Chapter 21 Ginger is old and spicy

Vandergrift's tactical feints deceived the Japanese. They thought that the U.S. military would land on the southern coast, so they heavily fortified there, but they did not expect the U.S. troops to go to the west coast.Prior to this, the Japanese had only sent some symbolic troops to the landing points they considered suspicious, and only 300 troops were sent to Cape Torokina. 300 Japanese soldiers entrenched at Cape Torokina, and when the Marines landed, bullets flew from a dozen well-disguised bunkers, mixed with field artillery fire. Bougainville's beach landing is much more difficult than Guadalcanal.The waves at Cape Torokina are extremely high, the beach is dangerous and narrow, and the damage to the landing craft is serious.In some troops, it happened that the command boat was destroyed, which caused the troops to lose their command, and the order was in chaos.Under such circumstances, if the Japanese bunkers were equipped with sufficient troops, the landing operation would surely fail.Even if there are only these 300 people, if they have outstanding combat skills and appropriate use of firepower, they are enough to pose a huge threat to unprotected landing craft.

Fortunately, none of this happened.The Japanese army did not regard Cape Torokina as an important defensive position, and the 300 Japanese soldiers they sent were not elite soldiers and could not play the role of one man guarding the border.They brought a 75mm gun. Judging from the position of the gun, it could have been used to monitor the entire beachhead, but the Japanese soldiers wanted to hide the artillery so that the U.S. military could not see it. The restriction also affected the bombardment effect-a total of more than 50 shells were fired, but only 3 US landing craft were destroyed.

After the US troops landed, they quickly destroyed these bunkers and artillery with grenades.By dusk, the Marines had established a solid beachhead. On this day, Koga just took the opportunity to arrive in Rabaul, ready to start "Operation Lu".Knowing that American troops had landed in Bougainville, he reacted quickly.That night, under the command of Rear Admiral Chitaro Omori, a formation of cruisers and destroyers rushed towards Queen Augusta Bay in an attempt to attack the US transport fleet and cover about 1,000 troops to carry out anti-landing. At midnight, they were less than 50 miles away from the beach where the US troops landed. As long as the attack was successful, many US Marines would not survive until dawn, and "Operation Cherry Blossom" would also fail.

Escorting and guarding the transport fleet was Rear Admiral Merrill's task force.Merrill's fleet had already conducted two shore-to-shore shootings, which took as long as 16 hours. The officers and soldiers were exhausted, but after receiving reports from coastal scouts and reconnaissance planes, Merrill still resolutely led the team to fight.The two lieutenants who accompanied him were the commanders of the two destroyer squadrons: Lieutenant Colonel Austin and Colonel Burke, who initiated the "Ancient Roman Law of War". The Merrill fleet is also a cruiser-destroyer formation, but its overall firepower is inferior to that of the Omori fleet. Omori has two heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and six destroyers, while Merrill has only four light cruisers and eight destroyers.

However, Merrill was well prepared, formulating a plan before the battle and rehearsing it repeatedly.In order to deal with the "spear" torpedo, the two destroyer squadrons will first attack the enemy's two wings, forcing the Japanese ships to draw a certain distance, and then give full play to the advantages of the American ships, and use long-range artillery to shoot with the assistance of radar. Queen Augusta Bay at midnight was torrentially rainy, and you couldn't see your fingers. It was suitable for radar but not for naked eye observation.Merrell's flagship was the first to spot the Japanese ship, and he ordered Burke's destroyer squadron to launch a torpedo attack.

At this time, the Omori fleet turned to evade, and none of the torpedoes launched by Burke's squadron hit. This was an accident, and the role of the commander is to seize the opportunity in the accident.Merrill realized that it was impossible to prevent the Japanese ships from approaching as planned, so he immediately canceled the original plan, ordered all ships to target with radar, and all opened fire on the Japanese ships. The firepower of Merrell's fleet is not very strong, but the concentrated firepower controlled by radar is different.During the battle, one Japanese light cruiser and one destroyer were sunk, and only one U.S. destroyer was hit by a torpedo on the stern.

Night battles were often dogfights, as was the Battle of Queen Augusta Bay.The US ships collided while sailing side by side at high speed, and the steel hulls were splashed with flames. If it is separated, it will miss the shot again.Burke's unit has been working for a period of time, and the cooperation is relatively tacit; Austin's unit is a newly formed unit, which has not had time to conduct formation training, and moves slowly.Because the radar could not distinguish clearly, some shells from Burke's unit flew towards Austin's unit.Austin yelled at Burke through the ultra-short wave radio: "We just faced another near-miss, I hope you will stop shooting at us!"

Burke scratched his scalp: "I'm sorry, please forgive the next group of four salvos, because they have already been shot..." Because they are afraid of hitting their own people, it is inevitable that there will be many more taboos.Originally, the two heavy cruisers of the Japanese army had appeared within the torpedo attack range of the destroyer, and they were also mistaken for American ships by the Austin squadron. They did not launch torpedoes at them, thus losing an opportunity to expand the results of the battle. The Omori fleet was overwhelmed and was forced to withdraw from Queen Augusta Bay.Burke asked Merrell to allow him to pursue the fleeing enemy. Merrell estimated that there would be an air attack by enemy planes after dawn, and ordered the poor not to pursue them, and at the same time made preparations to meet the Japanese planes.

Ginger is old and spicy, and Merrell's predictions are correct.He was defeated in the first battle. How could Koga bear this tone? He assembled all available troops in Rabaul, a total of 173 fighters, and vowed to deal a devastating blow to the US ship the next day.