US Marine Corps - The Black Vault

Planning jor Paring the Japanese Toenaiis 527
OPERATIONAL FIRSTS
The TOENAILS Operation was the first major Pacific amphibious landing
wherein ( 1) “transport planes were used to drop supplies and needed mate-
rial, including shells and water to our combat troops” and (2) large tugs
were available to salvage landing craft and landing boats.45
It also was the first amphibious operation where a Flag or General officer
with a small staff was set up to control all aircraft in the objective area. In
TOENAILS, Brigadier General Francis R. Mulcahy, USMC, Commander,
Headquarters and Forward Echelon, 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, was desig-
nated Commander Air New Georgia. He was positioned in the McCawIey
together with CTF 31 until the prospective Commander Occupation Force
moved his command post ashore to Rendova Island. When that event
occurred on D-Day, Mulcahy was to shift ashore to work under the command
of that of-liter. Direction of fighters over Task Force 31 on D-Day initially
was in the destroyer }enkitzs, which had a fighter director group aboard.
Close air support direction initially was in the McCawley which had a close
air support group aboard. Both of these latter groups were under orders to
shift ashore as soon as practical.4c
INTELLIGENCE
The Intelligence Annexes of CTF 3 1’s two Operation Plans (A8–43 and
A9–43 ) for TOENAILS contained over 60 maps and drawings. Otherwise
they were sketchy to an extreme. But even this was better intelligence than
SOPAC’S Operation Plan 14–43 for TOENAILS which had no Intelligence
Annex at all.
Despite the sketchiness of the intelligence data supplied, the overall
guesstimate of Japanese naval strength in the Solomons on 13 June 1943, by
post-war Japanese account, was reasonably conservative: “6 destroyers and
5 submarines versus actually 1 cruiser, 8 destroyers and 8 submarines in the
8th Fleet with Headquarters in the Shortlands.”
The 30 May 1943 estimate of Japanese air strength in the Solomons and
at Kavieng and Rabaul—393 planes—also was low, on the date it was made,
4’ (a) CTF 31 Op Plan A8-43, Annexes (E) and (F); (b) CINCPAC Operations in the Pacific
Ocean Areas, July 1943. P. 13.
‘0 (a) CTF 33 Op Plan 7-43, 18 Jun. 1943; (b) Commander New Georgia Air Force (Brigadier
General Mulcahy, USMC), Special Action Report covering the 1st phase of the New Georgia
Operations, 29Jun.–l3 Aug. 1943. No ser, undated,