What was the course of the Battle of Kuah?

In August 1942, Major General Vander led the 1st Marine Division to land on Kuah Island, and in February 1943, he defeated the Japanese troops stationed on the island and defended Henderson Airfield, winning the war.

<> "The Battle of Kuah Island." Kuah Island is a small, uninhabited island located in the South Pacific Ocean, and its strategic location is extremely important.

Japan hopes to use Kuah Island as a base for controlling sea supremacy in the South Pacific, and the United States has also taken a fancy to this small island and hopes to use it as a springboard for attacking the Japanese mainland.

In August 1942, while the Japanese army continued to strengthen the fortifications of Kuah Island, the US military also formulated a plan to attack Kuah Island.

According to the plan, the US troops quietly reached the sea of Kuah Island early one morning, and while the Japanese defenders on the island were asleep, they launched an attack, and soon seized the beachhead.

Many sleeping Japanese soldiers were blown up before they could open their eyes, and military targets were destroyed one by one.

The U.S. forces began to advance deeper into the island with little resistance, while Japanese sappers who were building airfields hastily retreated deeper into the island's dense forests.

The two sides engaged in a tragic tug-of-war. After repelling the Japanese in two air battles, the American troops successfully landed.

The Japanese fleet was not reconciled, and decided to make a surprise attack on the American troops on the island.

In order to achieve the goal of imitating the attack, the Japanese army adopted the tactic of luring the enemy in an attempt to sink the US aircraft carrier with the planes of the Japanese main aircraft carrier.

Unexpectedly, this plan was discovered by US reconnaissance planes and Australian observation posts, and the US military dispatched the 61st Task Force to meet the battle, and the two sides fought the second naval battle of the Kuah Island Battle in the waters southeast of Kuah Island.

As a result, 90 Japanese planes were destroyed, and the rest retreated in a hurry.

The US military fired at the Japanese troops who forcibly landed on Kuah Island, and the US military fired at them with anti-tank guns hidden behind their positions, as a result of which an entire Japanese column was knocked to the ground.

On the evening of October 25, the Japanese army reorganized the "final decisive attack", which still ended in a crushing defeat.

The United States and Japan fought more than 30 naval battles on Kuah Island, as well as countless bitter battles for position, which lasted from August 1942 to February 1943, and the Japanese army suffered heavy losses and finally abandoned Kuah Island. Since then, the Japanese army has shifted from strategic offensive to strategic defense in the Pacific theater, and the US military has strategically taken the initiative.

The three-day naval battle on Kuah Island is about to enter its final encounter. Halsey pinned all his hopes for the Japanese in the two battleships of the task force of the USS Enterprise, and he ordered Rear Admiral Willis Lee to leave the task force with the battleships "Washington" and "South Dakota" and four destroyers to go north, and to block the enemy's night attack approach. Rear Admiral Lee is "one of the brightest minds in the U.S. Navy" and an expert on shipborne radar.

Expecting the night battle to be extremely difficult, he devised a prudent plan of action: fighting in the open sea near Cape Esperance. That night, Lee's flagship "Washington" sailed past the "Iron Bottom Bay".

Affected by the large number of sunken ships underwater, the magnetic compass on the battleship kept turning back and forth. The wind blowing from the shore used to carry a strong rancid smell, but tonight there was a surprising smell of honeysuckle, which the American sailors on deck thought was a good omen. Late at night, the moonlight reflected the undulating silhouette of the Cape Esperance hills, and two giant American warships, led by four destroyers, passed through Savo Island along a southeasterly shipping lane.

Lee estimated that the Japanese would arrive at 11 p.m. Sure enough, when the expected moment of battle approached, the radar screen of the "Boomington" spotted the enemy ship group.

After the Battle of Kuah, Isoroku Yamamoto sat in Truk, the capital of the Caroline Islands, and watched closely and uneasily the American troops approaching Rabaul. The strategic deployment of the US military in the South Pacific is to form a pincer offensive against Rabaul, Japan's most important naval and air base in the southwest Pacific, which is located in the northeastern part of the island of New Britain in the Bismarck archipelago, near the northernmost tip of the Solomon Islands. Admiral MacArthur personally led the army, navy, and air force of the Southwest Pacific Theater from New Guinea to the west, and Admiral Halsey led the US Pacific Third Fleet north along the Solomon 11 Islands to carry out a separate encirclement from two directions.

In late April 1943, just as Yamamoto was actively planning a new round of air offensives and was on his way to the front line to inspect the air crew, his plane was ambushed by US fighter planes who had broken the code in advance and had obtained information, and crashed into the reckless jungle in the northern Solomon Islands. Yamamoto became famous for his successful surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the base of the US Pacific Fleet, and his killing undoubtedly greatly encouraged the confidence of the US officers and men in victory. Admiral Halsey's amphibious forces, with the strong support of the fleet and air forces, crushed the stubborn resistance of the Japanese on the island chain of the Solomon Islands, and the reinforcement of the defenders on the island by Japanese surface ships and aviation, seized Bougainville, the largest island in the northern Solomon Islands, in November 1943, climbing to the last step of the strategic ladder that rendered Rabaul useless.

Engineer units began to build an airfield on the island, just 220 nautical miles from Rabaul, where Admiral Halsey's bombers, under the cover of fighter jets, could bomb Rabaul and all areas of the Bismarck Islands. At the other end of the pincer offensive, General MacArthur took complete control of the northeastern part of the island of New Guinea after one quick decisive battle after another, and then landed on the island of New Britain, and the US forces in the southwest Pacific broke through the air and sea lines based on the Bismarck Islands. The fortress of Rabaul was encircled by the Allies, and several other remaining Japanese strongholds, which had lost sea and air supremacy, were completely paralyzed.

Admiral Koga, who succeeded Yamamoto as commander of the Combined Fleet, had to abandon the defense of Rabaul and abandon the 125,000 Japanese troops scattered in the Bismarck and the Northern Solomon Islands far behind the Allied rear.