XIV Corps (United States)

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XIV Corps
Shoulder sleeve insignia of XIV Corps.
Active	1933–1945 1957–1968
Country	United States
Branch	United States Army
Type	Corps
Engagements	World War II
Commanders
Notable commanders	Alexander Patch Oscar Griswold

XIV Corps was a corps-sized formation of the United States Army, originally constituted on 1 October 1933 in the Organized Reserves. The history of XIV Corps in World War II dates from December 1942. Then, under Major General Alexander Patch, the XIV Army Corps directed the American 23rd Infantry Division and 25th Infantry Divisions, the 2nd Marine Division, and the 147th Infantry Regimental Combat Team in the final drive that expelled the Japanese from Guadalcanal early in February 1943. The 70th Coast Artillery Regiment (Anti-Aircraft) landed on 23 May 1943. From air fields guarded by the XIV Army Corps, Allied aircraft began the neutralization of the enemy's vital Munda airfields on New Georgia.

Major General Oscar Griswold succeeded Patch as XIV Corps commander on 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 the adjacent islands was completed and the New Georgia campaign ended on 6 October 1943. American and New Zealand aircraft operating from the Munda field began the neutralization of Kahili and other enemy airfields in Bougainville.

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

In the Bougainville campaign, the 37th and Americal Divisions, and two battalions of the Fiji military forces, were the principal combat units of 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.^[1]

The three airfields in the Bougainville perimeter were used as bases for allied aircraft that 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 on 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, XIV Army Corps gained the nickname "Kings of the Solomons".