Название: Marines on New Britain: Cape Gloucester and Rabaul. A Pictorial Record
Автор: Eric Hammel
Издательство: US Marine Corps
Страниц: 37
Формат: PDF
Размер: 21 мб
Качество: хорошее
Язык: Английский
Год: 1949
The Guadalcanal-blooded 1st Marine Division’s assault on Cape Gloucester in western New Britain on December 26, 1943, was unconnected to the preceding seventeen month slog along the nearby Solomon Islands chain. Nor did it have anything to do with the neutralization of the Japanese naval and air fortress at Rabaul, on the eastern end of New Britain. True enough, the Cape Gloucester invasion happened to strategically isolate the vast Rabaul logistics base from Japanese-held areas in nearby New Guinea. But the invasion of Cape Gloucester was a tactical operation aimed at preventing a pair of badly built airfields from supporting an effort to interdict the passage of two Australian Army divisions then fighting their way along the New Guinea shore adjacent to Vitiaz Strait. On the eastern shore of Vitiaz Strait, the Cape Gloucester airfields, once captured and improved, were to support the Australian drive—but not the air offensive against Rabaul.
