The Douglas R4D ‘Skytrain’
Drawing by Kerr Eby, U.S. Navy Combat Art Collection
Not all aircraft in the Central Solomons were fighters or bombers. The Douglas DC-3 Skytrain or Dakota (C-47 in the Navy version) was designed in 1933, and became the standard American transport of the war. The plane was an all-metal monoplane with twin engines and retractable landing gear. It was powered by two Pratt & Whitney radial engines of 1,200 horsepower each. It carried a crew of three, 28 passengers or 18 stretchers, and three medical attendants. It could also carry up to 6,000 pounds of cargo at average speeds of 185 miles-per-hour. The U.S. Navy and Marines had some 600 Skytrains, designated as R4Ds. In the Central Solomons they were used for air resupply and medical evacuation. The Marines were still using the C117, a variation of the R4D into the 1970’s.
A Joint Pattern for Victory
The last Japanese air attacks on New Georgia came the nights of 16 and 17 January 1944, but by then the campaign was finished and the final score taken. Army historian John Miller quoted a senior officer as concluding that the heavily outnumbered Japanese stood off nearly four Allied divisions in the course of the action, and successfully withdrew to fight again. One Japanese noted at the time that the:
... Japanese Army is still depending on the hand-to-hand fighting of the Meiji Era while the enemy is using highly developed scientific weapons. Thinking it over, however, this poorly armed force of ours has not been overcome and we are still guarding this island.
In his postwar memoirs, Admiral Halsey commented on how the smell of burnt reputations in the New Georgia campaign still filled his nostrils. The smoking reputations Halsey referred to came as the result of outright reliefs and transfers of senior officers and they were not limited to any one service. Numerous changes were made in the command structure until he got the commanders needed to produce results. The payoff to the New Georgia operation resulted in the Vella Lavella landings that bypassed Kolombangara and successful Bougainville and New Britain campaigns that demonstrated the pattern for successful joint operations there and throughout the Pacific War.
The Army had 1,094 men killed and 3,873 wounded in the fighting for New Georgia, while the Marines suffered 650 casualties in all. The Marines came through in better condition than might have been otherwise expected. Morale during the periods of greatest danger had been high. In the last two months of the campaign with enemy activity virtually nonexistent, the effects of the rough conditions showed to a certain extent, but at no time, was there any slackening in the performance of duty. For most of the campaign, shelter and sanitation were absent and the food, though usually of sufficient quantity, was seldom appetizing.
It was felt after the Solomons campaign that “struggle for control of the Solomon Islands was a critical turning point in the war against Japan. These campaigns can best be appreciated as a sequence of interacting naval, land, and air operations.” The contribution to the ability to conduct joint operations was measured in the differences between the fighting on New Georgia in the summer 1943 and the success realized at Bougainville and Cape Gloucester later in the year. Here was a pattern for joint operations, and, as coastwatcher D.C. Horton phrased it, it was a “pattern for victory.”
Even though the 9th Defense Battalion Artillery Group positions at Munda Airfield were bombed, they continued to fire at assigned targets. Here elements of Battery A smolders after an air raid.
Department of Defense Photo (USMC) Photo 56830
Sources
The basic sources for this pamphlet were the second volume in the series History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Isolation of Rabaul, written by Henry I. Shaw, Jr. and Maj Douglas T. Kane, USMC (Washington: Historical Branch, G-3 Division, HQMC, 1963), and Maj John T. Rentz, USMCR, Marines in the Central Solomons (Washington: Historical Branch, HQMC, 1952). Other books used in this narrative were: Adm William F. Halsey and J. Bryan III, Admiral Halsey’s Story (New York, McGraw Hill, 1947); Saburo Hayashi and Alvin D. Coox, Kogun, The Japanese Army in the Pacific (Quantico: Marine Corps Association, 1959); RAdm Samuel E. Morison, Breaking the Bismarcks Barrier: History of U.S. Naval Operations in World War II, vol VI (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1950); Robert L. Sherrod, History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II (Washington: Combat Forces Press, 1952); Charles A. Updegraph, Jr., U.S. Marine Corps Special Units of World War II (Washington: History and Museums Division, HQMC, 1972); Col Joseph E. Zimmer, The History of the 43d Infantry Division (Baton Rouge, LA: Army and Navy Publishing Co., 1947); John Miller, Jr., Cartwheel: The Reduction of Rabaul (Washington: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1959). In addition, in the Marine Corps Historical Center, Washington Navy Yard, Washington, D.C., are the Marine Corps Archives, which contain much primary source material produced by the Marine Corps units in the fighting in the Central Solomons. Also in the Center are the Oral History and Personal Papers Collections, containing many first-hand accounts of the operation.
The author wishes to thank members of the raider, aviation, and defense battalion reunion groups and associations which provided letters, manuscripts, and recollections to aid in the writing of this history.
About the Author
Major Charles D. Melson, USMC (Retired) is originally from the San Fransciso Bay area. He is married to Janet Ann Pope, a former Navy Nurse.
Major Melson completed graduate education at St. John’s College in Annapolis. He is a coauthor of The War that Would Not End, a volume in the official history of Marine Corps operations in Vietnam, and is the author of Vietnam Marines. He served as a historian in the Marine Corps Historical Center, Washington Navy Yard, for six years and continues to deal with the past as the director of The Queen Anne’s Museum of Eastern Shore Life in Maryland. Major Melson was a Marine for 25 years, 1967 to 1992, and served in Vietnam in a variety of Fleet Marine Force positions. He was a history instructor at the United States Naval Academy, and served also at Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps.
THIS PAMPHLET HISTORY, one in a series devoted to U.S. Marines in the World War II era, is published for the education and training of Marines by the History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, Washington. D.C., as a part of the U.S. Department of Defense observance of the 50th anniversary of victory in that war.
Printing costs for this pamphlet have been defrayed in part by the Defense Department World War II Commemoration Committee. Editorial costs of preparing this pamphlet have been defrayed in part by a bequest from the estate of Emilie H. Watts, in memory of her late husband, Thomas M. Watts, who served as a Marine and was the recipient of a Purple Heart.
WORLD WAR II COMMEMORATIVE SERIES
DIRECTOR OF MARINE CORPS HISTORY AND MUSEUMS
Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons, USMC (Ret)
GENERAL EDITOR
WORLD WAR II COMMEMORATIVE SERIES
Benis M. Frank
CARTOGRAPHIC CONSULTANT
George C. MacGillivray
EDITING AND DESIGN SECTION, HISTORY AND MUSEUMS DIVISION
Robert E. Struder, Senior Editor; W. Stephen Hill, Visual Information
Specialist; Catherine A. Kerns, Composition Services Technician
Marine Corps Historical Center
Building 58, Washington Navy Yard
Washington, D.C. 20374-0580
1993
PCN 190 003121 00
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained.
To make this eBook easier to read, particularly on handheld devices, most images have been made relatively larger than in the original pamphlet, and centered, rather than offset to one side or the other; and some were placed a little earlier or later than in the original. Sidebars in the original have been repositioned between chapters and identified as “[Sidebar (page nn):”, where the page reference is to the original location in the source book. In the Plain Text version, the matching closing right bracket follows the last line of the Sidebar’s text and is on a separate line to make it more noticeable. In the HTML versions, that bracket follows the colon, and each Sidebar is displayed within a box.
The spelling of “Biblio Hill” has been made consistent.
Page [32]: “hindered identification targets” probably is missing an “of”.