28 February 1946. Among the first to enter combat, and the very last to cease fighting, the 32nd was in combat for 654 days, more than any other United States Army unit during World War II, and eleven of its men were awarded the Medal of Honor. It was estimated the division had killed over 32,000 Japanese soldiers during the war. Many firsts The 32nd Division was the first division to deploy as an entire unit from the United States and the first division to be shipped as a single convoy overseas. Once in the South West Pacific Area, portions of the 128th Infantry were the first to be airlifted into combat, from Australia to Port Moresby, New Guinea. United States forces first launched amphibious offensive operations against the Japanese during the summer and fall of 1942. These were led by the 1st Marine and the Americal divisions on Guadalcanal beginning on 7 August, followed by Carlson's Raiders on Makin Island on 17 August. On 16 November the 32nd became the first U.S. forces to launch a ground assault against Japanese forces. They were followed by the 163rd Regimental Combat Team of the 41st Infantry Division, which arrived at Port Moresby, New Guinea on 27 December, and whose first elements flew over the Owen Stanley Range to the Buna Gona front on 30 December. On the Atlantic front, the first units to engage in a ground assault were the 1st Infantry, 3rd Infantry, 9th Infantry, 1st Armored and the 2nd Armored Divisions in North Africa on 8 November. In another first, the four gun sections of Battery A of the 129th Field Artillery became the first howitzers flown into a war, first carried to Port Moresby by a B-17 bomber. Then one half of Battery A, 129th Field Artillery, a single 105 mm howitzer, was air-lifted in pieces by three Douglas Dakota aircraft over the Owen Stanley Range to Buna, becoming the first U.S. Army artillery flown into combat in World War II. At Saidor, they became the first U.S. division to make a beach landing in the New Guinea campaign. They were the first to employ General MacArthur's "by-pass strategy," leaving some Japanese units alone and attacking behind them to cut them off from their lines of supply. In the battle for Aitape, they were the first division to simultaneously supply 11 battalions in combat in one action completely