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This is the last in a series of four books covering the Solomon Islands campaign (following one on the earlier Java Sea campaign). As with the earlier books in the series the focus is on the naval and air aspects of the fighting, although we do get accounts of the fighting on Bougainville and the other invasions carried out to isolate Rabaul.
The author makes a good point about how the Solomons campaign had seen a transformation in the fortunes of the two sides. If you compare the first of his books, covering the Java Sea campaign, you see the Japanese dominant on land and in the air, facing Allied naval forces that were often thrown together at the last minute, and that were almost always operating in hostile waters. By the period covered here that has totally flipped – it is now Japanese convoys that struggle to move without being crushed by Allied air power or submarines or naval forces, while the Allies are the ones launching a series of amphibious invasions that the Japanese were unable to respond to. We also see how the Americans have learnt from earlier operations – the landings on Bougainville were far better organised than the attack on Guadalcanal, and far better supported.
Not every Allied operation covered here went well. At the start of this period Rabaul was still a very dangerous target for Allied air attack, with large numbers of anti-aircraft guns, fighter squadrons and often powerful naval forces in the harbour and some of the early raids covered here were very costly for the Allies.
However by the end of the book the Japanese had withdrawn all of their surviving aviators from Rabaul, and it was rarely visited by Japanese naval forces after that. Perhaps the biggest mistake made by the Japanese during this period was to send their best naval aviators to Rabaul – over 170 carrier aircraft and their trained crews from the Zuikaku, Shokaku and Zuiho were sent to the island in November. Well over half of these crews were lost in the fighting around Rabaul, effectively knocking the carriers out of action until new aircraft could be trained. As a result the IJN was unable to respond to the American invasion of the Gilbert Islands late in 1943 or the Marshall Islands early in 1944. Instead they would have to wait until the invasion of the Mariannas in the summer of 1944 to try and fight the ‘decisive battle’, and the resulting battle of the Philippine Sea simply sealed the fate of the Japanese carrier force.
There is one key omission – the fighting on Bougainville went on for some time after the period covered here. There is much talk of a potential Japanese counterattack against the American perimeter, and how long it would take the Japanese to prepare for that attack, but the account of the ground battles on Bougainville ends before that counterattack was launched, in March 1944. We also only get a passing mention of the Australian period on Bougainville.
The book has the same tone as the earlier books, with a sardonic approach to the mistakes taken on both sides, which makes the book an easier and refreshing read compared to more straightly serious works. Sometimes I think Cox overdoes it, and expects a bit too much from commanders operating under great stress in a very difficult environment, but it does mean he is willing to point out the mistakes made on both sides.
This is an excellent conclusion to this series, marking the triumph of Allied arms in the Solomons, and the isolation and increasing irrelevance of the remaining Japanese bases in the area.
Chapters
1 – Caldera of Damocles
2 – ‘Japan Will Topple if Bougainville Falls’
3 – Mirror, Mirror
4 – Bloody Tuesday
5 – A Second Pearl Harbor in Reverse
6 – A Close Margin Between Victory and Disaster
7 – ‘Guadalcanal – Minus Most of the Errors’
8 – An Almost Perfect Action
9 – Ring Around Rabaul
10 - Anticlimax
Author: Jeffrey R. Cox
Edition: Hardcover
Pages: 496
Publisher: Osprey
Year: 2025