War has played a key role in the history of the United States, from the nation's founding

right down to the present. War made the U.S. independent, kept it together, increased its

size, and established it as a global superpower. Understanding America's wars is essential for understanding American history.

Welcome to Key Battles of American History,

a podcast in which we discuss American history through the lens of the most important battles of America's wars.

Here is your host, James Early.

Thank you. your host, James Early. Hello and welcome back to Guadalcanal, air, land, and sea, our 2,000-foot survey of the epic

Guadalcanal campaign of the Pacific Theater of World War II.

I'm your host, James Early, as always.

And as always, I am joined by my co-host, Dave Holland.

Well, at our last episode, we talked about the high-speed convoy,

the Japanese effort to bring as many reinforcements and other supplies to Guadalcanal

as quickly as they could to try

to get those pesky Americans off the island. They tried before a couple of times, made some

major pushes, neither one succeeded, but they had a third one coming up, and we saw they prepared

an attack, they did some naval bombardment.

They did some air, a lot of air bombings.

We also saw that Admiral Halsey was given command of the entire area,

relieving Admiral Gormley, who hadn't been aggressive enough for Nimitz and King's taste.

So Halsey took command command bringing up Americans morale,

and then we saw the Japanese finally launched their massive ground assault called the Battle of

Henderson Field, and we saw that they kept trying and trying. And once again, the Marines now

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