May 23, 2003: Added the personal diary of "Cash" Register (one of the Navy Wildcat pilots stationed on Cactus) to The Men page #2.
January 13, 2003: Restructured the Photo Gallery to add one more page (about men at work). Added a Veterans page for those seeking points of contact for Guadalcanal veterans and veterans organizations.
September 9, 2002: Added five more photos (from the archives of Stan Jersey) to Photo Pages #4, 5, and 7. Also added a photo of RNZAF Hudsons to Photo Page #3.
August 28, 2002: Added a huge squadron photo of VMSB-231 to their roster page (see "The Men" page 6 for the link). Added a photo of VS-5 to the Flight 300 page. Also added a half dozen assorted photos from the archives of Stan Jersey to Photo Pages #6, 7, and 8.
July 23, 2002: I've added an article describing the day the Airacobras saved the Marines and the invasion of Guadalcanal. The link is on Photo Page #4. I've also added more photos to Photo Pages #4, 5, 7, and 8.
June 20, 2002: THIS WEBSITE IS MOVING! I am going to a dedicated server under my domain name of "daveswarbirds.com", so the new address will be http://www.daveswarbirds.com/cactus. Please update your bookmarks. The old address will hopefully still work, but a re-direction will take the visitor to the new server. My aviation websites have become a victim of their own success, as I was getting so many visitors that my ISP was complaining about bandwidth useage, and I was forced to move to a commercial-grade server. This means that my costs for keeping my aviation websites online has suddenly increased 150%, and I was struggling to pay for them as it was. If you enjoy this site (or any of my other sites), please consider becoming a sponsor (ie. - make a donation) so that I can stay on-line. Email me for further information if you are interested.
August 9, 2001: Revised the Resources page so that you can get more info on the books I used, and even order them (most at 20-30% off) at Amazon.com. Also added a donations page to allow visitors to help pay my ISP costs so that I can keep this site online.
September 9, 2000: Added photos of Lt.Col. Mangrum, and Swede Larsen, as well as an SBD photo and a nice F4F painting.
September 1, 2000: Added a number of photos, including a picture of an Army Air Corp P-70 night fighter, and a squadron photo of VMSB-132 (look for the rest in the Men and Photo Gallery sections).
January 17, 2000: Added a page (accessible from a link on the History page) describing some of the living and working conditions for the Guadalcanal aviators.
January 13, 2000: Restructured the Photo pages (adding three more in the process), while adding about twenty five photos that were recently obtained during a three-day stint spent poring through the San Diego Aerospace Museum library archives. I would like to thank the librarians there for their assistance and patience. If you haven't been there recently, check out the museum's newly added SBD Dauntless and F4F Wildcat (which is in the markings of Marion Carl at Guadalcanal). They also have a PBY Catalina, and other WWII aircraft including an authentic Japanese Zero. (Unfortunately, they had to sell their Grumman Duck to make room for the Wildcat. Boo!)
If you're interested in the "Black Cat" PBY Catalinas that started their operations out of Guadalcanal (in December 1942), I've built a separate website all about them. Check it out... it has lots of text history and over eighty photographs.
In other news, another website in
this series, titled "Naval Air War in the Pacific",
has also been completed. It covers Navy and Marine aviation in the Pacific from
1941-5 (with special emphasis on aircraft carriers). Click on the above link to check it
out (or preferably, check out this site, then go to the "Naval Air War" site
from this site's Weblinks page.
Unless I find some additional material, this site is now considered complete. Do you have
any relevant photos of the air war on Guadalcanal from August 1942 - November 1942? If so,
please send them
to me (with references) so I can include them in this site. Actual (non-scanned)
photos will be treated with care and returned within one week. Thanks!
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