The Admiralty Islands is a 1944 U.S. Army film giving viewers a look at operations in February and March 1944 that led to the capture and occupation of Manus and Los Negros islands in the Admiralty Islands. The film opens with a map of the Admiralty Islands and shows the movement of the U.S. military during the operations. A plane flies reconnaissance over an airstrip on Los Negros (01:12). In New Guinea, elements of the Army’s 1st Cavalry Division prepares for invading Los Negros (01:40). Men sit around and smoke cigarettes waiting to move out. Men ride in trucks to the fast destroyer ships (APDs) to take them across the Bismarck Sea to Los Negros. Soldiers climb aboard the destroyers. A sea plane follows in the wake of a ship. Lt. General Walter Krueger boards a cruiser to meet with General Douglas MacArthur. On deck, men clean and prep their guns. Men sit and read letters before the fighting begins (04:48). Troops receive a final briefing for the objectives of capturing Momote airstrip on Los Negros and Lorengau airstrip on Manus. Naval guns fire on Japanese installations on Los Negros (05:21). Planes of the 5th Air Force bomb the beach, and soldiers climb down from the destroyers and into assault boats. The troops head for Hyane Harbor. The men run ashore and meet no resistance. Soldiers take cover from sniper fire (07:02), then return fire with machine guns. The film shows the burnt jungle; assault forces move farther inland. Footage shows what appears to be dead Japanese. Soldiers move supplies and cargo off the ships and onto the island prior to invading Manus (07:50). Footage from deep in the interior of the inland shows soldiers firing machine guns and mortars, and digging foxholes (08:15). Soldiers capture the Momote airstrip, but face fire from Japanese troops (08:45). Reinforcements arrive on March 5 and 6. B-24s airdrop supplies onto the beach. Soldiers fire artillery. Footage shows corpses littered on the ground (10:26). U.S. troops carry wounded soldiers back to battalion stations. Surgeons operate on a critically injured soldier in a hospital tent. Two men carry a wounded man on a stretcher to the beach to move him to the hospital ship in the harbor. Soldiers patrol Momote air strip (11:30). Army Engineers bulldoze the air strip. General MacArthur comes ashore to survey the airstrip. On March 14 the rest of the 1st Calvary Division arrives at Los Negros. Jeeps and trucks drive off an LST (12:21). Artillery units bombard Manus across the channel. Troops wade onto the beaches of Manus Island, again meeting no resistance. MacArthur (13:14) surveys the captured Lorengau airstrip. Viewers see dead Japanese bodies as well as Japanese POWs. A patrol retrieves the gun from a killed Japanese sniper (13:46). General Krueger and Major General Innis P. Swift plan the next move (14:10). Native Manus men guide the Allied soldiers on their outriggers along a river through the island’s jungle. A U.S. soldier gives a Japanese POW a drink of water (14:59). Footage shows Japanese corpses on the ground and an Allied cemetery. A bulldozer knocks down a tree on the airstrip. B-24 or B-25 bombers fly overhead, ending the film.

The Admiralty Islands campaign (Operation Brewer) was a series of battles in the New Guinea campaign of World War II in which the United States Army’s 1st Cavalry Division occupied the Japanese-held Admiralty Islands. Acting on reports from airmen that there were no signs of enemy activity and the islands might have been evacuated, General Douglas MacArthur accelerated his timetable for capturing the Admiralties and ordered an immediate reconnaissance in force. The campaign began on 29 February 1944 when a force landed on Los Negros, the third-largest island in the group. By using a small, isolated beach where the Japanese had not anticipated an assault, the force achieved tactical surprise, but the islands proved to be far from unoccupied. A furious battle over the islands ensued. In the end, air superiority and command of the sea allowed the Allies to heavily reinforce their position on Los Negros. The 1st Cavalry Division could then overrun the islands. The campaign officially ended on 18 May 1944. The Allied victory completed the isolation of the major Japanese base at Rabaul that was the ultimate objective of the Allied campaigns of 1942 and 1943. A major air and naval base was developed in the Admiralty Islands that became an important launching point for the campaigns of 1944 in the Pacific.

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