Secrets of Guadalcanal

One of the ships sunk during the battle.

The battle started in August of 1942.

The film then talks about coast watchers who kept track of Japanese movements, and the crytologists who broke the Japanese naval code JN25.

The Allies find out that the Japanese were building an airfield on Guadalcanal.

If they finished it then they could cut off the sea routes from the United States to Australia, leaving the Americans with no choice but to attack the island.

Yamamoto had warned the Emperor that, if they went to war, he could win for six months, but beyond that the American industrial might would give them the edge.

After Doolittle bombed Tokyo and some of his planes flew right over the Emperor's palace it was decided to attack Midway.

The Japanese planned to attack Port Moresby so the United States sent two carriers to the Coral Sea. The Lexington carrier caught fire and had to be abandoned. There was one Japanese carrier damaged so they gave up on the Port Moresby invasion.

The Japanese plan of attack.

At this point in the battle the Japanese did not know the American carriers were nearby and they had also failed to totally cripple Midway Island. The planes returned to their carriers to refuel.

After losing a lot of planes and pilots the course of the war was changed in five minutes when the American dive-bombers found the Japanese carriers and attacked. Three of the four Japanese carriers were destroyed. The film skips some aspects of the battle including the fact that a fourth Japanese carrier was destroyed.

Since Japan could not quickly replace lost ships (the Americans could, though, and that became a major factor in the eventual United States victory), it meant that all their holdings in the Pacific were subject to attack.

A southern approach to attacking Japan was accepted. Because of some difficulties between the Army and the Navy the area was divided into parts that the Army would attack and parts that the Navy would attack.

Task 1, the attack on Guadalcanal, was assigned to the Navy to carry out.

The beaches were taken without opposition. The entire operation, though, was riddled with problems since the soldiers were fairly new and the Navy pilots had no experience with amphibious operations. On nearby islands, though, the Americans faced stiff Japanese resistance.

The Americans took the airfield. The battle itself for the island took six months with the Japanese wanting the airfield back and able to do a lot of resupplying of their troops and attacking the Americans at night.

One goal of the Japanese was to destroy the American transports. The Japanese wiped out almost all the defending ships but then withdrew, thinking carrier planes would attack them in the morning.

The Japanese launched an attack on the Marines but without using any ship or any planes. They were beaten back with heavy losses.

The Americans sank a light Japanese carrier. They didn't send any planes to protect the bombers, though. They had their fighter planes launched and wait overhead for the expected Japanese attack.

The carrier Enterprise was badly damaged. The next day American planes flying from Henderson Field on Guadalcanal attacked the Japanese transports.

The Japanese planned another major attack.

During the subsequent battle the carrier Hornet was hit by bombs, torpedoes, and two kamikaze planes also attacked.

Although this part of the battle was a technical win for the Japanese, in effect it was a loss since they lost so many planes, veteran pilots and technical crews.

There were more ship battles, and the United States lost more ships, but they still had more ships in reserve and gradually they got the upper hand on the Japanese ships. The Americans also had more planes that they could use in their attacks and the Japanese efforts to keep putting more troops on Guadalcanal began to fail.

Natives killed some of the starving Japanese and cut their heads off. By the end of the battle the Japanese suffered 25,000 dead and around 1,000 taken prisoner.



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