Solomons Naval Campaign

Following their victory at the June 1942 Battle of Midway, the American high command sought to take the fight to the Japanese. In August they began a campaign to take the strategic island of Guadalcanal and its almost-complete airfield from the Japanese. That touched off the hardest-fought sustained naval campaign of World War II, as Allied and Japanese ships and planes battled to control the seas and skies of the Solomon Islands.

Solomons Naval Campaign is a Historical Study of these air and sea battles, from the preliminary planning through the invasion of Guadalcanal, the attempts to reinforce the island, and finally the Japanese decision to evacuate the island after their useless tactical victory in the Battle of Tassafaronga in late November 1942.

There are plenty of books about this campaign; ours dives deeper into the sinews of war, to explain the events as a chain of decisions. We look at the resources of both sides, the ships and the planes and the men, and of course the battles, too.

Solomons Naval Campaign is a companion volume to our Second World War at Sea: South Pacific game and Ironbottom Sound scenario book. It’s not a game book, but it does explain the events seen in those games from the player’s perspective: what forces, some obvious and others less so, shaped the decisions made by the participants on both sides. It’s filled with history and stories; it’s a standalone book and you don’t need to know anything about the game to enjoy it.