NEW BRITAIN
PHOTOGRAPHER FILMING ACTIVITY ON ARAWE, using a 35-mm. Eyemo movie camera, while the beachhead was being made secure three days after the landings on Arawe (top). Infantryman watching aircraft from his camouflaged foxhole (bottom). Five days after the landings the Americans had cleared the enemy from Arawe peninsula.
NEW BRITAIN
ALLIGATOR, mounting a .50-caliber gun on the left and a .30-caliber water-cooled machine gun on the right, coming down a slope to a beach on Arawe for more supplies for the men on the front lines. Armored amphibian tractors proved to be valuable assault vehicles. They could be floated beyond the range of shore batteries, deployed in normal landing boat formations, and driven over the fringing reefs and up the beaches. One of the immediate missions of the forces landing on Arawe was to establish a PT boat base.
NEW BRITAIN
MARINES WADING THROUGH A THREE-FOOT SURF to reach shore at Cape Gloucester. Note that they carry their rifles high. On 26 December 1943 marines landed on the western end of New Britain at points east and west of Cape Gloucester. Their immediate objective, the airdrome on the cape, was a desirable link in the chain of bases necessary to permit the air forces to pave the way for further advances.