Up the Slot: Guadalcanal and the Solomon Islands Campaign

You wake in the Florida group to explore Tulagi and Gavutu on foot. On the morning of August 7, 1942, while the landing on Guadalcanal went unopposed, the Marines who came ashore here met the hardest fighting of the operation. The Japanese garrisons fought to nearly the last man, and Gavutu and neighboring Tanambogo cost the 1st Parachute Battalion dearly for a pair of islets a few hundred yards across. In Purvis Bay you will see the beached bow of USS LST-342, torpedoed by the submarine RO-106 in July 1943 and towed here for salvage, and the hulk of the Japanese destroyer Kikuzuki, sunk during the Tulagi raid in May 1942.

Overnight in sheltered water.

The ship sails past Savo Island, where on the night of August 9, 1942 a Japanese cruiser force fell on the Allied screen and sank four heavy cruisers in little more than half an hour, the worst defeat in a fair fight the U.S. Navy has ever suffered. You continue to the Russell Islands, occupied without opposition in February 1943 to serve as a stepping stone toward New Georgia. Going ashore on Pavuvu and Banika, you will see where the 1st Marine Division rested and refitted, where the Seabees laid two airstrips, and where the hospitals stood.

Overnight in sheltered water.

You sail for the New Georgia group and the opening moves of the campaign to take Munda. At Seghe, the Seabees built a coral fighter strip in under three weeks in the summer of 1943 on ground held by the coastwatcher Donald Kennedy and his scouts, a vital link in the wider Allied drive on Rabaul known as Operation Cartwheel. There is a chance to swim to an aircraft wreck in the shallows off the runway. The ship continues to Viru Harbour, taken by the 4th Marine Raiders on July 1, 1943, and then to Lumbaria Island off Rendova, the forward PT boat base known to its crews as Todd City.

Anchor overnight.

The morning is given to Munda Airfield and its museum, the airstrip the Japanese carved out under camouflage in late 1942, and which cost the Americans five weeks of jungle fighting before it fell on August 5, 1943. The ship then cruises Kula Gulf, threading the Diamond Narrows with Arundel Island to port, and enters Blackett Strait, the hunting ground of the PT boats and the coastwatchers. Here, on the night of August 2, 1943, the destroyer Amagiri rammed and cut in two PT-109 under Lieutenant John F. Kennedy; you will swim ashore at Kennedy Island, the islet then called Plum Pudding, where he brought his surviving crew after a four-hour swim.

Anchor overnight in sheltered water.

The ship sails past Gizo for Vella Lavella, with the volcanic cone of Kolombangara filling the horizon, the island the Allies chose to bypass rather than assault, and the anchor of two night surface battles fought in July 1943. Vella Lavella was taken from August 1943 and became an airbase in the campaign to neutralize the great Japanese stronghold at Rabaul. At Barakoma Airfield you will stand on the strip that served as home base for VMF-214, the Black Sheep under Major Gregory “Pappy” Boyington, through their second tour in the winter of 1943.

Overnight in sheltered water.

The ship turns for Guadalcanal and runs back down the Slot, the channel that carried the Tokyo Express south by night for six months. Dolphins often run alongside. John Shively gives his presentation on the naval battles fought in these waters, and you will pass over them as he does.

You arrive at Honiara in the afternoon, with dinner aboard.

In the morning the Bilikiki sails to Red Beach and lands you on the beach where the 1st Marine Division came ashore in August 1942. From there you tour Alligator Creek and Bloody Ridge, then visit the Japanese Peace Memorial on Mount Austen and the Guadalcanal American Memorial on Skyline Drive. In the afternoon you check into your waterfront hotel in Honiara for the next two nights.

The day begins at the Vouza Memorial in Honiara. You then head west along the coast to see the wreck of the Japanese transport Kinugawa Maru at Bonegi and the open-air Vilu War Museum, before continuing to Cape Esperance at the island’s northwest tip.

Overnight in Honiara.

The morning is free to walk into town, visit the bookshop, or see the Coastwatchers Memorial next door to the hotel, raised to the men who stayed behind on Japanese-held islands with a radio and reported what passed.

Check out and transfer to Honiara International Airport.