US Marine Corps - The Black Vault

572 Amphibians Came To Conqaer
1123. Came off reef with no apparent damage to ship.
2 July 0600. Making extremely slow headway due to slow speed main-
tained by reason of strong head winds and seas, coupled with fact that one
LCT lost her ramp and was difficult to control.4’
AI?C-27 was not the only landing ship which unintentionally ran aground
during TOENAILS. The LCT-322 in the 4th Echelon for Segi grounded on
3 July and was pulled off by the tug Rail on 4 July.
DIVIDENDS
Segi paid far more real and speedy dividends than either of the other
diversionary assaults made by the Eastern Force on 30 June.
Beginning 10 July, it was possible to provide fighter support for all bomb-
ing missions against Munda from the Seabee-built 3,300-foot long Segi
airstrip. By 15 July, when Rear Admiral Turner reluctantly took his depar-
ture from TOENAILS, our aircraft from Segi were providing daylight
protection to amphibious craft during the last lap of their passage from the
Russells or Guadalcanal and at the beachheads.
WICKHAM ANCHORAGE
Early in the planning stages of TOENAILS, it was hoped that an
airstrip might be built on Vangunu Island to provide fighter and close air
support for later phases of operations in the Middle Solomons. When actual
reconnaissance indicated there were no really good airstrip sites available,
Vangunu Island stayed in the plans because Wickham Anchorage off
O1eana Bay on the southeast coast, two-thirds of the way from the Russells
to Rendova, looked like a good place for the landing craft to bide-a-wee
should they encounter very heavy weather or have engine failure beyond
the capacity of their limited engineers’ force to repair. At Wickham
Anchorage landing craft could remain during the daytime and be given
anti-aircraft protection.
The fact that the Japanese had a company and a half of troops in the
vicinity of Vuru, a mile south of Wickham Anchorage, led to beefing up
the Landing Force but did not change the basic intention.
Rear Admiral Fort, Second-in-Command of Task Force 31, commanded
u APC-27 War Diary, 1–2 Jul. 1943