The Shortland Islands are a group of islands located at the northwestern tip of the Solomon Islands in the southwest Pacific Ocean. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

The northwest of the archipelago is only 8 kilometers from the island of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea, and the main island of Shortland Island is one of the important military ports of the Japanese Combined Fleet.

On the evening of 25 October, a transport flotilla escorted by four heavy cruisers and six destroyers quietly left the harbor of Shortland Island and, under the cover of night, disappeared into the vast sea.

Since Yamaguchi Tawen accepted Yamamoto Fifty-six's commission to formulate a battle plan for attacking Kuah Island, as a fanatical believer in the theory of aviation victory, he initially set the target on the airfields around Kuah Island, but after some investigation and understanding, Yamaguchi Tawen and Minoru Genda, who were sent by Yamamoto to assist him, almost lost his head.

There are indeed three Japanese airfields near Kuah Island, but all of them are small airfields that can only be used by a dozen aircraft, and most importantly, these airfields are also under the strong suppression of Henderson Airport on Kuah Island, which cannot be replenished in time, and their combat capability is negligible.

There are two large airports that make sense, one on the island of Shortland and the other on Rabaul, thousands of miles away.

Knowing that the naval aviation at Rabaul airfield had to fly long distances for more than three hours to reach Kuah Island, and then hurriedly fought for 15 minutes before turning around and retreating, Yamaguchi Tabun and Minoru Genda hated the army and their naval colleagues in Rabaul to the extreme.

Three hours of flight, then another fight and another three hours back to Rabaul.

This is a devastating act of the pilots, and it is also a serious crime to use the valuable pilots as cheap army infantry.

After a temper tantrum between the two, they immediately set out to make a plan to find a suitable location and build a new airport on the islands near Kuah Island.

After some screening, New George Island, three hundred kilometers northwest of Kuah Island, came into the sight of the two.

New George Island is located 300 km from Kuah Island and only 200 km from Shortland Island.

After careful reconnaissance by reconnaissance aircraft, the two men placed the landing site in the southwest of New George Island, in an area called Cape Munda.

In order to attack Kuah Island, the Japanese Army mobilized three divisions to the south, namely the 2nd Division, the 6th Division, and the 38th Division.

Among them, the 2nd Division was assembled relatively quickly, and the main forces had already been transported by sea to Truk, Rabaul and Shortland.

Then arrived the 13th Wing, the advance unit of the 6th Division.

The 2nd Division was to be used on Kuah Island, and the task of landing on Cape Munda fell to the 13th Wing.

After 14 hours at sea, in the early morning of 26 October, the 13th Wing successfully landed on Cape Munda and on the island of Lentova, 10 kilometers south of Cape Munda.

Knowing that the landing was going well, Yamaguchi immediately set off for a second convoy of transport ships, sent engineering and air defense units to the island, and transported a large amount of machinery and equipment to begin the construction of an airstrip.

Because Cape Munda is within the operational radius of the US airfield on Kuah Island, the construction of the engineering unit is very hidden.

With the cooperation of the infantry of the 13th Wing, they chose the airfield in a dense forest, and in order to prevent the US reconnaissance planes from discovering it, every time they removed a tree, they pulled up a camouflage net there, which was covered with leaves such as coconut and palm pleats, and the bottom of the camouflage net was covered. Pilots who reconnoiter from high altitudes will find it difficult to spot runways on the ground if they are not careful.

At noon on 28 October, as the first echelon of the onboard assault battle plan, the first onboard flotilla with the battleship Hiei and four heavy cruisers Takao, Atago, Maya, and Chokai as the main force, and two light cruisers and eight destroyers escorted the first fleet, under the command of Vice Admiral Hiroki Abe, left the port of Shortland and sailed mightily toward Kuah Island.

Shortly after the first onboard fleet left the port of Shortland, the fleet commander was plunged headlong into a heavy rainstorm amid the cheers of the fleet's commander, Vice Admiral Abe.

The bad weather provided good cover for the 1st onboard fleet, and when the fleet broke out of the rainstorm, it was already night.

The fleet galloped all the way, taking advantage of the cover of night, through the narrow strait between Savo Island and the northwest corner of Kuah Island, and then slowed down to slowly approach the northern part of Kuah Island at a speed of fifteen nautical miles.

Henderson Airport is located in Cape Lunga, north of Kuah Island, with the northernmost point of the airport less than a kilometre from the sea.

Lieutenant General Abe received an order to approach Henderson Airport at night and use naval artillery to bombard the airport and damage the airfield's runway and facilities.

After passing through the slit strait, Cape Lunga was in sight, and Vice Admiral Abe ordered the battleship to be replaced with high-explosive shells and prepare for the shelling of the airfield.

At this moment, an unexpected sudden occurrence disrupted Lieutenant General Abe's scheduled plan.

Like the Japanese troops on the island, the U.S. forces on the island also need transport fleets to provide various supplies to maintain operations on the island.

A U.S. convoy from Australia, arriving a few hours later than normal due to a storm on the way, had to sail into the strait at night and sail towards Cape Lunga.

Shortly after the convoy entered the strait from the east, sonar listeners on a destroyer escorting the ship spotted submarine activity nearby.

In order to protect the transport ship, anti-submarine warfare was immediately launched, and depth charges were thrown into the sea one after another, and a series of white water columns rose into the air with a rumbling explosion.

Because the Japanese army was suppressed by American fighters at Henderson Airport, they had no choice but to use fast warships such as destroyers or cruisers to smuggle supplies to the Japanese troops on the island at night.

After the US military found out the secret of the Japanese army's night smuggling, it sent seaplanes to patrol at low altitude at night whenever the weather permitted, to search for Japanese warships to carry out "rat-like transportation" in the waters near Kuah Island.

When the U.S. transport fleet was engaged in anti-submarine warfare, a Catalina seaplane happened to be patrolling over the nearby waters, and the roar of the explosion and the dazzling white column of water in the darkness quickly attracted the attention of the pilot.

The seaplane immediately rushed in the direction of the rise of the white water column, swept the sea at a low altitude, and easily observed the vague figure of the battleship on the sea.

The driver, who did not know the truth, conscientiously sent a report to the base, reporting the movements of the "Japanese fleet", and then made a very professional move.

A flare dragged a parachute, unwilling to fall for a long time, hanging in the air like a small sun.

Almost the moment the flare was raised, the telescopes of more than a dozen lookout posts in the first onboard fleet commanded by Vice Admiral Abe instantly turned in the direction in which the flare was raised.

The transport fleet of the US military was exposed.

"Quick change armor-piercing bullets, quick change armor-piercing bullets······ Damn the radar, it didn't even detect the enemy······"

After cursing for a while at the ineffective domestic radar, Vice Admiral Abe immediately decided to meet the American fleet that was "ambushing" him.

The 1st onboard flotilla turned the bow of the ship and rushed in the direction in which the flares were raised.

In an oolong incident, the Battle of Kuah began······