Landing at Jacquinot Bay

Australian 6th Brigade troops unload stores at Jacquinot Bay

Date	4 November 1944
Location	Jacquinot Bay, New Britain, Territory of New Guinea 5°34′00″S 151°30′00″E / 5.5666667°S 151.5°E / -5.5666667; 151.5
Result	Allied victory

Belligerents

Australia

United States

Japan

Commanders and leaders

Raymond Sandover

Hitoshi Imamura

Units involved

6th Brigade

The Landing at Jacquinot Bay was an Allied amphibious operation undertaken on 4 November 1944 during the New Britain Campaign of World War II. The landing was conducted as part of a change in responsibility for Allied operations on New Britain with the Australian 5th Division, under Major General Alan Ramsay, taking over from the US 40th Infantry Division, which was needed for operations in the Philippines. The purpose of the operation was to establish a logistics base at Jacquinot Bay on the south coast of New Britain to support the 5th Division's planned operations near the major Japanese garrison at Rabaul.

As part of the first stage of the Australian take over, Brigadier Raymond Sandover's 6th Brigade was directed to secure the Jacquinot Bay area. While the region was believed to be undefended, the initial landing was conducted by a combat-ready force comprising the reinforced Australian 14th/32nd Battalion protected by warships and with aircraft on standby. As expected, there was no opposition to the landing on 4 November and work soon began on logistics facilities.

Once a base was established at Jacquinot Bay it was used to support Australian operations near Rabaul which were conducted in early 1945 in conjunction with advances on the northern side of New Britain. The campaign was effectively one of containment as the larger Japanese force was isolated while the Allies conducted further operations elsewhere.

During December 1943 and early 1944 United States Army and United States Marine Corps units landed in western New Britain with the goal of securing the area so it could not be used to launch attacks against the flank of the main Allied offensive along the north coast of New Guinea. The American forces defeated the Japanese garrison of western New Britain during the Battle of Arawe, Battle of Cape Gloucester and Battle of Talasea. In late April 1944 the US Army's 40th Infantry Division assumed responsibility for garrisoning the Allied positions in New Britain. The division subsequently maintained positions around Talasea–Cape Hoskins, Arawe and Cape Gloucester and did not conduct offensive operations against the Japanese forces in the east of the island. As a result, the fighting on New Britain devolved largely into what Peter Dennis has called a "tacit truce" with the US and Japanese troops being separated by a "no man's land", in which Australian-led native troops from the Allied Intelligence Bureau (AIB) conducted a small scale guerilla campaign.

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