Naval Battle of Guadalcanal

BelligerentsUnited StatesJapanCommanders and leaders (WIA)Strength

First night (13/14 Nov):

Second night (14/15Nov):

First night:

14 Nov:

Second night:

Casualties and losses

First phase (13/14 Nov):

• 2 light cruisers sunk
• 4 destroyers sunk
• 2 heavy cruisers severely damaged
• 2 destroyers heavily damaged

Second phase (14/15 Nov):

• 3 destroyers sunk
• 1 battleship moderately damaged
• 1 destroyer damaged

Plus (13–15 Nov):

• 1 destroyer damaged
• 36 aircraft
• for a total of 1,732 killed

13 Nov:

• 1 battleship sunk
• 2 destroyers sunk
• 4 destroyers damaged (one badly)

14 Nov:

• 1 heavy cruiser sunk
• 2 heavy cruisers damaged
• 1 light cruiser damaged
• 1 destroyer heavily damaged
• 7 transports sunk

15 Nov:

• 1 battleship sunk
• 1 destroyer sunk
• 4 transports destroyed (beached first)

Plus:

• 64 aircraft
• for a total of 1,900 killed (exclusive of transport losses)

The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal took place from 12 to 15 November 1942 and was the decisive engagement in a series of naval battles between Allied (primarily American) and Imperial Japanese forces during the months-long Guadalcanal campaign in the Solomon Islands during World War II. The action consisted of combined air and sea engagements over four days, most near Guadalcanal and all related to a Japanese effort to reinforce land forces on the island. The only two U.S. Navy admirals to be killed in a surface engagement in the war were lost in this battle.

Allied forces landed on Guadalcanal on 7 August 1942 and seized an airfield, later called Henderson Field, that was under construction by the Japanese military. There were several subsequent attempts to recapture the airfield by the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy using reinforcements delivered to Guadalcanal by ship, efforts which ultimately failed. In early November 1942, the Japanese organized a transport convoy to take 7,000 infantry troops and their equipment to Guadalcanal to attempt once again to retake the airfield. Several Japanese warship forces were assigned to bombard Henderson Field with the goal of destroying Allied aircraft that posed a threat to the convoy. Learning of the Japanese reinforcement effort, U.S. forces launched aircraft and warship attacks to defend Henderson Field and prevent the Japanese ground troops from reaching Guadalcanal.

In the resulting battle, both sides lost numerous warships in two extremely destructive nighttime surface engagements. Nevertheless, the U.S. succeeded in turning back attempts by the Japanese to bombard Henderson Field with battleships. Allied aircraft also sank most of the Japanese troop transports and prevented the majority of the Japanese troops and equipment from reaching Guadalcanal. Thus, the battle turned back Japan's last major attempt to dislodge Allied forces from Guadalcanal and nearby Tulagi, resulting in a strategic victory for the U.S. and its allies and deciding the ultimate outcome of the Guadalcanal campaign in their favor. The Japanese decided on the evacuation of Guadalcanal the following month, which they completed by early February 1943.

Guadalcanal was the last major naval battle in the Pacific War for the next one and one half years, until the Battle of the Philippine Sea. It was one of the costliest naval battles of the Second World War in terms of lives lost and most singularly unique in the history of modern naval warfare because of the close-range, almost point-blank, distances among the warships involved.