Battle of Wide Bay–Open Bay

Australian troops from the 19th Infantry Battalion patrolling Wide Bay

Date	December 1944 – April 1945
Location	Wide Bay and Open Bay, Papua New Guinea, New Britain, Territory of New Guinea
Result	Allied victory

Belligerents

Australia

Japan

Commanders and leaders

Alan Ramsay
Raymond Sandover

Hitoshi Imamura

The Battle of Wide Bay–Open Bay was a battle during the New Britain campaign of the Second World War. Following the arrival of the Australians on New Britain in late 1944, replacing the US garrison on the island, they began a limited offensive against the Japanese forces on the island. Pushing east from the positions previously captured by the US troops earlier in the year, after landing at Jacquinot Bay on the southern coast in November, the Australians began advancing across the island towards the Gazelle Peninsula, where they sought to isolate the numerically superior Japanese garrison. This advance was effected along two axes: Cape Hoskins to Open Bay on the northern coast, and Jacquinot Bay to Wide Bay on the southern. Once the Australians had secured a line across the island between Wide Bay and Open Bay in March and April 1945, the fighting on New Britain died down as the Australians sought to contain the larger Japanese garrison while limiting their own casualties. This situation lasted until the end of the war in August 1945.

The Japanese had captured the island of New Britain in February 1942 after overwhelming the small Australian garrison stationed around Rabaul. The Japanese subsequently built up a large garrison on the island, consisting of around 93,000 men from General Hitoshi Imamura's Eighth Area Army. This became a lynchpin in the defensive barrier that they established following the failure of attempts to capture Port Moresby in late 1942. In December 1943, as part of Operation Cartwheel, US forces landed around Cape Gloucester and Arawe to capture vital airfields and to provide the Allies with access through the sea passage between the straits separating New Britain from New Guinea, where during late 1943 the Allies had fought to secure the Huon Peninsula. This formed part of the overarching Allied strategy of isolating the major Japanese base at Rabaul, as it had been decided that rather than destroying the base with a costly direct assault, a more prudent strategy would be to surround the base and therefore nullify it as a threat.

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