Portal:Military of the United States/Featured article/22

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Battle of Edson's Ridge took place September 12–14, 1942 and was a land battle of the Pacific campaign of World War II between Imperial Japanese Army and Allied (mainly United States Marine Corps) ground forces. The battle took place on Guadalcanal Island in the Solomon Islands and was the second of three separate major Japanese ground offensives in the Guadalcanal campaign.

In the battle, U.S. Marines, under the overall command of U.S. Major General Alexander Vandegrift, repulsed an attack by the Japanese 35th Infantry Brigade, under the command of Japanese Major General Kiyotaki Kawaguchi. The Marines were defending the Lunga perimeter, that guarded Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, which was captured from the Japanese by the Allies in landings on Guadalcanal on August 7, 1942. Kawaguchi's unit was sent to Guadalcanal in response to the Allied landings with the mission of recapturing the airfield and driving the Allied forces from the island. Underestimating the strength of Allied forces on Guadalcanal, which at that time numbered about 12,000 personnel, Kawaguchi's 6,000 soldiers conducted several nighttime frontal assaults on the U.S. defenses. The main Japanese assault occurred on an unnamed ridge south of Henderson Field that was manned by troops from several U.S. Marine Corps units, although primarily troops from the 1st Raider and 1st Parachute Battalions under U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Merritt A. Edson. Although the U.S. Marine Corps defenses were almost overrun, Kawaguchi's attack was defeated with heavy losses for the Japanese attackers.