Battle of Ioribaiwa

Battle of Ioribaiwa
Part of the Second World War, Pacific War
View towards Imita Ridge and Ioribaiwa
Date 14–16 September 1942 Location Territory of Papua 9°18′26″S 147°33′34″E / 9.3070846°S 147.5595188°E / -9.3070846; 147.5595188 Result Allied withdrawal
Belligerents
Australia	Japan
Commanders and leaders
Selwyn Porter Kenneth Eather	Tomitaro Horii Masao Kusunose
Units involved
Maroubra Force 21st Brigade 3rd Infantry Battalion 2/14th Infantry Battalion 2/16th Infantry Battalion 25th Brigade 2/25th Infantry Battalion 2/31st Infantry Battalion 2/33rd Infantry Battalion	South Seas Detachment 144th Infantry Regiment II Battalion III Battalion
Strength
2,957	1,650
Casualties and losses
49 killed and 121 wounded	40 dead and 120 wounded

Maroubra Force

South Seas Detachment

The Battle of Ioribaiwa took place between 14 and 16 September 1942, during the Kokoda Track campaign of the Second World War. Involving forces from Australia, the United States, and Japan, the fighting centred on a high feature known as Ioribaiwa Ridge, south of Ofi Creek on the Kokoda Track, in the Territory of Papua. It was the last of three defensive battles fought by the Australians along the Kokoda Track to halt the Japanese advance from the north coast of Papua towards Port Moresby.

Although the Japanese were successful in pushing the Australian defenders back in the centre of their position on the track, heavy fighting on the flanks of the position blunted the Japanese attack, bringing it to a standstill. In the aftermath, the Australian commander, Brigadier Kenneth Eather, perceiving that the attack could not be held any further and that Ioribaiwa Ridge was unsuited to launching a counter-attack, withdrew his force back to Imita Ridge. The Japanese, however, had reached the limit of their supply line and after the fighting around Ioribaiwa. Regardless, strategic factors and reverses elsewhere forced the Japanese commander, Major General Tomitaro Horii, to pursue a more defensive approach in Papua and New Guinea. As a result, in October the Japanese began to withdraw towards their beachheads Buna–Gona, with the Australians in pursuit.

On 21 July 1942, Japanese forces landed on the northern Papuan coast around Buna and Gona, as part of a plan to capture the strategically important town of Port Moresby via an overland advance along the Kokoda Track, following an unsuccessful seaborne attempt during the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942. Two days later, the first engagement of the campaign was fought when a small force of Australian and Papuan soldiers clashed with the advancing Japanese around Awala. They were quickly brushed aside and over the course of late July, August and into September, a series of battles were fought along the Kokoda Track as the Japanese advanced south. The initial Japanese landing forces, consisting mainly of the Sasebo 5th Special Landing Force and the Yokoyama Advance Party, were bolstered in mid-August by the arrival of the South Seas Detachment, consisting mainly of the 144th and 41st Infantry Regiments, under the command of Major General Tomitaro Horii.

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Wikipedia