- 88 - Pacific War - The Mysterious Battle of the Pips, July 25 - 1 August, 1943

Last time we spoke about the allied drive to Munda and General Sasaki’s major counter offensive. General Wing began the drive upon Munda Point, but General Sasaki predicted many of the routes the Americans would take and ordered his forces to create tedious roadblocks and defensive positions to foil their advances. The allied progress was brutally slow, despite having the enormous advantage in artillery, naval and aerial bombardment support. The Japanese pillboxes were proving to be devastating to the allied infantry, requiring tanks to be brought over to New Georgia. When things began to halt, suddenly General Sasaki performed a counter offensive seeing a daring attack directed at the headquarters of the 43rd division. The attack nearly broke the lines of communications, but luckily the Fijian commandos outperformed the japanese at their own game of night fighting. Lastly the IJN suffered terrible losses to allied aircraft collapsing their reinforcement efforts. This episode is the Mysterious Battle of the Pips Welcome to the Pacific War Podcast Week by Week, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945.  The battles in New Guinea and New Georgia were particularly bloody, in all honesty things had begun to really escalate when you look at it from a numerical point of view. Over on Green Hell, General Savige had just seized Mubo, the Pimple, Green Hill and Observation hill taking them out of Japanese hands. The Japanese had withdrawn to Komiatum while simultaneously trying to defend the Bobdubi ridge area against Brigadier Hammer’s 15th brigade. General Savige, still unaware Salamaua was not the main target and in fact was being used as a deception to cover for Lae, continued his offensive, hoping to drive the enemy north of the Francisco River. Over on the other side, General Nakano’s 1st battalion of the 80th regiment had managed to  push Companies B and A off their ambush position on the Bench Cut Track. They were forced to withdraw towards Gwaibolom by July 10th. Meanwhile to the south Major Warfe launched an attack along Goodview junction. Captain Wally Meares of C platoon marched up Stephens Track while Captain John Winterflood’s B platoon took Walpoles track. Lt Hugh Egan created a blocking position using just 7 men around 800 meters south of Goodview Junction. The platoons went to work advancing down the steep ridges dislodging Japanese from outposts. Captain Meares platoon were continuing along the Stephens track when they suddenly encountered strong resistance from some Japanese who took a position along the Tambu Saddle which is at a junction between Stephens track and the Mule track. After engaging the Japanese, the platoon was forced to bypass them moving along the Mule track towards the Komiatum track where they ran into more Japanese. Meares men killed 13 Japanese on the Mule track before deciding to withdraw back to the Stephens track and dug in. The Japanese had surprised Warfe’s men. The forces they were running into were mainly the 1st and 2nd companies of the 66th battalion along with Araki’s HQ staff who had been on the run from Mubo to Komiatum. The Japanese tried to press on with a counter attack aimed at Winterflood’s B platoon. The Japanese tossed mortar and machine gun fire, but received terrible losses to the commando