South Pacific:
Operation Dovetail, Part Three
by Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
January 2025

The decision to suspend the landings appears to have had a deeply negative effect on discipline among the troops left on the beach. While some companies bivouacked as ordered, ate their C-rations, and awaited retrieval, others allowed their men to wander among the abandoned villages, looting homes in search of “souvenirs” despite strict orders forbidding Marines to enter the native settlements. Two companies of the 5th Marines’ 3rd Battalion rounded up pigs and chickens left by the inhabitants (who had been told that their animals would not be harmed) for a massive bonfire and luau. The regimental commander, Col. Leroy Hunt, stalked about making threats to court-martial the officers who should have restrained their men, but in the event did nothing. A platoon of F Company ignored their bellowing sergeant and merrily looted local dwellings. None of these impromptu barbecues seem to have had any security; no pickets protected the feasting, and later sleeping, Marines.

Overnight, Turner sent out a revised plan. No further landings would be made, and those troops still on the beaches would be retrieved. All Marines who had not actually boarded landing craft on the previous day would now do so, tootle up to a point 2,000 yards from the beaches, and then return to their transports.

Navy Lt. Jack Clark, the task force’s repair officer, had stockpiled propellers for the Higgins boats, ordering them from private metal shops in Wellington. That decision saved the operation, as crewmen worked feverishly to repair the landing craft. Meanwhile, Turner - apparently having heavily self-medicated - held a conference aboard his flagship, the transport McCawley, where he raged at his staff over the abysmal performance of the previous day. In particular, he demanded faster loading of Marines into the boats.

A rare photo: Marines board a Higgins boat during Operation Dovetail.

The exercise was to have been repeated on the 30th, this time with simulated naval gunfire and air strikes. Turner called off the landing part, not wishing to see the remainder of his Higgins boats destroyed on Koro’s unforgiving coral. Instead, there would be another loading exercise, with the boats simply motoring about and then returning to their transports.

And there would be a live-fire exercise involving two heavy cruisers, one light cruiser, six destroyers and five minesweepers. The air strike would last thirty minutes, the naval gunfire just five. But that was enough for near-disaster, as Capt. Paul Theiss of the transport Fuller did not understand that his boats were not to land the Marines, and they attempted to take the roasted-pork enthusiasts of the 5th Marines’ 3rd Battalion back to the beach just as the shells were to land. Seeing the boats move past the line of departure, the destroyer Ellett broke formation and cut them off just in time to prevent disaster and mass death. Those Marines who had already landed scrambled back into their boats.

All except for one platoon of Company K, still on the beach when the destroyers Buchanan and Monssen opened fire. The Marines dashed inland, but the destroyers did not fire on their position. Other destroyers scheduled to bombard the still-occupied beach held fire, and the bombardment exercise resumed in the afternoon. Some Marines spent the night on the island and returned to their transports the next morning. Or at least most of them. Three Marines would be left behind on Koro, to be found later by the islanders and returned to the colony’s capital of Suva. All of them apparently rejoined their units; Marine records are not clear on this (apparently two of the three had never been listed as missing by their units).

On the 31st, the Marines repeated the loading exercises, getting into their boats, approaching the island, and then returning to their transports. This time everyone got the memo and no one landed on the island. Operation Dovetail had come to an end, and on 1 August the fleet set sail for Guadalcanal and Operation Watchtower.

LVT(1) amphibious tractors off Guadalcanal. These would become the Marines’ answer to coral reefs.

“I shuddered to think what would happen,” Vandegrift wrote later, with feeling if not good grammar, “if those beaches turned out to be defended in strength.”

Capt. Bill Hawkins of Company B, 5th Marines, had no doubt: “We would have been slaughtered.”

At a final after-action conference held on the Australian heavy cruiser Australia, the escort’s flagship, a raging Turner cast around for someone else to blame, but he had personally chosen Koro after inadequate reconnaissance. The damage to the Higgins boats could easily have forced Operation Watchtower’s delay, thus allowing the Japanese to complete their Lunga Point airfield, or even outright cancellation.

Operation Dovetail revealed extensive problems in Marine amphibious doctrine. Loading took much too long. The boats and the waves of them were put under the command of young, inexperienced Navy officers. Discipline had eroded in some units during the long period spent in transit from the East Coast to New Zealand to Fiji.

The Navy’s gunnery support left much to be desired as well. The cruisers and destroyers had a difficult time hitting a stationary target, something completely contrary to their training to date. Shells landed well behind the beach, or fell short, or ricocheted off the water into the tropical forest. Had the beach been defended, naval gunfire would have been of little help.

Unloading an M2A4 light tank. None of the 1st Marine Division’s tanks came ashore on Koro Island.

When the Marines landed again for real a week later on Guadalcanal and Tulagi, things went much better, at least in terms of moving combat Marines from their ships to the shore. The boats had been repaired, and systems worked out to pool them so that Marines would not be stranded on their ship if too many of its boats failed to operate properly.

Other than that, the lack of practice thanks to Operation Dovetail’s early curtailment showed. The logistical units had not had a chance to rehearse on Koro, and at Guadalcanal supplies piled up on the beaches without enough working parties to move them inland. Naval gunfire support on Tulagi proved pretty much useless. When the cargo vessels withdrew on 9 August after the naval disaster off Savo Island, they took three-quarters of their loads with them.

The invasion force, as it left Fiji.

Guadalcanal had no coral reefs, but future targets would be ringed by them, and Marines would use LVT amphibious tractors (still seen as supply vehicles in July 1942) to cross them. Operation Dovetail allowed the Americans to make stupid mistakes where they could do no harm. And they made a great many of them.

So many, in fact, that Operation Dovetail would be nearly erased from the historical record. The Marine Corps’ official history grants it a few sentences; the Navy’s doesn’t mention it at all. Few secondary histories of the campaign make any mention of it, and then it’s very brief.

The Office of Naval Intelligence issued a classified “Combat Narrative” in January 1943 that provided a few details, but even this report sugar-coated many aspects, claiming that, “On July 28th, for instance, the weather was such as to endanger the ships' boats and tank lighters, and the exercise had to be canceled for the day.” This was an outright lie; the weather was perfect during the day, with clear skies and a full moon at night. The truth was that someone had blundered, but as at Pearl Harbor and later at Savo Island, Kelly Turner escaped responsibility.

As for the Koro Islanders, someone - it’s not clear who - paid out some compensation for the evacuation, in U.S. dollars. No payment was ever offered for the damage done to the villages by the errant naval gunfire, or for the Marines’ vandalism and thievery.

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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, three children, and new puppy. He misses his lizard-hunting Iron Dog, Leopold.

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