South Pacific
The Story, Part One:
The Situation, August 1942
by Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
October 2024

The American victory at Midway in early June 1942 brought with it a shift in the momentum of the Pacific War. The United States now had the opportunity to go on the offensive, even though the mass mobilization of American industry and manpower had yet to make its true weight felt on the front lines.

Chief of Naval Operations Ernest J. King immediately started planning to follow up the victory with a counter-offensive. The surviving American carriers, Enterprise and Hornet, returned to Pearl Harbor on 15 June, while Saratoga, which arrived too late for the battle, delivered replacement aircraft to Midway Island. A fourth carrier, Wasp, had arrived at San Diego from the Atlantic.

While the Americans had added two carriers to more than balance the loss of Yorktown at Midway, the air groups of Hornet and Enterprise had suffered heavy losses to their dive-bomber and especially their torpedo squadrons. While they re-organized with fresh pilots (including fighter pilots re-assigned to torpedo planes), King met with Nimitz at San Francisco.

Left behind. Escort carrier Long Island (left) and fleet carrier Hornet (right) at Pearl Harbor, 1 August 1942.

Nimitz had considered mounting a carrier raid somewhere in the South Pacific in August, but King wished to press forward far more aggressively. The Americans would seek to capture the seaplane base at Tulagi in the lower Solomon Islands, thereby providing a better shield for the convoy route between the United States and Australia. King intended the seizure of Tulagi as the first step in the conquest of the entire Solomons chain, aimed at the major Japanese base of Rabaul on the upper end of the archipelago.

King had some political maneuvering to accomplish first. He brought the president on board, and placated the massive ego of Douglas MacArthur, commanding the South-West Pacific Area, by including the objective of re-taking the Philippines in the eventual operational directive. MacArthur had promised to return to the American colony after his failed defense of the islands. King also adjusted the theater boundary to move Tulagi from MacArthur’s zone to the South Pacific Area of Vice Admiral Robert Ghormley.

Three of the American carrier task forces would be deployed in the South Pacific; the fourth, Task Force 17 centered around the carrier Hornet, would remain in Hawaiian waters so as not to overload the Allied ability to supply fuel to the naval forces and transports. Hornet instead underwent minor refits at Pearl Harbor and exercised with the battleships of Task Force One, similarly left behind.

Ground forces would consist of the 1st Marine Division, at the time scattered between Hawaii and New Zealand. Its elements moved from New Zealand, Samoa and elsewhere to Fiji, to practice amphibious landings. The practice, held on 29 and 30 July, did not go well. The invasion would go forward anyway, as King and Nimitz had access to decoded Japanese messages tracking their moves.

South Pacific Lines of Communication, 1942.

The Japanese had taken Tulagi on 3 May, and on 6 July they began landing construction troops (mostly Korean laborers) at Lunga Point on Guadalcanal, across Savo Sound (soon to be re-named Ironbottom Sound). Tulagi had a fine natural deep-water harbor, and a small contingent of Australian soldiers and sailors had pulled out before the Japanese arrived. A single Australian-owned plantation had produced copra (sun-dried coconut flesh, later pressed or boiled to produce coconut oil) on Tulagi before the war. The Japanese took over and expanded the Australian installations for their own seaplane base.

The Lunga Point airfield would have been a large Navy installation, from which patrol planes and bombers could range well over the Coral Sea and threaten the Allied hold on the New Hebrides and New Caledonia, as well as the sea route between the United States and Australia. Though the Lunga Point airfield serves today as the international airport of the Solomons’ capital, Honaira, and is rather urbanized, in 1942 the area held few people other than those working several Australian-owned copra plantations.

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Geography made Lunga Point crucial for both sides. Japanese planes stationed there threatened Allied communications, and could support further moves into the South Pacific. From the airfield, Allied planes could support an advance up the Solomon chain, which stretched like a convenient ladder from the Allied bases in the New Hebrides, Fiji and New Caledonia to the strategically-placed port at Rabaul and onward to New Guinea and the Philippines. King’s choice of the offensive’s objective had not been a casual one. The Japanese would draw similar conclusions before long.

In the wake of their defeat at Midway, the Japanese Combined Fleet did its best to avoid discussing the battle at all. Chuichi Nagumo, who had led the First Air Fleet to disaster, retained his command as did his boss, Isoroku Yamamoto. The Japanese still had eight aircraft carriers to the American four, though six of the Japanese flattops were smaller light carriers.

Damage control training: Junyo’s crew tests their fire hoses.

A quick re-designation moved the converted liners Junyo (commissioned in Aprl 1942) and Hiyo (just completing in July 1942) from light to fleet carrier status. Though not as large or as fast as the purpose-built heavy carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku, they could theoretically operate 54 aircraft apiece (compared to 72 for the bigger ships). The Imperial Navy also instituted crash training programs in damage control, increased the ratio of fighters in carrier air groups, and directed that each division of two heavy carriers would be accompanied by one light carrier operating only fighter planes. These doctrinal changes had not yet become practice by the time the Solomons Campaign began.

Planning continued for the Combined Fleet’s next offensive, Operation FS (Fiji-Samoa), the planned occupation of those large island chains and others in the region. That would sever Allied communications between the United States and Australia. In early July, the Imperial Navy’s General Staff delayed the operation. Landings would take place in the New Hebrides in September, in New Caledonia and Fiji in October, and in Samoa in November.

In a new round of conferences, the General Staff replaced the invasion of Samoa with air raids against the islands, and then moved on to indefinitely postpone the entire operation. At the same time, they called off planning for a renewed attempt against Midway Island. Instead, they considered another raid into the Indian Ocean to follow up the one conducted in April 1942. That too would be called off in favor of adopting a defensive posture along the outer perimeter of Japanese-held islands.

The new policy charged Eighth Fleet - assigned to the close blockade of Australia under Operation FS - with the immediate defense of the Solomons. The fleet would be the centerpiece of the newly-activated Outer South Seas area command under Vice Admiral Gunichi Mikawa, who had commanded Section One of Battleship Division Three (Kongo and Hiei) during the Midway operation, where they had escorted the Midway Invasion Force. He left Japan on the 19th aboard his new flagship, the heavy cruiser Chokai.

Mikawa would also have the 6th Cruiser Division, with the four oldest heavy cruisers in the Japanese order of battle, and the 18th Cruiser Squadron, with the three oldest light cruisers. Eight elderly destroyers, five submarines, a minelayer and a submarine tender rounded out the naval component. His small fleet arrived at Truk on 25 July, and at Rabaul on the 30th. Mikawa immediately sent all five of his heavy cruisers to Kavieng on New Ireland, to bring them out of range of Allied aircraft.

Japanese heavy cruiser Kako, shortly after her 1936-37 reconstruction.

For additional air cover, Mikawa would receive the 2nd Air Group, a mixed outfit with one squadron of A6M fighters and one of D3A dive bombers. The group had been formed in May 1942 to help defend New Caledonia after its capture in Operation FS. It arrived at Rabaul on 6 August 1942; none of its planes, though perfectly capable of defending New Caledonia, could reach Guadalcanal or Tulagi from their new base.

They would join the 25th Air Flotilla already present at Rabaul and nearby airbases, with additional bombers and fighters and perhaps most importantly, the long-range reconnaissance seaplanes of the Yokohama Air Group. As well as the Solomons, the flotilla had responsibilities to support Japanese operations in New Guinea.

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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.

Daily Content includes no AI-generated content or third-party ads. We work hard to keep it that way, and that’s a lot of work. You can help us keep things that way with your gift through this link right here.