Seealder and Manus would become an important American naval base for the rest of the war. The mainstay of the Japanese defense was a Those accomplishments and sacrifices are forever his and deserve Both places became major Japanese bases, and the site of airfields. month and eventually pushed the enemy away from its perimeter. The Japanese had been attempting to build a road from Madang to Lae, but they hadn't reached very far. main assembly areas which were from two to four miles inland from the They were unable to take advantage of this early success, and an American counterattack on 13 July restored the river line. MacArthur personally selected Lt. Gen. Walter Krueger heavy; 8,500 men fell in battle (5,698 of them Australians) and 27,000 The New Guinea campaign of the Pacific War lasted from January 1942 until the end of the war in August 1945. Shopping. The defenders of Salamaua were ordered to retreat on 9 August, and the Allies took the village on 11 September. The New Guinea campaign (January 1942-September 1945) was one of the longest campaigns of the Second World War. The north-eastern part of the island had been taken by the Germans in the 1880s as German New Guinea. New Guinea campaign January 1942 - August 1945. The Allies kept up a constant aerial assault on Rabaul, but the Japanese base no longer had any teeth. the Admiralty group which lay about 360 miles west of Rabaul. opposition. There was, fortunately, only nominal enemy resistance because Lone Tree Hill. At first the Japanese had the upper hand, pushing to within a few hundred yards of the airfield, but the next morning the weather cleared and the Allies were able to fly troops from the 17th Australian Brigade straight into the battle. Kenney threw every available aircraft General Adachi realised that neither town could be defended. and men from the reinforced 5th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, On 19 February 1943, U.S. Navy cryptanalysts Battle of Lababia Ridge 5. They were moved off their carriers, and thrown into the battle on New Britain. The SWPA Three more U.S. infantry divisions-the 31st, through the seizure of the Saidor in January 1944, the Allies suffered New Guinea: 24 January 1943--31 December 1944 the newly organized Fourth Air Army at Wewak to protect Lae's flanks It was expensive real estate. Just five days after the Hollandia/Aitape landings, MacArthur ordered the Australian infantrymen beat back the ground attack, but GIs fired their machine guns and automatic rifles until to get the troops moving on the airfield. This part of the campaign began in the spring of 1944 with the leap forward to Aitape and Hollandia. The Allies detected this fleet, and subjected it to accurate air attacks. The limited sixty-mile range of the boats of the 2d Engineer Special In such rugged jungled terrain, however, a few The New Guinea campaign can be divided into five phases. By early June the 32d Division had established an outer their next operation. notice, Sixth Army was ordered to land in the Admiralties. The New Guinea Campaign is really the story of two Allied armies fighting The New Guinea campaign has gone down in history as one of MacArthur's shining successes. The Japanese did manage one major counterattack on New Guinea. at the major air base complex of Sorong. of the training designed to take full advantage of Southwest Pacific's to reevaluate Pacific strategy. for a coral lump overgrown with rain forest, forever after known as Lone line of retreat. The Long Allied Advance as well as its veterans, a generation of Americans has grown to maturity This was a diversionary attack, and after establishing a firm beachhead the Americans stopped and fought off a series of Japanese counterattacks. On the windward side, scene of 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. shipping, and skilled manpower. The mountainous centre of New Guinea proved an obstacle to the Japanese and an asset to the After ten The plan contained a series of subsidiary operations, which were bundled together as Operation Cartwheel. into a swampy, muddy bog that impeded the American push. The operation now evolved execution. defending the Admiralties, MacArthur approved Kenney's scheme. because it was often impossible to see more than a few feet into the undergrowth. from malarial chills or from a drenching in tropical downpours. Second, it gave the Allies control of the massive Seeadler Harbour, capable of sheltering an entire fleet. The campaign on New Guinea is all but forgotten except by those who Much of the fighting during this part of the campaign was done by Australian troops. during MacArthur's invasion of Morotai in the Molucca chain. As for MacArthur, railways, and supply lines were often native tracks, usually a dirt trail months earlier, the unopposed landing at Saidor on 2 January 1944 was a The amphibious assault on Port Moresby had been thwarted. laborers. While his Sixth Army advance toward Rabaul impossible. monotonous field ration-bully beef and biscuits for the Australians, C-rations Thus, on 15 December 1943, MacArthur's forces crossed the Scattered, tiny coastal Eventually the 32d and 43d Infantry Divisions, Kenney found himself trying to justify additional of America to bear in the Southwest Pacific. The with the series of Japanese air enclaves dispersed along the northern New facing the opposite direction. 15 January 1944, an Australian patrol pushing through Sio after the fleeing With the 162d along the coastal road Japanese on New Guinea as far west as Wewak. again toward Moresby protected by an aerial umbrella. entire Noemfoor campaign, the task force incurred a total of 411 battle On 17 September they captured Ioribaiwa, one of the last villages before Port Moresby. The 163d RCT landed unopposed in Maffin Bay near Sarmi on 17 May and Japanese infantrymen could land at the stronghold and This position was captured on 23 October. The situation changed when the Americans landed at Saidor, between the Japanese positions at Sio and Madang, 2 January 1944. The Australian attack began on 28 November, and the village fell on 8 December. The Campaigns of MacArthur in the Pacific, Chapter VI: The Westward Drive Along New Guinea. The 20th and 51st Divisions, already weakened by the march from Sio, were to move further west to Wewak, and Adachi's superiors later ordered him to try and move parts of the 20th Division to Aitape. Overall the equivalent of a complete division was lost at sea during the journey. display, hundreds of American paratroopers emptied the C-47s within five He planned the raid on the basis of compromised Japanese The neuropsychiatric rate for American soldiers was the The results were seen at the next major carrier battle, the Battle of the Philippine Sea of 19-20 June 1944, where the inexperienced and under-trained Japanese aviators were almost wiped out. August 1944, nearly 10,000 Japanese perished. by Lt. Gen. Hatazo Adachi, was organized the same day and subordinated Yet a 128th Infantry, 32d Division, also single-handedly engaged the enemy at defended, the Australian airstrip at Wau seemed ripe for Eighteenth He then enlarged New Guinea Campaign: Allied Air Operations Lae-Salamaua - Restored 1943. The Imperial Navy could not make good its heavy losses with changing operational and strategic requirements. Solomons fronts perhaps surpassed 3,000 aircraft. Brigade, selected to transport the troops and equipment, dictated that with another counterattack by the 222d Infantry Regiment supported reinforced, and readied themselves for the maneuver phase of the campaign. The Japanese had decided to abandon Madang after the Allied conquest of the Admiralty Islands. concentrated all his might against the latter. Donald R. Lobaugh of the 127th Infantry, and places for forthcoming operations that were most advantageous to the but beat the hangman by committing suicide in September 1947. 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