50 Fun Facts About Battle of Guadalcanal

Which country contains the village that gave Guadalcanal its name, the home town of a sixteenth-century explorer?

Spain has the original Guadalcanal, a village in Andalusia's Seville province. Pedro de Ortega Valencia, sailing with Mendaña's expedition, named the Pacific island after his birthplace.

Which surname was shared by five brothers from Waterloo, Iowa, who all died when one cruiser sank off Guadalcanal?

Sullivan was the name, and the loss of all five aboard USS Juneau moved the Navy to name a warship USS The Sullivans. The brothers had insisted on serving together.

Henderson Field on Guadalcanal honours a Marine pilot killed attacking Japanese carriers in which earlier battle?

Midway is where Major Lofton Henderson died at the head of his bomber squadron. Marines gave his name to the field within days of coming ashore.

Which code name did Allied planners give Guadalcanal, a word the island's pilots soon borrowed for their own nickname?

Cactus was the code name, so the scratch collection of Allied planes flying from the island became known as the Cactus Air Force.

Which nickname did Allied forces give the fast Japanese destroyer runs that supplied Guadalcanal under cover of night?

Tokyo Express was the name the press made famous. The destroyers had to unload and be back at base within one night, before daylight brought Allied aircraft overhead.

Marines on Guadalcanal named a tidal lagoon Alligator Creek, but which reptiles actually lived in its waters?

Crocodiles, not alligators, live in the Solomons, so the name was wrong twice over: the 'creek' was a lagoon cut off from the sea by a sandbar. It stuck anyway.

Douglas Munro, killed rescuing Marines off a Guadalcanal beach, is the only Medal of Honor recipient of which service?

Coast Guard signalman Munro steered his own landing craft between Japanese guns and the Marines so the others could load. He was 22.

Which Japanese admiral, blamed for Pearl Harbor, was shot down in 1943 by American fighters flying from Guadalcanal?

Isoroku Yamamoto died when P-38s from Guadalcanal ambushed his transport near Bougainville. American codebreakers had read a message giving his travel schedule.

Japanese sailors named their own night destroyer runs to Guadalcanal after which creature that is busiest after dark?

Rats gave the runs their Japanese name, Rat Transportation. Fast warships could slip troops ashore this way, but not the heavy guns, vehicles and food an army needed.

Which household appliance named the lone Japanese planes that droned over Guadalcanal at night to keep Marines awake?

Washing machine was the comparison: troops called each raider Washing Machine Charlie for its rattling engines, which some bomber pilots deliberately ran out of sync.

Which Marine machine gunner earned the Medal of Honor on Guadalcanal, sold war bonds at home, then died on Iwo Jima?

John Basilone could have sat out the war as a celebrity, but he asked to go back to the fleet and was killed on the first day of the Iwo Jima landings.

Which 1998 Terrence Malick film, adapted from a James Jones novel, follows American soldiers fighting on Guadalcanal?

The Thin Red Line draws on its author's own war: Jones fought on Guadalcanal as an infantryman and was wounded there before he ever wrote about it.

Which nickname did Allied sailors give New Georgia Sound, the channel Japanese warships ran down toward Guadalcanal?

The Slot got its name from its shape, a narrow corridor of water between two chains of islands, and from the stream of warships that used it.

Which name did Allied sailors give the waters off Guadalcanal because so many ships and planes sank there?

Ironbottom Sound holds the wrecks of more than 50 vessels lost during the campaign, Japanese and Allied alike.

Which admiral nicknamed Bull took charge of the South Pacific in October 1942, with Guadalcanal hanging in the balance?

William Halsey replaced Robert Ghormley, whom the Pacific Fleet's commander had come to see as too pessimistic to keep leading the campaign.

Which general led the 1st Marine Division onto Guadalcanal and later became the first four-star Marine on active duty?

A. A. Vandegrift received the Medal of Honor for holding Guadalcanal and went on to serve as Commandant of the Marine Corps.

Which nickname belongs to the Navy construction battalions that reached Guadalcanal in 1942 to maintain Henderson Field?

Seabees is a play on CB, the initials of Construction Battalion. Nearly 400 of them landed in September 1942 to keep the battered runway in service.

Which mosquito-borne disease struck far more men of the 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal than Japanese fire did?

Malaria led the tropical diseases that caused some 8,500 hospital cases in the division, more than four times its battle casualties.

What were Japanese crews building on Guadalcanal in mid-1942 that prompted the Allies to invade the island?

An airfield at Lunga Point would have put Japanese long-range bombers within reach of the sea lanes between America and Australia. The Marines finished it themselves.

Which volcanic island near Guadalcanal named an August 1942 night battle that sank three American cruisers?

Savo's battle was a night ambush that routed the Allied screen while the attackers were barely scratched, one of the worst defeats in US naval history.

Which Marine Raider colonel, known as Red Mike, held Guadalcanal's Bloody Ridge against repeated Japanese night attacks?

Merritt Edson and about 800 Marines withstood more than 3,000 attackers just south of the runway. He received the Medal of Honor, and the ridge now carries his name.

Which phrase did Evans Carlson, whose Marine Raiders made a four-week patrol across Guadalcanal, borrow from Chinese?

Gung ho came from the name of China's industrial cooperatives. Carlson took it to mean working together and made it his battalion's watchword, and the Marines spread it.

Which Guadalcanal scout, bayoneted and left for dead by Japanese captors, crawled back to warn the Marines of an attack?

Jacob Vouza chewed through the ropes that bound him to a tree and reached American lines minutes before the assault. He was later knighted.

Which capital city of Solomon Islands grew up on Guadalcanal's north shore beside the wartime Henderson Field?

Honiara became the capital in 1952 because the American military had left the area better equipped with roads and facilities than anywhere else in the islands.

Which war correspondent landed with the Marines and turned his notes into the 1943 bestseller Guadalcanal Diary?

Richard Tregaskis stood 6 feet 7, a conspicuous target, yet stayed through the first weeks ashore. Hollywood released a film of his book within a year.

Joe Foss, the top Marine fighter ace over Guadalcanal, later became the first commissioner of which sports organization?

American Football League owners hired Foss in 1959, soon after he left office as governor of South Dakota. He ran the upstart competition until 1966.

Which constellation appears on the 1st Marine Division's shoulder insignia, designed in Australia after Guadalcanal?

Southern Cross stars surround a red numeral one that stands for Guadalcanal, the division's first action. Each Marine was issued two of the badges to sew onto his battle jacket.

Which Army formation, named for New Caledonia where it was raised, was the first Army unit sent to Guadalcanal?

Americal Division is a contraction of American and New Caledonian. Its first regiment ashore fought so closely beside the Marines that it was sometimes called the 164th Marines.

Coastwatchers who warned Guadalcanal of incoming air raids took their code name from which children's book character?

Ferdinand, the storybook bull who sits and smells the flowers rather than fight, was chosen to remind the watchers that their job was to observe unnoticed, not to do battle.

Barney Ross, decorated with a Silver Star for a night fight on Guadalcanal, had been a world champion in which sport?

Boxing made Ross famous as a champion in three weight divisions. Wounded on a night patrol, he held off a Japanese attack alone and saved a fellow Marine.

Which American carrier, launcher of the Doolittle Raid, was lost at Santa Cruz during the fight for Guadalcanal?

USS Hornet had been in service for just a year and six days. No American fleet carrier has been sunk by enemy fire since.

Which American battleship crippled the Japanese battleship Kirishima in a night gun duel off Guadalcanal?

USS Washington fired from the dark while the enemy's attention was fixed on another American battleship that had strayed too close, and came through the duel undamaged.

Which Australian cruiser lost off Guadalcanal was honoured when President Roosevelt had a US Navy ship renamed for it?

HMAS Canberra gave its name to USS Canberra, the first American warship named after a foreign capital city. The cruiser had been building as USS Pittsburgh.

Which nickname do naval historians use for Japan's Type 93 torpedo, which wrecked American cruisers off Guadalcanal?

Long Lance was coined only after the war, by the US Navy's chief historian Samuel Eliot Morison. At Tassafaronga the torpedoes sank one American cruiser and crippled three more.

Which stubby Grumman fighter did Marine pilots on Guadalcanal fly against the more nimble Japanese Zero in 1942?

Wildcat pilots could not out-turn a Zero, so they waited at high altitude, dived through the enemy formation, fired, and used the speed to climb back for another pass.

Which Guadalcanal Marine wrote the memoir Helmet for My Pillow after a Broadway musical about the war annoyed him?

Robert Leckie saw the musical South Pacific in 1951 and resolved to show readers that the war had been nothing like a stage show. His memoir appeared six years later.

Which code name covered Japan's secret evacuation of over 10,000 troops from Guadalcanal in February 1943?

Operation Ke fooled the Americans, who took the ship movements for a new offensive and braced for attack. They realised the Japanese had gone only after the last run.

Which small island near Guadalcanal, prewar capital of the British Solomons, did Marine Raiders storm on the first day?

Tulagi's defenders fought almost to the last man, while the main landing on Guadalcanal that same morning met practically no opposition.

Which Japanese fortress base on New Britain sent most of the bombers and warships that attacked Guadalcanal?

Rabaul was so distant that its aircrews faced an eight-hour round trip, a handicap that badly hampered Japan's bid to control the sky over the island.

Which toy line based a 1998 action figure on Mitchell Paige, a Marine awarded the Medal of Honor on Guadalcanal?

G.I. Joe picked one Medal of Honor recipient from each service, and Paige was the Marine. With his platoon cut down, he had moved from machine gun to machine gun, firing alone.

Which code name covered the August 1942 invasion of Guadalcanal, America's first land offensive against Japan?

Operation Watchtower was mounted in such a hurry, and with supplies cut so far back, that the Marines sent to carry it out renamed it Operation Shoestring.

Which Japanese emperor formally endorsed the decision to abandon Guadalcanal on the last day of 1942?

Hirohito gave his approval three days after the heads of his army and navy came in person to tell him they wanted to pull out.

Marine pilot Joe Foss, flying from Guadalcanal, equalled the 26 victories of which American flying ace of World War I?

Eddie Rickenbacker had been America's top scorer since 1918, so matching him made Foss the country's first ace of aces of the new war.

Which Japanese battleship, crippled in a night brawl off Guadalcanal, became the first battleship Japan lost in the war?

Hiei had its rudder jammed by shells from an American heavy cruiser and could not get away. It sank the same day.

Which future two-time Oscar winner played a Marine in the 1943 Hollywood film of Guadalcanal Diary?

Anthony Quinn joined a cast led by Preston Foster, Lloyd Nolan and William Bendix. The film reached cinemas only a year after the fighting it portrayed.

Which Army general took charge of the final offensive on Guadalcanal and later led the Seventh Army in Europe?

Alexander Patch was handed the whole island offensive in January 1943, and by February the Japanese had been driven off Guadalcanal.

Which animal's outline, seen from above, named a hill mass American soldiers stormed on Guadalcanal in January 1943?

A horse in full stride is what the hills resembled, so soldiers called them the Galloping Horse. A smaller feature nearby became the Sea Horse for the same reason.

Which admiral pulled his aircraft carriers away from Guadalcanal a day after the landings, exposing the transports?

Frank Jack Fletcher cited fighter losses and low fuel. Without air cover the transports sailed too, with more than half the Marines' supplies still aboard.

What kind of Japanese vessel sank the American carrier Wasp during the Guadalcanal campaign in September 1942?

A submarine, I-19, fired a spread of six torpedoes at Wasp just as the carrier's aircraft were being refuelled and rearmed on board.

Which Japanese admiral, nicknamed Tenacious by his American opponents, led the destroyer supply runs to Guadalcanal?

Raizo Tanaka fell out of favour with his own high command and was transferred to Singapore at the end of 1942, before the campaign was even over.