Battle of Vella Lavella

Name and dates

The Battle of Vella Lavella (also called the land battle of Vella Lavella, to distinguish it from the engagement at sea) is the name given to the capture by American and New Zealand forces of the island of Vella Lavella – the north-westernmost island of the New Georgia group in the central Solomon Islands. The fighting began with the landing at Barakoma on 15 August 1943 and ended on the night of 6–7 October, when the Japanese navy took off the last defenders from the northern coast. That same night the naval Battle of Vella Lavella was fought north of the island; Japanese accounts call it the Second Battle of Vella Lavella, the first being the night destroyer action off Horaniu on 17–18 August.

Vella Lavella was part of Operation Cartwheel, the Allied plan to encircle and isolate the main Japanese base at Rabaul, and it concluded the fighting for the central Solomon Islands that had been going on since June as part of the New Georgia campaign. It was not a great battle: at most a few hundred Japanese soldiers fought on the island, and the losses of both sides were counted in hundreds, not thousands. Its significance lay elsewhere. Admiral William Halsey, commander of Allied forces in the South Pacific, for the first time deliberately bypassed a strong Japanese garrison – on neighbouring Kolombangara – and struck where the enemy was barely present. This method, later called “leapfrogging” or “island hopping”, became the basis of the whole subsequent war in the Pacific.

The end of the fighting is dated in different ways. Some sources take 6 October, when the Japanese began the evacuation. The last Japanese troops, however, sailed only after midnight, and on the morning of 7 October the New Zealanders found the positions at Marquana Bay abandoned; 7 October therefore seems the more accurate date.

Background

The New Georgia campaign lasted much longer and cost much more than the plan had foreseen. The Americans captured Munda airfield, the objective of the whole operation, only on 5 August 1943, after six weeks of jungle fighting that in the end required the strength of four divisions. In the meantime the Japanese had also been defeated at sea: in the night actions in Kula Gulf and off Kolombangara they lost a cruiser and two destroyers, and on the night of 6–7 August, in Vella Gulf, six American destroyers sank three of the four Japanese destroyers carrying reinforcements. Even so, most of the defenders of New Georgia withdrew to neighbouring Kolombangara – a round volcanic island with an airfield at Vila – where, according to American estimates, General Noboru Sasaki had concentrated 10,000–12,000 soldiers and sailors.

The original plans assumed that after Munda it would be Kolombangara’s turn. Halsey, however, did not want a repeat. “The undue length of the Munda operation and our heavy casualties made me wary of another slugging match, but I didn’t know how to avoid it,” he recalled, as quoted by John Miller in the US official history (“Cartwheel: The Reduction of Rabaul”, 1959). The solution turned out to be Vella Lavella, some 65 km north-west of Munda. It was the outermost island of the New Georgia group, and therefore a convenient springboard against the Shortland Islands and Bougainville; it had flat coastal land better suited to an airfield than mountainous Kolombangara; and at the same time it lay close enough to the American airfields at Munda and Segi for fighters to cover a landing. Above all, though, there were few Japanese there. Taking Vella Lavella would cut Kolombangara off from Bougainville – the route by which its supplies came – and turn it into a garrison that could be left to wither on its own. Halsey sent his proposal to bypass Kolombangara to Admirals Richmond Turner and Aubrey Fitch as early as 11 July, during the fighting for Munda, and issued the order for the landing on 11 August, a few days after Munda fell.

At the end of July a small reconnaissance patrol was landed on Vella Lavella from PT boats. For a week, accompanied by Lieutenant Henry Josselyn of the Australian navy – a coastwatcher who was hiding on the island – the New Zealand Methodist missionary Silvester and local guides, it explored the south-eastern coast without encountering any Japanese, and on 31 July it returned to Guadalcanal with detailed information. The area around the village of Barakoma, on the south-eastern tip of the island, was chosen as the landing site. On 12 August an advance party of sailors and soldiers of the 103rd Infantry Regiment set out from Guadalcanal and Rendova in four PT boats; despite an air attack it reached its destination, where it was welcomed by islanders in canoes. When reports came in of larger Japanese forces than expected near the beach, the party was reinforced on 14 August. Its task was to mark and hold the landing beach; along the way it took seven Japanese prisoner. According to Miller, there were then about 250 Japanese on the whole island – survivors of sunken ships and soldiers who had made their way over from New Georgia – with no organised defence.

Course: the landing at Barakoma (15–20 August)

The landing was entrusted to Task Force 31 under Rear Admiral Theodore Wilkinson, who in mid-July had succeeded Turner as commander of the III Amphibious Force. The ground forces – a grouping called the “Northern Landing Force” – were led by Brigadier General Robert B. McClure, assistant commander of General Joseph Lawton Collins’s 25th Infantry Division. Its core was Colonel Everett E. Brown’s 35th Regimental Combat Team, reinforced with artillery, the 4th Marine Defense Battalion with its anti-aircraft guns, and the US Navy’s 58th Construction Battalion – the Seabees. According to Miller, the whole force numbered 5,888 men; the first echelon put ashore some 4,600 soldiers and sailors and 2,300 tons of equipment and supplies.

The convoy sailed from Guadalcanal in three groups, arranged by speed: seven fast transports converted from old destroyers (APDs), twelve landing craft infantry (LCIs) and three tank landing ships (LSTs) with two submarine chasers, escorted by twelve destroyers. Curtiss P-40 and Vought F4U Corsair fighters from the airfields on New Georgia and the Russells circled above the convoy and the beaches. At dawn on 15 August the transports hove to off Barakoma, and the troops went ashore in landing boats. The beach proved shallower and narrower than expected, and unloading the landing craft fell behind schedule, but there was no resistance on land.

The Japanese responded from the air. Around midday Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighters and Aichi D3A dive bombers from airfields in southern Bougainville appeared over Barakoma; massed anti-aircraft fire drove them away from the tank landing ships. A second raid, late in the afternoon, also failed, and the returning aircraft were intercepted by Marine Corsairs sent on a strike over Kahili. In the evening a group of torpedo aircraft attacked the landing craft without success, and around midnight floatplanes bombed the tank landing ships. No ship was sunk, and the Americans lost two aircraft in the air; various sources put Japanese losses at 17–44 machines. According to some accounts, 12 Americans were killed and 50 wounded on the day of the landing.

Further convoys with men and supplies arrived on 17 and 20 August. Japanese aircraft attacked them every time: several vessels were damaged, and the destroyers USS Philip and USS Waller collided during evasive manoeuvres. On 18 August the tank landing ship LST-396 was lost off New Georgia – not to bombs, but after an accidental explosion of her cargo and the fire that followed. The beachhead nevertheless grew rapidly. From the first day the Seabees unloaded bulldozers and built roads inland so that dumps could be dispersed away from the beach, and by the end of August they had laid out and cleared the runway of the future airfield.

The Japanese command at Rabaul concluded that it lacked the strength to counter-attack and retake the island. It decided only to build a barge base at Horaniu on the north-eastern coast, to serve as a staging point on the route between Bougainville and Kolombangara – and, if need be, for the evacuation of the latter’s garrison.

Course: the action off Horaniu (17–19 August)

The garrison for the Horaniu base was provided by General Sasaki: two companies of the 13th Infantry Regiment – some 390 men in all – and a platoon of naval infantry. On 17 August they set out from Buin in southern Bougainville in thirteen daihatsu landing barges, accompanied by two submarine chasers, four torpedo boats and an armoured boat. Cover was provided by four destroyers – Sazanami, Hamakaze, Isokaze and Shigure – which left Rabaul that day under Matsuji Ijūin, commander of Destroyer Squadron 3.

An American reconnaissance aircraft spotted the convoy, and Wilkinson sent four destroyers under Captain Thomas J. Ryan from Purvis Bay on Florida Island to meet it: USS Nicholas, O’Bannon, Taylor and Chevalier. Before midnight Avenger torpedo bombers attacked the convoy without success, scattering the barges for a time. A few minutes after midnight on 18 August Ryan’s radars detected the Japanese destroyers, and soon afterwards the barges. Ijūin had orders to avoid a decisive engagement and to protect the convoy; Ryan, instead of falling on the barges as the Japanese expected, manoeuvred for a torpedo attack on the destroyers. The Japanese fired more than thirty torpedoes, but the American ships, while steering round the barges, happened to avoid them all. In the exchange of radar-directed gunfire a shell hit Hamakaze, and later Isokaze as well; the American torpedoes missed. At about 1 a.m. Ijūin, who could not afford to lose a single destroyer and had moreover received a false report of a second American force approaching, withdrew at 35 knots. A breakdown on Chevalier ruled out a pursuit.

Ryan then turned back towards the convoy, but the barges had scattered in the darkness. The Americans sank both submarine chasers, two torpedo boats and one barge; the rest spent 18 August hidden under the overhanging vegetation of the northern coast, and on 19 August landed their troops at Horaniu. The engagement, known as the Battle off Horaniu (the Japanese speak of the First Battle of Vella Lavella), was therefore only a partial success for the Americans: the Japanese barge base was established, although the enemy lost several vessels and two destroyers were lightly damaged. Ijūin returned to Rabaul convinced that he had sunk an American destroyer.

In this way between about 600 and 750 Japanese – including the earlier castaways – ended up on the island; Jon Diamond gives as many as 1,000. These numbers meant that Vella Lavella was no longer an “empty” island, but the Japanese garrison had neither the mission nor the strength to threaten the American beachhead. Its role was to hold the staging point and to survive.

Course: the American advance (late August – mid-September)

For the first few weeks the Americans confined themselves to consolidating the beachhead and patrolling; the real fighting took place in the air and at sea. At the end of August a patrol looking for a site for a radar station ran into larger Japanese forces around Kokolope Bay on the eastern coast. McClure decided to clear the area. The 1st Battalion of the 35th Regiment, guided by local guides and a small detachment of Fijian scouts, set off northwards along the coast; the defence of the beachhead was taken over by a battalion of the 145th Infantry Regiment sent from New Georgia, and the 3rd Battalion of the 35th Regiment and the 64th Field Artillery Battalion joined the advance.

The fighting took the form of small skirmishes in the jungle. The Japanese avoided a decisive clash, falling back before the Americans and leaving small delaying detachments behind them. On 14 September the Americans occupied Horaniu, abandoned by its garrison, which had moved off to the north-west. The Japanese began to concentrate at the northern end of the island, between Paraso Bay and Mundi Mundi, from where they could hope to be evacuated by sea.

All this time the island was harried by Japanese aircraft. Between 15 August and 6 October 121 air raids on Vella Lavella were recorded; the gunners of the 4th Marine Defense Battalion claimed 42 aircraft shot down. The Seabees worked under the bombs, building roads, fuel stores, communications posts and an underground sick bay.

Meanwhile, to the east, the last fighting of the New Georgia campaign was under way. On 27 August the Americans landed on Arundel Island, between New Georgia and Kolombangara, where fierce Japanese resistance continued until 20–21 September. The occupation of Vella Lavella and Arundel caught Kolombangara in a vice: American artillery on Arundel could shell the airfield at Vila, while PT boats and destroyers hunted the barges that tried to supply it.

Course: the New Zealanders in the north of the island (18 September – 6 October)

In mid-September the Americans were relieved by New Zealanders. Major General Harold Barrowclough’s 3rd New Zealand Division, intended for the war in the Pacific and trained on New Caledonia, had not yet seen action; Vella Lavella became its baptism of fire. On 18 September its 14th Brigade under Brigadier Leslie Potter landed on the island – some 3,700 men in three infantry battalions, the 30th, 35th and 37th – and Barrowclough took over command of all forces on the island from McClure. The American battalions gradually left for rest and refitting.

Potter’s plan was simple: two battalions were to advance along both coasts – the 35th Battalion along the western one, the 37th along the eastern – and trap the Japanese garrison in a pincer on the northern tip of the island, while the 30th Battalion remained in reserve in the south. Because the jungle and the steep slopes of the interior ruled out a march inland, each battalion was given eight landing barges: the units hopped from bay to bay in them and then cleared the ground with patrols. Tanks could not operate there, and the guns had to be moved by barge and manhandled ashore.

On 21 September the New Zealanders set out from Maravari beach, and on 25 September, after occupying forward bases at Matu Soroto and Boro, they began the advance proper. For ten days, in torrential rain, they fought a series of small actions against little groups of Japanese hidden in well-camouflaged positions. The 35th Battalion reached Pakoi Bay and moved overland towards Timbala Bay. Several forward patrols sent to block the escape routes to Marquana Bay were ambushed and cut off; two platoons sent to relieve them also met strong resistance and had to turn back. The patrols, which inflicted considerable losses on the enemy, eventually broke through to the shore and were picked up by barges. The 37th Battalion advanced more slowly because the engines of its barges kept failing; it made up the shortfall with barges borrowed from the 35th Battalion and with one captured from the Japanese at Tambana Bay.

On 5 October, after heavy fighting, the 37th Battalion cleared Warambari Bay, and on the afternoon of 6 October it reached Mende Point. The last 600 or so Japanese troops were squeezed into a small strip of coast around Marziana Point on Marquana Bay. An artillery preparation was planned for the night and a general assault for the morning. The artillery fire, however, was interrupted by the appearance of Japanese aircraft – and in the darkness the Japanese carried out a successful evacuation for the second time in a week.

Course: the evacuation and the naval battle (6–7 October)

At the end of September the Japanese command, which had already written off the central Solomon Islands, decided to withdraw all its troops from them. Over three nights between 28 September and 4 October destroyers, barges and small craft took some 9,400 men off Kolombangara, according to Miller, at the cost of 29 small vessels; the Americans, who had been expecting an evacuation, failed to prevent it. Now it was the turn of the Vella Lavella garrison.

On 6 October some twenty small craft – submarine chasers, barges and motor boats – left Buin under Captain Shigoroku Nakayama. They were covered by Ijūin’s force, sent out from Rabaul: three old destroyers serving as transports (Fumizuki, Matsukaze, Yūnagi) and six modern destroyers (Akigumo, Isokaze, Kazagumo, Yūgumo, Shigure and Samidare). Wilkinson hastily sent two groups of three destroyers each against them. Only one arrived in time: USS Selfridge, Chevalier and O’Bannon under Captain Frank R. Walker. The other – Ralph Talbot, Taylor and La Vallette under Captain Harold O. Larson – was still steaming along the island’s western coast.

Walker did not wait for Larson and at about 11 p.m. attacked the superior enemy. Both sides fired torpedoes and opened fire. A mistake in the Japanese commander’s manoeuvring brought his ships, at short range, squarely into the American line of fire. The leading Yūgumo charged the American destroyers and fired her torpedoes, but, hit by many shells, she lost steering and at about 11.10 p.m. sank, finished off by a torpedo. One of her torpedoes, however, struck Chevalier, setting off the forward magazine, which blew her bow off. O’Bannon, following astern, rammed the crippled ship, and for some time the two remained locked together. Selfridge fought Shigure and Samidare alone until, at 11.06 p.m., she too was hit by a torpedo and disabled. Japanese reconnaissance aircraft mistook Larson’s approaching ships for cruisers, and Ijūin withdrew his destroyers to Rabaul without exploiting his advantage.

Larson arrived at about 11.35 p.m. and set about rescuing survivors. The badly damaged Chevalier was scuttled at about 3 a.m. by a torpedo from La Vallette; Selfridge and O’Bannon stayed afloat and left for repairs. The Americans lost 67 killed (54 on Chevalier and 13 on Selfridge), 47 wounded and 36 missing, the Japanese 138 killed; about a hundred Japanese sailors were pulled from the water by O’Bannon and American PT boats. Meanwhile, while American attention was focused on the fighting and the rescue of survivors, Nakayama’s vessels entered Marquana Bay at about 1.10 a.m. and within two hours took off 589 troops, whom they carried to Buin. On the morning of 7 October the New Zealanders found abandoned positions and equipment on Marziana Point. The fighting on Vella Lavella was over.

The airfield and the base

The airfield was the purpose of the whole operation, and the Seabees built it quickly. The runway at Barakoma, some 1,200 metres long, was laid out and cleared while it was still August; in September a signal tower, a command post, aviation fuel tanks and a camp for personnel were added. The first aircraft landed there on 24 September, and according to Miller, less than two months after the landing the airfield could accommodate almost a hundred machines. Among the units based there were Marine Corsair fighters, including the VMF-214 squadron of Major Gregory Boyington, one of the most famous American aces.

The island also became a naval base. The passage through the reef was deepened so that PT boats could enter the lagoon, and on 25 September a PT boat squadron set up on the north-eastern coast. The jetty at Biloa was enlarged, and a ramp for tank landing ships was built, along with sawmills. The 77th Construction Battalion, which arrived on 25 September – in the middle of a Japanese air raid – put up a thousand-bed hospital with an eye to the coming fighting on Bougainville; during its time on the island it was bombed 47 times. Two New Zealand engineer companies also worked on building roads and bridges.

Casualties

By Pacific standards, losses were small. According to Miller, 26 Americans were killed in the fighting on land and by bombs on the beachhead (19 by bombs, 7 by enemy fire) and 108 were wounded; the New Zealanders lost 32 killed and 32 wounded. Including sailors and airmen killed in the waters around the island, some studies give a total of about 150 Americans and New Zealanders killed; of these, 67 died in the night battle of 6–7 October, in which the destroyer Chevalier was also lost, as had been the tank landing ship LST-396 earlier.

Japanese losses are uncertain. The New Zealand official history estimates the number killed on the island at 200–300, Gordon Rottman at fewer than 150. To these must be added those killed in the naval actions (138 in the battle of 6–7 October, an unknown number in the action off Horaniu) and the airmen, whose losses in the raids on the beachhead ran to dozens of aircraft. Most of the island’s Japanese garrison survived and was evacuated.

Significance

The fighting on Vella Lavella was small in scale, but its consequences were large. For the first time in the Pacific war the Allies deliberately bypassed a strongly defended island and seized a weakly held one further on, thereby cutting off the garrison left behind. Instead of a second Munda – weeks of jungle fighting against ten thousand Japanese on Kolombangara – Halsey won an airfield at the cost of a few dozen dead. The lesson was not wasted. In the months that followed, Douglas MacArthur in New Guinea and Chester Nimitz in the Central Pacific began to apply the same method on a far larger scale; island hopping, which left whole Japanese armies without supplies in the rear – at Rabaul, on Bougainville, at Kavieng and on many atolls – became the hallmark of American strategy right up to 1945.

At the same time, Vella Lavella showed the limits of the method. Although defeated, the Japanese managed to withdraw almost ten thousand troops from Kolombangara and Vella Lavella, who would go on to fight on Bougainville. The night battle of 6–7 October, in which three American destroyers were put out of action and the evacuation succeeded, is sometimes described – by the historian Ian Toll among others – as the Japanese navy’s last victory of the Pacific war. The Japanese, however, were unable to exploit it: a few weeks later, in November 1943, a series of defeats for them began in night destroyer actions around Bougainville.

The capture of Vella Lavella brought the fighting for the central Solomon Islands, and the second phase of Operation Cartwheel, to a close. The airfield at Barakoma, the nearest to the next objective, provided cover on 27 October for the New Zealand landing on the Treasury Islands and on 1 November for the American invasion at Cape Torokina on Bougainville – the last great stage in the encirclement of Rabaul. When the front moved on, the base lost its importance: the last construction battalions left in January 1944, and on 15 June 1944 the airfield was abandoned.