As the Maf people told me, "If it can swim here, it can fly here." Within reason naturally.
The Zero, the Mitsubishi A6M, was designed by Jiro Horikoshi, first flown in 1939. The americans knew nothing about it until it wiped all US and other aircraft out of the skies from 1941 onwards..., until it's light construction and lack of potential for development meant that later US fighters could outclass it.... the japs went for the manouvrability over protection angle, making the plane far more nimble in the air and matchless as a dogfighter, while US and Allied planes concentrated on horsepower, armour protection for pilots, self sealing fuel tanks and so on to make them able to endure more punishment. The zero had none of that, so any round that hit them did considerable damage, US planes went heavier on the tracer rounds and explosive rounds in their guns, as once hit, the jap planes would pretty much always erupt in flames from their fuel tanks, even if the pilots themselves were not hit.
Henderson air base was named after the leader of a squadron of torpedo planes that was wiped out in the battle of midway, by one of his friends. The tradition was the first pilot to land on an airfield was allowed to name it whatever he wanted, so this pilot named it after his dead mate.
The japs were gradually forced to the north of Guadalcanal, losing many thousands of men en route, until they were concentrated around the Tambea area, where despite the pounding from the yanks, the jap navy managed to pull many thousands off the beaches there. However, many many thousands more died in the area.
Iron bottom sound is the name for the stretch of water that runs between guadalcanal and the florida islands, a huge area that many navies have heavily invested in infrastructure during that time. The waters immediately around the Island of Savo, a volcano in the middle of ironbottom sound just of the NE tip of guadalcanal, are referred to and the Savo Sound, as in the Battle of Savo Sound, where the yanks got their asses kicked by the japs a couple of times, loosing quite a few cruisers and....ummmm... maybe a battleship or two? can't remember. Later on, after a little education in not regarding the japs as hopeless little asian men, but actually bloody smart, efficient, brave and proficient naval forces (The yanks in particular had a strong racial things against the japs who they felt HAD to be so inferior in everything. Experience proved them to be wrong in this), then the US started to gain the upper hand, especially once they started to use their ship-borne radar for ranging etc at night, which is what really swung things their way.
Japanese ships ran from their main base at Rabaul, way to the north on the top end of the island or New Ireland, now part of PNG, down what became called "the slot", the gap between the western and eastern chains of the solomon islands, with bouganville, new georgia and guadalcanal forming the western chain, Coiseul, Isobel and malaita being the eastern chain.
Running the slot with destroyers going FAST at night was the only way before long that the japs could get supplies, reinforcements and evacuations for their troops on guadalcanal, then New Georgia (where we were, near Munda, the main airbase on New Georgia), as they were progressively driven northward out of the Sollies.
It was a destroyer in one of these runs, charging thru the blackett straits back to shelter in the jap base at Gizo that sliced Kennedy's PT109 in half.
It is a really interesting place for those keen on a bit of ww2 history eh.
A lot of kiwis were there as well.... Kiwis set up the PT boat base on Rendova Island for the yanks to take over, which is where Kennedy was based, and Kiwis not only had several squadrons of aircraft operating out of Munda air base (along side US Liberator bombers etc) but also their own fighter strip on kohinggo island nearby, but also it was kiwis who ran the radar at the munda airbase as well. Some of my customers were based there during the war, and were very interested to see the pics I had of the area, now totally different from how they remembered it!