Qualla: Battle of Blackett Strait

Battle of Blackett Strait: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit United States Strategic Bombing Survey (Pacific) Naval Analysis Division. Digitized by Google., Public domain. At 01:15 on the morning of 6 March 1943, the Japanese destroyer Murasame exploded so violently that American sailors twenty-five miles away, off Munda, heard the detonation roll across the black water. She had been running a routine supply mission through the Blackett Strait - the kind of night job Imperial Japanese destroyers had performed dozens of times in the Solomons - when the radar screens of an American cruiser force painted her onto the cathode glass without warning. Two ships went in. Neither came out. The battle lasted minutes, but the waters between Kolombangara and Arundel Island would remain infamous for the rest of the Pacific War.

Image: United States Strategic Bombing Survey (Pacific) Naval Analysis Division. Digitized by Google. | Public domain

Battle of Blackett Strait: Where the Slot Narrows

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Blackett Strait is not a strait so much as a squeeze - the narrow passage where the central Solomon Islands pinch together, with Kolombangara's volcanic cone rising steeply to the north and flat Arundel Island hugging the south. In early 1943, this geography mattered more than al...

Image: Public domain

Battle of Blackett Strait: Radar Over Moonlight

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. On the night of 5 March 1943, the destroyers Murasame and Minegumo had finished unloading at Vila and chosen the shorter return route through the Kula Gulf. They did not know that Rear Admiral Aaron Merrill's Task Group 68.5 - three light cruisers and three destroyers - was steam...

Image: Public domain

Battle of Blackett Strait: The Night After

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The bombardment of Vila proceeded as planned. American ships steamed away toward their base having lost not a man. For the Imperial Japanese Navy, which had dominated night battles in these same waters the previous year through superior optics and the lethal Long Lance torpedo, t...

Image: Public domain

Battle of Blackett Strait: PT-109 in the Same Water

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit USN, Public domain. Five months later, in the same Blackett Strait, an American patrol torpedo boat idled with engines barely turning over, trying to keep her wake invisible to Japanese floatplanes hunting above. The destroyer Amagiri - returning from yet another supply run - came out of the darknes...

Image: USN | Public domain

Battle of Blackett Strait: Quiet Water

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit USN, Public domain. Today Blackett Strait runs blue and calm between Kolombangara's forested slopes and Arundel's low green shore. Dive charters pass over the wrecks of Murasame and Minegumo; local fishermen know the spots. The villages along the shoreline remember, in the way small island places re...

Image: USN | Public domain