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. host, James Early. Welcome back to our series on Key Battles of the Pacific War, World War II.

We are going into our third episode and our mini-series on the Guadocanal campaign.

Before we go on, of course, you're going to want to go back and listen to the first two on

that if you haven't heard those.

But even if you have, it's probably been a week and you may want a little bit of a recap.

So what we've seen so far is that the Marines landed on Guadal

on August 7th. They had very little opposition. They took over the air strip that the

Japanese had been building. They established a strong perimeter around it. And they finished the

irstrip, naming it Henderson Field after an airman who was killed in the Battle of Midway.

Then actual American planes began to land there.

So the Americans have gained a valuable air base at the north part of the island of Guadalcanal.

Of course, the Japanese were not happy about this, so the Japanese keep trying to move reinforcements onto Guadal

Canal. And we've seen so far that they've launched two attacks in an effort to break

through to the perimeter, break through the perimeter, and possibly even take Henderson Field.

The first one of these was what is erroneously, but it's one of those things that sticks,

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