administration was handled by the United States Army Forces in the Far East. Although there was only one army staff, Alamo Force was in New Guinea while the main body of Sixth Army headquarters was in Brisbane until February 1944, when the two were finally brought together. They still had a dual role as Alamo Force and Sixth Army until September, when Alamo Force was discontinued and the Sixth Army became directly responsible for operations. Bismarck Archipelago The geographical, engineering and logistical difficulties of conducting operations in SWPA were driven home by Alamo Force's first operation, Operation Chronicle, the occupation of Woodlark and Kiriwina Islands in June 1943. Despite the fact that the operation was unopposed by the Japanese, it was subject to delays. Krueger visited Kiriwina, where road work and airbase development were held up by heavy rains, on 11 July. He was dissatisfied with the rate of progress and relieved the task force commander. The arrival of additional engineers sped up the base development effort, and No. 79 Squadron RAAF commenced operations from Kiriwina on 18 August. He was also concerned by reports of the invasion of Kiska in the Aleutian Islands in August 1943, in which a large Allied force invaded an island that had already been evacuated by the Japanese. If this could happen, it was also possible that a force might attack where the Japanese were unexpectedly strong. Different levels of command sometimes came up with widely varying estimates of Japanese strength because they used different methods to estimate it. An attempt to obtain information for Operation Dexterity, the attack on New Britain, with a joint Army-Navy reconnaissance team raised issues of inter-service cooperation. The Navy was mainly interested in gathering hydrographic data rather than information on the state of the Japanese defenders. Because of a breakdown in communications, the PT boat that was supposed to collect the team was unable to rendezvous with it, and the team had to spend eleven more days on the island. Finally, the Navy tried to prevent the Army commander from briefing Alamo Force headquarters on what had occurred. Krueger decided that he needed to have his own strategic reconnaissance capability. In November 1943, he formed the Alamo Scouts as a special unit for reconnaissance and raiding. An Alamo Scouts Training Center for volunteers was established on Fergusson Island, not far from Alamo Force's headquarters on Goodenough Island, under