Under Japanese air attacks, the 1st Marine Raider Regiment consolidated its gains and blocking positions, while Colonel Liversedge studied the Bairoko Harbor defenses. Communications, resupply, and fire support were problem areas. The Japanese improved their own dispositions and continued to bring in troops and supplies from Kolombangara by sea and then moved them overland to Munda Point. The main Japanese line was on a ridge in front of the Americans. The enemy fighting positions were log and coral bunkers that made excellent use of terrain and interlocking machine-gun fire supported by heavy mortars. On the night of 12-13 July, the Navy intercepted a Japanese troop landing at Kolombangara. Four days later, on 17 July, Liversedge pulled the 3d Battalion, 148th Infantry back to Triri Village for closer mutual support, while other Army companies continued to hold the Rice Anchorage area and communications routes. Reinforced on 18 July by the 4th Raider Battalion, Liversedge planned to attack Bairoko on 20 July 1943. The attack was launched on schedule despite the failure of a requested airstrike to arrive. Liversedge sent in Griffith’s battalion, followed by Currin’s battalion, to find an undefended flank or a breakthrough point. Griffith committed Wheeler’s Company B and Company C under First Lieutenant Frank A. Kemp. His other companies had been used to bring these two up to strength. Currin’s battalion fielded four companies, but was some 200 men understrength. Companies B and C soon stalled on the Japanese defenses. Captain Walker took Company P forward for support, while Snell’s Company N tried to find an open flank along the shoreline to the north. One of Snell’s men, Frank Korowitz, remembered feeling that he wanted to get up and run when Japanese attacked by surprise at close range, but “I also felt that I would rather be killed than have anyone know I was scared.” Liversedge fed in his remaining units to cover the gaps that developed between the two battalions and no longer had a reserve. Walker recalled, “without some kind of fire support (naval gunfire or air) these raiders could not penetrate the fortified enemy line.” McCormick, with Company Q, wrote that the Japanese had plenty of time to prepare and had “machine gun pits in the natural shelter provided by the roots of banyan trees and cut fire lanes through the underbrush.” The combination of machine guns, mortars, and snipers guaranteed “almost instant death” to any Marine caught in these fields of fire.