156 - Operation Ke: The pursuit and evacuation - How deception planning helped the Japanese Amry withdraw from Guadalcanal

0:00 Once the decision had been made to withdrawal, what was the Japanese deception plan and how effective was it against the US as they conducted the pursuit? We look at Operation KE and the evacuation of Guadalcanal. This is the Principles of War podcast,. Professional military education for junior officers and senior NCOs.

0:28 G' day team. Welcome back to the show. This episode, number 156 looks at Operation KE, the Japanese evacuation of Guadalcanal. The writing is on the wall for all to see, including the Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo, that the position on Guadalcanal for the Japanese is not sustainable. The operational imperative is now to withdraw as many troops as possible from Guadalcanal.

0:57 The withdrawal, particularly in a littoral environment, is a difficult tactical task. So let's get back to Dave to see how the Japanese plan to conduct this. Welcome back to the podcast, Dave. Thanks, James. Yes, the last of the combat. So we're now at around the 13th, 14th of January 1943 and by now the Sea Horse and the Galloping Horse have been.

1:23 Those positions have been taken on the 11th and 13th respectively. The Gifu is still holding out, but on the 14th the Tokyo Express is running and they're actually able to land a battalion of soldiers at Cape Esperance. These are fresh soldiers and with them is a staff officer from Rabaul with secret orders for Hyakutake.

1:46 What were those orders and how did Hyakutake receive them? Last of December, the Japanese high command had decided, okay, it's time to evacuate Guadalcanal once and for all. They wouldn't really discussing it in the open, but I think it come to a head between the Imperial Japanese Army and Imperial Japanese Navy when they had some high level, like top, top, high level discussions.

2:06 Imperial General Headquarters. So the biggest thing it obviously relate back to, you can't keep these guys supplied. The army said, well, you can't keep them supplied even though the army, the Navy said we can. So. Well, you're, you're not, they're starving to death, you need to get them out. And so they thought the only way we can do this because we've never had a quote, withdrawal orders, we have to go appeal directly to the Emperor.

2:29 So the Emperor and we discussed this in some of the first episodes after, especially after September, his interest was on Guadalcanal. That was like one of his main point, focus points was Guadalcanal. He followed in intently and he always wanted to update situation reports because it was the, the place where they were fighting the Allies in the Japanese view on the all-encompassing decisive battle.

2:50 So they had to appeal to the Emperor. And the Emperor initially said no, but then he said, well, these poor men are dying and I won't leave my soldiers to die. I forgot what he said. But basically he issued a decree or edict or whatever they call it now. In it, he didn't say retreat. It didn't say withdrawal.

3:07 It said a strategic move, kind of like he'll advance in another direction type thing. And we've heard before. So it was a strategic move. And what they were going to do is not abandon the whole Solomon Islands. They were just going to make a strategic move for more defensible positions in the Upper Solomons, because at that stage you were building air bases like Munda, you know, other places, and that's what they were going to do.

3:28 They reconsolidate. And that was the whole plan. So they knew, they still maintained, I wouldn't say completely maintained, but they're on par, maybe a little above par with naval superiority, especially at night, with the. The Americans or the Allies. So they knew that if we had a chance to evacuate, we can do it now.

3:46 Because you will see in the later campaigns, they never evacuated, not so much. They didn't want to because they didn't have capacity, because the Americans or the Allies controlled the sea dominance. But here they had a chance. So they said, well, we've got to fool the Americans. How can we do it? So we need to have a grand deception plan to do this.

4:06 So they come up with a plan and a code word of Operation KE, or KE or K, depends on who you are and how you pronounce it, but Operation KE. So it's going to comprise Admiral or Vice Admiral Tanaka, the destroyer guru. So he's going to take some like 21 destroyers and about four or five cruisers covering force, and over a period of a week, they were going to land at Cape Esperance, which is the northwest coast of Guadalcanal.

4:31 And they're going to, I think over a series a week, generally three nights. They're going to evacuate in three lifts, three big lifts, and they had category who they're going to evacuate in each one of the lifts. So that was a plan. Now, to make a cover plan, they had to fool the Americans, like I said, and they come up with a great deception.

4:48 So they sent out radio traffic because I knew the Americans listened to the radio traffic. They had a giant buildup of shipping and boombing and Rabaul because they knew that coastwatchers and their American spies or Allies spies would say look, they building up. You got to remember the Americans still thought well the Japanese are still coming down, right?

5:07 They're going to do another offensive like Japanese initially planned. We're going to land some more troops, we're going to do round three or round four. And you look at it. So Americans knew that at the same time in America Guadalcanal had like four operational airfields. Once again, the airfields were the key.

5:23 So they have to protect airfields at all costs like we've seen with Vandegrift and with the Marine offensives. And every time the Japanese start to come down with a naval intell American naval intelligence, they're saying the Japanese are coming. Either suspended an offensive by the Americans or they stopped it.

5:38 Like we've seen a number of times. They pulled back to the protect that perimeter. The Japanese also plan to have a massive air raids, a series of air raids. Once again, that's another deception to build up because they did this in the October for before they dropped off all the troops in October they had a massive buildup of air raids and air activity.

5:56 So they plan to do the same. But this is more to cover those destroyers evacuation. So they had. That was their plan. So Hyakutake, they said well we can't send him a message to withdraw because he won't believe it and he won't do it. And the only way we're going to do this is to land on the island and personally give him two messages.

6:15 One was from 8th Area Army Commander Imamura and the other one was a personal letter or personal decree from the Emperor. So those two staff officers that landed from the 8th Area Army, they landed on the 14th of one of these destroyer runs. And they made their way to Kokumbona where Hyakutake's headquarters was.

6:33 And we know a lot about this because they wrote in their memoirs and accounts. And then Hyakutake's staff officer, which was a. Was a chief of staff was a major general. He wrote his memoirs too, because he survived. He describes him the approach. So on the 14th, on the. The evening of 14, Hyakutake was.

6:51 He was in a. His little hole. It was like a hole in a riverbank. Camouflage hole in a riverbank was his headquarters. He was there. Well, his personal quarters because it was there for air raids. Because if you remember he got. He got wounded back in November by an air raid. So he's still slightly wounded and he's sick.

7:06 But they, they came to him. They spoke to the Major general chief of staff first and Said, this is what we have. And he says, well, okay, well I don't think how I could tell you is going to take this. Well, you need to tell him directly. So told Hyakutake Hyakutake initially said, no, I will not do that.

7:21 I'll refuse. We can't do this. We'll. We'll just all die here. I can't retreat. That was the first letter that was from his direct commander, 8th Area Army commander. They said, well, we've got this letter then straight from the Emperor. And Hyakutake got it and he walked off. He goes, I'll give you my, my answer in the morning.

7:40 He did. He thought about it all night and then he came back the next morning, goes, well, we don't have a choice. I forgot. It's like poetically what he said, but he basically pains him in thousand deaths and all that. But yeah, he said we will abide by the Emperor's request. So they had to come up with a cover plan on the land.

7:56 They just couldn't tell the whole army and all the commanders, okay, we're just going to retreat and we're going to get picked up and we're going to evacuate. They knew the Japanese mentality and their mindset was they would just end up killing themselves because they're not going to retreat and they're going to give up because they never have before.

8:13 They've never seized an order like this, I mean to this extent. So they come up with a cover plan. They said, okay, we need to do a slow withdrawal. We're going to withdraw down the point from Point Cruz. We're going to fight a rear guard. But till we get to the northeast, sorry, the northwest corner, Guadalcanal around Cape Esperance.

8:30 And there we will build a stronghold, consolidate and wait for reinforcements. Once reinforcements arrive that we've been promised, then we'll continue the offensive from there. And that was how they, I guess got away with it. And that's how they played it with the troops. In fact, the 38th Division commander, he'd already made his plans to do a giant assault in hand, just him and his guys to wipe themselves out because they knew they were getting toward the end.

8:53 So the stage withdrawal first. The remnants of the 2nd Division is going to hold around a Point Cruz coastal area and the ridges a little bit to the inland. The 38th Division was going to basically move through or like a passage of lines and they were going to move down the coast, right? And then once they had passed the 2nd Division, the 2nd Division start moving back.

9:12 Now, this battalion you mentioned, fresh battalion, was called a Yano Battalion, Y A N O under a guy called Major. I forgot his first name, but his surname was Yano. Apparently he was a specialist in rear guard actions. Now the first accounts I've read, a Yano Battalion is supposed to be an elite battalion is not correct, not correct.

9:30 I mean I've got plenty of evidence to suggest and even got a diary from a guy in the Yano Battalion and I've got diaries from the other regular Japanese. It spoke of them. So these guys were replacements. They were in Rabaul replacements, battalion size. They were going to go into the 230th Regiment.

9:47 They were replacements. That said they had about five to six weeks of basic training. Majority of them a few senior NCOs and a couple of officers that had some type of training. So they're fresh recruits. Basically it just happened to be a replacement unit. They threw them together and said now you're the Yano Battalion.

10:04 So there wasn't anything elite. I think one of them said, what is that? Anyway, I have to have to remember. That's a good quote some my new book coming out. But yeah, anyway, yeah, there wasn't a battalion of suicide. They were just the battalion of death or something like that. I've got it. They worded it anyway, that was they landed and what they're supposed to do, they're the freshest troops ahead and they were going to stage them at like river points and choke points and they were going to be the rear guard basically to die in place just to hold Americans off until the the regular Japanese could to get make their way to Cape Esperance.

10:35 So that was the plan, Operation KE. But it kicked off officially around mid January when we see that the 14th of January and by the way, those 8th Area Army staff officers, they jumped in a destroyer took off. So yeah, that's where we stand there with it with the Japanese. One of the other interesting things with this was that the Japanese Navy, as a part of just their routine procedures, changed all of their call signs and their code books on the 1st of January.

11:03 This meant that the cryptanalysts were forced to go back to traffic analysis rather than decryption. And the traffic analysis showed that there was a significant amount of movement into Rabaul, a buildup of forces, but it didn't discuss what the. They weren't able to define the intent. So from the American point of view, the buildup for an offensive looks very similar to the buildup for a withdrawal?

11:34 Yes. And I've heard people say, oh, it's army. The Army. The American army didn't know what they were doing. This was an American Army. You got to remember all this intelligence that's coming from Halsey's headquarters in South Pacific. They're giving the. Putting intelligence information into Patch, which is the XIV Corps commander, and Millard Harmon, which is the overall American army commander.

11:55 So you can't really blame the. The army of the commander on the scene. He was only getting the intel that he was receiving from the higher headquarters. And if you put yourselves in. In their shoes and knowing the information they knew at the time and then the whole integrity of the airfields. Yeah, they.

12:12 I guess you could say they could reasonably suspect it'd be a. Be probably reasonably that a division or two was coming their way to take the airfield. Not withdrawal, but the Japanese echelon. What they were going to do is the first echelon was a lot of the 38th Division. The second echelon was going to be Hyakutake staff in elements, most of the 2nd Division.

12:31 The third lift, we're just going to be remnants who didn't get picked up in the first two lifts. But Hyakutake wasn't going out in the first lift. He was going out in his second lift. That's the way, because I've got the documents for that from Japan. It shows exactly who was supposed to go on each lift.

12:46 So now we've got Marines to the west of the Point Cruz line, reducing the Sea Horse and the Galloping Horse and the Gifu. So at this point, the Gifu is still holding out, but the other two positions have. Have. Have been taken. The army was reducing those. Yeah, but Marines. Yeah, exactly right. Was on the coast.

13:07 Ah, correct. Yeah. So I think it was 25th Division with the Galloping Horse and Sea Horse. So that the capture of those positions, that actually secures the left flank for the marines and their coastal drive. Yeah. So the. The whole plan was that's why they had to take out those two ridges to give them more maneuver room for Patch, because what they wanted to do was used the 2nd Marine Division on the coast to continue their push.

13:31 At the same time, when they're pushing the Japanese there, the 25th Division under Collins was going to flank inland and hit the ridges and basically envelop them to aim at the strategic point. The supply point of Kokumbona. And Kokumbona was the place that the marines and. Or the Americans have been going to from day one in the campaign, because that was a strategic Trailhead and it was the main supply area for the Japanese.

13:52 So that was what it was. They were going to keep pushing with a major enfiladed attack from the Galloping Horse through the jungle, over the hills and come in from the north, straight across the ridges, straight into Kokumbona. That was the plan. So it's a hammer anvil. Well, not hammer anvil, but yeah, like a door.

14:09 The coast was going to be the hinge and the swinging of the door is going to be the 25th to go around the Japanese. Just a giant trap. One of the things that we don't often hear discussed in these military campaigns. So the 25th Division, their offensive is halted until the 22nd because they're waiting for engineers to build a road to be able to bring up the supplies that they need to continue their offensive.

14:32 So that logistics component, you can think of the difficulty because it's not easy terrain and it's not. The weather is very hot and sticky and it rains quite a bit. The 25th Division is sitting there waiting for a road just because it's so difficult to get the amount of food, critically water and also obviously ammunition up to the 25th Division to commence their offensive.

14:55 Oh yeah. So their engineer, their engineer battalion in that division, it was a couple of engineer battalions, but yeah, they worked wonders bulldozing small trails, jeep trails up and pre-staging supply dumps, building water purification. Already had the water purification. They'd been there for two months already on the 'Canal, so they had those built up.

15:14 But yeah, you got to get them to them because the days of the, the porters, Solomon Island porters and the troops throwing this stuff over their shoulders is you can't maintain a grand offensive by corps, by carrying hand carried supplies up. You just can't maintain the momentum that you want to push at this stage.

15:30 They wanted to push all the way to the coast. So that was 16 miles. They wanted a 16 mile push. You can't maintain it by hand carried water cans and ammo cans, yeah. Because this is what both the Japanese and the Australians found in the Kokoda campaign. The longer your you advance, the much more difficult it is to get water, food in particular to the troops at the front because the people who are carrying it are also consuming water and food.

16:01 So a decreasing amount of food gets to the front line because it's being used to support your logistics tail, which gets longer and longer. So we've got the Marines conducting their offensive on about the 13th of January. How does that kick off? There was the 8th Marines that cracked the line with the flamethrowers.

16:21 And we talk about rolling the fuel drums up to the bunkers and how they attacked in echelon to defeat the enfiladed fire. So it took them from the 13th to the 17th and they did crack the line. They surrounded. But you got to remember on the 16th, Hyakutake, they issued an order for these guys to start moving back.

16:38 So some of those guys are moving back. They're leaving some of the sick and wounded and some of the machine gun screening teams, but they ended up overrunning them. And then his 8th Marines moved back, remember, got the 2nd Marine Regiment, 8th Marine Regiment. Both of them had moved back to the. By the 17th of January, they moved back to the perimeter and the 6th.

16:56 6th Marines had came up and they were holding in a place called Rovad. And they were just waiting there until the army could come up to the left and those supplies could build up. And then once on the 22nd was going to be the kickoff date for the grand offensive or the continuation of the offensive. So the 6th Marines are sitting there and yeah, they're just building up the supplies.

17:16 The army starts putting a couple of regiments beside them, like the 182nd National Guard and 147th National Guard regiments that put them right beside the Marines, the 6th Marines. And they're just waiting for the 25th to people get ready to sweep to their left. And everything was set for 22 January.

17:32 That was the grand plan. So by 22 January, everybody was in place. Now I've just mentioned they, they pulled back two Marine regiments. Remember, the 2nd Marine Division is there, landed on the 4th of January. So that left the Marines with one regiment on the line, whole division, one regiment. Then you had a 25th Division, but you had these two other regiments.

17:53 I just mentioned the 182nd, which is actually attached to the Americal Division, if you remember those guys. Guys, the army that first landed, they're back in the perimeter too, protecting airfields. And then it left the independent army regiment called the 147th. So they'd moved up from Aola, which was.

18:08 Was the east around Koli Point. They were guarding the airfield, then moved up fresh troops. They're ready to go, but they're not under any division command because they're not attached to the 25th. So what Patch did he goes, well, they need some form of division command. We got a 2nd Marine Division here with only one regiment.

18:25 We'll just throw them in with a 2nd Marine Division. They could be part of the 2nd Marine Division. I don't have the official or you know, smoking gun. It says, look, we don't want two army regiments in a marine division. And you know, a marine division consists of all army regiments. I don't know if the army like that or Marines didn't like that.

18:43 I don't know. But what happened was I said, well, let's just give it a hybrid name because it's a hybrid unit. We'll call it the CAM Division. CAM Combined Army Marine Division. It will be under the command of the 2nd Marine Division. Commander at that time was the Brigadier General De Carre and the division staff.

19:00 So it was basically in all name. It was the 2nd Marine Division but they renamed it the CAM. So it all, it was everything but the name. And that's how they, they got away with. And plus then the, the two army regiments had a, a division command to report to under control. So that was the birth of the CAM Division around that time.

19:18 So we got the CAM Division sitting there and you're waiting and then 25th ready to go. 22nd of January it all kicks off, right. So Marines or the CAM Division initially starts pushing and making good ground, especially to the left, the two army regiments. But the Marine Regiment 6th ran into a bit of a bottleneck and a defensive point at Hill 94 because remember the Japanese have been building this area for months.

19:42 So they got stopped there. Delay. At the same time, the 25th was going to take a series of hills called 86, 87 and 88. That was going to be the first step. But they had the 161st Regiment. I think we discussed these guys, they were like the National Guard unit of the 25th Division of all regulars. They, they considered themselves the, you know, the redheaded stepchild, the bastard child and second class citizens.

20:05 But they're going to let them lead the assault because you got to remember the 27th had fought hard for the Galloping Horse. But the 27th, they expected a lot of resistance on Hill 87. So the 27th kicked off and they were going to secure the base of it to allow the 161st who were moving through the jungle to attack.

20:21 What happened was because the Japanese had pulled out, when the 27th went to take the, I guess their secure point into first of the hill, they had little resistance and they kept pushing. They pushed up on hills 87 and then they went to 88. So Collins is about a mile and a half, maybe two miles back on his OP on Hill 49.

20:39 He's got these big spotting scopes. And he's watching these. The army guys just flood over the hill. So he calls up to the regimental commander, he says, keep pushing, keep pushing. He goes, okay, at least take 88. So he pushes his guys, 88 and Collins gets in a jeep. He drives as much as he can to those brand new roads.

20:56 He goes up to see Patch's chief of staff, who has to be far deployed. He's on foot now. And he says, I want permission to push all the way to Kokumbona if we can. We got him on the run. Let's go. And he goes, permission granted. So he makes his way by foot and goes up to Hill 87. This is now, this is the division commander now.

21:12 He's kind of behind the lines with this forward deployed regiment. They're sweeping. And he says to the regimental commander and he, McClure, McClure says, oh, look, my boys have taken 87 and 88. We're digging in. He goes, no, quit digging in. He goes, no one's covering my rear. Don't worry about your rear.

21:27 Keep pushing. Go to like, I think it was Hill 90, 97, 91. Keep pushing, keep pushing to 99, which overlooks Kokumbona. Just keep pushing. They said, yes, sir, and they did. They kept pushing. And by nightfall they'd made it to something like a thousand yards short of Kokumbona. Overlooking Kokumbona.

21:44 So that was a great initiative by that division commander. And Collins was one of those type of guys. He seen it happening and he went forward and made it happen, physically made it happen on the ground to keep pushing, keep initiative, keep driving, driving, driving. Didn't really worry about his flanks, didn't worry about his rear.

22:00 He said, I don't care, just keep driving. We're not going to get this opportunity again. They had relatively. They were semi fresh guys, so pushed. So on the evening of the 22nd, they were almost at Kokumbona and all that. They trapped something like equivalent of about 2,000 Japanese in a pocket. Could be a thousand to 2,000 Japanese in a pocket.

22:19 You got to remember, if you visualize got the Marines pushing up the coast now you've got the army just swept in and they've almost cut them completely off. At Kokumbona, there's only a small little track. The government track is like the only lifeline the Japanese have at this point. The Japanese don't even know they're there.

22:33 I mean, that evening, early that morning, there was report is one of the 27th battalions wiped out some like 75 Japanese pulling out and they had a 37 millimeter gun. They're just trying to withdraw then, you know, the Americans behind the lines. So battalion just caught them out and almost killed them to the man.

22:50 But, yeah, so in the morning of the 23rd, they resumed the attack. They pushed on or. Sorry, the morning of the. Yeah, the 23rd, they pushed on and they took Kokumbona. On the 23rd, they just went in and took Kokumbona. Now the Marines are still pushing, and at this stage, by the 22nd/23rd, they'd trapped the Japanese in it.

23:08 So between the 23rd and 24th and 25th, it was just, we're trying to reduce these pockets now. At the same time, the Marines had a destroyer off coast and they were using McCall in rolling naval gunfire. At one point, the army had moved quick, so fast on the 23rd, the Marines didn't know the army was that far up.

23:28 So their assault on the 23rd started obviously with a artillery bombardment. And artillery was always shooting and hitting around the army. And army said, stop, stop, stop. So the way they called it in, they would have their shells land, because I had the Japanese in a bit of a ravine that landed shells off the coast.

23:44 And then they'd walk the rounds in basically from north to south, up and down the ravine, instead of just trying to, you call your rounds over and walking them back or walking them short, because you had friendlies on both sides of this ravine. They'd land them in the ocean and walk them in sideways.

24:00 And I thought that was actually pretty, pretty clever how they did that. But, yeah, they had that direct fire, five inch gunfire, naval gun support the whole time when they were doing that. So they were starting to coordinate and get some. Starting to, I don't say use their brain, but they had. Using resources quite well.

24:16 They had at the time, especially firepower. Yeah, there's a couple of points in that. So first thing is, when you have a look at the map, Collins's sweep to the northeast towards Kokumbona, that's a significant distance to go over very, very complex terrain. And. And he's really seized the initiative there and smashed open that defensive position.

24:36 Because Kokumbona is a key piece of terrain because it sits astride the government track. And so that does really cut off those troops that the. That the 6th Marines are advancing against. Yeah, because once again, Hyakutake already given the order to start moving back. So these are elements of the 2nd Division.

24:53 It was supposed to cover. And some of the Yano guys were moving up at that stage around Kokumbona where they were supposed to cover the withdrawal, the 38th Division had already moved out. Well, what was left of them had already moved out past Kokumbona. So they're moving down the coast. But the 2nd Division, primarily the 4th and the 16th and the remnants of the 29th Division or regiments were still caught in those ravines.

25:13 When I said a regiment at that stage we're looking, say I think the 4th Regiment had 250, 300 men effective. So not even a half a battalion or company, a reinforced company size. And it left. And you had all kinds of different stragglers coming in. Some actually were moving in from coming off Mount Austen, a few of the stragglers in.

25:31 So you had Japanese all over the place. But I was reading one account, he was a company commander, the 27th, he was a company commander in Company A. And they're moving, going to Kokumbona. He says, I go down to the ravine and it's a typical Japanese bivouac ravine. He said, I see some huts and lean-tos and a stream.

25:49 He said, we're running through there. He said, Japanese not giving us any resistance. I'm seeing Japanese, but we're just shooting them left and right, stabbing. He said, we're stabbing, shooting as you're running through. I tell my men to fill up in a stream because these are the same guys that remember it was on the Galloping Horse that ran out of water.

26:03 And he says, we didn't suffer any casualties, we killed a lot of Japanese. You could just see at that stage they were getting light resistance. They did encounter some resistance. But if you look at the casualty figures in between the 22nd and the 25th, there were like I think maybe six. No, I think maybe it was less than 15 American dead.

26:22 It's something like 30 wounded out of two divisions. So you, that's. You can see the resistance or lack of resistance. They were just seriously cleaning up those ravines. There's only the 6th Marines that got a bit of resistance from them. Bring tanks up. And they failed again. So early days the tanks failed again?

26:38 Yeah, because. Well, no, they, they brought them up. I'll take it back because after the, the 15th, 14th and 15th of January, they said, we're not bringing tanks up anymore, we'll bring half tracks up because they work quite well. They brought a half track up and one half track got hit by Japanese 37 millimeter anti tank gun.

26:54 And I was reading the account of that, how they had to hook it up with a chain and pull it out under fire. Yeah. So, but they were using that quote and the Japanese reports talking about the marines using tanks. Americans had tanks, but they were half tracks. Because if you look at both accounts and if both sides, one says we had half tracks.

27:11 And the Japanese said, oh, they had tanks. I guess if you looked at a track, half track with a 75 millimeter mounted gun and they could hear the clanking, they probably thought it was because you remember Fourth Battle, Matanikau, we talked about the Americans. They heard Japanese artillery tractors moving, bringing up guns and they thought they were tanks.

27:26 So it's easily understood. But yeah, that's where we stood on basically on the 24th, 25th. I'm gonna get my days mixed up there. They had Kokumbona and they need to resupply. Before they continued, the regimental commander said, we need to resupply these guys. So then they brought landing craft in to resupply.

27:43 There's some famous photos of them on that day. It showed the army walking around and they captured like six Japanese at Kokumbona. And there's a great photo because the reading reports that captured six Japanese prisoners. And there's. I've seen a photo of that day. They had six Japanese sitting there all emaciated and sick, you know, wasn't bound or anything, didn't have to be.

28:01 And this poor army guys walking around, they look exhausted and beat too, just walking around them. Yeah, that's where we stand on Saturday, 25th of January. And so one of the important things about Kokumbona, of course, is that you can actually land landing craft there. There's no coral, and that's why it was important to the Japanese.

28:19 They'd now lost that. But the Americans now have just effectively they can start moving supplies up by sea, which is a lot quicker and a lot more efficient than trying to get them up a jeep trailer. Yeah. So the next step was going to be the push to the Poha. So the next couple of days, the Poha River's probably about half a mile, maybe a mile if that, away from Kokumbona to the west on the coast.

28:41 Because remember, Guadalcanal's got a series of small rivers tailor made for defenses running north or south to north. And the government track, basically, or the coastal track parallels or runs through. But Poha was a major objective too, after Kokumbona. So a couple of days after that, they, the 25th took the Poha and that's where it stopped.

29:01 And then Collins said, okay, we'll bring up the 161st, they're coming in and then we'll continue pushing. I want to keep pushing. These Japanese, you know, we got them on the run. I think he said we can take them out now. Finally we can take them, we can destroy them. We'll leave the episode here. Once again, a big thank you to Dave for his time and sharing his wisdom about the Guadalcanal campaign.

29:21 There's one thing that I do want to reflect on though and, and that is the Japanese deception plan. Withdrawals in the littoral are notoriously risky operations. It risks attracting a joint level pursuit. The embarkation point becomes a choke point that the enemy can attack. We saw this at Dunkirk. There's a few good examples.

29:42 We've got Gallipoli in January 1916, 83,000 ANZAC troops and 35,000 from Cape Helles three weeks later. The withdrawal was characterised by progressive thinning. Periods of silence that conditioned the Turks to inactivity. Self firing rifles to keep up the appearance that the trenches were manned. Sand muffled tracks.

30:06 The withdrawal was arguably the most successful part of the entire Gallipoli campaign. Dunkirk again, 338,226 evacuated from the harbour. A third of them French. That was Operation Dynamo. There were two other operations, Operation Cycle and Aerial, which took another 190,000 out of Le Havre, Cherbourg, Brest and Saint-Nazaire.

30:33 Odessa in October 1941, the Soviet Coastal Army had around 86,000 troops and civilians, guns and equipment extracted by sea to Sevastopol. They held the perimeter at full strength until the last night when the final evacuation was 35,000 troops in a single lift. The next morning Romanians attacked to empty trenches.

30:56 This is an operation well worth studying. It's not well known in the West. One of the cleanest large formation withdrawals the evacuation from Sicily, August 1943. 100,000 Axis troops, 10,000 vehicles and heavy equipment across the Straits of Messina. Kesselring enabled this with hundreds of flak guns on both of the shores and he made approaching that crossing extremely expensive.

31:26 Those divisions that were evacuated, they then fought at Salerno and all the way up the peninsula. So this is an operational level Allied failure with strategic consequences. The last one to think about is the port of Hungnam in December 1950. This is the Miracle at Christmas and we discussed that in our mini series looking at Chinese deception in the Korean War.

31:51 Here you've got 105,000 troops, 98,000 civilians, 17 and a half thousand vehicles, 350,000 tons of cargo out of a single port. The perimeter was held by naval gunfire and carrier air as the perimeter contracted. This is a great example of sea control and the ability of a fleet to influence actions on land.

32:18 The US Navy was able to convert a defeat into a redeployment. Operation KE, the withdrawal from Guadalcanal, sees the Imperial Japanese Army effectively culminated in its logistics position is parlous. They are no longer able to generate much combat power at all, and the decision is made to withdraw them.

32:41 How is this operation going to succeed? A big part of that is the deception plan. If the 25th Infantry Division, which is in pursuit, learns that a withdrawal is taking place, then they could apply more pressure and the withdrawal may become a rout. If the US Navy learns that there was a withdrawal in progress, then they will concentrate their forces and not only sink the transports and their escorts, but also the troops on those transports.

33:11 There's a couple of things that the Japanese do as a part of their deception plan. So the first thing is to make the evacuation look like a reinforcement operation. This wasn't the first time that they tried to reinforce Guadalcanal. And so the Americans had seen that before, and they had reacted in a way that was useful to the Japanese.

33:34 They had withdrawn into the perimeter so that they could maintain the defence around the decisive terrain, the airfield at Henderson. One of the first parts of the Japanese operation was to actually reinforce Guadalcanal. They sent forward troops who were going to be able to hold that last defensive perimeter, troops that were fit for battle.

33:56 Japanese aircraft strike the Cactus Air Force aggressively. To those on Guadalcanal, and more importantly, those in higher headquarters, this looks like preparatory bombing, setting the conditions for a successful landing on Guadalcanal. But it's not. This is the IJN attempting to degrade the ISR and maritime strike capabilities of the Cactus Air Force.

34:21 Same action, different intent. For the Japanese, it's really important that they're able to hide the size of the fleet that is coming to Guadalcanal, where it is going to land and what they are doing. And to do that, they need to degrade the American intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability.

34:39 Traditionally, the Japanese have preceded large amphibious landings with large fleet actions. And this is exactly what they do here as a part of the task force. They've got two fleet carriers, Zuikaku and Junyo. They've got two battleships, the Kongo and Haruna. They're escorted by four heavy cruisers.

35:01 They've also got the two monster battleships, the Yamato and the Musashi, as a part of a build up of forces at Truk this reinforces in the mind of the US intelligence section that there is a major operation underway. As the build up is taking place, the Japanese change their naval cipher. This means that the US crypto analysts are now no longer able to decipher Japanese naval traffic.

35:30 This is exacerbated by the fact that the Japanese cruiser Tone sets out and starts transmitting fake traffic. American intelligence, as it tries to maintain situational awareness of the Japanese forces and their intentions, is now left with relying on just signals intelligence. Where is the traffic coming from and how much of it is there?

35:56 Tone off to a flank, transmitting a lot of traffic makes it look like there is another force out there with any deception plan. Security is an important part. And part of that for the Japanese is that very few soldiers on Guadalcanal are told of what the actual plan is. And that is partially for security reasons, partially because they're concerned that they will commit suicide if they find out.

36:21 They're going to have to endure the disgrace of being evacuated from Guadalcanal. Much of this feeds into Magruder's principle. We talked about Magruder's principle in our Deception on the Yalu River episode. It's one of the military deception maxims. And in the US military deception manual, this is how it describes the principle.

36:45 It is generally easier to induce a deception target to maintain a pre existing belief than to deceive the deception target for the purpose of changing that belief. Now we need to think of the US headquarters and them receiving this information. They're going through their own OODA loop. Observe, orientate, decide, act.

37:06 Now, this wasn't doctrine back then, but this is what they were doing. They were getting information that was coming in. They're seeing the buildup in Truk, they're getting the signals intelligence. They then need to orientate themselves on that information. And that is the important part of the OODA loop.

37:23 The orientation phase looks at cultural traditions, genetic heritage, new information, previous experiences and analysis and synthesis. These are all of the things that filter the information that has come in. It shapes decisions and it updates over time. The Japanese were taking advantage of preconceived ideas within the American intelligence cycle.

37:48 This is where it gets interesting. The Japanese deception plan doesn't slow down the OODA loop, it speeds it up, but it speeds it up in the wrong direction. If there was a lot of information coming in and it was ambiguous or contradictory, then a decision is going to take longer to be arrived at. But this isn't the case here.

38:09 The Japanese are showing everything that they can to the Americans to reinforce the belief that they are going to conduct a major amphibious assault. Remember, a deception plan should always look at the actions you want the enemy to take. They want the US to withdraw. They need to pull back to protect Henderson Field.

38:31 That's what they're aiming for. How do you defend against this? Well, in your two shop, you should have someone really playing the devil's advocate here. Well, what if they're not attacking? What if they're trying to withdraw? The tea leaves were there to be. Read more so below Halsey's headquarters.

38:49 Collins, he was the one who was pursuing the Japanese. He could see the state that the troops were in. He could see the lack of firm resistance in many places. But that understanding wasn't getting through to Halsey. Potentially he wasn't getting all of the information. Potentially they didn't want to see that information.

39:08 They'd already thought that this was going to be an amphibious assault. That's probably enough deception doctrine for one day. We will come back next week to see how Operation KE plays out. The Principles of War podcast is brought. To you by James Ealing. The show notes for the Principles of War podcast are available at www.theprinciplesofwar.com.

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