Word: tulagi
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First round of the American offensive in the Solomon Islands was over. The Navy had announced that the three islands where the Marines had landed-probably Florida, Tulagi and Guadalcanal-had been captured. There might still be bands of Japs to be mopped up in bloody battles in the interior hills and jungles, but the opening battle was over and the Americans...
...Japs still had airdromes in the attack area, and on the eleventh day they apparently still held Tulagi harbor...
Admiral Ghormley must have known generally what resistance he would meet. Tulagi was the scene of the Navy's first attack in the Battle of the Coral Sea, a blistering aerial surprise that caught a Jap force flatfooted, littered its tiny (one square mile) harbor with the hulks of nine or ten ships, including five cruisers. Since then, it had been regularly scouted...
...Around Tulagi, the bull's-eye, are other rings of the Navy's target. Most important of them passes through the island of Guadalcanal, said to be the only spot on the Solomons where a big system of air-dromes could be established. For the rest, the Solomons are precipitously mountainous (highest peak 10,000 feet), bordered with miasmic mangrove swamps, inhabited by ebony-black natives with an incurable habit of roasting and eating white visitors...
...reaching results were still far off. For if the Japanese are driven from the Tulagi area, they will still hold Bougainville in the northern Solomons, from which they must be driven in turn. But the capture of Tulagi will mean that the Japanese strongholds in New Britain and New Guinea will have their flanks threatened...