Battle of Tassafaronga
The battle took place in Ironbottom Sound near the Tassafaronga area on Guadalcanal. A US force of five cruisers and four destroyers under the command of Rear Admiral Carleton H. Wright engaged eight Japanese destroyers attempting to deliver food to their forces. The last attempt by the Japanese to deliver significant additional forces to the island failed during the Naval Battle of Guadal Canal.
About Battle of Tassafaronga in brief
The battle took place in Ironbottom Sound near the Tassafaronga area on Guadalcanal. A US force of five cruisers and four destroyers under the command of Rear Admiral Carleton H. Wright engaged eight Japanese destroyers attempting to deliver food to their forces. The US warships opened fire, and sank one destroyer. The other Japanese ships quickly returned fire with Type 93 \”Long Lance\” torpedoes, sinking one US cruiser and damaging three others. Tanaka’s ordered his force to retreat and they failed to complete the intended supply mission. On November 26, Japanese Lieutenant General Hitoshi Imamura took command of the new Eighth Area Army at Rabaul. One of Imamura’s first priorities was the continuation of the attempts to retake Henderson Field and Guadal canal in New Guinea. The last attempt by the Japanese to deliver significant additional forces to the island failed during the Naval Battle of Guadal Canal of November 12–15. The Japanese were rarely able to use large, slow transport ships or barges to deliver troops and supplies to the Island; instead, they used warships based at Rab Faul and the Shortland Islands. These high speed warship runs to GuadalCanal occurred throughout the campaign and were later called the \”Tokyo Express\” by Allied forces and \”Rat Transportation\” by theJapanese. Beginning on November 16, 1942, the Japanese had switched to using submarines to deliver provisions to their troops on the island. In the next three weeks, no major US Navy boats stationed at Tulagi, Tulagi and a cycle of submarines made no major attacks on Japanese forces on the islands.
The Allied landings were meant to deny the Japanese access to bases that they could use to threaten supply routes between the US and Australia, and to secure the islands as starting points for a campaign with the eventual goal of neutralizing the major Japanese base at rabaul. The landings began the six-month GuadalCANal campaign. The first units of the 17th Army began to arrive there on August 19, and by the next two months increased the number of US troops at Lunga Point on Guadelcanal to more than 20,000. By August 8, the 11,000 Allied troops, under the. command of Lieutenant General Alexander Vandegrift, secured Tulagi as well as the Japanese airfield under construction at Luna Point. To protect the airfield, the US Marines established a perimeter defense around Lunga point. The Japanese attempted several times between August and November 1942 to recapture Henderson Field, to no avail. One of the last attempts was the attempt to retake Buna in Buna, but it was considered a more severe threat to Rabaul and postponed further reinforcement efforts. The Allies eventually took control of Buna on August 25, 1942. The battle was won by the U.S. 8th Fleet Sixth Fleet on August 28, 1942 and the Allies took control of the Solomon Islands on August 29, 1942 and August 30, 1942 in the Battle of Savo Island.
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This page is based on the article Battle of Tassafaronga published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 10, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
