Following the Battle of Midway, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff decided America needed to take advantage of the momentum gained by launching Operation Watchtower, the first US offensive operation of the war.
US Marines landed on Guadalcanal to seize an airfield the Japanese were building there. The operation was rushed and the Marines short on supplies, which moved them to refer to the mission jokingly as “Operation Shoestring.”
- Listen now:
Playlist:
Fanfare
Opening War Theme
“Pacific – 1941”
Composed and performed by Antonio Serbanescu.
Presented by arrangement with Pond5.com
Closing War Theme
Except when otherwise indicated, the contents of this podcast are © and ℗ 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 by Mark Painter, all rights reserved. Some music and sound effects used by arrangement with Pond 5.
Pacific-1941 is such a cool song. Thanks for using it.
I’m familiar with the Solomon Islands thanks to the YouTube channel Geography Now, as well as the Leave it to Beaver episode “Beaver’s Hero”, where Ward Cleaver was part of the Navy Seabees, but Beaver embellishes it to make him more of a hero, wanting to put him at Guadacanal, but Wally can’t spell that, so they put him at Wake Island instead.
I recall an episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show long ago, in which Mary’s boss, Lou Grant, confides to Mary that he’d written a book, but was unable to get it published. It was a memoir describing his experiences at Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima. He told Mary that several editors he submitted it to described it as “boring.” Mary expressed disbelief that his experiences at Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima could be boring, and he said, “Yeah, but I was there in 1952.”