The Choiseul Raid: October 28-November 3, 1943 by Eric Hammel
Requirements: ePUB Reader, 1.92Mb
Overview: By mid-1943, following protracted and nasty slogs on Guadalcanal and New Georgia, the Allied commanders in the South Pacific Area decided to bypass the large island of Choiseul in order to seize the best target on their strategic and operational maps. Choiseul was a dead end; there was no place worth attacking from the air that could be reached from potential air bases on the island. By this stage of the Solomons Campaign, air strategy shaped ground strategy. Inasmuch as Allied fighter aircraft based in central or northern Bougainville would be able to escort bombers to and from Rabaul, the main Japanese base in the region, the U.S. 3rd Marine Division made ready to land on Bougainville’s west coast, at Empress Augusta Bay.
Planning for the Empress Augusta Bay operation led to an interesting insight: If the Japanese expected an Allied invasion of a possible air-base site on Choiseul, why not feed into that expectation by giving them what appeared to be an invasion of Choiseul? That might fool the Japanese into not rushing reinforcements to Empress Augusta Bay. So it was decided that the 2nd Marine Parachute Battalion would mount an amphibious landing on Choiseul ahead of the Bougainville invasion and put on enough of a show to convince the Japanese that it was the real thing and Bougainville was the feint.
Genre: Non-Fiction, History, War
Download Instructions:
http://festyy.com/wX0dWR
