A series of posts I wrote about the Pacific war. Note that I did not include campaigns in e.g. China and India as these were primarily ground-based, and I am planning to cover them at some other point.
Picard, kindly make your Rafale vs J-20 and Rafale vs F-35/F-22 analysis in this thread:
Bleeding around Guadalcanal continued. Neither side could gather enough strength to push back the other. Attack was followed by counterattack, which was followed up by a counter-counterattack. While individual battles could be one-sided indeed, there was no real result, only mounting losses. Both sides created imaginative new surprises for the enemy, and the fate toyed with both.
For the Japanese, the particular issue was the Henderson Field air base. This American air base was located at Guadalcanal itself, in immediate proximity to the battlefield. From here, US aircraft could constantly attack the Japanese troops, transport ships and warships. As a result, there were many attacks mounted against it. Japanese heavy bombers regularly bombed it from 10 000 meters, but the engineering troops regularly repaired the runways on the same day.
During the night of 14th October 1942., Japanese battleships Kongo and Haruna suddenly appeared off the island. Their 16 14-inch guns bombarded the air field with high explosive projectiles, causing massive destruction. Half the aircraft at the air field were destroyed, and fires consumed nearly the entire fuel supply. Despite all the efforts of the engineering crews, the air field was incapable of operations the next morning, just in time for the Japanese convoy to deliver supplies. And the next night, the hell came again: Japanese heavy cruisers Chokai and Kinugasa, under command of admiral Mikawa, came to deliver the next blow. Over 700 large-calibre projectiles rained on the airfield over the night.