153 - Not a Step Back! - Wehrmacht Closes in on Stalingrad - WW2 - July 31, 1942

by Panzer
Over the month that the Axis summer offensive has gone on, the importance of taking Stalingrad-
which was not originally a real objective- has grown and grown in importance, and the
6th Army has been driving for it with all its might, and this week?
This week the Germans are stopped dead in their tracks.
The 6th Army has run out of gas.
I’m Indy Neidell; this is World War Two.
Last week the Axis took Rostov- for the second time in a year, but the hoped for prisoners
taken by the hundreds of thousands did not happen.
Not there, and not really anywhere so far during that huge summer offensive.
The fighting in North Africa was still at a stalemate, but the Axis will eventually
lose a war of attrition there, and the Allies also decided to invade French Northwest Africa
later this year.
Meanwhile the Japanese landed thousands of troops on New Guinea.
And this week sees Tomitaro Horii’s South Seas Detachment advancing there up the Kokoda
Trail.
“Every one of the 2,000 soldiers was trained to hack his way through the undergrowth with
a machete until he dropped with exhaustion; when a man fell, his place would be taken
by another.
Each soldier was equipped with a special shovel with holes so that mud would not stick to
the blade…
Field and machines guns were stripped down to be carried by native bearers as the mountain
trail was hacked open so that the South Seas Detachment following behind could make one
of the most grueling military advances in history, over the Owen Stanley Ridge and down
into Port Moresby.”
It’s only this week that the Australian Commander of the 39th infantry, William Owen,
realizes that the Japanese are attempting the impossible.
His 500 men have retreated in the face of the advance, crossing the somewhat stereotypical
jungle canyon rope bridge over the ravine of the Kumasi River, and cutting the bridge
down into the river, but the Japanese quickly throw across a bridge of their own, and by
the 39th Owen has been mortally wounded fighting for Kokoda, which the Japanese take.
On the 30th, other Japanese forces occupy small islands between Timor and New Guinea.
On the 31st, American bombers attack targets on Tulagi and Guadalcanal.
We’ve seen before that the Allies are planning on soon attacking the Japanese at Tulagi and
Guadalcanal in force, but what sort of defense do the Japanese have there at sea?
Well, they have the new 8th Fleet- the Outer South Seas Force- under the experienced command
of Gunichi Mikawa, but he doesn’t exactly have an overwhelming force.
He is to play defense, since the loss of a few hundred planes at Midway forestalled operations
versus Fiji, Samoa, and New Caledonia.
He’s got his flagship, heavy cruiser Chokai, he’s got cruiser division 6- Japan’s 4