Morning Star, Midnight Sun Osprey (9781472826428)

Morning Star, Midnight Sun: The Early Guadalcanal-Solomons Campaign of World War II August-October 1942

Features

• 448 pages
• Softcover
• Book dimensions are 9" by 6"

Following the disastrous Java Sea campaign, the Allies went on the offensive in the Pacific in a desperate attempt to halt the Japanese forces that were rampaging across the region. With the conquest of Australia a very real possibility, the stakes were high. Their target: the Japanese-held Solomon Islands, in particular the southern island of Guadalcanal.

Hamstrung by arcane prewar thinking and a bureaucratic mindset, the US Navy had to adapt on the fly in order to compete with the mighty Imperial Japanese Navy, whose ingenuity and creativity thus far had fostered the creation of its Pacific empire. Starting with the amphibious assault on Savo Island, the campaign turned into an attritional struggle where the evenly matched foes sought to grind out a victory.