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Guadalcanal

PRB

PRB

Administrator
Staff member
I've been reading books about the Pacific War since I could read, and the Guadalcanal Campaign places high on the list of subjects I've consumed over the years. One of the enduring “points of view”, lets say, on Guadalcanal has been the notion that the Navy “ran out” and left the Marines to fend for themselves after the landings in early August, 1942. I've never quite bought into that, and always defended the navy's “point of view”. Still, one can certainly understand how it looked that way to the Marines on the ground. After so many years of reading about this stuff, I learned a shocking statistic in James D. Hornfischer's new book Neptune's Inferno, The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal. Total US Army/USMC KIA from August 1942 to February 1943 stands at 1,592. US Navy KIA during the same period: 5,041. This isn't something it ever would have occurred to me to look up, and in 2012 I suppose it's enough to say it was a bloody mess, for all hands, on both sides. But I did find it interesting...
 
In Barret Tillman's book on the SBD Dauntless, he has a whole chapter devoted to Guadalcanal. The Marine SBD's were backed up with Navy SBD squadrons that were ordered in when their carriers were damaged. A lot of missions were flown with the Navy and Marines flying together as a group (quite often because it took both groups to get together enough operational aircraft to make up squadron strength).

The Navy lost Wasp and Hornet during Guadalcanal. And I know the Battle of Savo Island was fought in support of the Guadalcanal campaign.
 
Neptune's Inferno is, IMHO, the definitive book about Guadalcanal. If you haven't read it already (surprised if you haven't) get your hands on Guadalcanal Diary by Richard Tregaskis. Written in 1942 with an eye toward the censors in that day and age, it's nonetheless a good read. I read it in high school, back when scrolls were the norm, but bought a decent copy some years ago.

A couple of others you might consider that deal with the Solomon Island campaign are:

Pacific War Diaryby James Fahey.
Disaster in the Pacific by Denis and Peggy Warner.
Destoyer Squadron 23 by Ken Jones.

There are others, of course, but those three are my favorite.

Bob
 
On the other side of the coin is "Japanese Destroyer Captain" by Temeichi Hara. It is a good book with background on training and deployment of IJN destroyer units. It ends with the final mission of the Yamato with the author in command of the DD unit escorting the Yamoto and the pummeling that they all took from USN airplanes.

Another good book from the US Navy side is "South Pacific Destroyer" by Russell Crenshaw. It gives a good account of the day in and day out duties of sailors and DDs in the Solomons.
 
Lots of good books! I haven't read Destroyer Squadron 23, but all the others I have. Jag, those two destroyer books are fantastic.

Another classic is The Cactus Air Force, by Thomas G. Miller (1669)
A really great read is Alone on Guadalcanal, A Coastwatcher's Story, by Martin Clemens (1998).
 
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