The landing on Rendova

At dawn on 30 June 1943 the order rang out from the flagship of Rear Admiral Richmond Turner, the transport USS McCawley: “All boats in the water, all troops into the boats.” A few minutes later the first wave of the American 43rd Infantry Division was heading for Rendova, an island lying across the narrow Blanche Channel from the Japanese airfield at Munda on New Georgia. Turner warned them by radio: “You are landing first – expect resistance.” At around seven o’clock the boats touched the beaches by a plantation that before the war had belonged to Lever Brothers. So began the main phase of Operation Toenails, the American invasion of New Georgia. That same day landings in the Solomon Islands and New Guinea opened Operation Cartwheel, a multi-stage campaign intended to encircle the Japanese stronghold at Rabaul.

The plan

After the end of the fighting on Guadalcanal, Admiral William Halsey prepared a leap to New Georgia to take the Munda airfield from the Japanese. The plan provided for four simultaneous landings. The three smaller ones, at Segi Point, Viru Harbour and Wickham Anchorage on Vangunu island, were to secure the supply route from Guadalcanal and the Russell Islands. The main landing, on Rendova, was to give the Americans a base just a few kilometres from Munda. Heavy artillery was to be emplaced on Rendova, from where it could shell the Japanese airfield. From the island the troops were then to cross the lagoon to New Georgia and attack Munda from the east.

The land forces consisted of Major General John H. Hester’s 43rd Infantry Division, made up of National Guard units from New England and reinforced by the 9th Marine Defense Battalion and the 24th Naval Construction Battalion. Hester commanded both the division and the whole New Georgia Occupation Force, and his staff was consequently split between two tasks. The first step was taken even before the day of the landing: on 21 June marines of the 4th Raider Battalion landed at Segi Point to rescue the coastwatcher Donald Kennedy, who was threatened by the Japanese.

The landing

Turner’s Western Group arrived from Guadalcanal on the night of 29–30 June in fog and rain. Its way had been cleared by Rear Admiral Aaron S. Merrill’s cruisers and destroyers, which that night shelled the Japanese bases at Vila on Kolombangara, at Munda and in the Shortland Islands. First, while it was still dark, A and B Companies of the 169th Infantry Regiment occupied the islets at Onaiavisi Entrance to the Roviana Lagoon, which were later to serve as the jumping-off point for the attack on Munda. On Rendova, navigation markers were mistaken in the rain, and two companies of the 172nd Infantry Regiment, which were to seize the beaches ahead of the rest of the force, landed several kilometres from their objective. They had to be taken back aboard ship, and reached the right beaches a few minutes after the first wave of the regiment’s main body.

The Japanese garrison on Rendova was small. According to various sources it numbered between about 120 and 290 men from the 229th Infantry Regiment and the Kure 6th Special Naval Landing Force. The Japanese command had not expected a landing on the offshore islands. According to a post-war Japanese report, the landing on Rendova “took our forces completely by surprise”. The defenders did not have time to man their positions and fell back inland. Men of the 172nd Regiment pursued them as far as the Pengui River. According to Western accounts, by evening between 50 and 65 Japanese had been killed, including their commander. The Americans lost four killed and several wounded, among them the regimental commander, Colonel David Ross. Over the next few days the Japanese survivors crossed to New Georgia in canoes.

The Japanese coastal batteries at Munda and on Baanga island proved more dangerous. They fired on the covering destroyers and hit USS Gwin, killing three sailors. On shore the worst enemy was mud. Landing craft grounded on the reefs, and the men waded to the beach carrying their loads. Torrential rain turned the red clay of the plantation into a quagmire. Lorries had to be hauled from tree to tree with winches, and one bulldozer sank into the mud almost up to its roof. Even so, by evening some 6,000 troops had landed on Rendova with their weapons, equipment and stores.

Japanese air raids and the sinking of McCawley

The Japanese air force reacted late. When the Americans landed at Segi on 21 June and their activity in the air and at sea increased, the commander of the South-East Area Fleet at Rabaul, Vice Admiral Jin’ichi Kusaka, moved some of his aircraft to the airfields around Buin on Bougainville. After 26 June, however, he concluded that the Allies were merely reinforcing Guadalcanal and pulled them back to Rabaul. Although a Japanese submarine spotted Turner’s convoy around midnight, for several hours there was nothing to attack it with.

At around 11 a.m. 27 Japanese fighters appeared over Rendova, but most were shot down by the fighter cover. By 3 p.m. the transports had unloaded almost all their equipment, and Turner sent them back to Guadalcanal. It was then that 25 Mitsubishi G4M torpedo bombers struck, escorted by 24 Zeros. Despite anti-aircraft fire and attacks by Corsair fighters of squadron VMF-221, one of the aircraft managed to put a torpedo into McCawley’s engine room. Fifteen members of the crew were killed and the ship lost power. Turner shifted his flag to the destroyer USS Farenholt, and a salvage party tried to keep the transport afloat. In the evening, at 8.23 p.m., in the dark Blanche Channel, McCawley was hit by two more torpedoes and went down within seconds. They had been fired by American PT boats from Rendova. Their commanders had been assured beforehand that there were no friendly ships in the area, so they took the transport for an enemy. Nobody was left on board, so the attack caused no casualties. After this incident the PT boats were placed directly under Turner and assigned a liaison officer.

The outcome of the day’s air fighting is disputed. American ships and airmen claimed more than 100 Japanese aircraft destroyed (101 or 106 were reported), but according to Japanese records about 30 were lost. The Japanese for their part claimed to have shot down 50 aircraft, sunk a cruiser and a destroyer and damaged eight transports. The Allies lost 21 aircraft and one transport. The Japanese command nevertheless admitted that because of the stubborn defence by fighters it had been unable to deal the convoy a decisive blow, and called the speed of the unloading “positively miraculous”. That same night several Japanese destroyers appeared off the western coast of Rendova, but a violent squall thwarted their attack.

The other landings of 30 June

Smaller operations were going on at the same time. At Oloana Bay on Vangunu island, units of the 103rd Infantry Regiment and two companies of the 4th Raider Battalion under Lieutenant Colonel Lester E. Brown came ashore. They moved overland towards the village of Vura on Wickham Anchorage, which was defended by an army platoon and a company of a special naval landing force. The landing at Viru Harbour did not take place, because Lieutenant Colonel Michael Currin’s raiders, who were to take it from the landward side, had not managed to fight their way through the jungle in time. The ships carrying an infantry company therefore turned back to Segi Point. The raiders took Viru only the following day. At Segi Point the Seabees began building a fighter airfield that day.

On the same day, 30 June, General Douglas MacArthur’s forces began their part of Operation Cartwheel. The main forces of Operation Chronicle, which were to build airfields there, landed unopposed on Woodlark and on Kiriwina in the Trobriand Islands. At Nassau Bay in New Guinea, south of Salamaua, an American battalion of the 162nd Infantry Regiment landed on the night of 29–30 June to link up with the Australians advancing from the Mubo area. Thus on a single day both arms of the Allied pincers aimed at Rabaul were set in motion.

Popular chronologies state that on this day the Americans landed “on Rendova island on New Georgia”. Rendova is not part of the island of New Georgia. It is a separate island in the New Georgia group, divided from the main island by the Blanche Channel and the Roviana Lagoon. That is precisely why the Americans were able to take it almost without a fight and set up artillery on it aimed at Munda.

Significance

The landing on Rendova succeeded. At the cost of a few men killed on land and one transport, the Americans gained a base on the doorstep of Japanese-held Munda, and over the following days further echelons of troops, artillery and supplies arrived on the island. The next step was the great attack on Munda. On 2 July the first units of the 43rd Division crossed the Roviana Lagoon to the beaches at Zanana on New Georgia. On the night of 4–5 July marines and army troops under Colonel Harry Liversedge landed at Rice Anchorage in the north of the island to cut Munda off from supplies coming through Kula Gulf. At sea there were night clashes with Japanese destroyers: the Battle of Kula Gulf on the night of 5–6 July and the Battle of Kolombangara a week later. Throughout this time Rendova was a target for Japanese air raids, including a heavy attack on 4 July, but the American beachhead was never seriously threatened.

The march through the jungle to Munda proved far harder than the plan had foreseen. The inexperienced 43rd Division was held up in front of well-concealed Japanese bunkers, and disease and combat fatigue spread among its soldiers, putting many hundreds of men out of action. Halsey had to commit further divisions, and in mid-July Major General Oscar Griswold took over command of the land forces from Hester. The Munda airfield was taken only on 5 August, and the last Japanese units left New Georgia at the end of August, crossing to Kolombangara. The experience of New Georgia persuaded Halsey to bypass heavily garrisoned islands. In August his forces passed over Kolombangara and landed further on, on Vella Lavella. The sinking of McCawley by torpedoes from her own side’s boats, for its part, became a warning about poor communication between the services in the night fighting off the Solomon Islands.