Landing at Scarlet Beach 1943
Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate.
Key facts
| Date | 22 September 1943 – 2 October 1943 | Wikidata |
|---|---|---|
| Year | 1943 | Wikidata P580 (start time) |
| Era | World War II era (1939–1945) | derived from year |
| Location | Papua New Guinea | Natural Earth (modern borders) |
| Continent | Oceania | Natural Earth |
| War / conflict | Pacific War | Wikidata P361 |
| Participants | United States | Wikidata P710 |
| Coordinates | -6.4833, 147.8500 | Wikidata P625 |
About the battle
The Landing at Scarlet Beach (Operation Diminish) took place in New Guinea in September 1943, during the Huon Peninsula campaign of the Second World War. Allied forces landed at Scarlet Beach, north of Siki Cove and south of the Song River, to the east of Katika and about 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) north of Finschhafen. The capture of Finschhafen allowed the construction of air bases and naval facilities to assist Allied forces to conduct operations against Japanese bases in New Guinea and New Britain.
After Lae had fallen sooner than the Allies had anticipated, they exploited the advantage. As a result of faulty intelligence, which underestimated the size of the Japanese force in the area, the assault force chosen consisted of only Brigadier Victor Windeyer's 20th Infantry Brigade. The landing at Scarlet Beach that took place on 22 September 1943 was the first opposed amphibious landing that Australian forces had made since the Landing at Anzac Cove in the Gallipoli Campaign of 1915. Navigational errors resulted in the troops being landed on the wrong beach, with some of them coming ashore at Siki Cove and taking heavy fire from the strong Japanese defences in pillboxes. After re-organising, the Australians pushed inland.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Landing at Scarlet Beach (revision 1377711858), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; shortened by selecting paragraphs and trimming at a sentence boundary; formatting and citations removed. No text added.
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All 56 battles of the Pacific War →
Browse more: battles in Papua New Guinea · Oceania · World War II era battles