Gona fell on 9 December. The Japanese attacked Isurava on 26 August, and the Australians were forced to retreat by the end of the month. New Guinea had been a key part of the Japanese defensive perimeter, and the Allied victories on the island had repeated forced them to pull that perimeter back before eventually breaching it altogether. On 25 Aug, 2,400 men of the 5th Kure Special Naval Landing Force and the 5th Sasebo Special Naval Landing Force (non-combat) landed at Milne Bay under the command of Commander Shojiro Hayashi. Battle of the Bismarck Sea (1943) 12. As long as the Japanese held this coast they could damage any Allied naval force attempting to pass between New Guinea and New Britain. British Commonwealth units could not hold the Malayan Peninsula, falling back to the island fortress of Singapore. He was ordered to try and expel the Americans from Aitape and Hollandia, but soon realised that he only had the strength for the Aitape operation. The Japanese expected the Allies to attack Salamaua and Lae. . On 5 September the Japanese reached the 'Gap', the high pass across the Owen Stanley range, and began to advance south, down the mountains towards Port Moresby. Buna, New Guinea Campaign. At the cost of only four aircraft they sank all eight transports and four of the destroyers. 10 July 1943: American and British forces land on Sicily. These were carried out by General Eichelberger's I Corps. There is little new in Gailey's works, but the coverage is relatively good and thorough at the regimental level and above. Some of the islands off the coast of New Guinea also played a major part on the fighting. This left Madang undefended, and it fell to the Australians on 24 April, two days after the start of the next major leapfrogging attack. American soldiers of the 32nd US Division complete an amphibious assault near Pongani … This fighting is generally split into three campaigns - first the Salamaua-Lae Campaign and then the parallel Huon Peninsula and Finisterre Range campaigns. At the start of the campaign the eastern part of the island was in the Southeast Area, with its HQ at Rabaul. The Australians then began to advance around the coast, heading towards the Japanese base at Sio. . Instead the main Japanese fleet carried out a damaging but ultimately pointless raid into the Indian Ocean. They then launched a counterattack of their own, beginning on 16 November. It quickly became clear that the Japanese were intending to attack Port Moresby. On the same day all thee airfields on the island were captured and two were in use by the end of July. It also came under German rule, as New Mecklenburg, and shared the fate of New Britain during and after the First World War. It was a major offensive base during the Papuan campaign, then the target of the first major Allied offensive after their victory in Papua. It gained in importance after the loss of Lae and Salamaua and the Japanese were determined to hold onto it. The Japanese began to bomb Rabaul on 4 January, using a mix of long range flying boats and carrier aircraft. The New Guinea campaign can be divided into five phases. In the meantime the Japanese Army troops returned to Rabaul and the area was garrisoned by the navy. Battle of Buna-Gona (1942–1943) 10. The first stage of Operation Postern was over. The Americans began a major counterattack on 31 July and by 9 August General Adachi had decided to abandon the attack. By the end of the war the Japanese had been pushed back into a few isolated strongholds in the mountainous interior, although they did still hold their once-powerful base at Rabaul on New Britain and all of nearby New Ireland. The Joint Chief of Staffs approved this plan on 12 March, and D-Day for the new Operation Reckless was set for 22 April. The Australians recaptured Kokoda, and quickly pushed the Japanese out of the Oivi position. By 19 October the attack lost force, and the Australians were able to push the Japanese away. The Japanese fleet left Rabaul on 4 May, with the intention of attacking Port Moresby on 10 May. The Japanese were very well dug in, and the attacks made very slow progress. Elsewhere March saw the effective end of the New Britain campaign, at least until the Australians took over later in 1944. Solomon Islands February 1943 - November 1944 Solomon Islands Descriptions and pictures. World War Two, U.S. - Quick Battle Timeline 1942 USA and World War II, 1942 After the attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, President Roosevelt began to set up a new command structure for United States forces and begin operations against the Japanese in the Pacific Theater while making plans for assisting Great Britain and the allies in North Africa and Europe. He became a w…, Isoroku Yamamoto On 2 February the Japanese Imperial HQ issued orders for the capture of Lae and Salamaua, on the Huon Gulf. The Allied offensive provides the last three phases of the New Guinea campaign. Visual = 5 Content = 5 W8410. An airfield was to be built at Milne Bay, at the eastern tip, while another force was to advance north to secure the Dobodura Area. These attacks came too late to help protect Lae and Salamaua, but the South Seas Detachment was operating on very narrow margins, so the losses here delayed their next amphibious attacks. Retrieved April 15, 2021 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/new-guinea-campaign. February 1943- September 1944: New Guinea Campaign. The Japanese had decided to abandon Madang after the Allied conquest of the Admiralty Islands. A great deal of planning went into the Allied counterattack in the South Pacific. Courtesy of Vincenzo Peluso and Toyoko Yamane-Peluso. Allied operations in New Guinea were essential to the U.S. Navy's drive across the Central Pacific. The Allies now prepared for an attack on the Japanese strongholds. ." On 5 September the US 503rd Airborne landed at Nadzab, a pre-war airfield in the Markham Valley west of Lae. The Vitiaz strait, between New Britain and New Guinea, would become an important shipping lane for both sides. In February 1944, America forces made an amphibious landing near Saidor, linking up with Australian soldiers. 1. The successful carrier attack on the Huon Gulf on 10 March had alerted the Japanese to their presence and so the Japanese decided to commit the fleet carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku to the attack on Port Moresby. Horii's attack on Port Moresby over the Kokoda Trail was timed with a landing at Milne Bay at the eastern tip of New Guinea island. The invasion of Biak had a wider significance. . On 15 February Singapore was overrun with more than 130,000 Allied servicemen taken as P… Expanding across the Pacific and the east Asian mainland, forces sought to conquer territory for the Japanese Empire, and, in particular, to drive out western influences in the region. New airfields were built near the north coast of Papua and supplies were moved around by sea. Although the Japanese continued to press, their attacks failed, and they were soon forced to retreat. The campaign on New Guinea is a very forgotten event. Kevin C. Holzimmer , Walter Krueger, Douglas MacArthur, and the Pacific War: The Wakde‐Sarmi Campaign as a Case Study, Journal of Military History, 59 (October 1995), pp. The first target was Finschhafen, on the eastern tip of the Huon Peninsula. The north-eastern part of the island had been taken by the Germans in the 1880s as German New Guinea. General Douglas MacArthur, the Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA) commander, had secured an airstrip and staging base at Buna on the New Guinea north coast. General Adachi's Eighteenth Army was now pinned between the Americans at Aitape in the west and the Australians coming from Madang in the east. Adachi's aim had been to reinforce Wewak and Hansa Bay, but Operation Reckless left him trapped between two Allied forces. Back on the Huon Peninsula the Australians made steady progress around the coast, pushing the Japanese rearguard back. Second was the Papua campaign, which saw the last major Japanese offensives in New Guinea. It was fought between Allied forces and Japanese troops at Buna, Sanananda and Gona, on the island of New Guinea, from November 16, 1942 to January 22, 1943. The raid failed in its main objective, the destruction of the British Eastern Fleet, and also gave the Americans the time they needed to get their own carriers into the area. On the same day, 23 January, Kavieng on New Ireland was captured without a fight. Overall the equivalent of a complete division was lost at sea during the journey. In June 1944 it was the most heavily fortified Japane…, World War II, U.S. The key position here, Hill 660, was finally captured on 16 January, the same day on which Arawe was declared secure. This island group was to the north of New Guinea, north-west of New Britain and west of New Ireland, at the north-western corner of the Bismarck Sea. The expected victory on Guadalcanal would never come, and the Japanese would be on the defensive on New Guinea for the rest of the war (despite some local counterattacks later in the campaign). About 3,000 Japanese soldiers drowned, and only 950 reached Lae. The western part of the island was part of the Southern Army (Field Marshal Count Hisaichi Terauchi), which was based in the Dutch East Indies. The Oxford Companion to American Military History. Thursday, October 15th, 1942. "New Guinea Campaign Both carriers were thus unavailable for the battle of Midway. On 6 April Japanese troops from Rabaul landed at Lorengau in the Admiralty Islands, and they were secured by 7 April. Both places became major Japanese bases, and the site of airfields. The advance on Salamaua began soon after the Nassau Bay landings, and by the end of August the Japanese had been pushed back to the last defensive positions outside the town. 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