- 84 - Pacific War - Invasion of New Georgia, June 27 - July 4, 1943

Last time we spoke about the extensive plans involved in Operation Cartwheel. The allies were crossing their T’s and dotting their I’s. MacArthur was getting closer to unleashing Operation Chronicle, the invasion of Woodlark and Kiriwina islands. MacArthur’s Navy, that being the 7th amphibious fleet are now prime and ready to go. Over in the Solomons, Admiral Halsey’s Operation Toenails likewise had finalized their plans for a full scale invasion of New Georgia. The invasion would consist of multiple amphibious assaults done by countless units all with important missions. It was to be a extraordinary complex operation that would showcase to the Japanese how far American production had come and just how doomed the empire of the rising sun was. In the words of a great wizard “The board is set, the pieces are moving. We come to it at last, the great battle of our time” This episode is the Invasion of New Georgia Welcome to the Pacific War Podcast Week by Week, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945.    I do want to just start off with a bit of an apology. I am well aware the past few episodes have been extremely heavy on the planning rather than the doing as they say. Again this is the reality of the week by week schedule and this podcast as I hope all of you know follows the Youtube series almost to a T, well almost, I do like to wander off now and then. But today I assure you we are diving into the fray of battle. Ever since the conclusion of operation KE and the allied victory at the Bismarck Sea, the war in the South Pacific had gotten a bit more quiet, but certainly tense. Both sides were looking at another, expecting a major offensive to kick off at any moment. But it would be the allies who would kick off everything by unleashing the start of Operation Cartwheel. The opening shots of Cartwheel would begin with the invasion of Woodlark and Kiriwana islands just off the southeast coast of New Guinea and due south of New Britain. Colonel MacKechnie’s 162nd regiment continued to prepare their Nassau bay landings just 11 miles south of Salamaua. Ever since April of that year their 1st battalion had been carrying intensive amphibious training at Morobe Harbor. They were being reinforced with the 532nd engineer shore regiment, 542nd engineer amphibian regiment, the 592nd engineer boat regiment under Brigadier William Heavey and with a Papuan infantry battalion who had marched to Buso by mid june. Under orders not to proceed any further north, the spent their time carrying out long-range patrols, gaining valuable intelligence on the enemy. From their intelligence, MacKechnie believed there were about 75 Japanese near the mouth of the Bitoi river, an outpost or two along the beach at Nassau Bay and about 300 Japanese on Cape Dinga which also held an outpost. MacKechnie decided to use Mageri point as a staging base, which held an excellent beach 12 miles north of Morobe with good cover for their landing crafts.They had with them 2 LCMS, 2 captured Japanese barges and 29 Higgens boats. To further augment them, 4 PT boats were assigned to help transport the men, around 150 of them from Morobe. In the meantime, Brigadier Moten planned to send Captain Dexter’s D company who had just achieved an incredible victory at Lababia ridge where they repelle