The Tactics Society

This course is a case study covering the Guadalcanal Campaign from 1942-1943 during the Second World War. While Guadalcanal is a fascinating case study on the integration of ground warfare, air warfare and naval warfare, this specific course focuses primarily on the ground combat experiences of US Marine Corps units. WMI plans to release other case study courses in the future focusing on air operations and naval operations around Guadalcanal. Such case studies will likely fall under a larger case topic covering the Solomon Islands campaigns.  For more information on our approach to dividing case topics from case studies click HERE.

Below is our general “roadmap” for building out the case study project. As with all of our learning materials, we intend this case topic to be a series of “living” resources and documents that we will constantly improve, refine and upgrade over time with the help of our readers and scholar community (for more information about how we create “living” learning content click HERE). This general roadmap will offer an outline or structure that our writers, contributors and community members can use to develop new content and incorporate it into the larger body of learning materials. While the structure can and will evolve over time, we chose to start by focusing on the following themes.

Theme 1: Amphibious Warfare Doctrine

The epic struggle for Guadalcanal was one of the first opportunities to test new theories about how to conduct amphibious warfare. Success in amphibious warfare depends on the integration of land, air and sea capabilities to ensure the sustainment and steady resupply of the invasion force. While this course focuses primarily on ground combat operations, it is critical to understand how the role of land forces related to the air and sea campaigns going on at the same time.

Theme 2: Defensive Operations

For the Marines and Army units on Guadalcanal, many of the most decisive battles were defensive in nature. Heroic and tenacious defenses like that of Edson's Ridge provide excellent historical examples of defensive operations. This course will examine key lessons learned from the Guadalcanal campaign about the employment of infantry, heavy weapons, artillery and air support in the defensive role.

Theme 3: Jungle Warfare

As with many battles in the Pacific Theater, the jungle environment and terrain provided additional challenges that further complicated the conduct of operations. This course will examine these challenges and study how both U.S. and Japanese forces attempted to use terrain to their advantage in the battle. The course will also examine how the jungle environment affected critical operational factors such as field sanitation/hygiene, maintenance and morale.

Theme 4: Logistics

While the study of logistics in amphibious warfare largely falls under the category of naval operations, there are still many lessons to be learned about the best way for an invasion force to approach problems of logistics and supply. This course will identify and analyze as many of those lessons as possible and further case studies will be able to explain how they connect with related lessons on the naval side.