US Marine Corps - The Black Vault

396 Amphibians Came To Conqner
THE SECOND DEFENSIVE DECISION—VANDEGR:
PERIMETER DEFENSE
~’s—
Admiral Turner recalled that the defensive type naval decision made by
Vice Admiral Fletcher to withdraw the carrier Air Support Forces (CTG
61. 1) from an area where they might soon be subject to concentrated and
coordinated submarine and land based air attacks was followed the next
morning, Sunday, 9 August, by a defensive Marine decision made by Majo~
General Vandegrift, which was equally decisive on the flow of the war in
the Lower Solomons during the next four months.’”
Major General Vandegrift at his 0900 conference of regimental commanders
on the 9th directed that the planned ground offensive operations
cease, that “further ground operations be restricted to vigorous patrolling,”
and that “defenses be immediately organized to repel attack from the sea.” 107
On Guadalcanal Island there were nearly 11,000 Marines stranded but
intact. The first day on Guadalcanal, as the Army history relates it:
the Guadalcanal forces had landed unopposed and captured the airfield without
casualties.10s
Or as the Marine history puts it:
. . . the lack of opposition (on the Guadalcanal side only) gave it somewhat
the characteristicsof a training maneuver. . .109
Contact with the enemy on Guadalcanal the first and second day was
nominal. As the Army history states it:
The enemy garrison, composed of 430 sailors and 1,7’00 laborers, had fled
westward without attempt ing to defend or destroy their installations. . ..110
The Marine Corps history states:
There were hardly enough Japmese fighting men ashore on the island to
bother the Vandegrift force. . . .’l’
But,
if the Japanese struck hard while the landing force was abandoned and without
air support, the precarious first step to Rabaul might well have to be
taken all over again. llZ
‘ffiTurner.
‘mGriffith, The Baitle for Guadalcanul, p. 68.
‘M Miller, Gtiadakat~al: The FirJ~ Offensive (Army), p. 75.
‘wHough, Ludwig, and Shaw, Pearl Harbor lo Guudaliatzal (Marine), p. 257.
1’0Miller, p. 73.
‘u Hough, Ludwig, and Shaw, p, 2S7.
“Ibid., P. 27i.