Dyer scoffed at this idea and the next day flew me up to the Piasecki helicopter factory at Morton, Pennsylvania, just outside Philadelphia. There I had a ride in their “dog ship”—a twin-rotor-transport helicopter called the “Flying Banana,” which was destined to become the world’s first transport helicopter. This was the implement I had dreamed of when I was pondering Carlson’s classic moves during his famous raid on Guadalcanal. Carlson had gained his unlimited mobility through the employment of native scouts. We could achieve the same results faster and to greater distance with whirlybirds.
Dyer, a man deeply experienced in aircraft procurement at the Pentagon level, undertook to write the necessary program, the vital sine qua non that can make or break the best of ideas. Concurrently Sam Shaw made a thorough written analysis of the technical aspects of atomic warfare, and I contributed the basic study of our proposed tactical employment of helicopters in the face of atomic attack. By utilizing the helicopter’s speed and range we found that we could reap the following benefits:
We could disperse amphibious shipping over a transport area of sufficient size to preclude the possibility of destroying more than one vessel per bomb.
Despite the greatly increased distances involved, the relatively high speed of the choppers would put Marines ashore faster than existing ten-knot landing craft.
The troops need not be landed as a vulnerable mass at the water’s edge as from boats but could be distributed initially in correctly dispersed positions inland, on or near their beachhead objective.
The arduous and dangerous shore party phase would be almost eliminated by landing supplies at dumps established inland, not at the water’s edge.
The overall speed of the operation would greatly augment the element of surprise and shock, which has tactically been one of the great attributes of the seaborne form of attack.
Our proposal, when completed, was a very thorough and penetrating study of the major problems then facing the Corps. It was approved without change and used as the basis of the Marine Corps’s new look when it was presented to a discerning Congress, much to the discomfiture of our opponents in their struggle to achieve dominance on a national scale in areas where the military had heretofore been forbidden to tread.
We can attribute some of the plan’s origin to the imagination and initiative inherent in Evans Carlson’s speed and mobility through the employment of his native scouts during his classic raid on Guadalcanal.
As was to be expected, the winged dinosaurs who ran Marine aviation at that time, with the exception of Lt. Gen. Field Harris, USMC, took fright and opposed the scheme in every way, apparently fearful that they would lose pilot seats or, worse still, have to fly whirlybirds themselves. They did everything possible to hamstring the program, one year giving the entire annual Marine helicopter appropriation to the air force to develop their flying crane, a giant lifting machine of little interest to the Marine Corps. But the helicopter made its own way through the ruck and gained warm acceptance when it first appeared on the battlefields in Korea flying Marines of the 1st Division in and out of combat. Today, helicopters are indispensable to all of our armed forces.
Viewed in retrospect, the failure of the Japanese to establish a beachhead in the Koli Point area east of our Lunga Perimeter had marked the end of their effort to retake the island with their existing ground forces. They were demonstrably unable to dislodge us, and a massive buildup would be required before they could make another attempt. Japanese moves to augment their force and our efforts to prevent reinforcement took center stage. These issues were fought out on the seas and in the skies above. Land fighting became of secondary importance, and we in the ground forces became little more than interested but concerned spectators of a larger drama.
The navy’s passage back from the catastrophe of Pearl Harbor had been a stormy one, strewn with the ghosts of great ships and heroic men—the numbers of both exceeding by many times the total count of such losses over the entire history of our naval service since the days of John Paul Jones. It all ended in a series of bloody sailors’ battles fought at point-blank range in the dark waters of Ironbottom Sound. Only when the last of these had been survived or won was the overall campaign of Guadalcanal finally decided.
The total vessels lost by both navies had been about the same, but we could replace ours, even increase their numbers; the Japanese could not. Our other losses were of a different character; leaders like Admirals Scott and Callaghan are not easy to replace. Their deaths remind us that admirals still die on the bridges of their flagships while generals die in bed.
Our successful prosecution of the Guadalcanal campaign was in no small degree affected by the contrasting views of the high commands on either side. For us it was a venture of the greatest importance from the beginning, its success a desperately needed foothold on the road back. To the Japanese it began as a minor annoyance, little more than a momentary distraction from their major objective, the seizure of Port Moresby in southern New Guinea, from which they could menace northern Australia. This attitude proved fatal. Our seizure of Guadalcanal and Tulagi on 7 August had not even been considered important enough by the Japanese to be mentioned in the day-to-day journal of events kept in Tokyo by Tojo’s secretaries.35 The fact of the landings was known but dismissed—after all, the Imperial Japanese Army already held more than 300,000 Allied POWs. The handful of Marines in the Solomons would be picked up shortly and put in the bag.
The Japaneses’ early victories were so astounding that they can scarcely be faulted for believing in their own invincibility. They attributed their successes to a moral and spiritual superiority over their opponents, derived from their Bushido, and tactics of the bamboo spear. In this they were mistaken. Their easy conquests in Malaya, the Netherlands East Indies, and the Philippines were due to the Allies’ failure in each case to provide a logistical supporting base sufficient to keep pace with the tremendous augmentation in numbers of their own military garrisons.
When the crisis came, Allied leaders at home as well as on the scene suddenly became aware of the enormity of the problem and their total inability to solve it in the narrow margin of time remaining. Thus, our vast superiority in numerical strength became a major liability. Our meager reserves of supplies were quickly dissipated, and there was no possibility of resupply. If Guadalcanal had possessed a garrison of 50,000 Marines instead of 13,000 under similar circumstances, the result might well have been the same. Support for such a force would have been impossible. The leaders in Singapore, Batavia, and Manila separately came to the same conclusion: With no prospect whatever of ultimate success, continued resistance would achieve nothing beyond useless sacrifice of human life.
The enemy’s fascination with Bushido (way of the warrior) and bamboo spear tactics was in large measure a delusion. Although these were useful in building morale, they had the effect of inviting disastrous mistakes by substituting rash and impulsive reaction for reasoned tactical judgment. Although they sometimes succeeded, particularly against surprised or worn-out defenders, it was always at great cost in Japanese lives and eventually Japanese morale. There comes a time in every combat unit’s experience when it no longer brags about the extent of its losses.
Nor had the Japanese military always been successful in the past. During the late 1920s and the 1930s we had noted numerous instances of small fights in which even the nondescript soldiers of Chinese General Chiang Kai-shek stood up successfully against their Japanese oppressors. In Manchukuo to the north, little known clashes with the Russians occurred constantly. Some of these incidents were serious battles hardly noted in the U.S. press. In one such clash at Nomonhon on the Mongolian border the Japanese lost 50,000 men, including an entire infantry division. The Russian loss was less than 10,000. Such disparity caused many of us to re-examine our estimates of Japanese training and the effectiveness of the Bushido doctrine on which it was based.
The ultimate act of Bushido, the banzai charge routinely used against Marines on
Guadalcanal, never succeeded and came to be regarded by Marines as a sure sign of American victory. Just as routine were the scurrilous diatribes that so often preceded the banzai charges at sunset on an eventful night. Their aim, to intimidate and cow our defenders, was so wide of the mark as to cause their effort to be regarded as an entertainment event. Our aim, to infuriate and incite the enemy, goading him into reckless assaults, often succeeded. Usually repeated in series, the banzai thrusts, each lessening in force and determination, might continue until dawn. Then both antagonists would begin to look for the ritualistic green flare that signaled the enemy’s withdrawal from contact.
The Japanese were quick enough to recognize that the disaster of the Ichiki detachment at the Tenaru was due in part at least to their overhasty attempt to retake Guadalcanal by raiding tactics without firm naval control of the area. This was exactly the same mistake that we had made when Admiral Fletcher at the Saratoga conference had announced his intention to execute an early withdrawal, thus turning the operation into a hit-and-run amphibious raid—but without the usual formality of picking up the landing force.
No major attempt by the Japanese to retake Guadalcanal was made until 21 August, when a massive task force left Truk. The mission of the enemy was to put a landing force ashore to regain possession of the island. As at Wake and Midway, the task force, including a landing force for the purpose of reoccupying Guadalcanal, embarked on high-speed destroyer transports similar in many ways to our own APDs. The size of the landing force was totally incommensurate with the requirements of its mission. It consisted of only one Rikushenti unit36 and one battalion of Japanese infantry—a total force of only 1,500 men. On 24 August the Battle of the Eastern Solomons was joined south of the Stewart Islands. It resulted in a heartening victory for Fletcher’s smaller U.S. Navy force, which inflicted severe losses on the enemy task force, including the sinking of the carrier Ryujo. The Japanese’s mission of reoccupying Guadalcanal was abandoned, and the task force returned to Truk.
Their subsequent efforts, as we have seen in detail, were at best only partially successful. The enemy expended vast resources in his mistaken effort to establish power ashore without firm control of the sea through domination of the air above it. Initially we had made the same mistake, but we had learned our lesson early on and were wise enough never to repeat that blunder. The legend of Guadalcanal is the story of the men and ships and planes who turned an impending defeat into a resounding and decisive victory for the United States.
Old George was in the war to the very end, isolating Rabaul permanently by seizing Cape Gloucester in New Britain in 1943, protecting MacArthur’s advance northward by a successful but costly attack on Peleliu in 1944, and finishing off the war at Okinawa. These were all hard fights, and the 1st Division’s losses for the entire war totaled more than 20,000 killed and wounded.
After the peace was signed in 1945, the 1st Marine Division was sent to northern China, where it expelled the former Japanese conquerors and faced off against the Chinese Communists for more than two long, hard years. One of its scrapes with the Chinese was at Hsin Ho on the Manchurian railroad, a few miles west of Tongku at the mouth of the Pei-ho River and on the exact spot where, as a second lieutenant, I had hassled with Chinese Communists in 1927 in the days of Brig. Gen. Smedley Butler and the 3d Marine Brigade, forerunner of the 2d Marine Division.
Old George finally got home in 1947 but was off to the wars again in 1950 for years of service in Korea, adding to its colors new battle streamers that bore such names as Inchon, Chosin, and Hagaru-Ri. A comment by noted military writer S. L. A. Marshall on the Chosin battle is noteworthy: “No other operation in the American book of war quite compares with this show by the 1st Marine Division in the perfection of tactical concepts precisely executed, in accuracy of estimate of situation by leadership at all levels, and in promptness of utilization of all supporting forces.”37
Old George was also among the first to land in Vietnam and stayed until the bitter end of that misbegotten war ten years later. The division fought valiantly throughout, particularly in the sanguinary “soldiers’ battles” fought to stabilize and restore the situation following the Tet Offensive. The 1st Division suffered none of the unrest that demoralized some other units during the closing phases of that war.
The old magic was still there when in Operation Desert Storm, Old George broke through the Iraqis’ barricades in record time, then moved into Kuwait City after sweeping aside the stunned defenders of that beleaguered nation’s captured capital. Its recent participation in Somalia was a highly creditable display of professionalism in the restrained use of force in an obscure and volatile situation. Its response at every level from the overall command to the gunner on the street bespoke a discipline borne of long years of unfailing service. The Marine Corps and its 1st Division have never given the nation an unhappy moment, and they never will.
What if Germany invaded America in...
1901
A thrilling novel of a war that never was
by Robert Conroy
The year is 1901. Germany’s navy is the second largest in the world; their army, the most powerful. But with the exception of a small piece of Africa and a few minor islands in the Pacific, Germany is without an empire. Kaiser Wilhelm II demands that the United States surrender its newly acquired territories. President McKinley indignantly refuses, so with the honor and economic future of the Reich at stake, the Kaiser launches an invasion of the United States, striking first on Long Island.
Now the Americans, with their army largely disbanded, must defend the homeland. When McKinley suffers a fatal heart attack, the new commander in chief, Theodore Roosevelt, rallies to the cause, along with Confederate general James Longstreet. From the burning of Manhattan to the climactic Battle of Danbury, American forces face Europe’s most potent war machine in a blazing contest of will against strength.
Published by Presidio Press Available wherever books are sold
“A definitive biography . . . The story of this brave and paradoxical Marine is the stuff of legends.”
—W. E. B. Griffin Author of The Corps
BLACK SHEEP ONE
The Life of Gregory “Pappy” Boyington by Bruce Gamble
Black Sheep One is the first biography of legendary warrior and World War II hero Gregory Boyington. In 1936, Boyington became an aviation cadet and earned the “wings of gold” of a naval aviator. After only a short period on active duty, however, he was “encouraged” to resign from the Marine Corps due to his unconventional behavior. Remarkably, this inauspicious beginning was just the prologue to a heroic career as an American fighter pilot and innovative combat leader. With the onset of World War II, when skilled pilots were in demand, he became the commander of an ad hoc squadron of flying leathernecks. Led by Medal of Honor winner Boyington, the legendary Black Sheep set a blistering pace of aerial victories against the enemy.
Published by Presidio Press
Available wherever books are sold
“Onward we stagger, and if the tanks come, may God help the tanks.”
—WILLIAM O. DARBY
DARBY’S RANGERS
We Led the Way by William O. Darby
From the moment they hit the beaches in North Africa to their last desperate struggle at Anzio, Darby’s Rangers asked for only one thing in World War II—the chance to fight. Experts at amphibious landings, night attacks, and close combat, the Rangers were the spearhead for advancing U.S. forces. And at their helm was William O. Darby, a forceful, charismatic man who inspired, and was inspired by, his troops. Against overwhelming odds in Tunisia, through the concentrated hell at Gela, on to the final kill at Messina and the Italian mainland, Darby and his Rangers led the way. Darby’s Rangers is an authentic war story, as vivid as the action itself.
Published by Presidio Press
Available wherever books are sold
“Behind the legend of the ‘bad boy’
squadron is the true story of the pe
o-
ple, places, and events that made the
outfit what it was.”
—World War II Magazine
THE BLACK SHEEP
The Definitive Account of Marine
Fighting Squadron 214 in World War II
by Bruce Gamble
With their renowned squadron leader Greg “Pappy” Boyington, Marine Fighting Squadron (VMF) 214 was one of the best-known and most colorful combat units of World War II. The popular television series Baa Baa Black Sheep added to their legend—while obscuring the truly remarkable combat record of the Black Sheep and Boyington. A retired naval flight officer and former historian for the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation, Bruce Gamble provides a highly readable account that serves to both correct and extend the record of this premier fighting force.
Published by Presidio Press
Available wherever books are sold
“Gripping . . . These men were
common warriors who fought with
uncommon courage and thus shaped
the destiny of our great nation.”
—Former Senator Bob Dole
THE DEADLY BROTHERHOOD
The American Combat Soldier
in World War II
by John C. McManus
“Do you want to know what the World War II foot soldier felt and how he fought? What he ate and how he liked it? What his life was like during periods he was not in combat? The Deadly Brotherhood goes a long way towards answering such questions. . . . Each chapter contains a wealth of supporting comments. This approach produces an extreme degree of authenticity. . . . This fine book provides a comprehensive understanding of a World War II infantryman’s troubles and travails.”
No Bended Knee Page 27
