In the month prior to the landings, Allied aircraft assigned to AirSols launched over 3,200 sorties against Japanese airfields surrounding the proposed landing site, and the wider Bougainville area in an effort to reduce the ability of the Japanese to interfere with the landings from the air. On the day of the landing, a naval task force, Task Force 39 under Rear Admiral Aaron S. Merrill, including several cruisers and destroyers, bombarded the airfields around Buka and the Bonis Peninsula. Proceeding south, a fire mission on the Shortlands followed, as part of a diversionary plan to take Japanese attention away from Cape Torokina.