrived but indomitable commander of the 39th, LieutCol Ralph Honner, with the other battalion also under their own junior officers. For over a month, the Japanese continually smashed into them with successive banzai charges, slowly pushing the Australians back. But the Japanese were suffering horrendous casualties, and in order to save face, Hyakutake was required to continually feed troops into the Kokoda Track. These troops were much needed on Guadalcanal where American Marines had landed on 7 August.

About the time the Marines were hanging on to Henderson Field by their fingernails, the Australian 21st Brigade of the veteran 7th Division arrived and its commander, Brigadier Arnold Potts, assumed command of the Maroubra Force and the remnants of 30th Brigade. The 21st was a regular formation with extensive experience in the Western Desert and fighting in Syria and Lebanon. They had no jungle training or experience, but they quickly learned from the 30th Brigade troops – grizzled veterans after a month on the Track. 

In punishing conditions that Allied medical professionals would study to determine how long a human being can survive on the line in the jungle before they’re permanently broken (three months), Potts and the Maroubra Force slowly fell back and bled the Japanese. For another month, the Japanese threw troops down the Kokoda Trail in an ever lengthening supply line and sledgehammered the Australian positions. However, as Japanese strength grew, these banzai charges were just fixing attacks that supported flanking columns which attempted to “trail block” the Australians until they withdrew. (The same technique worked very well against the British in Burma). But the Japanese focus on getting combat troops into the fight on the Kokoda Track meant there was little throughput for logistics. For example, the Japanese engineers were thrown into the fight as infantry before they could actually do what they were meant to do, turn Buna and Gona into a proper port and improve the Track. Many Japanese units were unsupported and withering away.

The Japanese were literally sacrificing the lives of their soldiers by assaulting the Australian positions before they starved to death. The problem for Brigadier Potts was it was actually working.

Maroubra Force was in close contact with the Japanese for all of August and most of September. At no point in time were the nearest Japanese farther than 30 meters from the Potts’ main line of resistance. There was at least a platoon passage of lines to the rear under heavy pressure every day. To exasperate the Japanese supply situation, Potts’ established “Chaforce” and “ Honnerforce”, both about 400 man ad hoc task forces, to raid the Kokoda Track to the north. Nonetheless, the Japanese still came on.

MacArthur and some armchair strategists in Australia were concerned with the Japanese advance, and several Australian officers were sacked, fueled by wild tales of panicked abandon of positions. But they failed to grasp the extreme conditions on the Kokoda Trail: the heat, humidity, the thickness of the vegetation, disease, even the cold at the higher elevations. Furthermore, they failed to even acknowledge the lengths the Japanese were willing to go to maintain an overwhelming superiority in numbers, which never dropped below four to one.

While the Japanese advance continued, the Australian buildup at Port Moresby was slowly gaining momentum. The rest of the Australian 7th Division arrived, and on 7 September the indefatigable 39th Battalion was withdrawn from the line. Of the 800 men that started up the trail two months before, just 30 remained. 

But what cannot continue indefinitely, eventually will not. Just as the fighting on the Kokoda Track relieved pressure on the US Marines on Guadalcanal, the reverse was true in September: The losses suffered by the Japanese in the Solomon’s forced Hyakutake to suspend operations on New Guinea until “the Guadalcanal matter was resolved”.

Maroubra Force held, despite the Japanese within sight of Port Moresby.

In mid-September, Potts turned over the Maroubra Force to the commander of the recently arrived 25th Brigade, who withdrew to Imita Ridge, the last effective natural barrier before Port Moresby. Despite Hyakutake’s orders, the Japanese tried one last push before they moved into defensive positions. They failed.

After a brief respite, it was time to do it all over again, but this time in reverse. In late September, after it was obvious the Japanese suspended the offensive, the Australians began attacking back up the Kokoda Track. For the first time in the Pacific War, the Japanese were on the operational defensive.

The Japanese would prove as tenacious in the defense, as they were aggressive and courageous on the attack.