XIV Corps (United States)

XIV Corps (United States)

Constituted 1 October 1933 in the Organized Reserves. The history of XIV Army Corps in World War II dates from December 1942. Under Lieutenant General (then Maj. Gen.) Alexander M. Patch, the XIV Army Corps directed the Americal and 25th (Tropic lightning) Army Infantry Divisions, the 2nd Marine Division, and the 147th Separate Infantry Regiment in the final drive which expelled the Japanese from Guadalcanal early in February 1943. From air fields here guarded by the XIV Army Corps, Allied aircraft began the neutralization of the enemy's vital Munda airfields on New Georgia.

Lieutenant General, (then Maj. Gen.) O.W. Griswold succeeded General Patch as XIV Corps commander 26 April 1943. In a lightning campaign which began 30 June 1943 with the invasion of Rendova Islands, General Griswold's forces which included the 43rd (New England) and the 37th (Buckeye) Infantry Divisions with elements of the 25th Division, seized New Georgia and the important Munda airfield on 6 August. Mopping up of the adjacent islands was completed and the New Georgia campaign ended 6 October 1943. American and New Zealand aircraft operating from the Munda field began the neutralization of Kahili and other enemy airfield in Bougainville.

The XIV Corps defeated the once fine Japanese 17th Army on Bougainville in March, 1944. Part of this army was the Sixth Infantry Division, considered Japan's best division in the early Chinese campaigns. It played a major part in the Rape of the Chinese city of Nanking in 1937.

In the Bougainville campaign (1943-45), the 37th and Americal Divisions, and two battalions of the Fiji military forces were principal combat units of the XIV Corps. Elements of the 93rd (Negro) Infantry Division arrived after the peak of the battle and assisted in harassing retreating Japanese troops. There were 65,000 Japanese on Bougainville when the Americans landed, of whom some 8,200 died in combat and 16,600 from illness.

The three airfields in the Bougainville perimeter were used as bases for allied aircraft which reduced the once mighty Japanese air and naval base of Rabaul, New Britain, to an impotent outpost of the enemy's island empire. The first raid of Truk, a large Japanese air and naval base in the Central Pacific, was staged through Bougainville by Liberators of the Thirteenth Air Force.

From the Solomons campaigns the XIV Army Corps gained the nickname "Kings of the Solomons."