Morning Star, Midnight Sun - The Early Guadalcanal - Solomons Campaign of WWII August-October 1942

Following the disastrous Java Sea campaign, the Allies went on the offensive in the Pacific in a desperate attempt to halt the Japanese forces that were rampaging across the region. With the conquest of Australia, a very real possibility, the stakes were high. Their target: the Japanese-held Soloman Islands, in particular the southern island of Guadalcanal.

Hamstrung by arcane pre-war thinking and a bureaucratic mind-set, the US Navy had to adapt on the fly in order to compete with the mighty Imperial Japanese Navy, whose ingenuity and creativity thus far had fostered the creation of its Pacific empire. Starting with the amphibious assault on Savo Island, the campaign turned into an attritional struggle where the evenly matched foes sought to grind out a victory.

Following on from his hugely successful book Rising Sun, Falling Skies, Jeffrey R. Cox tells the gripping story of the first Allied offensive of the Pacific War, as they sought to prevent Japan from cutting off Australia and regaining dominance in the Pacific.

CONTENTS

I. Now What? - Strategic situation in Summer 1942

II. Learning on the Landing - The Invasion of Guadalcanal

III. The Sleeping Watch - The Battle of Savo Island

IV. Expensive Bait - Battle of the Eastern Solomons

V. I am Aoba - The Battle of Cape Esperance

VI. Not Quite Midway - Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands

VII. Barfight in the Dark - The First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal

VIII. The Reckoning Begins - Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal

IX. Just When You Think - Battles of Tassafaronga and Rennell Island

X. Cartwheeling - Bismarck Sea, Landings on New Georgia and Vella Lavella

XI. Guadalcanal - Minus All the Mistakes

XII. Anti-Climax - Isolation of Rabaul