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ON CONTESTED SHORES
U.S. troops disembarking on Utah Beach, 6 June 1944.
Ocial U.S. Navy photo
ON CONTESTED
SHORES
e Evolving Role of Amphibious
Operations in the History of Warfare
VOLUME 2
Edited by Timothy Heck,
B. A. Friedman, and Walker D. Mills
Marine Corps University Press
uantico, Virginia
2024
ON CONTESTED
SHORES
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGINGINPUBLICATION DATA
Names: Heck, Timothy, 1982– editor. | Friedman, B. A. (Brett A.), editor. | Mills, Walker D.,
editor. Marine Corps University (U.S.). Press, issuing body.
Title: On contested shores : the evolving role of amphibious operations in the history of war-
fare, vol. 2 / edited by Timothy Heck, B. A. Friedman, and Walker D. Mills.
Other titles: Evolving role of amphibious operations in the history of warfare, vol. 2
Description: First edition published 2024. | uantico, Virginia : Marine Corps University
Press, 2024. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “e second vol-
ume of On Contested Shores serves as both manual and inspiration for its readers. While
not doctrine, the organization, breadth of experience and analysis, and topics presented
here should nd a place on the shelves at operational units, PME schoolhouses, and on
the desks of scholars looking to better understand what puts men and women in small
boats to land on contested shores”—Provided by publisher.
Identiers: LCCN 2020037806 | ISBN 9798986259581 (paperback)
Subjects: LCSH: United States. Marine Corps. | Amphibious warfare—History—Case studies.
| Landing operations—History—Case studies.
Classication: LCC U261 .O5 2020 | DDC 359.9/6460973—dc23 | SUDOC D 214.513:AM 7
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020037806
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Published by
Marine Corps University Press
2044 Broadway Street
uantico, VA 22134
1st Printing, 2024
ISBN: 979-8-9862595-8-1
DOI: 10.56686/9798986259581
THIS VOLUME IS FREELY AVAILABLE AT WWW.USMCU.EDUMCUPRESS
v
CONTENTS
Foreword ix
Preface and Acknowledgments xiii
Glossary of Select Terms and Acronyms xv
Introduction 3
Timothy Heck, B. A. Friedman, and Walker D. Mills
DOCTRINE AND LOGISTICS
CHAPTER ONE 7
e Landing at Collado Beach: e Logistical Importance
of the Amphibious Landing near Veracruz during the Mexican-American War
Christopher Menking
CHAPTER TWO 21
e Landing Cra Controversy, 1934–1942
Jerry E. Strahan
CHAPTER THREE 42
Red Tide over the Beach: Soviet Amphibious Warfare in eory and Practice
Benjamin Claremont
Contents
vi
CHAPTER FOUR 64
Innovative Amphibious Logistics for the Twenty-rst Century
Walker D. Mills
TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION
CHAPTER FIVE 89
Amphibious Juernaut: How the Landing Ship, Tank, and Landing Vehicle,
Tracked, Created the Most Powerful Amphibious Assault System of World War II
Douglas E. Nash Sr.
ORGANIZATION AND TRAINING
CHAPTER SIX 121
e Union Defence Forces’ Amphibious Invasion
of German South West Africa, 1914
David Katz
CHAPTER SEVEN 142
Operation Albion: e German Amphibious Landing
on the Baltic Islands, 12–17 October 1917
Eric Sibul
CHAPTER EIGHT 163
Beyond Cold Shores:
Inland Maneuver in Historical Polar Amphibious Operations
Lance R. Blyth
CHAPTER NINE 182
Soviet Preparations for a Naval Landing against Israel in June 1967
and eir Partial Implementation
Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez
POLICY AND INTEROPERABILITY
CHAPTER TEN 197
Operation Husky: e Challenges of Joint Amphibious Operations
Darren Johnson
CHAPTER ELEVEN 213
A New Zealand-led “Commando Raid” in the South Pacic:
e Green Islands, 30–31 January 1944
Shaun Mawdsley
Contents
vii
CHAPTER TWELVE 228
PLA Amphibious Campaigns and the Origins
of the Joint Island Landing Campaign
Xiaobing Li
MILITARY MATERIEL AND PERSONNEL
CHAPTER THIRTEEN 247
U.S. Geostrategic Deterrence and A2/AD at Work
in the American Civil War, 1861–1865
Howard J. Fuller
CHAPTER FOURTEEN 276
A Groundswell of Support in the Pacic:
Deploying Small Wars Doctrine amid the Rise of Amphibious Warfare
Evan Zachary Oa
CHAPTER FIFTEEN 301
Prelude to Stalin’s ird Crushing Blow: e Kerch-Eltigen Landing, 1943
Timothy Heck
CHAPTER SIXTEEN 321
Not a Carbon Copy of the U.S. Marine Corps: e Development
of the People’s Liberation Army Navy Marine Corps since 1979 and
What that Means for the Chinese Power Project in the Pacic and Beyond
Edward Salo, PhD
Conclusion 333
Timothy Heck, B. A. Friedman, and Walker D. Mills
Select Bibliography and Suested Further Reading 339
Index 353
About the Authors 361
ix
FOREWORD
I
am honored to be asked to prepare the foreword to this volume of On Contested
Shores. e second in the series, On Contested Shores shows the care and eort be-
ing taken to relate the information contained in them to current day situations
and circumstances. e chapters are individual contributions collected from many
countries, showing the wide reach the authors have presented for completeness.
e foreword to rst volume by Brigadier General Jason Q. Bohm is very well
written and, for the most part, covers this volume also. at volume started with an
article about an Italian special operation (June 1555) and ended with a discussion of
U.S. Marine Corps expeditionary advanced base operations (EABO) concepts now
and in the future. at book was chronologically organized, allowing readers to grasp
some of the sweep of amphibious operations during the past 500 years.
In contrast, this volume’s chapters have been organized thematically so that read-
ers can nd commonalities, intersections, and dierences about a subject, concept, or
event more easily. is active dialogue helps the volume meet the goal of creating an
applicable history. e volume starts with the Veracruz landings during the Mexican-
American War (1846–48) and concludes with a discussion of the Chinese People’s
Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) Marine Corps today. Additionally, the authors have
addressed the technolo, organizational structure, and policies needed to eld mod-
ern amphibious forces.
Let me uote a short section from General Bohm: “Timothy Heck, B. A. Fried-
Foreword
x
man, and Marine Corps University Press have compiled a comprehensive and well-
balanced work to advance this eort. ey endeavored to ‘elucidate the foundations
of amphibious warfare while also illuminating its future potential’.”1 To this, I add
Walker D. Mills as coeditor for the 2024 volume, and comment that they have made
volume 2 just as interesting and readable as a bonus for the reader.
Amphibious operations remain the essential tool for the Joint Force to conduct
forcible entry operations. Amphibious Operations, Joint Publication 3-02, describes the
role and purpose of these landings as follows:
Amphibious operations use maneuver principles to employ ready-to-fight combat
forces from the sea to the shore to achieve a position of advanage over the enemy.
During combat operations, maneuver, in conjunction with organic and supporting
fires, is essential to gaining access where the enemy least expects i. It provides a
position of advanage to destroy or seriously disrupt the enemy’s cohesion through
a variety of rapid, focused, and unexpected actions that create a turbulent and
rapidly deteriorating situation with which the enemy cannot cope.2
e landings, technologies, forces, and policies are examined here with an eye to-
ward making historical analysis relevant to modern practitioners across a wide spec-
trum of elds and disciplines. is is, in short, not a book by Marines, for Marines,
about Marines. Rather, it is a richer analysis of what is needed to enable the Joint
Force to sta, train, euip, and employ amphibious forces.
In my 1987 Marine Corps Gazette article, “inking about Warfare,” I argued that
oensive actions are oen undertaken for the specic purpose of shielding other or-
ganizations from damage and casualties.3 is combat shield “can deny an enemy the
opportunity to shoot at a force or otherwise disrupt its operations.”4 Ultimately, “the
measure of success is the survival of the shielded force.”5 Amphibious operations allow
commanders to place forces ashore that can then shield ships at sea and construct an
aireld to extend the range of bombers and ghters, creating a new shield by which
the landing force can advance like climbing the rungs of a ladder.
Many works on amphibious operations, not just this volume, focus on major
force-on-force landings. Iwo Jima, Normandy, and Gallipoli all come to mind as
o-examined and documented amphibious operations. Less examined but eual-
ly important is the concept of an amphibious campaign and landing that supports
operational maneuver through shielding. While the mention of U.S. Army general
Douglas MacArthur might raise hackles on some, his amphibious campaign model in
1 Jason Q. Bohm, “foreword,” in Timothy Heck and B.A. Friedman, eds. On Contested Shores: e Evolving
Role of Amphibious Operations in the History of Warare (uantico, VA: Marine Corps University Press,
2020), xi, https://doi.org/10.56686/9781732003149.
2 Amphibious Operations, Joint Publication 3-02 (Washington, DC: Joint Chiefs of Sta, 2021), I-3.
3 Philip D. Shutler, “inking about Warfare,” Marine Corps Gazette 71, no. 11 (November 1987): 18–26.
4 Shutler, “inking about Warfare,” 20.
5 Shutler, “inking about Warfare,” 21.
Foreword
xi
the South Pacic during World War II and its application in Korea all bear further
examination as a model for why amphibious landings are conducted and how to plan
for them.
I encourage readers to look at the landing on the Green Islands, covered admira-
bly here by Shaun Mawdsley, to get a sense of this model of amphibious operations.
First, the landing was a small, combined operation conducted by U.S. Navy Pacic
Fleet with the 3d New Zealand Division to accomplish a reconnaissance in force.
Second, it t in a seuence of operations that used amphibious operations to position
airpower to deny the Japanese not only airpower but land and seapower as well, forc-
ing them to abandon Kavieng, the last major base in the South Pacic theater.
e Green Islands were not the rst use of a land-based force to deny enemy
access to aviation. Indeed, using Marines of the 1st Marine Division to defend Hen-
derson Field on Guadalcanal so the ghters and bombers could protect the division
and the eet oshore was the rst major use by the United States of this concept.
e events of 20 August 1942 are emblematic of this symbiotic shielding relationship
between the infantry and aviation as part of an amphibious force:
On 20 Augus, from a point 322 kilometers south of the island, 19 planes of Ma-
rine Fighter Squadron 223 (VMF-223) flying Grumman F4F-4 Wildcats led by
Major John L. Smith and 12 dive bombers of Marine Scout Bombing Squadron 232
(VMSB-232) flying Douglas SBD-3 Dauntlesses led by Lieutenant Colonel Richard
C. Mangrum took o from the flight deck of the USS Long Island (CVE 1). Be-
ginning at 1330, the flight ended with the safe arrival of all planes at Henderson
Field by 1700. Within 8 hours of their arrival, the first great counteratack of the
Japanese was thrown back; and within 12 hours, the newly arrived planes were per-
forming their first mission in support of the ground troops—patrolling the beaches
east of the Tenaru to cut o any attempt at escape by the remnants of the enemy
force that Lieutenant Colonel Edwin A. Pollock’s 2d Batalion, 1st Marines, had
cut to pieces at the mouth of Alligator Creek.6
As aircra transitioned from ship to shore, the infantry shielded the maintainers,
pilots, and aircra who then conducted close air support strikes against the Japanese.
Modern concepts of EABO and stand-in forces could learn much from these early
uses of amphibious power as movable shields. e model of Guadalcanal was carried
forward in the southwest Pacic theater by General MacArthur.
In his role as commanding general of the 1st Marine Division and senior ocer
on Guadalcanal, General A. A. Vandegri “ ‘invented a new system of war—the sys-
tem of seizing a beachhead on which an aireld could be constructed, setting up a
cordon defense around it, then proceeding to the next step. e process was repeated
in endless variations throughout the South Pacic—at Bougainville, Cape Gloucester,
6 Maj John L. Zimmerman, USMCR, e Guadalcanal Campaign (Washington, DC: Historical Division,
Headuarters Marine Corps, 1949), 64.
Foreword
xii
Hollandia, Aitape, Geelvink Bay, Mindoro.’ is campaign moved the force forward
4,828 kilometers in a little more than a year.”7
e primary maneuver element was the ghter base that was moved to the beach-
head as soon as safely possible. e ghters then shielded the bombers to gain air
superiority and sea control, while the surface ships gained undersea control. is
allowed the next landing in the seuence to be made away from defended positions
with little opposition and a lot of re support. e new ghter base was built uick-
ly, and the process repeated. e landings on the Green Islands were part of that
seuence.
As we examine amphibious operations and the opportunities they provide the
Joint and combined force, both volumes of On Contested Shores provide valuable in-
sights into a form of warfare that has had comparatively little coverage in other his-
tories. e common theme of the need for multidomain planning and cooperative
execution, apparent even in the early entries, becomes more obvious in the later chap-
ters. Future volumes could include seuences of amphibious operations that show
how all U.S., allied, and coalition forces can work together across all domains—space,
air, land, sea, undersea, electromagnetic, communications, intelligence, and cyber—to
accomplish assigned missions with minimum casualties. Again, historical examples
exist that are worth looking at, both well-known and those less studied. I look for-
ward to reading them when they come out.
Philip D. Shutler
Lieutenant General, U.S. Marine Corps (Ret)8
7 LtGen Matthew Glavy, USMC, and LtGen Philip D. Shutler, USMC (Ret), “Designing a Force with a
Fighting Foot Ashore,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 149, no. 11 (November 2023).
8 Philip D. Shutler was commissioned in 1948 following graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy. He
served as a platoon leader and as a reconnaissance company commander in Korea, including at the
Chosin Reservoir, before becoming a naval aviator in 1952. He commanded Marine Aircra Group 31
in Vietnam and was later named the deputy commandant for aviation. He was director for Operations
(J-3), Joint Sta, when he retired on 1 July 1980. He remains active in analysis and discussions of military
operations, campaign planning, and strate.
xiii
PREFACE
AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We started this project shortly aer the rst volume of On Contested Shores
was published in 2020. We did so, in part, because the topic seems to
have struck a nerve with readers, practitioners, and scholars, many of
whom became potential contributors. ey, and we, recognized there was much
more ground (or shoreline) to be covered that had direct operational relevance to
the Marine Corps, our Joint Services, and our allies and partners. us, a second
volume was born, and Walker D. Mills was brought on board to help cra what you
read today.
is volume, unlike the rst, is not organized chronologically. Rather, it is grouped
around common themes, namely the DOTMLPFPI construct—doctrine, organiza-
tion, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel, facilities, policy, and
interoperability—many will remember from professional military education (PME).
While not all the DOTMLPFPI categories are covered, we sought out contributions
that addressed specic elements we found vitally important to the conceptualization
and execution of amphibious operations. anks is due to the authors who allowed
us to tinker with their work in a way that helped make these themes more explicit
without this becoming a pedantic work aimed solely at the suering PME student.
Ultimately, we hope this book serves as both manual and inspiration for its read-
ers. While not doctrine, the organization, breadth of experience and analysis, and
topics presented here should nd a place on the shelves at operational units, PME
Preface and Acknowledgments
xiv
schoolhouses, and on the desks of scholars looking to better understand what puts
men and women in small boats to land on contested shores.
We would like to acknowledge the incredible assistance provided by Angela An-
derson and her team at Marine Corps University Press for supporting both this vol-
ume and the previous one. Without their input, guidance, and dedication, the work
you see today would exist in a dozen hard drives and half-forgotten notebooks instead
of in your hands. ank you also to Major General Jason Bohm who wrote, at Angela’s
reuest, the introduction to our rst volume. We would also like to thank the United
States Naval Academy for hosting the McMullen Naval History Symposium, which
remains the premier conference for studying naval and amphibious operations and
forces. e symposium’s role as a focal point for scholarship made our process easier
as we sought contributors, peer reviewers, and supporters.
To our families, friends, peers, and networks, thank you for your support as we
took this volume from concept to completion. Whether it was one of our children
asking us to nd “more anpibian eyes” to a gracious and understanding partner allow-
ing us to slip away to write, edit, and coordinate, we could not have done this without
their support. ank you.
xv
GLOSSARY OF SELECT
TERMS AND ACRONYMS
A2/AD antiaccess/area-denial
ADC Alaskan Defense Command
APD auxiliary personnel destroyer
ARG Amphibious Ready Group
BuC&R Bureau of Construction and Repair
CCP Chinese Communist Party
CNO Chief of Naval Operations
DMO distributed maritime operations
DOTMLPFPI doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education,
personnel, facilities, policy, and interoperability
DUKW six-wheeled amphibious truck
EABO expeditionary advanced base operations
FDB Fleet Development Board
FLEX Fleet Landing Exercise
FMF Fleet Marine Force
GSWA German South West Africa
KMT Kuomintang troops
LAW Light Amphibious Warship
LBB Landing Boat Board
LCAC Landing Cra, Air Cushion
LCI Landing Cra, Infantry
Glossary of Select Terms and Abbreviations
xvi
LCM Landing Cra, Medium (Mike boat)
LCPL Landing Cra Personnel, Large
LCP(R) Landing Cra Personnel (Ramp)
LCT Landing Cra, Tank
LCVP Landing Cra, Vehicle, Personnel (Hiins boat)
LPD Landing Platform, Dock
LSD Landing Ship, Dock
LSM Landing Ship, Medium
LST Landing Ship, Tank
LVT Landing Vehicle, Tracked
MAC Marine Amphibious Corps
MAF Marine Amphibious Force
MDO multidomain operations
MEF Marine Expeditionary Force
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
PLA People’s Liberation Army (China)
PLAAF PLA’s Air Force
PLAN People’s Liberation Army Navy
PLANMC People’s Liberation Army Navy Marine Corps
PND Policía Nacional Dominicana
PRC People’s Republic of China
PT boat patrol torpedo boat
recce reconnaissance
ROC Republic of China
SOCOM U.S. Special Operations Command
SSF South Sea Fleet (China)
Triple Entente the formal association between Russia, France, and Great Britain
during World War I
UAV unmanned aerial vehicle
UDF Union Defence Forces’ (South Africa)
ON CONTESTED SHORES
3
INTRODUCTION
Timothy Heck, B. A. Friedman,
and Walker D. Mills
A
Miliary, Naval, Littoral War, when wisely prepared and discreetly con-
ducted, is a terrible Sort of War. Happy for that People who are Sovereigns
enough of the Sea to put it into execution! For it comes like under and
lightning to some unprepared Part of the World.
~ omas More Molyneux, 17591
“e Marines have landed and have the situation well in hand,” a concept popularized
by correspondent Richard Harding Davis at the end of the nineteenth century, has
served as a buzz phrase, recruiting slogan, and catchphrase signifying that the United
States is taking decisive action in response to a crisis somewhere in the world.2 While
stirring and captivating, the phrase implies a simplicity, an almost mathematical cer-
tainty to amphibious operations: problem + Marine Corps = problem solved.
e reality of landing Marines, or any amphibious force, however, is a decidedly
more complex process than just crossing the beach. A successful amphibious force is
far from something that happens overnight or in an ad hoc manner. At the least, forc-
es need to be raised, euipped, trained, provided with doctrine, transported, landed,
1 uoted in Expeditionary Operations, Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 3, with change 1 (Washington,
DC: Headuarters Marine Corps, 2018), 4-1.
2 “Famous uotes,” Marine Corps History Division, accessed 20 December 2023.
Heck, Friedman, and Mills
4
supplied, evacuated, and supported. ey need to communicate, conduct reconnais-
sance, interact with local populations, administer their own population, and prepare
to repeat the operation again. Similarly, the forces needed to repel amphibious land-
ings must also be carefully planned for and prepared. For any situation to be well in
hand, an amphibious force needs a planned starting point and a decided end state.
e littoral battlespace, focus of Molyneux’s opening epigraph, remains just as
vital a battlespace today as it did in 1759; and amphibious forces, vessels, and con-
cepts remain crucial to understanding how war can and is being prosecuted. In the
Indo-Pacic, the Philippine Navy is engaged in an ongoing strule with the Chinese
People’s Liberation Army Navy over sovereignty and control of the islands making
up the South China Seas. Most notably, in 1999, the Filipino government ran the BRP
Sierra Madre (LT 57) aground on the Second omas Shoal in the Spratly Islands to
help bolster its claim against Chinese expansionism.3
While seemingly part of a nonamphibious operation, the Sierra Madre was built
in World War II for just that purpose. Commissioned into the U.S. Navy as a Landing
Ship, Tank (LST) in 1944, it served in the Western Pacic until mothballed at war’s
end. Aer nearly two decades, the ship was recommissioned and served as part of
the logistics basing for the Mobile Riverine Force in the Mekong Delta before being
turned over to the Republic of Vietnam Navy in 1970 as the My o. With the collapse
of Saigon imminent, the My o set sail loaded with refugees, eventually docking at
the American naval station at Subic Bay, where diplomatic agreements transferred it
to the Philippine Navy in 1976.4 Now aground, the ship serves as an outpost and visi-
ble reminder of Filipino sovereignty in these contested seas. It is resupplied by at least
one other World War II-vintage LST, the BRP Benguet (LS 507).5 e Philippine mil-
itary has almost taken a page directly from then-Commandant of the Marine Corps
General David H. Berger’s June 2023 Force Design 2030 Annual Update: “Amphibious
warfare ships are the cornerstone of maritime crisis response, deterring adversaries,
and building partnerships. ey persist forward, are globally deployable, and oer
eet and joint force commanders exible and tailorable force options in competition
and conict.”6
As Douglas Nash writes in his chapter, the development of the LSTs, like all
purpose-built amphibious technolo, was one fraught with progress and setbacks.
at these two ships, laid down in southern Indiana in 1944, continue to play a sig-
nicant role in global politics is a tribute to their designers, builders, crews, and the
3 Jon Hoppe, “e Measure of the Sierra Madre: e Extensive History of the Sierra Madre, Originally
the USS LST-821,” Naval History Magazine, vol. 36, no. 1, February 2022.
4 Hoppe, “e Measure of the Sierra Madre.”
5 Camille Elemia, “How a Decaying Warship Beached on a Tiny Shoal Provoked China’s Ire,” New York
Times, 11 November 2023.
6 Gen David H. Berger, Force Design 2030: Annual Update, June 2023 (Washington, DC: Headuarters Ma-
rine Corps, 2023), 4.
Introduction
5
enduring value of amphibious forces and technolo. e Sierra Madre and Benguet
have witnessed and served in the evolution of a variety of amphibious operations
since being laid down, including full-scale landings, low-intensity conict, human-
itarian operations, and now, for the Sierra Madre, as a focal point for regional and
global strategic competition.
Work on this volume started before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in Febru-
ary 2022. With Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014, Russian naval dominance in the
littoral waters around Ukraine should have provided ample opportunity to employ
Russia’s Naval Infantry (Morskaya pekhoa Rossii) in an attempt to strike well behind
Ukrainian front lines. Instead, the Russian Naval Infantry seems to have conducted
only a few small-scale landings and elements of it have been soundly defeated by the
defending Ukrainians.7 While this lack of DDay-style landings might be shocking to
Western observers, Soviet amphibious doctrine, which the Russians are heir to, cate-
gorized landing operations in a variety of ways, only two of which were operational or
strategic in nature.8 e Russian Naval Infantry’s presence alone, combined with Rus-
sian naval reach, provides a valuable service and capability to Russian commanders,
giving them assets to conduct tactical and operational maneuver from the sea while
reuiring Ukrainian planners to calculate a potential Russian landing into defensive
considerations.9
But amphibious operations, even in the Molyneux or Davis version, are more
than just boats crashing over the surf to discharge troops. e chapters in this volume
reect that expansion and are divided into the following sections:
Doctrine and Logistics
Technolo and Innovation
Organization and Training
Policy and Interoperability, and
Military Materiel and Personnel
Each chapter largely nests in its selected theme but, as with the blended and
combined nature of amphibious operations, elements bleed from one to the other.
New Zealand’s landing on Green Island in 1944, for example, could not have been fa-
cilitated without technolo provided by or organizational lessons learned by others
previously.
Underlying all of them, though, is belief that amphibious operations remain rel-
evant. e Marine Corps, which has started a massive organizational redesign to ad-
7 See Michael Schwirtz et al., “Putin’s War,” New York Times, 16 December 2022.
8 V. I. Achkasov and N. B. Pavlovich, Sovetskoe voenno-morskoe iskusstvo v Velikoĭ Otechestvennoĭ voĭne [So-
viet Naval Operations in the Great Patriotic War, 1941–1945], trans. U.S. Naval Intelligence Command
Translation Project (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1981), 97.
9 For more, see Walker Mills and Timothy Heck, “What Can We Learn about Amphibious Operations
from a Conict that Has Had Very Little of It? A Lot,” Modern War Institute, 22 April 2022.
Heck, Friedman, and Mills
6
dress the expected future battleeld, still sees them as central to purpose and identity.
We hope this volume provides ideas, inspiration, and debate about the application
of amphibious power, reinforcing the idea that the Marines will be landing and soon
have the situation well in hand.
7
CHAPTER ONE
The Landing at Collado Beach
The Logistical Importance of the Amphibious Landing
near Veracruz during the Mexican-American War1
Christopher Menking
The Mexican-American War is the United States’ rst war of expansion against
a large foreign nation. It represents the nation’s rst large-scale invasion of
another county, mobilizing armies and ghting in three separate foreign the-
aters of war, and maintaining logistical networks to support these armies in the eld
across the North American continent. During the war, the U.S. military grew to meet
the new demands of a foreign conict. e Regular Army, the U.S. Army uarter-
master Department, and U.S. Marine Corps saw permanent expansion during the
war, laying the foundation for future growth.
e campaign for central Mexico presented the most signicant logistical chal-
lenge of the war. e uartermaster Department would have to transport supplies
and soldiers from New England manufacturing depots to New Orleans then to the
various ports on the Rio Grande and in Mexico. e campaign brought not only
the risk of the gulf but also the added obstacle of springtime diseases that plagued
the Mexican coast each season. Further complicating this endeavor was the fact
that the campaign began with the rst major joint amphibious operation for the
U.S. Army and Navy, which caused additional logistical hurdles that needed to
1 Much of this chapter is based on Christopher Menking, “Remembering the Forgotten DDay: e
Amphibious Landing at Collado Beach during the Mexican War” (thesis, University of North Texas,
October 2013).
Menking
8
be surmounted to achieve success. With utmost preparation, the uartermaster
Department helped coordinate the largest amphibious invasion of the war and up
until World War II.
e true heart of the invasion’s success lay with the interdepartmental coopera-
tion between the Army under General Wineld Scott, the Navy led by Commodore
David Conner, and the Army uartermaster Department commanded by General
omas Sidney Jesup. e ability and willingness of these three men to cooperate at
a time when the United States military was oen rife with internal conict and po-
litical intrigue is truly uniue. eir cooperation was not perfect. However, when it
mattered, each set aside their pride to assure success of the operation. Scott and Jesup
buried issues from previous wars, Jesup and the uartermasters executed the onerous
demands of the invasion, and Scott subordinated Army troops to Conner and the
Navy to ensure the landing was successful. During the months of planning and move-
ment, these three men and their subordinates worked surprisingly well together and
achieved one of the most important victories of the war that led to Mexico’s ultimate
surrender.
On 27 October 1846, General Scott submitted a memorandum proposing an
invasion of Mexico from the coast titled “Vera Cruz and Its Castle.” He discussed
what would be necessary to capture the port city of Veracruz and its protecting cas-
tle, San Juan de Ulúa. President James K. Polk, Secretary of War William L. Marcy,
and the rest of the cabinet had been debating the best course to bring the war to a
close. ey knew that the Army must take possession of Mexico City to force the
Mexican government to admit defeat and come to the negotiating table. In the early
months of the war, it became clear that it would not be logistically feasible for Gen-
eral Zachary Taylor to march his army to Mexico City from the north. ere simply
were not enough roads; the terrain was extremely hostile, being mostly desert; and
the distance to maintain the supply lines to the Army would have been too great.2
Scott’s memorandum argued cogently that the capture of Veracruz without an
advance inland would be meaningless. With the expectation that the capture would
be “a step towards compelling Mexico to sue for peace,” Scott outlined what forces
he believed would be needed to capture Veracruz, including “an army of at least ten
thousand men, consisting of cavalry (say) 2,000, artillery (say) 600, and the remain-
der infantry.” e full memorandum outlined the preliminary expectations Scott had
regarding what forces were needed to land in the face of what he expected would be
staunch opposition. Not only did Scott believe that the landing would meet Mexican
resistance on the beach, but he “did not doubt meeting at [the] landing the most for-
midable strule of the war. No precaution was therefore neglected.” Ten thousand
troops, custom built landing cra, and support from the Navy were all essential com-
2 K. Jack Bauer, e Mexican War, 1846–1848 (New York: Macmillan, 1974), 233.
e Landing at Collado Beach
9
ponents to success in Scott’s mind. Time would deprive him of much that he wanted,
but he would receive enough of each of these three components to execute a successful
landing, which fortunately proved to be unopposed.3
On 16 November 1846, aer four more days of prodigious activity, Scott pro-
duced yet another memorandum summarizing the needed troops, supplies, and ships
for the operation, which he gave to Marcy:
For transporting 14,000 men to Veracruz, with horses, artillery, stores, and boats,
50 ships, of from 500 to 750 tons each.
e Boats of the blockading squadron are no, I learn, capable of putting
ashore, at once, more than (say) 500 men—only one have the number to be drawn
from that flee.
We should therefore require (say) 140 flat boats, to put ashore at once, say
5,000 men, with 8 pieces of artillery. Horses might follow in the second or their
trip of boats.
e form of the boats, & c., shall be determined by to-morrow, when orders
may be given for their purchase, (probably) construction. Colonel Santon, chief
quartermaster, is expected back to-nigh.
e ships need not (to avoid demurrage) be chartered until the troops are
known to be nearly in position to embark.
P.S.—Orders should be given at once, to have in readiness to be shipped, ord-
nance and ordnance stores for the water expedition.4
e uartermaster Department was already working at full capacity to supply
both the Army and Navy with necessary supplies and ships. Scott’s memorandum
placed a whole new burden on the department. While maintaining its already high
level of production and procurement, the department now had to supply, move, and
support an additional army in the eld. Beyond the daunting new task of Scott’s ex-
pedition was the short time frame the general placed on the production of materiel
and the movement of troops. Springtime in the Gulf of Mexico brought malaria and
yellow fever to the Mexican shore. In Spanish, yellow fever was called the vomito
negro because of the black, tar-like vomit that its victims expelled. e disease is
transmitted by mosuito and can debilitate a person within a day of infection and
roughly 25–50 percent of all victims die. Scott hoped to land, capture Veracruz, and
3 K. Jack Bauer, Suroats and Horse Marines: U.S. Naval Operations in the Mexican War, 1846–48 (Annapolis,
MD: U.S. Naval Institute, 1969), 63–64, 66; and Wineld Scott, “Vera Cruz and Its Castle,” in Messages of
the Presidents of the United Sates, with the Correspondence, therewith Communicated, between the Secreary of
War and Other Ocers of the Governmen, on the Subject of the Mexican War, House Executive Documents
no. 60, 30th Cong., 1st Sess., Serial Set 520 (Washington, DC: Wendell and Van Benthuysen, 1848), 1268–
74, hereaer Messages of the Presidents of the United Sates.
4 Wineld Scott, “Memoranda for the Secretary of War,” in Messages of the Presidents of the United Sates.
Menking
10
move inland before his army succumbed to the ravages of disease. It was at this point
in the war that the uartermaster Department truly came into its own and stepped
up to meet the challenges placed before it.5
On 23 November 1846, Scott received his orders from Marcy:
Sir: e President of the United Sates desires you to repair to the lower Río
Grande, in order to ake upon yourself the general direction of the war against
Mexico from this side of the Continen, and more particularly to organize and
conduct an expedition (with the co-operation of the navy) against the harbor of
Vera Cruz.6
With this order, Scott began his journey from Washington, DC, to Veracruz, where
he and Commodore Conner would become the rst soldiers to successfully invade
the coast of Mexico at Veracruz since Hernán Cortés, conuering again the “Halls of
the Montezuma.”7
Scott reuested enough custom-built boats to put ashore 5,000 troops, including
light artillery batteries, in the rst wave of landings. Aer receiving Marcy’s orders
to construct the suroats, Assistant uartermaster General Henry Stanton wrote,
“e Department has been recently reuired to provide, at an embarrassingly short
notice, one hundred and y boats or barges, of the description indicated in the
drawings and specications handed you yesterday, by the 1st of January!” e success
of delivering these boats proved to be one of Stanton’s greatest achievements during
the war. Lieutenant George M. Totten, a Navy ocer, designed the suroats, which
were built near Philadelphia. e boats were double-ended, broad-beamed, and at-
bottomed, with frames built of well-seasoned white oak. ey were built in three sizes
so as to nest together for transport: 40 feet to could hold at least 45 troops, 37 feet to
hold approximately 40 troops, and 35 feet to hold a maximum of 40 troops. Each surf-
boat carried a crew of six oarsmen, one coxswain, and a skipper, and ranged in cost
between $795 and $950 per boat. ese vessels, given their nesting feature, could be
stacked to t into ships with oversized hatches and be stored in their holds. e boats
were completed in the 30 days as Scott had reuested, though according to Stanton
it was “one of the most dicult orders which has ever been imposed on me.” Timely
delivery of the suroats proved to be almost as dicult as their rapid production.
e 141 boats in 47 stacks were shipped partly in Army vessels, whose decks had been
cut to admit them into the hold, and partly on the decks of vessels chartered by the
uartermaster Department. Only 65 of the 140 nished boats made it to Scott by the
time of the landing. ough this was only one-half of the reuested amount, it proved
5 Wineld Scott to William Marcy, 16 November 1846, in Messages of the Presidents of the United Sates,
1274.
6 William L. Marcy to Scott, Projét, 23 November 1846, in Messages of the Presidents of the United Sates,
1275–76.
7 William L. Marcy to Scott, Projét, 23 November 1846, in Messages of the Presidents of the United Sates,
1275–76.
e Landing at Collado Beach
11
to be enough to accommodate the original 2,500-troop rst wave Scott called for in
his rst memorandum.8
General Jesup, while operating out of New Orleans, directed the new volunteer
regiments to be outtted and put on transports. Steadily new waves of soldiers made
their way to Mexico for the continuation of hostilities in the new theater of war. By
10 December, Stanton sent out a circular stating that “instructions have been given
to muster the Volunteers into service, by companies, as they report themselves ready
without waiting for the enrollment of the entire Regiments.” ese units would be
supplied and ready to embark for Mexico as soon as able rather than delay waiting
for the full compliment. Scott’s landing needed as many troops as possible before exe-
cuting the landing, but he had a deadline set by the seasons and the threat of disease.9
e Mexico City campaign last touched American soil at Brazos Santiago, Texas,
en route to Veracruz. Scott’s army of invasion gathered as they awaited troops from
New Orleans and pulled regulars from Taylor’s forces to make the army that would
land on Collado Beach, south of Veracruz. is depot became one of the main coaling
stations for the Army transports and Navy vessels on their journeys south to Tampico
or Veracruz. In late 1846, Jesup traveled to Brazos Santiago to help coordinate Scott’s
landing at Veracruz. e bulk of supplies from New Orleans traveled through the
harbor at Brazos Santiago. e growing port became the key forward logistical center
for the entire war.10
During early January, the department continued working to move the new vol-
unteers from across the United States euipped and transported to Mexico. Most of
the new recruits mustered into service either traveled to join Scott in the invasion at
Veracruz or to reinforce Taylor’s forces in northern Mexico. Transfers of experienced
Regular Army troops to Scott’s expedition le Taylor with depleted forces. e new
recruits easily lled the gaps in the ranks for the armies remaining in northern Mexi-
8 “Boats: Surf Boats of Mexican War,” 31 December 1846, John Lenthall Papers (1794–1865), Independence
Seaport Museum, Philadelphia; Bauer, Suroats and Horse Marines, 63–64, 66; Chester L. Kiefer, Maligned
General: e Biography of omas Sidney Jesup (San Rafael, CA: Presidio Press, 1979), 285; K. Jack Bauer,
“e Veracruz Expedition of 1847,” Miliary Aairs 20, no. 3 (Autumn 1956): 164; Wineld Scott, “Vera
Cruz and Its Castle,” in Messages of the Presidents of the United Sates, 1268–74; Ivor D. Spencer, e Victor
and the Spoils: A Life of William L. Marcy (Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 1959), 147, 164; and
William G. Temple, “Memoir of the Landing of the United States Troops at Veracruz in 1847,” in Philip
Syng Physick Conner, e Home Squadron under Commodore Conner in the War with Mexico, Being a Synopsis
of Its Services, 1846–1847 (n.p., 1896), 60–62.
9 Henry Stanton to B. Alvoro, 3 December 1846, Henry Stanton to John Goolrick, 3 December 1846,
Letters Sent by the Oce of the uartermaster General, microlm no M745, Roll 21, 309–10; and Henry
Stanton to omas Jesup, New Orleans, 3 December 1846, United States Department of War, Letters
Sent, Roll 21, 311.
10 Edward J. Nichols, Zach Taylor’s Little Army (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1963), 194; William H. Sam-
son, ed., Letters of Zachary Taylor from the Battle-Fields of the Mexican War (Rochester, NY: Genesee Press,
1908), 104; J. Jacob Oswandel, Notes of the Mexican War, 1846–1848 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee
Press, 2010), 26; W. L. Marcy to MajGen Z. Taylor, in Messages of the Presidents of the United Sates, 365–66;
and omas T. Smith, e U.S. Army and the Texas Frontier Economy, 1845–1900 (College Station: Texas
A&M University Press, 1999), 16, 20, 24, 71, 112, 138.
Menking
12
co. Since it seemed likely most of the ghting was moving to central Mexico, inexpe-
rienced volunteer recruits would be far less of a liability in the northern theater than
in active combat during the Mexico City campaign.11
Scott reached Brazos Santiago from New Orleans on 27 December 1846. Within
a week, on 3 January, he called for the detachment of a portion of General Zachary
Taylor’s troops—1,000 cavalry, 4,000 regulars, and 4,000 volunteers, less those already
headed to Tampico—for departure from that port. On 4 January, Secretary Marcy
noted that their intelligence had reported no large covering army being assembled at
Veracruz, and he expressed hope that Scott would be able to take the city and castle
before such a force could be assembled.12
Despite lingering dierences from the Second Seminole War, Scott supported Je-
sup’s proposal to Secretary Marcy for an increase of the uartermaster Department’s
assigned ocers. During the previous war Jesup wrote a series of misunderstood and
poorly conceived letters that created unnecessary tension between himself and Scott,
11 Henry Stanton to Samuel Dusenbery, 2 January 1847, Henry Stanton to John Goolrick, 4 January 1847,
Henry Stanton to R. F. Loper, 4 January 1847, Henry Stanton to D. H. Vinton, 9 January 1847, Letters
Sent by the Oce of the uartermaster General, microlm no M745, Roll 21, 368–70, 382.
12 Bauer, e Mexican War, 1846–1848, 238; W. L. Marc to MajGen Wineld Scott, in Messages of the Pres-
idents of the United Sates, 391; and Henry Stanton to R. F. Loper, Philadelphia, 4 January 1847, United
States Department of War, Letters Sent, Roll 21, 370.
MAP
Troop and materiel movement to Mexico, 1846.
Source: sourtesy of the author, adapted by MCUP
e Landing at Collado Beach
13
signicantly straining their long friendship. Jesup wrote a letter to President Andrew
Jackson complaining of Scott’s “foot draing,” which resulted in Jackson ordering
Scott back to the capital to explain his failures before a military court of inuiry.
Scott’s wrath fell on Jackson, Jesup, and Brevet Major General Edmund Pendleton
Gaines, the latter also wrote a letter placing the blame for the military failures in
Florida on Scott’s shoulders. Ultimately, Scott received vindication from the court
with Jesup and Gaines receiving slaps on the wrists for comments made to the press.
With Scott’s help, Jesup received the rst department expansion in almost 25 years.
Jesup recommended and received the appointment of 4 additional majors and 10
additional assistants from the Army. Scott worked with Jesup and the uartermas-
ter Department to uickly achieve ambitious goals. Given the connes of time, the
Department performed admirably, due in large part to Jesup’s hard work and eort.
Such cooperation and commitment to the invasion contributed to its ultimate suc-
cess.13
Stanton informed Jesup on 14 January 1847 that the 140 boats reuested by Gen-
eral Scott were completed. More importantly, all of the ships carrying the nesting
landing cras were en route to Brazos Santiago. e transport ships carrying the
suroats had been purchased for this sole purpose, which added to the expeditious
nature of their shipping. In addition, many of the ships that were carrying volunteers
and ordnance destined for Mexico were already at sea or would be leaving shortly.
Transports containing ordnance that had yet to set sail received direction to Isla de
Lobos, roughly 340 kilometers from Collado Beach, rather than Brazos Santiago due
to their late departure. e department achieved the task of maintaining Taylor’s
forces while building a separate army for invasion of the Mexican coast. ough un-
doubtedly stressful for the uartermasters involved, the achievement of both material
production and manpower transportation is one that surpassed military eorts up to
this point in United States history.14
At Brazos Santiago, every brigade commander was exceedingly anxious to avail
themselves to Scott to ensure that their brigade would participate in the amphibious
assault; “but General Scott, with his usual military diplomacy, met all such applica-
tion with the stereotyped assurance that there would be more work to do than he had
troops to accomplish, and that before they reached the City of Mexico they would
have all the ghting they wanted.” Brevet Brigadier General William J. Worth arrived
13 Kiefer, Maligned General, 119–22; John S. D. Eisenhower, Agent of Destiny: e Life and Times of General
Winfield Scott (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 163–66; . S. Jesup to Wm. L. Marcy, in
Messages of the Presidents of the United Sates, 568–69; and Erna Risch, uartermaster Support of the Army:
A History of the Corps, 1775–1939 (Washington, DC: uartermaster Historian’s Oce, Oce of the uar-
termaster General, 1962), 286.
14 Henry Stanton to omas Jesup, New Orleans, 14 January 1847, United States Department of War,
Letters Sent, Roll 21, 384–85; Henry Stanton to D. H. Vinton, New York, 19 January 1847, United States
Department of War, Letters Sent, Roll 21, 393; and Henry Stanton to omas Jesup, New Orleans, 29
January 1847, United States Department of War, Letters Sent, Roll 21, 415–16.
Menking
14
with his division of regulars at the mouth of the Río Grande on 22 January, providing
his troops with the honor of serving as the vanguard of the invasion.15
General Scott had hoped to sail from Brazos Santiago by the beginning of Feb-
ruary to avoid vómito negro season, but delays pushed the departure of the expedition
force back until mid-February. Despite delayed ships, Scott ordered Captain A. R.
Hetzel—a Brazos Santiago uartermaster—to charter enough vessels locally to get the
troops at Brazos Santiago aoat by 10 February and those at Tampico aoat ve days
later. On 15 February 1847, Scott set sail from Brazos Santiago aboard the steamer
USS Massachusetts (1845), destined for Tampico. With his departure, he le orders
that aer replenishing their water tanks, all ships with troops or supplies destined
for the landing were to rendezvous on the ocean side of the barrier island of Isla de
Lobos.16
General Scott arrived at Tampico on 16 February, leaving two days later for Isla
de Lobos.17 Colonel George T. M. Davis—aide-de-camp to General Scott—noted that
“the arrival on the 16th of General Scott and his sta was strong as proof of Holy
Writ that the hour of action was at hand, and the enthusiasm and military demon-
stration with which his advent was hailed at Tampico must have convinced him that
he enjoyed the unlimited condence of the citizen-soldier composing the brigades of
Generals uitman, Shields, and Pillow.” Scott stopped in Tampico to monitor embar-
kations at Tampico of some of the remaining troops there, namely regulars. Once his
orders were issued, he continued to Isla de Lobos.18
Isla de Lobos is located about 97 kilometers south of Tampico, roughly 13 kilo-
meters east of Tamiahua Lagoon.19 General Scott arrived on 21 February, bringing
troops with him to join the troops already on the island. e day aer his arrival,
Scott informed Commodore Conner that he was sending two vessels with ordnance
supplies, two with suroats, and some transports ahead to Antón Lizardo, about 26
15 George T. M. Davis, Autobiography of the Late Col. Geo. T.M. Davis, Capain and Aide-de-camp Scott’s Army
of Invasion (Mexico), from Posthumous Papers (New York: Jenkins and McCowan, 1891), 121; and Wineld
Scott to William Marcy, Brazos San Iago, 24 January 1847, in Messages of the Presidents of the United Sates,
856.
16 Wineld Scott to William Marcy, Brazos San Iago, 12 January 1847, in Messages of the Presidents of the
United Sates, 844–46; Wineld Scott to Commodore Connor, at Sea, 26 December 1846, in Messages of the
Presidents of the United Sates, 846–47; Wineld Scott to W. O. Butler, Camargo, 3 January 1847, in Messages
of the Presidents of the United Sates, 851-852; and Bauer, Suroats and Horse Marines, 71–72.
17 ere is some confusion about when Gen Scott actually arrived in Tampico. Some sources say 16 Feb-
ruary 1847, others record it as 18 February. Given the distance of approximately 483 kilometers, Scott
aboard the Massachusetts should have been able to make the trip within a day. Given this information, 16
February will be the date used here.
18 Davis, Autobiography of the Late Col. Geo. T.M. Davis, 121; Wineld Scott to General Brooke, Brazos San
Iago, 12 January 1847, in Messages of the Presidents of the United Sates, 855–56; and Bauer, Suroats and
Horse Marines, 72.
19 During the war, Isla de Lobos was chosen for its good harbor. In more recent years, the island has
become a favored spot for tourism, especially for divers and shermen due to the wildlife in the sur-
rounding reefs.
e Landing at Collado Beach
15
kilometers southeast of Veracruz just o the coast. Scott reuested to have the troops
land and encamp ashore. On 26 February, Scott informed Conner that once the regu-
lars, one-third of his siege train, and more suroats arrived, he would leave for Antón
Lizardo and attempt a landing.20
e vanguard of transports reached Antón Lizardo on 4 March 1847. On 5 March,
Scott, arrived aboard the Massachusetts. Lieutenant Raphael Semmes records that “our
hitherto uiet headuarters, in which we had stagnated all winter, became daily more
animated, until Antón Lizardo was crowded with a magnicent eet of steamers
and sail-vessels; all bearing at their ga-ends the proud ag of the republic.” While
at Antón Lizardo, Scott issued General Order No. 45, which assigned the three land-
ing waves to their respective transports and specied which units would be in each
line. e rst line was under the command of General William Worth. e second
under the command of General Robert Patterson, and the third included the re-
serves placed under General David E. Twis that were made up of the 2d Brigade
of Regulars. An amphibious landing in the line of battle presented a daunting task.21
Aer arriving at Antón Lizardo, Scott joined Conner on the steamer USS Petria
(1846) to reconnoiter the beaches between Anton Lizardo and Veracruz for a suitable
location to land the suroats. Accompanying them were Worth, Twis, Patterson,
and Major General Gideon Pillow, as well as Scott’s sta, including Captains Robert
E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston and Lieutenants Pierre G. T. Beauregard and George G.
Meade. Aer discussion, they decided on a sandy stretch of shore almost ve kilome-
ters south of Veracruz, beyond the range of its guns. ey chose “a gently curving strip
of sand paralleled by a line of sand hills about 150 yards inland, Collado Beach lies
behind Sacricios Island, two and one-half miles southeast of Veracruz.” is would
soon prove a fortuitous choice for the troops making the landing.22
At daylight on 9 March 1847, the troops assembled. General Scott could not have
chosen a better day. Historian K. Jack Bauer later poetically described it as “a bril-
liant sun sparkled in the cloudless blue sky and illuminated the snowcapped grandeur
of distant Mount Orizaba once again looking upon a conueror landing at Vera-
cruz.” Lieutenant Semmes noted that “if we had had the choice of weather, we could
not have selected a more propitious day.” Many of the soldiers and ocers in their
journals mentioned a feeling or connection to the time of Hernan Cortez, as if this
invasion force were walking in the conuistadors’ footsteps. Scott felt that “the sun
20 Bauer, Suroats and Horse Marines, 75.
21 Bauer, e Mexican War, 1846–1848, 240; Bauer, Suroats and Horse Marines, 76–77; Adm Raphael Sem-
mes, Memoirs of Service Afloat during the War between the Sates (Baltimore, MD: Kelly, Piet, 1869), 125;
Conner, e Home Squadron under Commodore Conner in the War with Mexico, 19; Roger G. Miller, “Win-
eld Scott and the Sinews of War: e Logistics of the Mexico City Campaign October 1846—September
1847” (master’s thesis, North Texas State University, 1976); and General Orders No. 45, 7 March 1847,
Adjutant General’s Oce General Orders, Record Group 94.
22 Bauer, e Mexican War, 1846–1848, 241; Bauer, Suroats and Horse Marines, 77; Conner, e Home Squad-
ron under Commodore Conner in the War with Mexico, 19; and Temple, “Memoir of the Landing of the
United States Troops at Veracruz in 1847,” 64.
Menking
16
dawned propitiously on the expedition.” As if predestined, the landing took place on
the 33d anniversary of Scott’s promotion to the rank of general. e auspicious day
was enhanced by calm seas with little surf on the beach, a condition Scott felt was
necessary for the landing.23
At 0945 that morning, the covering force hoisted anchor and sailed for the land-
ing area. e USS Reefer (1846), Bonia (1846), Petrel (1846), Tampico (formerly USS
Pueblano), and Falcon (formerly USS Isabel), which formed the inshore covering force,
hoisted anchor and stood out for the landing area. Fieen minutes later, the USS
Rarian (1843) signaled the main body of ships to prepare to get under way. According
to William G. Temple, serving under Conner,
all preliminary arrangements having been made, between 11:00 a.m. and 12 o’clock
noon, the fleet—Commodore Conner leading, in the flag-ship Raritan under Cap-
ain Forres, whose decks, like those of the other ships, were crowded with troops,
and General Scott following at a short disance, in the steamer Massachusetts—got
underway, in gallant style, and filed, one by one, out of the narrow pass leading
from the anchorage.24
General Scott wrote that “the whole eet of transports—some eighty vessels, in
the presence of many foreign ships of war, stood up the coast, anked by two naval
steamers and ve gunboats to cover the movement. Passing through them in the large
propeller, the Massachusetts, the shouts and cheers from every deck gave me assurance
of victory, whatever might be the force prepared to receive us.” Even though the beach
did not have defenses built on it, Scott believed Worth and his troops would face
Mexican forces that would try to throw the Americans back into the sea.25
At 1215 that aernoon, the inshore covering force moved oshore of Collado
Beach. e next three hours were lled with the movement of the larger vessels as
they appeared and moved to their assigned posts. At 1245, the Reefer and accompa-
nying gunboats arrived o Isla Sacricios, directly across from the city of Veracruz
and less than 10 kilometers southeast of San Juan de Ulúa. e rest of the ships soon
arrived and took their assigned places with little disorder or confusion. Once they
were safely anchored, the steamers cast the suroats loose, whose oarsmen propelled
them to the troop ships to embark their passengers. At 1530, the steamers USS Spitfire
(1846) and Vixen (1846), with ve schooner gunboats of the inshore force, closed to
within 90 yards of shore. During this preparation, the otilla of gunboats attached to
the suadron under Commander Josiah Tattnall as senior ocer took position within
23 Bauer, e Mexican War, 1846–1848, 242; Semmes, Memoirs of Service Afloat during the War between the
Sates, 126; Bauer, Suroats and Horse Marines, 79; and Wineld Scott, Memoirs of Lieu.-General Winfield
Scott, ed., Michael Gray and Timothy D. Johnson (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2015), 418–19.
24 Temple, “Memoir of the Landing of the United States Troops at Veracruz in 1847,” 67.
25 Bauer, e Mexican War, 1846–1848, 242; Bauer, Suroats and Horse Marines, 80; Semmes, Memoirs of
Service Afloat during the War between the Sates, 126; Conner, e Home Squadron under Commodore Conner
in the War with Mexico, 19; and Scott, Memoirs of Lieu.-General Winfield Scott, 419.
e Landing at Collado Beach
17
grapeshot range of the beach, so as to cover the landing with its guns, as previously
ordered by Commodore Conner.26
ree ags were hoisted on the main truck of the Massachusetts, signaling Worth’s
division to prepare for the landing. Soldiers clambered down into the suroats. Lieu-
tenant Semmes remembered that “the suroats, 67 in number, and each one manned
by experienced seamen of the navy, were hauled alongside of the ships; the soldiers,
with their arms and accoutrements, were passed into them; and as each boat received
her complement, she shoved o, and laid on her oars at a little distance, until the
others should be ready.” When each detachment was ready, it formed up in the line
of battle parallel to Collado Beach and abreast to the acting naval transports some
450 yards oshore. e strong currents that swirled around Isla Sacricios and its
reef threw the suroats into confusion. e units became mixed up, but rather than
sort them out boat by boat, General Worth ordered that each regiment pull for the
boat with its regimental colors hoisted. e perfect line of battle was lost, but each
suroat landed next to others in their regiment.27
While the suroats formed up parallel to the shore, Mexican cavalry could be
seen in the dunes behind the beach. In response, the mosuito eet, a U.S. Navy
suadron detachment, under Commander Tattnall ran close into the beach and kept
up constant shelling. At 1700, the Tampico hurled a 24-pound shell at cavalry who
could be seen on the dunes behind the beach. e shot had no visible eect on the
cavalry. For the anxious Americans, this cemented their fear that the landing force
would have to ght strong Mexican opposition to claim the beach.28
At 1730, the Massachusetts red a shot, signaling the beginning of the landing. e
cannon silenced the murmur among the eet; all eyes were xed on the suroats as
the sailors pulled hard to cover the 450 yards to the beach. e setting sun behind the
dunes silhouetted the walls and castle of Veracruz. While the small suroats closed
in on the beach, not a single crack of musket re was heard from the shore. en, just
before the suroats touched the sand, a gure leaped out of one of the cra into wa-
ter up to his armpits. He waded ashore. It was General Worth. His sta followed him
onto the beach, and suroats began hitting the sand all around them.29
In a matter of moments, the rst wave followed Worth, 2,595 troops in all, onto
the beach without a single casualty. Oswandel watched from his ship and remembered
that “as soon as the surf boats struck the beach the soldiers instantly jumped on shore,
26 Bauer, Suroats and Horse Marines, 8, 80; Bauer, e Mexican War, 1846–1848, 242; and Conner, e Home
Squadron under Commodore Conner in the War with Mexico, 19. Grapeshot refers to a type of cannon charge
using round pellets that when red spread in an eect much like a shotgun blast. is type of shot was
particularly devastating against infantry.
27 Bauer, Suroats and Horse Marines, 80–81; and Semmes, Memoirs of Service Afloat during the War between
the Sates, 126–27.
28 Capt William Harwar Parker, Recollections of a Naval Ocer, 1841–1865 (New York: Charles Scribner’s
Sons, 1883), 84; and Bauer, Suroats and Horse Marines, 81.
29 Bauer, e Mexican War, 1846–1848, 242, 244; and Bauer, Suroats and Horse Marines, 81–82.
Menking
18
some in the water. We are now looking for the Mexicans to attack our men, but on
they rushed in double uick time until they came to a sand hill. Here they planted the
ag of our country with three hearty cheers, responded to with great enthusiasm by
every soldier on board the ships.” At 1740, Worth’s troops planted the American ag
on the dunes, as “the troops debarked in good order; and in a few minutes aerward
a detachment, which had wound its way up one of the sand-hills, unfurled the Amer-
ican ag, and waving it proudly over their head, planted it in the land of Cortez.”30
When the American soldiers reached the top of the sand hills, they realized that
the Mexicans had ed back behind the safety of the city walls. Aer the rst assault,
the remaining United States forces landing at the beach no longer tried to land in
the order of battle. In less than ve hours, more than 10,000 troops landed at Col-
lado Beach without a single loss of life.31 Extra care had to be taken in landing the
siege train. At rst, they tried to land the heavy batteries from two suroats lashed
together, but this did not work. e remaining guns were lowered into the suroats
carefully due to their fragile pine bottoms.32
is landing positioned the American forces to besiege and take the city of Ve-
racruz, beginning the march to Mexico City. If the Mexican soldiers had met the
Americans on Collado Beach, the Army would have been in far worse shape. is de-
cision not to resist the landing by the Mexican commander changed the landing from
a hazardous amphibious assault to a perfect example of how to execute such an op-
eration awlessly for future American military leaders. During the next week, Scott
directed his forces to take up positions around Veracruz to begin the siege. General
Scott chose to besiege the city rather than assault it, as was the popular idea among
his men. He did so to save American lives and those of citizens in the city. As the
investment around the city continued, the Mexicans sent cavalry to nd so points
in the American lines. Brigadier General Juan Morales—the Mexican commander at
Veracruz—chose to hold his small garrison within the walls.33
e U.S. Navy and Marines participated in the landing rst as escorts command-
ing the landing cra and then ghting alongside the Army once ashore. Sailors and
Marines served in naval batteries under the command of the Navy. Some Marines
also served with the Army as more traditional soldiers. Eventually, a Marine battalion
arrived in Mexico under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Samuel E. Watson. e
30 Oswandel, Notes of the Mexican War, 1846–1848, 35–36; Bauer, e Mexican War, 1846–1848, 244; Davis,
Autobiography of the Late Col. Geo. T.M. Davis, 125; Bauer, Suroats and Horse Marines, 82; and Semmes,
Memoirs of Service Afloat during the War between the Sates, 128.
31 e number of troops landed at Collado Beach during these ve hours varies between 8,600 and
around 13,000, depending on the source.
32 Bauer, Suroats and Horse Marines, 82, 419–20; Conner, e Home Squadron under Commodore Conner in
the War with Mexico, 20; and Temple, “Memoir of the Landing of the United States Troops at Veracruz
in 1847,” 68–69.
33 Bauer, e Mexican War, 1846–1848, 245–48.
e Landing at Collado Beach
19
battalion was attached later to Major General John A. uitman’s 4th Division. ey
went on to serve alongside the Army with distinction during the Battle of Chapulte-
pec. Beginning with the landing at Veracruz and the culminating with the victory
at Chapultepec, the Marines demonstrated their value to the United States Armed
Services.34
On 22 March 1847, Scott called for the formal surrender of Veracruz, which Mo-
rales rejected. Gun batteries, both ashore and aoat, continued to bombard the walls
of the city, trying to force its capitulation. Finally, on 29 March, the formal surrender
of Veracruz took place. Scott achieved the surrender by tempering his demands and
allowing the Mexican forces to save face. He agreed to parole the whole garrison and
allowed civilians free movement around the city. General Worth assumed charge of
Veracruz as military governor.35
e landing was a success and the city was taken. General Scott and Commodore
Conner deserved the accolades given to them for this operation. It was a positive ex-
ample of what could be accomplished with joint operations. e Army and Navy had
worked in unison to achieve a herculean feat at Collado Beach. Midshipman William
H. Parker stated that “whatever may be said of Commodore Conner’s management of
aairs up to this time, the arrangements for this service were perfect.”36
Commodore Conner must be credited with successfully conducting an incredi-
bly complicated operation. He suested the landing place, proposed the method of
transporting troops to the debarkation point, and handled the details of the landing.
General Scott deserved credit for conceiving and planning such an audacious oper-
ation. Moreover, Scott managed to land on a hostile shore without much logistical
support and not uite the number troops that he deemed minimal to execute the
operation. General Jesup and his uartermasters achieved a monumental success by
supplying three armies in the eld, while also transporting one of those armies to exe-
cute the largest amphibious assault to date. With the landing complete, General Scott
took Veracruz and began his march to capture Mexico City, the rst foreign capital
ever occupied by the United States Army.
e U.S. Army uartermaster Department, under the guidance of Jesup, pro-
vided Scott with the manufacturing, transportation, and manpower he needed to
undertake one of the most important battles of the war. e supply networks es-
tablished the department crossed the United States East Coast, the Gulf of Mexico,
and inland to Mexico City aer Veracruz’s capture. e uartermasters overcame the
unpredictable northers of the gulf, the risk of disease along the Mexican coast, and
partisan bandits raiding American supply lines in central Mexico. e uartermaster
34 Gabrille M. Neufeld Santelli, Marines in the Mexican War, ed., Charles R. Smith (Washington, DC:
History and Museums Division, Headuarters Marine Corps, 1991), 31–33, 36–39.
35 Bauer, e Mexican War, 1846–1848, 249–53.
36 Parker, Recollections of a Naval Ocer, 1841–1865, 84.
Menking
20
Department more than met the expectations demanded of them during the war and
the experience gained during the Mexican-American War shaped how uartermasters
waged the coming American Civil War on a much grander scale.
e war nally came to an ocial end on 2 February 1848, with the signing of
the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, a small suburb of Mexico City where the Mexican
government had ed during the occupation of the city. Diplomat Nicholas P. Trist
served as the U.S. representative in the negotiations. e nal provisions of the treaty
dealt with many of the territorial issues between the neighboring countries, including
nalizing the Texas-Mexico border and the ceding of a vast portion of Mexico’s far
northern land. is treaty led to bitterness on both sides of the war, but the conict
came to an end in a relatively short time as a result of the central Mexico campaign
that started with the amphibious operation at Veracruz.37
37 e Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 2 February 1848, National Archives and Records Administration,
Washington, DC.
21
CHAPTER TWO
The Landing Craft Controversy, 1934–1942
Jerry E. Strahan
In his book, First to Fight, Marine Corps lieutenant general Victor H. Krulak de-
clared that the American landing cra of 1937 “had not advanced far beyond”
what they were “during the Revolutionary War.”1 is lack of advancement can be
attributed to three factors. First, extremely limited Navy budgets—funds simply were
not available for the development of such cra. Second, there was a belief that ad-
vancements in air power had made successful amphibious assaults impossible. ird,
during the interwar period, many of America’s prewar planners believed that if war
broke out in Europe, the French would hold back the invading forces and their ports
would remain open as they had during World War I.2 As a result of this type of think-
ing, in January 1939, just eight months prior to the start of the war in Europe, the
United States had a total of 19 personnel landing cra.3 is situation would rapidly
change, but not without controversy and competition involving the Navy’s Bureau of
Ships and boatbuilder Andrew Jackson Hiins.
In the late 1920s, Hiins owned a small boatyard in downtown New Orleans
where he built rued workboats for oil exploration and timber companies. ese
1 LtGen Victor H. Krulak, USMC (Ret), First to Fight: An Inside View of the U.S. Marine Corps (Annapolis,
MD: Naval Institute Press, 1984), 90.
2 VAdm Daniel E. Barbey, USN (Ret), MacArthur’s Amphibious Navy: Seventh Amphibious Force Operations
1943–1945 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1969), 12.
3 “Report on Landing Boat Program of the Navy Department,” n.d., Senate Documents, Record Group
46, Senate 79AF30, 33, National Archives, hereaer Senate Report.
Strahan
22
companies operated deep in the Louisiana swamps and needed a boat capable of pass-
ing over oating logs, crossing submerged sandbars, pulling up on a riverbank, and
then retracting with ease. In addition, these maneuvers had to be accomplished with-
out damaging the boat’s hull or propeller.
In 1931, Hiins announced the development of just such a boat—the “Eureka.”4
By necessity and coincidence, the shallow-dra Eureka possessed many of the same
characteristics reuired of future landing cra. Hiins had attempted to interest the
Navy in his boats as early as 1927. Of his rst meeting, he recalled, “ey were very
nice, but denitely not interested.” He continued calling on the Navy, but claimed
that “they did not lend an attentive ear.”5
4 “Drawing Number Book, no. 1,” n.d., Hiins Industries, New Orleans, LA, author’s collection, 8; and
“23-foot ‘Eureka’ Model,” n.d., advertising letter, Hiins Industries, New Orleans, LA, author’s collec-
tion. e letter’s heading, “Hiins Industries, Inc.,” establishes that the letter was written post 26 Sep-
tember 1930—the day Hiins started the company.
5 “A Revisal by A. J. Hiins Sr., President, Hiins Industries, Inc., of Transcript of Hearing before the
Navy Department Price Adjustment Board,” 7 October 1943, Sen 79AF30, OP5, Box 185, U.S. Senate,
Record Group 46, National Archives, 19, hereaer Hiins Revisal.
FIGURE
Andrew J. Hiins.
Source: courtesy the Hiins amily
e Landing Cra Controversy
23
It was not until 1934 that he found a group who showed a strong interest in his
boat—the U.S. Marine Corps. e Corps’ leadership at uantico, Virginia, were im-
pressed with his Eureka, but the Corps, like the Navy, lacked the funds to purchase
such cra.6 Fortunately, the following year the Navy received a budget increase, thus
allowing its Bureau of Construction and Repair (BuC&R) to solicit bids. e BuC&R
was looking for a boat of a specic length and weight. What it was hoping to nd
was an existing commercial boat capable of serving as both a standard launch and a
personnel landing cra.7 Nine New England companies responded, ve entries were
selected for testing. Four were wooden deep-vee hull Eastern seaboard shing skis
and the h was a steel commercial cra that was uickly eliminated. From August
through October 1936, the shing boats underwent sea trials at Cape May, New Jer-
6 Hiins Revisal, 19.
7 LtCol Kenneth J. Cliord, USMCR, Progress and Purpose: A Developmenal History of the United Sates
Marine Corps, 1900–1970 (Washington, DC: History and Museums Division, Headuarters Marine Corps,
1973), 48–49. On p. 3 of Senate Report, the date given for the bids being advertised is early 1936.
FIGURE
An early Eureka workboat designed for oil-eld companies, timber companies, and trappers
for use in Louisiana’s shallow water swamps. e Eureka later evolved into the Navy’s LCP
and then its 36-foot LCPL and LCVP.
Source: courtesy the Hiins amily
Strahan
24
sey, where it was discovered that all four boats had disadvantages that alterations
could not correct.8 Even so, three were chosen for additional testing.
Hiins never submitted a bid. It appears he was not ocially notied of the
process. Later, he wrote to the BuC&R, “We have been aware that the Navy Depart-
ment has a need and have been investigating suitable types of boats for parties to land
through the surf. . . . We know that we have designed, perfected, and are building the
very type of boat best tted for this purpose.”9 He then reminded the BuC&R that his
company had written them on several occasions and even included specications and
drawings. In closing, he reuested that a representative be sent to New Orleans to test
a Eureka.10 No BuC&R representative was dispatched.
ree and a half months aer the Cape May trials, the Navy took a major step
8 Senate Report, 6.
9 “Andrew J. Hiins to the Bureau of Construction and Repair,” 1 October 1936, National Defense Com-
mittee Files, OP-5, Navy Department Matters Ships, Shipbuilding and related Matters, Box 182, Record
Group 46, National Archives. e Navy Department existed until the passage of the National Security
Act of 1947, which created the Department of the Navy, ocially replacing the Navy Department.
10 “Andrew J. Hiins to the Bureau of Construction and Repair,” 1 October 1936.
FIGURE
A Eureka climbs Lake Pontchartrain’s concrete seawall to exhibit the strength of its hull.
Source: courtesy the Hiins amily
e Landing Cra Controversy
25
in the development of landing cra. e secretary of the Navy created the “Navy
Department’s Continuing Board for the Development of Landing Boats for Training
in Landing Operations,” generally referred to as the Landing Boat Board (LBB). Si-
multaneously, the commander in chief of the United States Fleet established the Fleet
Development Board (FDB). e LBB and the FDB were intended to work jointly—the
LBB developing the boats and the FDB overseeing their testing and making recom-
mendations to the BuC&R.11
Approximately two weeks aer the formation of these boards, the BuC&R and
the Navy’s Bureau of Engineering, authorized the Philadelphia Navy Yard to build a
prototype landing boat. e design was intended to incorporate the best features of
three of the sea skis tested at Cape May. e newly formed FDB objected, reasoning
that “little would be gained by constructing a boat so similar in design” to the unac-
ceptable skis. In spite of the objection, the BuC&R had the Philadelphia Navy Yard
move forward with building a 30-foot landing boat. Additionally, the three skis
continued to be tested.12
At a later meeting of the LBB, various potential landing boats were discussed.
Included in the discussion was the design of a 33-foot Eureka submitted by Hiins
Industries. e board rejected the Eureka, claiming the design failed to show “su-
cient promise” as a landing boat.13
In complete contrast to the LBB’s actions, when Lieutenant Commander Ralph
S. McDowell, the ocer responsible for landing cra development in the BuC&R,
learned of Hiins’s Eureka he wrote to the boatbuilder and invited him to Washing-
ton. Hiins accepted and the two men spent a week discussing the Eureka’s design
and capabilities.14 Little else could be accomplished because funds were still limited,
and landing cra were low on the Navy’s list of priorities.
Tests continued to be run on the shing skis and the BuC&R’s Philadelphia
boat. In early 1938, all four cra participated in Fleet Landing Exercise 4 (FLEX 4).
Despite the fact that the Philadelphia boat was considered “the least suitable” of all
of the boats tested, the BuC&R ordered ve additional boats of the same design. e
senior member of the FDB “urged” that the order be canceled. e Chief of Naval
Operations (CNO) responded, “Until a more suitable boat can be developed, their
completion is considered justied.”15
During this same period, McDowell once again contacted Hiins. is time to
inform him that the Navy had $5,200 available to purchase a 30-foot experimental
11 VAdm George Carroll Dyer, USN (Ret), e Amphibians Came to Conquer: e Story of Admiral Richmond
Kelly Turner, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Department of the Navy, 1969), 205.
12 Senate Report, 8–11.
13 Senate Report, 14.
14 LtCol Frank O. Hough, USMCR, Maj Verle E. Ludwig, USMC, and Henry I. Shaw Jr., History of the
U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, vol. 1, Pearl Harbor Guadalcanal (Washington, DC: Historical
Branch, G-3 Division, Headuarters Marine Corps, 1958), 26–27.
15 Senate Report, 18–20.
Strahan
26
landing cra. If he would agree to furnish a boat of his own design, at the specied
price, and not exceeding 30-feet in length, he would be awarded a contract.16
Hiins vehemently opposed the 30-foot reuirement. In his opinion, the boat’s
beam was too wide for its length. He believed the boat should be at least 39-feet long.
However, despite the 30-foot limit and the fact that the boat would cost considerably
more than $5,200 to build, he accepted McDowell’s oer.17
Aer approximately 11 years of calling on the Navy, on 5 May 1938, Hiins re-
ceived his rst contract. Within weeks, he had a 30-foot Eureka ready for shipment.
e boat cost more than $12,500 to build. ere was also the additional expense of
transporting it and the cost of sending a retired captain, Bert Oakley, to properly
demonstrate its capabilities.18
On 27 May 1938, Oakley sent Hiins a telegram describing the preliminary trials
as “very spectacular and a sensation.” According to the captain, the chief boat builder
of the Norfolk Navy Yard commented, “e boat was doing the impossible and [he]
could hardly believe what he had actually seen.” Oakley then declared that the mem-
bers of the board, the Coast Guard representatives in attendance, and the crew, were
all, “astonished and pleased with the trials.”19
McDowell was so impressed by the Eureka’s performance that he suested the
boatbuilder contact U.S. Navy commander M. W. Powers, an ocer assigned to the
Construction Corps of the U.S. naval mission in Lima, Peru. McDowell was aware
that the Peruvian government was interested in purchasing several shallow dra
workboats and he believed the Eureka would be ideal for their purpose.20
Lieutenant Commander George H. Bahm, head of the special board responsible
for conducting the Eureka’s Norfolk trials, was also impressed by the boat’s perfor-
mance. He reported, “e Hiins boat is considered generally the best of the Exper-
imental Landing Boats thus far tested for the purpose intended.”21 Following Bahm’s
report, the LBB recommended to the CNO that Hiins be awarded a contract to
build four experimental 30-foot landing boats. Two were to be constructed of wood
and two were to be fabricated of metal.22
16 Hiins Revisal, 20.
17 Hiins Revisal, 20; and Andrew Hiins to Gen Holland M. Smith, 3 February 1948, Coll/2949 Hol-
land M. Smith Collection, 1905–67, Box 1, Series 1.2, Personal Correspondence 1917–65, Folder 9, Personal
Correspondence 1947–48, Archives Branch, Marine Corps History Division, uantico, VA, hereaer
Hiins to Smith, February 1948; and Hiins to Whitt and Chambers, Ltd., July 8, 1940, author’s col-
lection.
18 Hiins Revisal, 20. Bert Oakley may refer to Robert B. Oakley, though all sources simply refer to Bert.
19 Oakley to Hiins, 27 May 1938, author’s collection. e Norfolk Navy Yard’s name was changed in
1945 to Norfolk Naval Shipyard.
20 LtCdr R. S. McDowell to Andrew J. Hiins, 1 June 1938, author’s collection.
21 “Hiins Experimental Landing Boat: Report of Tests,” USS Arkansas, 7 June 1938, National Defense
Committee Files, OP-5, Navy Department Matters Ships, Shipbuilding and Related Matters, Box 182,
Record Group 46, National Archives.
22 Senate Report, 31–32.
e Landing Cra Controversy
27
Hiins was appreciative of the order, but still frustrated by the 30-foot reuire-
ment. In a postwar letter to Marine Corps lieutenant general Holland M. Smith, Hig-
gins wrote, “I got some experimental orders, again for the goddamned 30’ length boat.
I built these more or less under protest.” When he uestioned the BuC&R as to why
the boats had to be 30-feet in length, he was told that the existing davits on military
and commercial ships could not handle anything longer. During a meeting with the
Navy Department, Hiins exclaimed, “To hell with designing a boat to t the davits.
. . . ey should design their davits to t a proper size boat.”23
ere was also another reason why Hiins was upset. Shortly aer the BuC&R
began testing his Eureka, its Design Division’s Small Boat Desk came out with a new
set of plans. According to Hiins, their plans incorporated several of his boat’s fea-
tures. In his opinion, the Small Boat Desk was attempting to steal his design, but
“they missed the point and the features they tried to copy were defeated by mal-
formed under-water sections.”24
In the fall, the BuC&R followed up on a previous recommendation of the FDB
and the LBB. It awarded a contract to build three experimental landing boats that
would be similar to an earlier BuC&R-designed metal landing boat built by Welin
Davit Corporation; however, they were to incorporate changes recommended by the
FDB. e records do not show whether any of the changes included features copied
from the Eureka.25 What is known is that, in June 1938, the LBB recommended that
two wooden and two metal Eurekas be purchased. Following two design modica-
tions and approval by the CNO, on 1 December 1938, the Navy purchased the four
Hiins boats.26
Two months later, FLEX 5 began its naval exercises in the West Indies. As a result
of their poor showing during the exercises, the three sea skis and the Philadelphia
boats were eliminated as potential landing boats. Also eliminated from consideration
were the original BuC&R boat built by Welin Davit, once hailed as the biest ad-
vancement thus far in a landing boat; two other metal BuC&R boats; and the original
30-foot Eureka. is le the three modied BuC&R boats built by Welin Davit and
the four newly purchased Eurekas. e FDB suested several modications to both
the BuC&R and Hiins’s designs. e LBB then recommended that one BuC&R and
one Hiins boat be constructed incorporating the changes.27
e modied bureau and Hiins boats were retested during FLEX 6. e ocial
report determined that the Hiins boat was “considered to be the best all-round boat
for the purpose intended.”28 In reference to the bureau’s metal boat, the report con-
23 Hiins to Smith, February 1948.
24 Hiins to Smith, February 1948.
25 Senate Report, 24–25.
26 Senate Report, 32.
27 Senate Report, 34–39.
28 Senate Report, 41.
Strahan
28
cluded, “About the only advantage oered by this type of boat is the cheapness and
speed with which they can be manufactured.”29
Completely disregarding the report’s ndings, the LBB and FDB recommended
continued development of the bureau boats. Later, during the spring and summer of
1940, the bureau awarded contracts to build 41 30-foot metal bureau boats and 62 of
Hiins’s 30-foot wooden Eureka landing boats.30
Hiins was excited about the order, but again frustrated by the 30-foot limita-
tion. He later recalled, “I got so exasperated that on my own, and without an order,
and at my own expense, I built a boat 36-foot of length, and bore all the expense of
shipping it to Norfolk, demanding that it be tested.”31
On 11 September, the CNO ordered competitive trials between the 36-foot Hig-
gins boat, a metal bureau boat, and a landing boat built by Chris-Cra Corporation.
Tests were conducted on 17 September, and a full report was forwarded to the sec-
retary of the Navy William Franklin Knox. e report indicated that Chris-Cra’s
twin-engine entry performed excellently but had diculty retracting. Because of the
29 Senate Report, 42.
30 Senate Report, 45.
31 Hiins to Smith, February 1948.
FIGURE
A 36-foot Eureka LCPL during a training exercise on Lake Pontchartrain.
Source: courtesy the Hiins amily
e Landing Cra Controversy
29
retracting issue, the FDB recommended against further development of the boat. Of
the modied 36-foot Hiins entry, the FDB reported that it was “by far the most
superior” and “exceeded in performance any other landing boat that the members of
the Board had ever seen.”32 As for the metal bureau boat, it was considered, “the least
satisfactory of the three tested.”33
Despite the ndings, six days aer the test, the Bureau of Ships, which had been
established on 1 July 1940 to assume the combined functions of the BuC&R and the
Bureau of Engineering, awarded a contract to Gibbs Gas Engine Company of Jackson-
ville, Florida, to build 16 bureau-type metal landing boats. e bureau simply refused
to give up on its Small Boat Desk’s design in spite of its deciencies.34
Based on the test results, on 19 September, the LBB recommended to the CNO
that Hiins be awarded a contract to build 335 36-foot Eureka landing boats, now
designated by the Navy as a Landing Cra Personnel, Large (LCPL).35 Prior to going
into production, Hiins built two new 36-foot Eureka landing boats and absorbed
all costs. He wanted to ensure that his company would be giving the military the best
possible boat. Each boat was constructed with slightly dierent hull modications.
Informal tests were held on 22 October 1940 at Virginia Beach, and the Eureka with
the slightly atter hull design was determined to be the superior of the two cra.
It had better retracting capabilities and surpassed the Navy’s speed reuirements.
Because of its length, the 36-foot Eureka could carry more troops and materiel. Also,
because of its improved hull design, it was nine miles per hour faster than a 30-foot
boat with the same engine.36 On 30 November, the bureau ocially awarded Hiins
Industries the contract. Approximately ve months later, on 30 April 1941, Hiins
received a second contract for an additional 188 36-foot Eureka landing boats.37
It had been 13 years since Hiins rst approached the Navy. Approximately two
years had passed since he shipped his rst boat to Norfolk. e competition between
the boatbuilder and the Bureau’s Small Boat Desk over the design of the personnel
landing cra had nally come to an end.
According to General Smith, “through the unfathomable process whereby the
ocial mind nally emerges from the darkness into the light, the Navy eventually
decided to standardize on the 36-foot Hiins boat.”38 In Smith’s opinion, Hiins
“won the opening phase of the boat battle singlehanded, with loud Marine applause.”39
32 Senate Report, 46.
33 Senate Report, 46.
34 Senate Report, 45.
35 Senate Report, 50.
36 Hiins to Whitt and Chambers, 8 July 1940, author’s collection.
37 “e Chief of the Bureau of Ships to the Under Secretary of the Navy (Clearing Oce),” 15 September
1942, National Defense Committee Files, OP-5, Navy Department Matters Ships, Shipbuilding, and Re-
lated Matters, Box 182, Record Group 46, National Archives.
38 Gen Holland M. Smith, USMC (Ret), and Percy Finch, Coral and Brass (New York: Charles Scribner’s
Sons, 1948), 91.
39 Smith and Finch, Coral and Brass, 90.
Strahan
30
Hiins might have won the opening phase, but his battle with the bureau was far
from over.
In July 1940, as Hiins was trying to interest the British in his Eurekas, he pur-
chased the Albert Weiblen Marble and Granite Works and converted it into a multi-
story, $1.5 million boat building facility, known as the City Park Plant. According to
Hiins, Rear Admiral Claude A. Jones, the assistant chief of the bureau, and Captain
Norborne L. Rawlings, procurement ocer for the bureau, warned him against con-
structing additional plants for landing cra production.40
Hiins ignored their advice and moved forward.41 During the early stages of his
new plant’s construction, he determined that as presently designed, it would never be
capable of delivering the thousands of landing cra he believed it would be called on
to produce once the United States entered the war. His solution—immediately rede-
sign and enlarge the facility. e problem was he lacked available land. Delgado Trade
School was on one side of the Louisiana plant. On the other side was the Southern
Railway tracks, which would be vital for bringing material in and transporting n-
ished boats out. In front of the plant ran City Park Avenue. Bordering the back of the
plant was Holt Cemetery. Hiins “knowingly and willingly” enlarged his plant onto
40 Andrew J. Hiins Jr., interview with author, 25 March 1975, author’s collection; Hiins Revisal, 36;
and Statement by Andrew Hiins, 10 January 1947, Statler Hotel, Washington, DC, typescript in Papers
of Harry S. Truman, File 633, Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, MO, 7, hereaer Statler Hotel
statement.
41 Hiins Revisal, 33; and House Documents, 77th Cong., 2d. Sess., Serial no. 10600, vol. 23, no. 281, 49.
FIGURE
City Park Plant.
Source: courtesy the Hiins amily
FIGURE
City Park LCVP production line.
Source: courtesy the Hiins amily
e Landing Cra Controversy
31
an unused portion of the cemetery. By the time the plant was complete, 40 percent sat
on property to which he held no title. He reasoned, once the war was won, the legal
issues could be resolved.42
e City Park Avenue plant, aer completion, held the honor of being the
world’s largest boat-building facility housed under one roof dedicated to the pro-
duction of landing cra.43 It also had the distinction of being the rst boat-building
plant to implement assembly line production techniues. Additionally, it was the
only boat-building plant to produce landing cra on the second oor and then lower
them by a huge elevator to waiting railroad cars below.
According to Marine Corps General Robert E. Hogaboom, this was typical of
Hiins. e general once wrote that, “in discussing problems of the Corps and de-
tails of boat reuirements he [Hiins] was uick to grasp an idea and seemed to be
able to mentally translate it into practical design. . . . uick decision he gave and im-
mediate action he demanded. He was the sort who tended to knock down anything
that stood in his way.”44 A series of events starting in March 1941 would prove Hoga-
boom’s characterization of Hiins to be true.
As the country drew closer to entering the war, it appeared the United States
might have to seize the island of Martiniue from the French to halt its use as a
German submarine base.45 Such action would reuire an amphibious assault and Gen-
eral Smith had no faith in the bureau’s ability to design and build the landing boats
reuired for such an operation. erefore, he turned to the one person he believed
could accomplish it—Andrew Hiins.
Smith sent Captain Victor H. Krulak and Major Ernest E. Linsert, secretary of
the Marine Euipment Board, to New Orleans to meet with Hiins. ey showed
him photographs, taken by Krulak in 1937, of ramped Japanese landing boats partic-
ipating in the invasion of China. Aerward, they informally asked him if he could
install a ramp in the bow of a Eureka. Hiins immediately accepted the challenge
and, at his own expense, had his men begin working on the design.46
Linsert later returned to New Orleans, accompanied by Navy commander Ross
B. Daett, representing the bureau, and on 26 May they observed three ramped Eu-
rekas undergo tests on Lake Pontchartrain.47 Linsert reported to Brigadier General
Charles D. Barrett, director of plans and policies at Marine Corps headuarters, that
42 Statler Hotel statement, 7.
43 City Park Plant Dedication Booklet, author’s collection, 19.
44 Gen Robert E. Hogaboom to Benis M. Frank, 3 November 1975, copy in author’s collection courtesy
of Frank.
45 LtGen Victor H. Krulak (Ret) to Jerry Strahan, 5 November 1975, author’s collection; and Krulak, First
to Fight, 94.
46 Krulak, First to Fight, 94.
47 Chief of the Bureau of Ships to Under Secretary of the Navy, 15 September 1942, National Defense
Committee Files, OP-5, Navy Department Matters Ships, Shipbuilding and Related Matters, Box 182,
Record Group 46, National Archives.
Strahan
32
he considered both boats to be uite satisfactory.48 On 27 May, the LBB informed Hig-
gins via telephone that a special board of Marine Corps and bureau representatives
would arrive in New Orleans in three days to ocially test the new ramped Eurekas.
e LBB also reuested that he have preliminary drawings of a 45-foot tank landing
cra ready for review.49
For more than a decade the bureau’s Small Boat Desk had been trying to design
a cra capable of landing a tank over an open beach, but had not been successful.
During the Caribbean exercises of 1941, the Marines had been supplied with three
45-foot BuC&R-designed lighters, which according to General Smith, “were unman-
ageable and unseaworthy in heavy surf.”50 During the exercise, one of the lighters
capsized. e bureau was now desperate.
Hiins agreed to accept the LBB’s reuest, but under one condition. He would
only work with the Marine Corps.51 Once that was established, he informed the caller
that when the board arrived, instead of drawings, he would have a completed cra in
the water ready for testing. e caller failed to take him seriously.52
Hiins had on hand a partially completed towboat and dredge tender. When a
proposed contract with the Mobile District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers failed to
materialize, he was le with the unnished boat.53 e towboat’s length and width
were the approximate size reuired for the tank lighter. Immediately, he had his
workers begin converting the towboat into a tank landing cra.
When the special board members arrived in New Orleans, they found not only
the new 36-foot ramped Eurekas but also a completed 45-foot tank landing cra. e
lighter had been designed, fabricated, and put in the water in 61 hours.54 Hiins had
accomplished in less than three days what the BuC&R’s Design Division had been
unable to accomplish in more than two decades. e board considered the trials of
the Eurekas and the tank lighter to be highly successful.55
Previously, the senior member of the LBB had instructed the CNO that if the
ramped Eurekas proved acceptable, the contract for the 188 spoonbill-bow Eureka
landing boats was to be modied. All remaining boats were to be the new ramped
Eureka design, now designated by the Navy as Landing Cra Vehicle, Personnel
(LCVP). Also, Hiins was to immediately begin construction of 49 tank lighters,
48 Cliord, Progress and Purpose, 51.
49 Andrew J. Hiins Jr., interview with author, 26 June 1975, author’s collection.
50 Smith and Finch, Coral and Brass, 92.
51 Hiins to Smith, 3 February 1948, Archives Branch, Marine Corps History Division, uantico, VA.
52 Andrew J. Hiins Jr., interview with author, 20 April 1973, author’s collection. Hiins served as vice
president of Hiins Industries during the war and took over as president when his father died in 1952.
53 Hiins Industries Inc., drasman’s drawing no. 2583, 28 May 1941, and drasman’s drawing no. 2511-A,
31 May 1940, author’s collection; Graham Haddock, interview with author, 26 June 1975, author’s collec-
tion; and J. A. Dovie, “Drawing Number Book,” author’s collection, 66.
54 Hiins to Smith, February 1948.
55 Hiins to Smith, February 1948; and Hough, Ludwig, and Shaw, Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, 28.
e Landing Cra Controversy
33
now classied as a Landing Cra, Mechanized (LCM). ere was one stipulation: as
many of both boats were to be delivered to Norfolk, Virginia, within 14 days.56
Hiins now had a contract, but he lacked engines, steel, bronze rods, and a
place to produce the LCMs and LCVPs. His City Park Plant was already dedicated
to the mass production of 36-foot Eureka landing boats, but it could be converted to
manufacture LCVPs. at le him still needing a place to produce the LCMs. His St.
Charles Avenue plant lacked the space to fabricate the 45-foot steel cra. To solve the
problem, he purchased an old carriage barn on Polymnia Street. e barn’s le wall
ran directly behind the rear wall of the St. Charles Avenue plant, making its location
ideal. Additionally, its size was adeuate for assembling the lighters. However, Hig-
gins still needed a place to fabricate parts, so he took matters into his own hands. He
barricaded o the block of Polymnia Street bordering one side of his plant, covered
it with canvas, and turned the street into a temporary warehouse and fabrication
yard. Residents living on the closed o block could not drive their cars home, gar-
56 Graham Haddock, interview with author, 26 June 1975, author’s collection; Senate Report, 35; and
“Statement by A. J. Hiins, of Hiins Industries Inc., New Orleans,” 24 September 1942, 4, author’s
collection, hereaer Hiins statement.
FIGURE
Troops disembark from a Hiins LCVP.
Source: courtesy the Hiins amily
Strahan
34
bage trucks could not pick up trash, and a brothel owner complained the noise was
destroying romance and killing business.57
Now that Hiins had a place to produce the cra, he uickly gathered the nec-
essary components. Hiins Industries served as an outlet for Gray Marine motors.
erefore, it had some of the reuired engines on hand, but not nearly enough. With
the factory unable to supply additional motors in time, Hiins contacted other Gray
Marine dealers nationwide and purchased their stock. To expedite delivery, he sent
his company trucks across the South to pick up engines and rush them back to New
Orleans.58
As for the lack of steel, the industrialist discovered a barge load of the reuired
type moored near Baton Rouge. He sent a eet of chartered trucks and armed plant
guards to persuade the consignee to release the material to Hiins Industries. To
57 Haddock June interview; and “e Boss,” Fortune, July 1943, 214.
58 Graham Haddock, interview with author, 10 November 1975, author’s collection.
FIGURE
e rst LCMs being fabricated in the converted Polymnia Street carriage barn.
Source: courtesy the Hiins amily
e Landing Cra Controversy
35
get additional material, he had a Birmingham, Alabama, steelmaker called o a golf
course on a Sunday morning. He then persuaded him to furnish the necessary metal
plating. Next, he contacted President Ernest E. Norris of Southern Railway and re-
uested that the atcars loaded with steel be attached to the rst possible passenger
train headed to New Orleans. Norris informed Hiins that regulations prohibited
such an action. Hiins contacted the Navy; the regulations were temporarily sus-
pended and the steel was soon headed south.59
At this point, Hiins lacked one last critical item: bronze rods to be used as
propeller shas. When he discovered the mills could not provide the rods in time, he
searched for other sources. Rods were located at an oileld depot in Texas, but the
owner refused to sell.60
e CNO had instructed “that every practicable means be taken to expedite com-
pletion and delivery” of the boats.61 at was all Hiins needed to know. Since there
was no time for the Navy to expropriate the material, Hiins sent his son, Andrew
Hiins Jr., with some plant workers to Texas. Accompanying them was a pair of wire
cutters. Aer dark, the crew “borrowed” an ample supply of rods from the oileld
depot and loaded them in the back of their company truck. With Texas police in
pursuit, their truck crossed the Louisiana state line, where Louisiana State Police cars
were waiting to escort the shipment to New Orleans. Shortly thereaer, the benevo-
lent depot owner received full payment for the material.62
At the end of the 14-day time limit, Hiins delivered 26 LCVPs and 9 LCMs. e
LCMs had to be partially painted as the train rolled down the tracks toward Norfolk.
In spite of incredible diculties, the Navy received their boats on time.63
As the LCVPs and LCMs rolled east, it appeared the competition between the
bureau and Hiins Industries had nally come to an end. Such was not the case. e
bureau’s Small Boat Desk was determined to design the LCVP and LCM that would
serve as the Navy’s standardized landing cra, and they had an ace in the hole: the
bureau was in charge of awarding landing cra contracts.
e Amphibious Force, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, had reuested that all future person-
nel landing boats be the new Hiins ramped LCVP design. e bureau ignored their
reuest and awarded a contract to produce 200 Hiins-designed LCPLs. However,
the contract was not awarded to Hiins but to Chris-Cra Corporation. Later, it
was revised, and the nal 162 boats produced were LCVPs. But the bureau chose not
59 “e Boss,” 214; Ideas for United Nations, lm, n.d., Gayle Hiins Jones Collection, New Orleans, LA;
and Andrew J. Hiins Jr., interview with author, 20 April 1973, author’s collection.
60 Gen Robert E. Hogaboom to Benis M. Frank, 3 November 1975, copy in author’s collection courtesy
of Frank.
61 Secretary of Naval Operations to Secretary of the Navy, 29 May 1941, Oce of the Secretary General
Correspondence, 1940–42, S82-3 (1) W4-3 (410527), Record Group 80, National Archives.
62 Gen Robert E. Hogaboom to Benis M. Frank, 3 November 1975; and Andrew J. Hiins Jr., interview
with author, 25 March 1975, author’s collection.
63 Haddock interview, June 1975; and Hiins statement, 4.
Strahan
36
to produce the Hiins-designed LCVP. Instead, its Small Boat Desk had recently
come out with its own version and the bureau contracted with Chris-Cra to mass
produce it.64
e bureau’s boat featured a 3.5-foot-wide ramp and was given the designation
Landing Cra Personnel (Ramp) (LCP[R]). Hiins’s LCVPs had a 6-foot 2-inch-wide
ramp that allowed small vehicles to be carried by the boat. e bureau’s narrower
ramp on the LCP(R) was incapable of transporting a vehicle. e Hiins LCVP
could debark 36 troops in 19 seconds. e LCP(R) took 32 seconds to debark the
same number of soldiers. e LCP(R)’s narrower ramp also limited its use as a mate-
riel carrier. Plus, the LCP(R) proved to be bow heavy. e Amphibious Force of the
Atlantic Fleet had not been consulted about the LCVP’s design changes. An LCP(R)
pilot model was never produced or tested to uncover potential aws. Instead, the
Small Boat Desk’s design went straight into production with 1,587 LCP(R)s being
manufactured.65
As negative reports came in from the commanding general of the Amphibious
Force and from additional testing, production of the narrow-ramped boat was halt-
ed.66 All future boats were to be of the Hiins’s design. us, for the second time, a
Hiins-designed boat had beaten out a bureau designed boat to become a standard-
ized Navy landing cra. e Small Boat Desk had lost its second battle, but it was
not yet ready to concede the war. In General Smith’s opinion, “in the Navy, tradition
never dies while there is a shot le in the locker.”67 In the summer of 1941, the bureau
was about to re its third and nal shot.
Ocers assigned to the Small Boat Desk were insistent that, given enough time,
the defects in their tank lighter could be corrected. From May to July 1941, they fo-
cused their attention on redesigning it. e result was a 47-foot lighter that was ex-
tremely similar to their previously unsatisfactory 45-foot cra. Again, no model-basin
test had been run and no prototype had undergone sea trials. e forces aoat had
previously recommended that no additional bureau-type lighters be produced. Yet,
in August, when the bureau received a directive to build 131 additional tank landing
cra, it only reuested bids on its newly modied untested lighter.68
As the bureau pushed forward with its bid process, on Sunday morning 7 De-
cember 1941, Hiins and members of the New Orleans Dock Board held a roadside
meeting near the Industrial Canal (a.k.a. Inner Harbor) in eastern New Orleans.
e industrialist was interested in leasing land from the board so he could build
a large boat building plant. e plant would help turn out the massive orders the
64 Senate Report, 61–65.
65 Senate Report, 74.
66 Senate Report, 69–71.
67 Smith and Finch, Coral and Brass, 93.
68 Senate Documents, 78th Cong., 2d Sess., no. 71, Report 10, Part 15, Investigation of the National Defense
Program, 154, hereaer Senate Report 10.
e Landing Cra Controversy
37
boatbuilder believed would soon be forthcoming. In fact, the British Admiralty
had already notied the bureau that it wanted to purchase 150 Hiins-designed
LCMs.69 Hiins saw that as simply the beginning. As he and board members nego-
tiated terms, a broadcast from a nearby car radio announced that Pearl Harbor had
been attacked. Terms were immediately agreed on and, by that aernoon, Hiins
had crews clearing the site.70
Because of the now urgent reuirement for lighters, the bureau suddenly needed
Hiins’s production capabilities.71 erefore, on 26 December, the 131 tank lighter
bid was modied. e bid now called for 10 47-foot bureau lighters and 20 45-foot
Hiins lighters. e remaining 101 lighters were to be 50-foot in length to accommo-
69 Senate Report 10, 157.
70 Statler Hotel statement, 12.
71 Aer the attack on Pearl Harbor, there was urgent need for an increase in the production of landing
cra. According to George E. Mowry’s report, “Landing Cra and the War Production Board,” Special
Study no. 11 (rst issued on 15 July 1944 specically for the War Production Board), there were two major
landing cra production programs. e rst began in April 1942 in preparation for the invasion of North
Africa and ended in the spring of 1943. e second major production program in preparation for the
invasion of Western Europe and the Pacic operations began in August 1943 and peaked in May 1944.
e problem, even during the peak production periods, was that oen aer a directive from the CNO to
produce landing cra it might be months before the Bureau of Ships awarded a contract.
FIGURE
Industrial Canal Plant.
Source: courtesy the Hiins amily
Strahan
38
date the Army’s new 30-ton M4 Sherman medium tank. Seventy-six of the 101 were to
be Hiins’s lighters and 25 were to be the bureau-designed boats.72
During a meeting at the White House on 4 April 1942, the bureau was instructed
to provide 600 50-foot lighters by 1 September for “imminent military operations.”73
e bureau increased the order to 1,100 lighters and decided that all 1,100 would be
its design. is decision was made in spite of the results of two separate tests. On 20
April 1942, during trials held at Ipswich, Massachusetts, the bureau lighter demon-
strated it had “no directional control” when in reverse. Later, during trials held at
Philadelphia, it was discovered the boat could not be run at full speed and retain
“seaworthiness.”74
When the Army learned of the bureau’s decision to produce its lighters instead
of Hiins’s, it strongly objected. Conferences concerning the tank lighters were held
between the Army and the bureau in early May 1942. e Army continued to insist
on the Hiins lighter and the Navy was adamant that its tank landing cra was ca-
pable of handling Army needs. e Army reached out for help. ey reuested that
Hiins lend them his chief naval architect George Huet, and also a member of his
engineering department, Graham Haddock, to serve as consultants in the forthcom-
ing inter-Service meetings.75
As the meetings took place in the Navy building on Constitution Avenue, the
Army positioned Huet and Haddock in its headuarters nearby. If a uestion arose
that their representatives could not answer, they uickly sent a messenger to obtain
the needed information from their hidden experts.76 During the discussions, Hiins
was in New Orleans being honored by the city as part of its Maritime Day celebra-
tion. As soon as the festivities were over, he immediately headed to Washington to
join Huet and Haddock.
Aer arriving, he discovered the bureau still planned to produce its tank light-
er. In response, Hiins visited Senator Harry S. Truman (DMO), head of the Sen-
ate’s Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program.77 Aer two
additional meetings, Truman ordered the Navy to have its tank lighter compete one-
on-one against Hiins’s LCM.78 e competition took place on 25 May 1942, near
72 Senate Report 10, 157.
73 Senate Report 10, 157. During the Senate hearings, the uestioner instructed those testifying that spe-
cic geographic locations were not to be used when referencing future military actions. Instead, those
answering were to use the term imminent miliary operations. is also seems to be the case at the White
House meeting on 4 April 1942.
74 Senate Report 10, 159–61.
75 Haddock interview with author, 8 January 1993, author’s collection.
76 Haddock interview, June 1975.
77 e Senate’s Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program was commonly referred
to, even in government documents, as the “Truman Committee.” See Special Committee to Investigate
the National Defense Program (1 March 1941) in “Chapter 18. Records of Senate Select Committees,
1789–1988,” National Archives.
78 Krulak, First to Fight, 97–98.
e Landing Cra Controversy
39
Norfolk, Virginia. Senior ocers from the Navy Department, the Bureau of Ships,
the Army, the Marine Corps, and an administrative assistant from the Truman Com-
mittee were all on hand. By the end, the results were clear79.
e following day, Major Howard W. uinn, from the Operations Division, U.S.
Army Transportation Services, wrote to the commanding general of the Services of
Supply that “as we neared the net it became apparent that the Navy Bureau-type tank
lighter was in trouble. . . . It appeared that the lighter was going to overturn.”80
uinn described the crew as “straddling” the sides of the lighter and the coxswain
as “steering the vessel from the rail.” He concluded, “As far as comparison of charac-
teristics of the types of tank lighters are concerned, it may be stated that on May 25
tests there was no comparison.”81 e ocial report concluded that “the Bureau-type
lighter was unseaworthy and that the Hiins lighter performed excellently.”82
79 Senate Report 10, 162.
80 Senate Report 10, 163.
81 Senate Report 10, 163.
82 Senate Report 10, 163.
FIGURE
Bureau of Ships’ tank lighter during 25 May 1942 competition against Hiins Industries’ LCM.
e bureau’s crew was prepared to abandon ship if necessary. Hiins’s LCM easily handled
the mildly choppy seas and successfully landed its tank.
Source: courtesy Graham Haddock from original Hiins files
Strahan
40
As a result of the 25 May competition, the Bureau of Ships notied all Navy yards
building bureau lighters under the 1,100-boat contract, that they were to convert their
production to the Hiins-designed tank lighters.83 None of the 126 produced 50-foot
bureau lighters were ever assigned to combat. e CNO reported to committee inves-
tigators that the bureau’s lighters were “restricted to service for training purposes or
for miscellaneous utility lightering [sic] work.”84
e competition between Hiins and the bureau was nally over. However, the
investigation into the Bureau of Ships was just beginning. On 8 June 1942, the Tru-
man Committee ocially opened hearings concerning the landing cra program.
Approximately two months later, the committee forwarded its ndings to secretary
of the Navy Knox. e report concluded that the bureau, “for reasons known only
to itself, stubbornly persisted for over ve years in clinging to an unseaworthy tank
lighter of its own.” It then claimed that in the bureau there was “an inherent reluc-
tance on the part of its personnel to accept any design but, its own, even though
this involves a agrant disregard for the facts, if not also for the safety and success
of American troops.”85 In the committee’s opinion, “If a better design had not been
available, persons in the Design Division of the Bureau, responsible for the lighter
program, might be deemed merely incompetent.”86 As a result of their ndings, the
committee recommended that Knox “reorganize the sections of the Bureau’s design
division that had been responsible for the tank lighter program.”87
Also, on 5 August 1942, Truman sent a letter to Secretary Knox stating, “I cannot
condemn too strongly the negligence or willful misconduct on the part of the ocers
of the Bureau of Ships entrusted with this vital matter, involving as it did both the
success of our military forces and the lives of American marines, sailors, and soldiers.”
As for the bureau’s treatment of Hiins Industries, the senator found it to be “biased
and prejudiced.” Truman claimed “that the war eort has not suered an irreparable
injury is due largely to the ability and ener of Hiins Industries, Inc. and to its
repeated criticisms of the shortcomings of the designs prepared by the Bureau of
Ships.” In his opinion the boatbuilding company “should be commended for doing
this without fear of the results which such criticisms might incur with the agency on
which it was dependent for contracts.”88 e following day, Secretary Knox informed
the committee that he was authorizing an examination of the tank lighter program be
made on behalf of the Navy Department.89
On 18 August 1942, Knox authorized Yale University professor Herbert. L.
Seward to conduct the Navy’s investigation. As Seward began his inuiry, Knox was
83 Senate Report 10, 164.
84 Senate Report 10, 136.
85 Senate Report 10, 167–68.
86 Senate Report 10, 167.
87 Senate Report 10, 168.
88 Harry Truman to Secretary Frank Knox, 5 August 1942, from Hiins’s 1942 copy, author’s collection.
89 Senate Report 10, 133.
e Landing Cra Controversy
41
already initiating a reorganization of the bureau. In early November, Seward submit-
ted his ndings to Knox. He had discovered the “slow-going” peacetime practices of
the bureau had continued, that “ris and chasms between factions” existed, and that
no existing procedures allowed for “proper consideration of suestions submitted
from outside sources.” Just as troubling, his investigation found no process for allow-
ing recommendations from the forces aoat to be uickly brought to the attention of
those in charge of design and procurement.90
Seward’s report also veried that the bureau’s lighter had been given undue pref-
erence, while Hiins Industries had received piecemeal orders, thereby making a
steady production ow dicult to maintain. As for the treatment accorded Hiins,
Seward described it as “unfortunate.” His report concluded that “the Hiins lighter
is superior to the Bureau type lighter.”91
It had taken the Marine Corps, the Army, the Truman Committee, the Navy
Department’s own investigation, personnel changes in the Small Boat Desk, and the
1 November appointment of Captain Edward L. Cochrane as the new chief of the
Bureau of Ships to correct the pre-1942 problems and prejudices of the bureau. It had
also taken an industrialist willing to call out the unfair practices of some ocers in
the Bureau of Ships, even though such an action could have been detrimental to his
company.
In a postwar letter to General Smith, Hiins wrote, “I would not care to appear
as if I was disgruntled with the Navy, for aer 1942, we got along excellently.”92 By
late 1942, he had no reason to be resentful. His LCP, LCPL, LCVP, and LCM had all
become the Navy’s standardized landing cra.
When the Allies invaded Normandy in 1944, Hiins Industries consisted of eight
plants and employed more than 20,000 workers. e company produced 20,094 boats
and ships for the Allied war eort. A remarkable achievement for a company that in
1937 employed approximately 50 workers and operated from a single small boatyard
not located on the waterfront. An achievement that almost never occurred because of
a biased few in the Small Boat Desk of the Bureau of Ships.
90 Senate Report 10, 133–34.
91 Senate Report 10, 133–34.
92 Hiins to Smith, February 1948.
42
CHAPTER THREE
Red Tide over the Beach
Soviet Amphibious Warfare in Theory and Practice
Benjamin Claremont
The term amphibious operations generally does not bring to mind the Soviet
military. If it does, the image is likely inuenced by the work of Tom Clancy
and Larry Bond, whose dramatic Soviet invasion of Iceland featured heavily
in their bestselling Red Storm Rising.1 Even Cold War-era American intelligence of
the Soviet Morskaya Pekhoa (Naval Infantry) was limited.2 Allen E. Curtis, the liai-
son between the U.S. Army’s Soviet Army Studies Oce and the National Training
Center’s opposing force in 1989–2000, called Defense Intelligence Agency eorts “pa-
thetic,” noting there was one unclassied report from 1979 that was never updated.3
Indeed, even for the Soviet Navy, the Naval Infantry, along with Morskaya Aviatsiya
(Naval Aviation), was seen as something of an unwanted and oen neglected dis-
traction from the Navy’s priorities. However, the Soviet Union had a long history of
amphibious operations, especially during and aer the Second World War. e study
1 Tom Clancy and Larry Bond, “Operation Polar Glory,” in Red Storm Rising (New York: G. P. Putnam’s
Sons, 1986).
2 e abbreviation MorPekh, short for Морская Пехота (Morskaya Pekhoa) or Naval Infantry, will be
used throughout. In addition, the acronyms MPBn and MPBr, meaning Naval Infantry Battalion and
Brigade, will be used.
3 Allen E. Curtis, “Soviet Marines in the 70s–80s,” Miniatures Page, 20 May 2007; the document is in
LtCol Louis N. Buardi, e Soviet Naval Inantry, DDB-1200-148-80 Defense Intelligence Report (War-
saw: DIA Soviet Warsaw Pact Division, Directorate for Research, 1980).
Red Tide over the Beach
43
of Soviet amphibious warfare oers a uniue perspective that contrasts with Western
experience.
Given Russian performance in the Russo-Ukrainian War, one might uestion
the utility of understanding Russian and Soviet amphibious warfare, especially for
the United States, an insular power heavily invested in expeditionary amphibious
warfare and Joint forcible entry. Russia, like the Soviet Union before it, is a conti-
nental land power. eir navy, and by extension their Naval Infantry, exist to support
the activities of the Ground Forces (Soviet Army). is is a fundamentally dierent
perspective of Joint warfare than in the United States. However, it is one which both
challenges core assumptions of American thinking on amphibious warfare and has
been consistently understudied despite the criticality of coastal and littoral regions
during and aer the Cold War.
Unlike the Western allies with histories of colonial campaigns and marine expe-
ditions, the Soviet Naval Infantry really only began conducting amphibious assaults
during the Second World War. e material conditions of the Nazi-Soviet war meant
that victory or defeat would be decided by the large-scale land campaigns in the Sovi-
et Union and bordering states. Geography determined that the main water obstacles
were riverine, on the great rivers such as Don, Dniepr, Vistula, Oder, and Volga.
e amphibious assaults of the Western allies moved toward applying an unstop-
pable force of operational-strategic air interdiction, close air support, and a volume
of naval gunre only possible when the world’s two largest naval powers—the United
States and United Kingdom—focused their might on a few kilometers of beach.4 ey
were oen strategic assaults, crossing oceans and breaking into a continental theater
with forces numbering in the tens of divisions. In contrast, Soviet amphibious as-
saults were small (battalion-regimental scale), at shallow depths (oen less than 150
km from friendly forces), rarely had anything larger than destroyers for re support,
and were made to insert forces to outank defenses or to insert a forward detach-
ment.
Despite its alien context, the Soviet/Russian perspective is useful for three ma-
jor reasons. First, understanding the theory and practice of the probable enemy em-
powers leadership at all levels to shatter mirror imaging and work forward probable
enemy courses of action on the basis of battleeld conditions, and the Russians build
o the foundation of Soviet theory and practice. Second, it provides perspective on
how amphibious warfare can support and enable successful large-scale, high-intensity
ground forces operations in continental theaters. ird, and perhaps most important-
ly, studying an external approach to amphibious warfare forces reassessment of what
preconceptions and assumptions are taken for granted.
Before diving into historical vignettes and Soviet amphibious theory, some con-
text is necessary. e Soviet study of war was a fully articulated academic eld with its
4 e term United Kingdom here includes Dominion, Commonwealth, and Empire forces.
Claremont
44
own language, subelds, methodological structures, and lively debates.5 e Soviets
used very precise terminolo when discussing military science, and there are many
false friends with English language terms. To deconict, this chapter will put the
terms in English when discussing the Western understandings and in Russian or italic
translation or transliteration when using Soviet denitions.6 e following introduc-
tion will hopefully orient the rest of this chapter within Soviet terminolo and their
intellectual framework. is, of course, does not imply that the author or publisher
condones or supports the ideolo of the USSR in any way. It is, however, import-
ant to understand an organization through their own eyes and in their own words.
In the Soviet understanding, war (война, voyna) was distinct from armed conflict
(вооружённая борьба, vooruzhonnaya bor’ba).7 War was a broad sociopolitical
phenomenon that is dened based on Vladimir Lenin’s Clausewitzian articulation as
an expression of the politics of the warring powers and the classes within them.8 e
Soviets considered war to be total, a strule by the whole of a country (coalition) in
which armed conflict was only currently the main form of strule, alongside economic,
diplomatic, and ideological conict.9 As the Soviets viewed war as encompassing the
totality of the state, war fell under the purview of civilian leadership.10 However, and
most importantly, the Soviets did not see war as a failure of diplomacy or policy but
as one tool among many to achieve policy aims, one which carried great risk and so
was dangerous and undesirable, but one which may be forced on the USSR.11 Only a
fool would desire war, but to the Soviets it was something that must be prepared for,
endured should it come, and its opportunity not suandered.12
In contrast, peace (мир, mir) was primarily dened as the conduct of foreign
5 Peter H. Vigor, “e Function of Military History in the Soviet Union,” and Christopher N. Donnel-
ly, “e Soviet Use of Military History for Operational Analysis: Establishing the Parameters of the
Concept of Force Sustainability,” in Col Carl W. Reddel, USAF, ed., Transformation in Soviet and Russian
Miliary History: Proceedings of the Twelh Miliary History Symposium, AFD-101028-004 (Washington, DC:
U.S. Air Force Academy, Oce of Air Force History, U.S. Air Force, 1986), 117–40, 243–72; and Chris-
topher Donnelly, Red Banner: e Soviet Miliary System in Peace and War (London: Jane’s Information
Group, 1988), 182–83.
6 For example, in the case of strate, operations, and tactics, Western denitions will work from the
paradigm established by B. A. Friedman in On Operations: Operational Art and Miliary Disciplines (An-
napolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2021) or U.S. Joint doctrine like Strate, Joint Doctrine Note 2-19
(Washington, DC: Joint Chiefs of Sta, 2019) and Joint Warfighting, Joint Publication 1 (Washington,
DC: Joint Chiefs of Sta, 2023), while Soviet denitions will universally be taken from two authorita-
tive Soviet reference works: Советская военная энциклопедия [Soviet Military Encyclopedia] [SVE],
8 vols. (Moscow: Voenizdat, Soviet Ministry of Defense, 1979–89), hereaer SVE volume number, and
Военный Энциклопедический Словарь [Miliary Encyclopedic Dictionary] [VES] (Moscow: Sovetskaya
Entsiklopediya, 1986), hereaer VES 1986. Denitions will be given in footnotes.
7 VES 1986, 151, for война, 157 for Вооружённая борьба.
8 VES 1986, 151.
9 VES 1986, 151.
10 VES 1986, 151.
11 VES 1986, 151.
12 Donnelly, Red Banner, 104; and VES 1986, 151.
Red Tide over the Beach
45
policy without the use of armed conflict.13 Indeed, the Soviet Miliary Encyclopedic
Dictionary denes mir as explicitly including competition below the threshold of
armed conflict, and notes that “peace without weapons and violence, peace in which
every people chooses the path of their development, their way of life, is the ideal of
Socialism.”14 To the Soviets, peace, in the Western sense of “peace with goodwill,” could
only come when the fundamental antagonisms inherent to capitalism were resolved
by its elimination.
Finally, armed conflict being the primary mode of strule in war, but able to exist
outside of it, was the sum of military actions taken to achieve political and military
goals.15 As it related primarily to the activity of the armed forces, it was managed by
military leadership.16
ese subjects and denitions fell under the category of miliary aairs (Военное
дело, Voyennoye delo), the term for all issues relating to the theory, practice, and
construction of armed forces, and more particularly in the USSR the system of
knowledge reuired for service personnel to successfully fulll their military duty.17
e highest level of miliary aairs in the USSR was miliary doctrine (доктрина
военная, doktrina voennaya), the ocial policy statement (system of views) of the
civilian government of the USSR espousing the scientically based, ocially ordained
system of understanding war and the use of the armed forces within it, in present and
future.18 It was both military-technical and sociopolitical. e sociopolitical aspect
of miliary doctrine set the policy objectives, methods, and force posture, and was the
product primarily of the civilian leadership of the USSR. is broad approach was
then rened by the military-technical aspect of miliary doctrine.19
Miliary doctrine’s military-technical aspect laid out the scientically supported
state-approved theory and practice of warfare. It was derived from theoretical research,
practical assessments of military and economic capabilities, and political policy and
goals to create a logically sound and coherent miliary doctrine that reected rigorous
and objective research, not simply the preferences of any Soviet general or marshal.20
e Soviets studied war, peace, and armed conflict as part of a rigorous academic
eld: miliary science (военная наука, voyennaya nauka).21 Miliary science was “the
system of knowledge about the laws of war, military strate, the nature of war,
13 VES 1986, 448.
14 VES 1986, 448.
15 VES 1986, 157.
16 e Soviet Army: Operations and Tactics, FM 100-2-1 (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 1990),
1-5.
17 VES 1986, 139.
18 SVE, vol. 3, 225–29; and James M. McConnell, Analyzing Soviet Intentions: A Short Guide to Soviet Miliary
Literature (Alexandria, VA: CNA, 1989), 2.
19 Donnelly, Red Banner, 106.
20 Col David M. Glantz, Soviet Miliary Operational Art: In Pursuit of Deep Battle (Abingdon, UK: Frank
Cass, 1991), 2–5; and e Soviet Army: Operations and Tactics, 1-8.
21 VES 1986, 135–36.
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the construction and preparation of the armed forces and the country for war, and
methods of conducting armed conict.”22 is broad eld was subdivided into a
number of other subelds, though this chapter will focus on miliary art (Военное
искусство, Voyennoye iskustvo).23
Miliary art was the theory and practice of the preparation and conduct of
military action (armed conflict) on land, sea, and in the air.24 It further broke down
into the elds of:
• Miliary strate, the theory and practice of planning for, preparing for,
and ghting armed conflict at the national or TVD level.25 Due to this
scale, it was denitionally joint and combined arms.
• Operational art, the theory and practice of planning and conducting
combined arms (common eet), joint and independent operations
(combat actions) by various formations of the armed forces.26
• Tactics is the theory and practice of preparing and conducting combat
by subunits, units and formations of various branches of the armed forces,
combat arms (forces) and special forces. It is subdivided into general
tactics and branch tactics of the armed forces, combat arms and special
troops.27
Having oriented this chapter within the Soviet understanding of military theory
and the terminolo they used to describe it, the time comes to examine the Soviet
Naval Infantry and their concepts for use. Soviet MorPekh (Naval Infantry) existed to
support and enable the Ground Forces, and so it is important to understand them
within the context of Soviet miliary art and that of the Ground Forces in particular.
By the late 1980s, the Soviet military had adopted an iterated and modernized
derivative of the military concept it had pioneered before World War II and rened
22 VES 1986, 135–36; and McConnell, Analyzing Soviet Intentions, 2–4, notes the distinction between sys-
tems of knowledge (sciences) characterized by roughly free theoretical exploration and systems of views
(policy/doctrine) characterized by ocial authoritative statements.
23 VES 1986, 136. e other elds include general theory, theory of the construction of the armed forces,
theory of military training and indoctrination, theory of the military economy and rear of the armed
forces, theory of command and control, branch-specic theory, and military history.
24 VES 1986, 139–40. By the late 1980s, this denition appears to have expanded to include space in the
classied literature, but this cannot be conrmed from primary sources yet.
25 SVE, vol. 7, Стратегия военная, 555–65. TVD is oen translated as “theater of military activity.”
26 SVE, vol 6, Oперативное искусство, 53–57.
27 V. G. Reznichenko, Taktika [Tactics: A Soviet View] (Moscow: ВОЕННОЕ ИЗДАТЕЛЬСТВО, 1987),
introduction. Branch is used to translate “вид Вооруженных Сил,” while “arm” is used to translate
“Род войск.” Special troops is a translation of “специальных войск,” which is a term encompassing most
logistics, combat support, and combat service support functions. Do not confuse it with “особого
назначения” or “специального назначения” (OsNaz/OsN or SpetsNaz/SpN, meaning Special Purpose),
which refer to Special Operations Forces (SOF). is distinction is generally unclear in the English-
language literature, likely due to translation issues.
Red Tide over the Beach
47
during that conict: deep operations.28 It was the ideal to which the Soviet military
strove, much as the U.S. military sought to execute its concept of AirLand Battle.29
Deep operations was an integrated military concept that discussed warfare from
under the sea to above the atmosphere, from the level of national military decision-
making to small-unit tactics.30 Note that “deep” does not refer to overall depth of
advance or to the distance from jump-o points or how far from the initial forward
edge of the battle area (FEBA) forces reach, but the separation between advanced
forces and the main body.31
e 1980s theory of deep operations was typied by a robust and integrated
joint and combined arms approach using modern technolo to improve on the
concept. Its dening feature is that rather than the stereotypical “Soviet steamroller,”
an enemy defense is split by several “nger-like penetrations controlled by a single
powerful hand.”32 ese ngers are the advanced forces, tasked with critical assets
such as enemy airelds, preempting the enemy’s ability to form a coherent defense by
seizing key terrain or interdicting the ow of reinforcements, or collapsing planned
defenses by seizing them before the enemy can establish a position.33
While the Operational-scale Advanced Force, a.k.a. the OMG (Operational
Mobile Group, Operativnaya Podvizhnaya Pruppa), has received far greater attention,
in the realm of amphibious operations the relevant concept is the much more
common and less discussed PO (Forward Detachment, Peredvoi Otriad).34 A typical
PO would be a battalion reinforced with attachments to act as a task-organized, self-
sucient combined arms group capable of independent action.35 Acting as a forward
detachment in support of ground forces would be a very likely role for MorPekh (Naval
Infantry) in a coastal direction.
28 David M. Glantz, e Miliary Strate of the Soviet Union: A History (London: Routledge, 1992), 200–8,
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315035666. ere are a number of key dierences, especially in echelonment,
but these are largely outside the scope of this chapter.
29 Vincent H. Demma, Department of the Army Historical Summary, Fiscal Year 1989, ed., Susan Carroll
(Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1998), 45–50.
30 It was expressed in a classied 1980s General Sta Directive, which carried with it the weight of law.
ough this document does not currently exist in the open literature, there are several references to it
by those involved in its production. MajGen Yuri Kirshin uoted in John G. Hines and Ellis Mishulivich,
Soviet Intentions, 1965–85, vol. 2, Soviet Post-Cold War Testimonial Evidence (Washington, DC: Oce of Net
Assessment, Department of Defense, 1993), 104; and LtGen Gelii Viktorovich Batenin, uoted in Hines
and Mishulovich Soviet Intentions, 1965–85, vol. 2, 7–8. is work also features extensive interviews with
Col Gen A. A. Danilevich, who was the leader of the author-collective on this work.
31 e Soviet Army: Operations and Tactics, 1-48. e implications of such a concept in sea, air, and space are
outside the scope of this chapter, but they do carry over.
32 e Soviet Army: Operations and Tactics, 1-48.
33 e Army Field Manual, vol. 2, pt. 2, A Treatise on Soviet Operational Art (London: British Army, 1991),
6-16–6-17.
34 OMG is oen mistranslated as Operational Maneuver Group. Also note that PO are not the only
advanced force relevant here, raiding detachments and other units are also relevant.
35 David M. Glantz, e Soviet Conduct of Tactical Maneuver: Spearhead of the Oensive (London: Frank Cass,
1991), 10–13.
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e Soviet Union, like Russia before and aer it, was a continental land power.
Its security concerns were primarily focused on its land borders—NATO, the Middle
East, and aer 1960 the People’s Republic of China.36 eir signicant continental
holdings reuired defense, and this commitment absorbed the bulk of the Soviet
military’s attention.37 e Soviet Navy was ocially less important than the ground
forces, and the priority for the Soviet Navy through the bulk of the Cold War was
Admiral Sergey G. Gorshkov’s Withholding Strate, a modernized nuclear “eet in
being,” which saw the Soviet eet committed to protecting its nuclear ballistic missile
submarines (SSBN).38 ese SSBNs would serve a crucial role in intrawar deterrence
and conict termination, so their survival was an incredibly high priority for the
Soviet military as a whole.39
e Soviet Navy thus did not place a high priority on expeditionary amphibious
warfare. Amphibious operations were to take place at relatively shallow depths in
support of ground forces actions. Indeed, the Soviets reported 114 amphibious
landings during the Nazi-Soviet war, of which only 4 were large-scale operations.40
In contrast, the Western Allies conducted 22 major and hundreds of minor landings
during the war.41
e Soviet Naval Infantry, like the Soviet airborne forces, spent most of the war
ghting as ground troops. ey came to prominence during the sieges of Sevastopol
and Odessa, earning the moniker of “Black Death.”42 At Leningrad, the Soviet Navy
committed more than 87,000 sailors as Naval Infantry, and large numbers were
employed in the defense of Moscow and Stalingrad, as well as assisting in crossing the
Don, Dnepr, Danube, and Amur.43 By the end of the war, the Soviet Naval Infantry
numbered approximately 500,000 personnel, of which approximately 300,000 had been
cumulatively landed.44 During the Second World War, Soviet naval development was,
36 In the post-World War II period. For the interwar period, this would shi to British and Japanese
Imperial holdings and the USSR’s capitalist neighbors.
37 Alongside the strategic nuclear forces (SNF). For more on SNF, see John Hines, Soviet Intentions, 1965–
1985, vol. 1, An Analytical Comparison of U.S.-Soviet Assessments during the Cold War (McLean, VA: BDM
Federal, 1995).
38 James McConnell, Admiral Gorshkov on “Navies in War and Peace,” ADA003071 (Arlington, VA: Center
for Naval Analyses, 1974), 76–81.
39 Brad Dismukes, “e Return of Great Power Competition: Cold War Lessons about Strategic ASW,”
Naval War College Review 73, no. 3 (2020): 3, 5–7.
40 John J. Carroll, Soviet Naval Inantry, ADA047604 (Leavenworth, KS: Army Command and General
Sta College, 1977), 42.
41 Carter A. Malkasian, Charting the Pathway to OMFTS: A Historical Assessment of Amphibious Operations
from 1941 to the Present (Alexandria, VA: CNA, 2002), 10, 19.
42 LtCol Donald K. Cli, USMC, “Soviet Naval Infantry: A New Capability” (master’s thesis, School of
Naval Warfare, Naval War College, 1971), 14.
43 Cli, “Soviet Naval Infantry,” 15. e use of dedicated amphibious forces in support of river crossings
merits further study.
44 Norman Polmar, omas A. Brooks, and George E. Federo, Admiral Gorshkov: e Man Who Challenged
the U.S. Navy (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2019), 49.
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49
by their own admission, focused “on developing ways for the Navy to assist the ground
forces in the defense and attack on seaside directions.”45 Despite this supporting role,
the Black Death had earned a reputation as relentless and formidable combatants. To
further explore Soviet Naval Infantry and amphibious operations during World War
II, the 1944 Petsamo-Kirkenes operation will be oered as a vignette.46
Despite austere beginnings, the Soviet Northern Fleet was a sizable force by
October 1944. At the same time that U.S. and Allied forces were landing and ghting
on Leyte, the Soviets were conducting ve amphibious landings across Finnmark
during northern Norway’s arctic autumn. e rst and largest of these landings was at
the bay of Bukhta Maativuono (now Guba Malaya Volokopaya), where approximately
3,000 Soviet Naval Infantry landed around midnight between 9 and 10 October 1944.47
45 VES 1986, 140.
46 Petsamo is the Finnish name. In Norwegian, it is Petsjenga; in Russian, it is Pechenga. e town is
currently located in Murmansk Oblast, Russia. ere is uite a lot of room for scholarship on the subject
of Soviet amphibious warfare. Even the four large landings—Kerch-Feodosiya in 1941, Novorossiysk in
1943, Kerch-Eltigen in 1943, and Moon Sound in 1944—have relatively little written on them in English.
47 James Gebhardt, “Petsamo-Kirkenes Operation (7–30 October 1944): A Soviet Joint and Combined
Arms Operation in Arctic Terrain,” Journal of Slavic Miliary Studies 2, no. 1 (1989): 58.
MAP
Petsamo-Kirkenes oensive operation, 7–29 October 1944.
Source: courtesy of Brendan Matsuyama, adapted by MCUP
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With no dedicated amphibious vessels, the Soviets successfully put this force ashore
in three waves supported by light cra and shore batteries.48 e only opposition to
the landing came from German coastal artillery, but these had been located during
Soviet preparations for the landing and were suppressed by Soviet res. is force,
the bulk of the 63d Naval Infantry Brigade (MPBr), was tasked with hindering the
withdrawal of Nazi forces, especially Division Group van der Hoop, alongside forces
of the 12th MPBr, who attacked overland from the Sredni peninsula.49 ese two
naval infantry brigades formed up by midday on 10 October and began pursuing Nazi
forces down the “Speer Road” running between Pechenga and Titovka, less than 30
km directly.50
e Soviet landing was successful for several reasons. First, the landing site was
lightly defended and German defenses were targeted robustly. e Soviet Naval
Infantry had approximately 275 aircra of the Northern Fleet’s Naval Aviation on
standby. e Northern Fleet, under Admiral Arseni Golovko, conducted extensive
hydrographic surveys and navigational support, photoreconnaissance of German
positions and potential landing sites, as well as presurveying Soviet shore battery
positions and locating German shore defenses for suppression or destruction.
Furthermore, German shore batteries were suppressed by coordinated attack: small
cra would locate the batteries by drawing their re and then vector Naval Aviation
aircra to strike the German guns.51
It is worth noting the command relationship throughout these amphibious
operations. Naval Infantry forces were subordinate to Admiral Golovko and the
Northern Fleet, and the forces in general were subordinate to the Karelian front
under Kirill A. Meretskov.52 e two organizations were formally coordinated through
Stavka (General Headuarters), though Golovko and Meretskov reportedly had an
eective and congenial working relationship.53 However, this lack of formal command
relationships provided ample opportunity for friction: there were separate Northern
Fleet and Karelian front forward command posts that had no direct communications,
only through the Northern Fleet headuarters in Polyarny, more than 100 km to the
east.54
e Northern Fleet landings during the Petsamo-Kirkenes oensive operation
were surprisingly successful for how ad hoc they were. As James Gebhardt notes,
“e [Northern] Fleet had no amphibious landing cra,” and one landing (that of
48 Maj James F. Gebhardt, e Petsamo-Kirkenes Operation: Soviet Breakthrough and Pursuit in the Arctic, Oc-
tober 1944, Leavenworth Paper no. 17 (Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute, U.S. Army Command
and General Sta College, 1989), 90.
49 Gebhardt, e Petsamo-Kirkenes Operation, 90.
50 Gebhardt, e Petsamo-Kirkenes Operation, 38–39. e “speer road” appears to be roughly the same route
as the modern A138/E-105.
51 Gebhardt, e Petsamo-Kirkenes Operation, 89.
52 Gebhardt, e Petsamo-Kirkenes Operation, 87.
53 Gebhardt, e Petsamo-Kirkenes Operation, 86–87.
54 Gebhardt, e Petsamo-Kirkenes Operation, 88. e graphic is located on 27.
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51
12 October at Liinakhamari) was conducted by an improvised force of 500 sailors,
eshing out a cadre of 150 naval infantrymen.55 Whereas the Western Allies used
purpose-designed landing cra—Landing Ship, Tank (LST); Landing Cra, Tank
(LCT); Landing Ship, Medium (LSM); Landing Cra, Support (LCS); Landing Cra,
Assault (LCA); and iconic Landing Cra Vehicle, Personnel (LCVP, better known as
the Hiins Boat)—Soviet landings generally relied on motor torpedo boats, motor
gun boats, minesweepers, submarine chasers, and other nonspecialized cra.56 e
Soviet Naval Infantry of WWII had no analog for the American Landing Vehicle,
Tracked (LVT). eir ship-to-shore connectors were wooden gangplanks, running the
vessel up to the shore, or whaleboats.57 As a result, the actual landing was generally
a lengthy and vulnerable process. e Soviets were aware of this and carefully chose
landing sites to avoid robust German beach defenses, while remaining in range of air
and artillery support. Furthermore, the lack of robust Soviet amphibious li capacity
signicantly hindered the landing of both follow-on forces and heavy euipment.
Soviet authors such as Admirals Ivan Isakov and K. A. Stalbo candidly spoke to these
shortcomings, but noted that, in spite of the improvised landing cra, lack of heavy
euipment, sustainment issues and the knock-on eects thereof, Soviet landings were
oen successful.58
ere were practical, geographical, and economic factors that caused the lack
of specialized landing vessels during the Nazi-Soviet war. Practically speaking, the
USSR had no large force of amphibious warfare ships, much less personnel to use
them. As Admiral Stalbo described it:
In order to land forces in the war years, we had to resort to using warships, and
poorly-suited ships and boats. . . . e lack of specialized landing ships oen led
to considerable losses of landing forces and made weather conditions of special
significance.59
To develop such a force during the war would have been extremely wasteful, given
the strain on the Soviet state. Both the USSR and Nazi Germany were continental
powers, the bulk of whose combat power was found in their ground and air forces.
For the USSR to defeat Nazi Germany, a necessity given the war of genocide and
conuest the Nazis unleashed on the Soviet people, it rst had to liberate the occupied
regions of the USSR and destroy Nazi Germany.60 Given the geography of the region,
55 Gebhardt, e Petsamo-Kirkenes Operation, 92.
56 Gebhardt, e Petsamo-Kirkenes Operation, 94.
57 Gebhardt, e Petsamo-Kirkenes Operation, 92.
58 Adm I. S. Isakov, Red Fleet in the Second World War (London: Hutchinson, 1947); RAdm K. A. Stalbo,
“e Naval Art in Landings of the Great Patriotic War,” Morskoi Sbornik, no. 3 (1970): 3; and uoted in
Carroll, Soviet Naval Inantry, 39.
59 Carroll, Soviet Naval Inantry, 38–39.
60 is is not to minimize the violence inicted by the USSR on the various peoples living in the Soviet
Union, of Eastern and Central Europeans, or the peoples of the various areas illegally annexed in 1939–45.
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amphibious warfare would either be river crossings or on the coastal periphery,
universally in support of the ground forces. In addition, limited Soviet economic
resources during the interwar period had been primarily focused on ground and air
forces modernization. e result of these and other factors was, as S. G. Gorshkov
noted,
[before the war] neither the building of landing ships nor the training of special
landing troops were given due attention. All our fleets came into the war without
having a single specially constructed landing ship. . . . All this limited the potential
of the [Navy] in solving the asks of assisting land forces and made it harder for it
to sage landings from the sea . . .61
Despite these handicaps, the landings during the Petsamo-Kirkenes oensive
were tactically successful, but they lacked the overall joint coordination to turn
a successful landing into a successful amphibious operation. For example on 9–10
October, the Soviet Naval Infantry landed well aer the beginning of the Soviet
oensive and more than 30 hours aer the Nazi Division Group van der Hoop was
authorized to retreat toward Pechenga/Petsamo.62 While the Naval Infantry was able
to engage van der Hoop’s forces and prevent their redeployment, they were unable to
force an encirclement or prevent their retreat.63 is is typical of Soviet issues with
coordinating multiple front (eet)-level entities prior to the adoption of the theater
command in the late summer of 1945.64
More information on the Petsamo-Kirkenes landings can be found in James
Gebhardt’s e Petsamo-Kirkenes Operation, whose bibliography includes much of the
Soviet-era historiography and analysis of the operation, while the pair of articles by
Sven Holtsmark in Journal of Slavic Miliary Studies cites a robust overview of Soviet
contemporary primary sources.65 e Petsamo-Kirkenes oensive is an excellent
example of how the Soviets used naval desant to insert critical forces into the enemy
rear to support and enable larger ground forces oensives. rough the end of the
Cold War, the Petsamo-Kirkenes operation was held up by authoritative Soviet
publications as a decisive and important historical model for the use of amphibious
operations to support ground forces.66 While it has seen more research in recent years,
61 S. G. Gorshkov, e Sea Power of the Sate (Oxford, UK: Pergamon, 1979), 140.
62 Gebhart, e Petsamo-Kirkenes Operation, 94.
63 Gebhart, e Petsamo-Kirkenes Operation, 97, 116.
64 LtCol David M. Glantz, August Storm: e Soviet 1945 Strategic Oensive in Manchuria, Leavenworth Pa-
pers no. 7 (Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute, U.S. Army Command and General Sta College,
1983), 37.
65 Sven G. Holtsmark, “Improvised Liberation, October 1944: e Petsamo Kirkenes Operation and the
Red Army in Norway. Part I,” Journal of Slavic Miliary Studies 34, no. 2 (2021): 271–302, https://doi.org/10.1
080/13518046.2021.1990554; and Sven G. Holtsmark, “Improvised Liberation, October 1944: e Petsamo
Kirkenes Operation and the Red Army in Norway, Part 2,” Journal of Slavic Miliary Studies 34, no. 3 (2021):
426–58, https://doi.org/10.1080/13518046.2021.1992707.
66 Gebhart, e Petsamo-Kirkenes Operation, 116.
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53
the English language historiography would benet from robust modern work on the
subject, especially that incorporating post-Soviet archival material and historiography
on the topic.67 Furthermore, there is room to examine the causal forces behind Soviet
force development during the interwar and wartime periods, especially between the
doctrinal avoidance of amphibious warfare and lack of landing means.68
Despite their excellent combat record and relatively large size at the end of the
Great Patriotic War, the Soviet Naval Infantry was uickly cut down post war due
to shiing views of the character of warfare. With the rise of Nikita S. Krushchev
and the ouster of Admiral Kuznetsov, the Soviet Navy focused on submarines and
nuclear strikes, while the responsibility for amphibious warfare was uietly shied to
the army.69 Krushchev was politically opposed to expeditionary amphibious warfare,
which he saw as a tool of the warmongering imperialists.70 e Naval Infantry was
successively downsized, folded into the coastal troops, and retired without fanfare.71
However, contemporaneous with the removal of Krushchev in 1964 came the
rebirth of the naval infantry.72 is appears to be related to the rising prominence
of Admiral S. G. Gorshkov, made deputy minister of defense in 1962, who had a
special interest in amphibious operations due to his service during the Great Patriotic
War.73 Gorshkov was a prominent Soviet naval commander during the war and led
approximately one-uarter of all Soviet amphibious landings during the war.74 Much
in the way that the British Royal Navy of the First World War was the product
of Admiral John A. Fisher, the Soviet Navy was shaped by Gorshkov’s concept of
maritime warfare during his tenure 1956–85.75
In contrast to the continental Soviet Union, the United States is and historically
has been an insular maritime power.76 America is protected from attack by signicant
maritime borders, and its security is thus contingent on command of the sea.
Possessing a large navy, its primary mode of military activity is projecting power
67 e Soviet (now Russian) military history journal VIZh, as well as magazines like Sovietskiy Morpekh
or Morskoye Pekhotinets or the journals Morskoi Desant and Morskoi Sbornik are generally available and
underutilized.
68 at is to say, were landing means not procured because they were not needed in doctrine, or were
they not needed in doctrine because none were likely to be procured? Not to mention the ideological-
political and bureaucratic-political inuences.
69 Carroll, Soviet Naval Inantry, 51–53.
70 N. K. Krushchev, Krushchev Remembers: e Last Tesament, ed. and trans. Strobe Talbott (Boston, MA:
Little, Brown, 1974), 26; and uoted in Carrol, Soviet Naval Inantry, 53.
71 Carroll, Soviet Naval Inantry, 53. e retirement was so subtle, the author was unable to nd a specic
date in any source.
72 Carroll, Soviet Naval Inantry, 54.
73 Polmar, Brooks, and Federo, Admiral Gorshkov, 135–37.
74 Polmar, Brooks, and Federo, Admiral Gorshkov, chaps. 4, 5, and 6 provide a solid biographical picture;
and see Cli, “Soviet Naval Infantry,” 54, for the number of landings commanded by Gorshkov.
75 Polmar, Brooks, and Federo, Admiral Gorshkov, 202–3.
76 Naval Warare, Naval Doctrine Publication 1 (Washington, DC: U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast
Guard, 2020), 1.
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from the sea to the land.77 erefore, expeditionary amphibious warfare is a critical
capability. As such, the amphibious forces of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps have
been tailored to these reuirements, especially since the Second World War.
us, to the American audience, and indeed many other audiences, amphibious
warfare is almost inherently expeditionary. is was not the case for the Soviets, and
they tailored their force structure and military thought accordingly. e Soviet Union
did not possess any “Big Deck” amphibious warfare ships, compared to the U.S. Navy’s
13 in 1989.78 Instead, they had a large eet of smaller amphibious ships, with more than
250 LSTs, LPDs, LCACs, and LCUs.79 Indeed, some of the capabilities they pursued
greatly exceeded Western reuirements. e Zubr-class LCAC, for example, is able
to travel 300 nautical miles at 55 knots and land a mechanized infantry company.80
In addition, the Soviets made extensive use, in both exercise and theory, of civilian
77 Naval Warare, 1–3.
78 In the late 1980s, the Soviet General Sta actually had a reuirement for an LHD (Landing Helicopter
Dock/UDK in Soviet parlance), resulting in Project 11780 Kherson, but it was killed by the navy because
it could not be made at the same time as Project 11437 Ulyanovsk carriers due to lack of shipyard space.
Alexander Karpenko’s Nevskii-Bastion blog is a convenient, albeit Russian language, source and not au-
thoritative.
79 Of the Ropucha, Alligator, Ivan Rogov, Polnocny, Tsaplya, Lebed, Gus, Zubr, and Aist classes, as well as the
Project 106 small landing ship (LCU). Compare to ~175 U.S. Navy vessels of comparable role and capa-
bility in 1989 per Navsource/DANFS.
80 Yuri Apalkov, Ships of the Soviet Navy Handbook, vol. 4, Landing and Minesweeping Ships (St. Petersburg:
Morkniga, 2007), 48–56.
FIGURE
Soviet Naval Infantry Brigade table of organization and euipment, ca. 1990.
Source: courtesy of Brendan Matsuyama, adapted by MCUP
Red Tide over the Beach
55
roll on/roll o (RORO) ships, a practice alluded to by the use of MV Yulius Fucik in
Clancy and Bond’s Red Storm Rising, and taken to an extreme in “Sea Control in the
Arctic: A Soviet Perspective.”81
For example, the Soviet amphibious li capability in the Northern Fleet ca. 1987–
90 was able to move approximately one brigade, though a more likely employment
scenario would be multiple reinforced battalion task forces.82 In the late 1980s, the
Soviet Northern Fleet had the capacity to simultaneously land three such naval
task forces.83 In total, it elded two naval infantry brigades, the 61st and 175th
81 Cdr Dennis M. Egan, USCG, and Maj David W. Orr, USMCR, “Sea Control in the Arctic: A Soviet
Perspective,” Naval War College Review 41, no. 1 (Winter 1988): 51–80. Egan and Orr propose that the Sovi-
ets would send multiple divisions to northern Alaska via the Arctic route to attack oil and gas infrastruc-
ture mainly using ROROs. uestions of the utility and viability of sustaining a campaign in northern
Alaska for any length of time are not well explored. It is, however, thought provoking. It is worth noting
that Soviet merchant shipping, like Soviet civilian aviation, was openly viewed as a mobilization asset.
82 is would force an adversary to confront multiple dilemmas simultaneously. It also would t into the
training patterns and logistical capacity of Soviet amphibious forces, especially in the northern theater.
SSRC Soviet Amphibious Warare (e Hague: Soviet Studies Research Center, 1985), 55–58, touches on
this. It also adds redundancy should any single landing fail.
83 By the late 1980s, the Soviet Navy in total had four naval infantry brigades and one division: the 61st
and 175th Naval Infantry Brigades in the Northern Fleet, the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade in the Black
Sea, 336th Guards in the Baltic, and the 55th Naval Infantry Division in the Pacic Fleet. “Военно-
Морской Флот (ВМФ),” Navy (VMF), accessed 1 September 2023.
FIGURE
Task Force Papa Bear/Regimental Combat Team 1 (RCT-1), 1991.
Source: courtesy of Brendan Matsuyama, adapted by MCUP
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Naval Infantry Brigades.84 Each brigade was approximately euivalent to one of the
regimental combat teams formed by the 1st Marine Division during Operation Desert
Storm (1990–91).85
e Northern Fleet also possessed two distinct types of special operations
forces: Отряды Специального Назначения по Борьбы с ПДСС, Detachments of
Special Purpose (SOF Detachment), for combating underwater sabotage forces and
means, or PDSS, and Отдельные морские разведывательные пункты специального
назначения, Separate Naval Reconnaissance Point for Special Purposes, or OMRp
SpN.86 PDSS were primarily tasked with defending Soviet naval bases from enemy
divers, and they were armed with underwater rearms and a number of specialized
antidiver grenades and launchers.87 OMRp SpN lled a much more traditional over-
the-beach deep reconnaissance, sabotage, and direct action role, and had a history
going back through the Second World War.88 Sources are limited and unclear, but
it appears that OMRp SpN were focused more on deep reconnaissance than the
Western naval SOF emphasis on beach reconnaissance and obstacle clearance coming
out of the Underwater Demolition Team/Special Boat Service (UDT/SBS) tradition.
Soviet and Russian naval SOF are, however, a relatively understudied topic, and one
that merits further research. ere is notable lack of clarity in the exact ways in which
they would be used, and how those would dovetail with conventional forces.
RED WAVES WASHING ASHORE:
THE MECHANICS OF LANDINGS
In Soviet terminolo, landings were dened by scale and, to an extent, purpose.
Soviet denitions ranged from the multiarmy operational-strategic naval landing
(OSMD) through the multidivisional operational naval landing (OMD) to the
tactical naval landing of reinforced company to reinforced regiment scale.89 However,
while they categorized a wide scale of landings, the Soviets only rarely conducted or
exercised OMDs, with the vast majority of exercises being Тактический морского
Десант (tactical naval landings, or TMD), tending toward reinforced battalion
84 See 61st Independant Naval Infantry Brigade and 175th Independent Naval Infantry Brigade, “Военно-
Морской Флот (ВМФ).”
85 LtCol Charles H. Cureton, USMCR, U.S. Marines in the Persian Gul, 1900–1991: With the First Marine
Division in Desert Shield and Desert Storm (Washington, DC: History and Museums Division, Headuarters
Marine Corps, 1993), 20. Task Forces Papa Bear, Ripper, and Taro (Regimental Combat Team 1/7/3) to
be specic.
86 A clearer but less literal translation of these units might be “Counter-Frogman Detachment” for PDSS
and “Separate Naval Reconnaissance Team” for OMRp SpN.
87 Information on Soviet naval SOF is limited, but it is possible PDSS had organizational control of the
DP-62 Damba jet bombing system, a BM-21 Grad modied to re depth charge rockets ueued by sonar.
88 James F. Gebhardt, “Soviet Naval Special Purpose Forces: Origins and Operations in the Second World
War,” Journal of Slavic Miliary Studies 2, no. 4 (1989): 563–64, https://doi.org/10.1080/13518048908429964.
89 Milan Vego, Soviet Naval Tactics (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1990), 287–88. ere are also
diversionary and reconnaissance landings.
Red Tide over the Beach
57
scale.90 Soviet writings emphasized exible and uick-reacting TMDs coordinated
with ground forces, rather than set piece and/or expeditionary OSMD.91 Indeed, the
distinction between Soviet TMD and OMD was the scale of the landing force not its
depth or mission.92
Note that this emphasis on TMD does not preclude multiple simultaneous
landings of reinforced battalion scale, which was within Soviet capability and
dovetails well with their desire to overload the adversary decision-making system.93
Imposing so many problems on the enemy as to induce paralysis was a hallmark of
the Soviet concept of warfare, which can be found at least as far back as the concept
of deep battle.94 Confronting a potential adversary with multiple task organized
reinforced-battalion scale combined arms groupings would be a classic mission for
90 SSRC Soviet Amphibious Warare, 46; and Vego, Soviet Naval Tactics, 299.
91 James F. McConnell, Robert G. Weinland, and Michael K. McGwire, Admiral Gorshkov on “Navies in War
and Peace” (Arlington, VA: CNA, 1974), 70.
92 SSRC Soviet Amphibious Warare, v. is does not preclude brigade-size landings, but they were assessed
as less likely, especially in the Barents/Norwegian Seas.
93 e Soviet Army: Operations and Tactics, 1-42.
94 Note that this is a designed byproduct and not the end goal.
FIGURE
Notional Northern Fleet battalion-strength landing group, ca. 1987.
Sources: based on author’s analysis, courtesy of Brendan Matsuyama, adapted by MCUP
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Soviet Naval Infantry during the conduct of armed conict within a continental TVD.
By the 1980s, naval landings occupied “an important, if limited role” in the Soviet
concept of warfare, especially in maritime or coastal theaters.95 Naval infantry forces
would act as advanced forces for a larger Soviet ground force in roles such as raiding
detachments, forward detachments, and other forces to destabilize the enemy’s
scheme of deployment/maneuver.96
e TMD was divided into several stages for planning purposes. First came
preparation and embarkation, during which forces were trained, planning and sta
work conducted, and landing forces and naval assets organized and loaded. Aer
this came the sea transit, debarkation (including the battle for debarkation), where
troops moved from ship to shore, and nally the battle ashore and, if necessary,
reembarkation.
Preparation and embarkation were two separate phases, but were closely linked as
the point of embarkation was in part decided by the target and what preparations were
necessary. Preparation consisted of conducting the reuired reconnaissance, sta work,
and planning to select the port of embarkation, landing site, further tasks, command
and control, the force necessary, and timing of a landing.97 Available sources indicate
shore reconnaissance and obstacle clearing would be conducted by “diver demolition
teams” or “assault frogmen specially trained in underwater demolition, engineers,
reconnaissance and communications personnel,” but the precise designation, chain of
command, attachment or subordination of these personnel is unclear.98 ese forces,
known as the advance detachment, would typically land between H-hour and H+5
minutes, oen by a mix of small boats, hovercra, and rotary-wing aviation.99
Preparation occured as continuously as possible until the point of embarkation,
including rehearsals and other typical measures. Typical timing allotments by the late
1970s would have been (approximately): two hours for elaboration of the commander’s
decision; one hour for route reconnaissance between assembly and embarkation
areas, typically separated by 8–15 km; one hour for coordination; three hours for nal
material preparations; one hour for watertight integrity checks; and a nal hour for
party-political work, which consisted of eorts to improve morale, unit cohesion,
and combatant motivation.100 Aer this had been accomplished, the forces moved,
typically by company (with reinforcements attached), to the embarkation point and
loaded onto vessels.101 Timing was ideally such that the amphibious vessels and the
95 e Army Field Manual, vol. 2, pt. 2, A Treatise on Soviet Operational Art (London: British Army, 1991),
10-1.
96 e Army Field Manual, vol. 2, pt. 2, 10-1.
97 Vego, Soviet Naval Tactics, 302–3.
98 Vego, Soviet Naval Tactics, 306–7; and SSRC Soviet Amphibious Warare, 50.
99 Vego, Soviet Naval Tactics, 311–12.
100 Vego, Soviet Naval Tactics, 50–51, 303, 8–15 km from e Army Field Manual, vol. 2, pt. 2.
101 SSRC Soviet Amphibious Warare, 44; and Vego, Soviet Naval Tactics, 303–4.
Red Tide over the Beach
59
landing force were only static at the embarkation point for as long as it took to load.102
Generally, an embarkation area would have two alternative embarkation points in
case the primary is disabled.103
Once the landing force had loaded onto the transports, they began the sea
transit, taking constant precautions to prevent enemy means of reconnaissance, as
well as to obfuscate the time, place, and scale of the landing until as close to when it
occurred as possible.104 e landing force was generally escorted by a close screen of
fast attack cra and antisubmarine warfare vessels, preceded by mine warfare vessels,
accompanied by a re support ship detachment, and protected by antiair warfare
combatants pushed 30–50 km down the likely threat axis.105 e Soviets desired to
conduct the embarkation and sea transit during one period of darkness, arriving at
the debarkation area.
e debarkation area is chosen following mine countermeasures and assault diver
sweeps of the debarkation area, the landing force anchors and the MPBn uses its
amphibious assets to assault the shore. For an unprepared beach, the typical norm
for a Soviet MPBn was a landing area 400–600 m wide, from which the MPBn would
establish a beachhead 3,000–4,000 m by 1,500–2,000 m.106 e Soviets called this
process the battle for debarkation.107 Western readers might know it better as the
amphibious assault.108 It was a combat action fought by joint air, naval, and ground
forces to “break enemy anti-landing defenses, destroy enemy forces on the coast, and
establish a beachhead.”109
Vertical envelopment was a key tool in the Soviet amphibious landing playbook,
though the Soviet Navy had relatively meager capability for the task organically.110
Indeed, by the 1980s, the Soviets “consider[ed] . . . that an amphibious assault alone
would be most unusual.”111 Accompaniment by vertical envelopment, whether heli-
borne or parachute landed, was ubiuitous by the late 1970s, and a percentage of
the Soviet Naval Infantry went through airborne training.112 Typically, a vertical
102 Vego, Soviet Naval Tactics, 303–4.
103 e Army Field Manual, vol. 2, pt. 2, 10-5.
104 Vego, Soviet Naval Tactics, 304–5.
105 e Army Field Manual, vol. 2, pt. 2, 10-6.
106 Vego, Soviet Naval Tactics, 307.
107 Vego, Soviet Naval Tactics, 307.
108 e Army Field Manual, vol. 2, pt. 2, 10-6; and SSRC Soviet Amphibious Warare use this term for the
combat phase.
109 Vego, Soviet Naval Tactics, 308.
110 e Soviets never built an aviation-focused amphibious warfare vessel. e Kiev-class ship was un-
suited to the task and needed for its intended role, while the Moskva-class ship was a particularly poor
design by any measure. For more background on aviation surface combatants, see Benjamin Claremont,
“Why the Moskva-Class Helicopter Cruiser Is Not the Best Naval Design for the Drone Era,” CIMSEC,
13 October 2021.
111 SSRC Soviet Amphibious Warare, 61, emphasis original.
112 e Army Field Manual, vol. 2, pt. 2, 10-5; and Carroll, Soviet Naval Inantry, 84–85. Approximately one
battalion per brigade is the commonly cited ratio.
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envelopment would land either alongside the main body of forces or 10–20 minutes
before the advanced detachment.113 In addition to organic xed- and rotary-wing
vertical envelopment capabilities, Soviet Naval Infantry and Airborne Forces oen
worked in close cooperation. e Soviet Airborne Forces (Vozdushno-desantnye voyska,
VDV) were euipped as mechanized infantry, albeit in lightly armored vehicles.114
ey possessed a full suite of parachute-capable infantry ghting vehicles, armored
personnel carriers, artillery, multiple rocket launchers, and self-propelled antitank
guns.115 e mobility and combat power of the VDV allowed the Soviet joint force
to inject forward detachments or other advanced forces into the enemy depth
simultaneously to an amphibious assault, enhancing the ability of the Soviet military
to rapidly undermine the coherence of an adversary’s defensive structure. Vertical
envelopment could also be used in the more traditional “bite and hold” role of light
infantry airborne forces, using the mobility of the helicopter to avoid the exhausting
marches that had incapacitated Soviet light infantry during the Petsamo-Kirkenes
oensive.116
e Soviet tendency to never throw away euipment, no matter how outdated,
le them with a surprisingly strong naval gunre support capability in the 1980s. e
Northern Fleet’s 37th Naval Landing Division had two Sverdlov-class light cruisers
attached through the end of the Cold War.117 ese would be supplemented by smaller
Soviet surface combatants with 130mm, 100mm, and 76mm guns.118 In addition to
this, the ground forces might support a landing, if it was conducted within the range
of the long-barrel 203mm, 152mm, and/or 130mm guns.119 Whether in range of ground
forces artillery support or not, Soviet TMD would, as a rule, occur within range of
Soviet air support.120 is could take the form of naval aviation aircra, such as Sukhoi
Su-17 Fitter attack aircra, or ghters like the Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker, but it was also
not uncommon for naval aviation Tupolev Tu-22M Backre medium bombers to take
part in strikes.121
e Soviet approach to amphibious warfare is alien in many details compared to
113 Vego, Soviet Naval Tactics, 314–15.
114 e BMD (Boyevaya Mashina Desana or roughly airborne combat vehicle) family—BMD-1, BMD-2,
BTRD and variants—are only resistant to infantry small arms and light artillery fragmentation.
115 “Whatismoo’s Unclassied Soviet Army Field Guide,” YouTube video, 4 pts., provides a handy uick
reference to Soviet vehicles and euipment.
116 Gebhardt, e Petsamo-Kirkenes Operation, 43–44. e Light Rie Corps saw mixed success, consistently
suering from exhaustion due to the grueling reuirements of walking long distances under severe noise,
light, and engineering discipline to preserve operational security. e 70th Naval Infantry Brigade in
particular exhausted itself reaching the objective and was unable to block the road it was assigned to.
117 “37-я дивизии морских десантных сил, Military Unit: 51309,” 37th Naval Landing Division, accessed
1 September 2023. Sverdlov-class ships are roughly euivalent to the U.S. Navy’s Cleveland- or Fargo-class
gun cruisers.
118 Vego, Soviet Naval Tactics, 300, references the 1981 use of Kara- and Krivak-class ships in this role.
119 e Army Field Manual, vol. 2, pt. 2, 10-3.
120 Vego, Soviet Naval Tactics, 301, 308–9.
121 Vego, Soviet Naval Tactics, 309.
Red Tide over the Beach
61
the Anglo-American school of thought. While the broad strokes are similar, taking
military personnel and moving them from sea to shore, the Soviets had a uniue
methodolo from the highest conceptual levels to the precise timing and order of
tasks.
To an uncharitable Western eye, the Soviet approach seems both rigid and
slapdash, an overaressive and underresourced way to put a small force not very
far behind enemy lines with little provision for further supply over the beach. Such
a judgment would not be incorrect, but not because the Soviets were unaware of
alternative approaches. Soviet authors examined contemporary foreign amphibious
operations throughout the Cold War and integrated their ndings where they felt
appropriate.122 e limitations of Soviet amphibious forces were intentional choices
made to optimize the force for the distinct role of amphibious warfare within their
understanding of the theory and practice of the conduct of and preparation for war.
e Soviets viewed expeditionary amphibious warfare as inherently imperialist
and so pursued no extensive capability for it. e continental nature of the USSR
meant that naval activity would act in support of a ground campaign, with amphibious
assaults acting more as a horizontal envelopment than a forcible entry. erefore,
logistics over the shore were not necessary. By leaning on a exible and aressive
approach to landing with a short turnaround from deciding on a landing to troops
ashore, the Soviets hoped to get inside the enemy’s ability to react and to minimize
the temporal length of the vulnerable period of transit and disembarkation.
e USSR consistently chose to have amphibious forces focused on battalion-to-
brigade scale landings done at short notice over short distances in support of ground
forces in a coastal axis. One of the best examples of this is Project 11780 Kherson, a
1980s Soviet LHD program to produce two ships: Kherson and Kremenchuk.123 e ships
were to approximate a 60-percent scale Tarawa-class ship to the point that designers
reportedly called them “Ivan Tarava.”124 e ships were designed for a mix of Yakovlev
Yak-38 Forger and Yakovlev Yak-141 Freestyle jumpjets, Kamov Ka-29 Helix-B assault
helicopters, and Tsaplya-class LCACs.125 ey were designed for transporting two
naval infantry battalions a range of 12,875 km at 18 knots.126 e Soviet General
Sta supported the LHD program even at the expense of aircra carriers, but the
navy refused to abandon the aircra carrier program. e design bureau in charge
122 Jacob W. Kipp, Naval Art and the Prism of Contemporaneity: Soviet Naval Ocers and the Lessons of the
Falklands Conflict, Stratech Studies Series (College Station: Center for Strategic Technolo, Texas A&M
University, 1983), 22–33.
123 Alexei Sokolov, Альтернатива. Непостроенные корабли Российского Императорского и
Советского флота [Alternative: Unbuilt Ships of the Russian Imperial and Soviet Fleets] (Moscow:
Военная книга, 2008), 43; see also, “Фотогалерея Pilot’а Модели авианесущих крейсеров проект
11780,” for images from the project.
124 Alexander Karpenko, “Project 11780 Universal Landing Ship,” Nevskii-bastion.ru, accessed 1 Septem-
ber 2023.
125 Karpenko, “Project 11780 Universal Landing Ship.”
126 Karpenko, “Project 11780 Universal Landing Ship.”
Claremont
62
of Project 11780 eventually released a design update that shied the 130mm twin-
gun mount and 3K95 Kinzhal (SAN-9 Gauntlet) surface-to-air missile system to the
middle of the ight deck, which cascaded into the program’s termination.127
e resources available to the Soviet Navy and their priorities meant that even
when the technical capacity to pursue a robust expeditionary amphibious capability
existed, the institution would choose to maintain the existing paradigm and further
support the primary mission of aressive bastion defense. e Soviet political
repudiation of expeditionary warfare likely assisted the navy in this debate with
Soviet General Sta. While the General Sta desired the capability, it would have
come at the cost of handicapping the carrier eet and expending a great deal of
political capital with the Politburo to obtain a capability the Soviet government was
ideologically opposed to.128 By 1986, the program was canceled and with it the only
serious eort by the USSR to pursue expeditionary amphibious capabilities.
MARINES WITHOUT LANDINGS
Despite a robust capability supporting a coherent, albeit alien, concept of amphibious
operations, the most pitched battles fought by Soviet Naval Infantry, and post-Soviet
Naval Infantry in Russia and Ukraine, have all been fought ashore. At Sevastopol
(Crimea, now part of Ukraine), Odessa (Ukraine), and Leningrad (Russia), in
Afghanistan and Chechnya, and in Mariupol (Ukraine) and, ironically, in Kherson
(both in Ukraine and the namesake of the previously mentioned abortive Soviet LHD
eort), Soviet, Russian, and Ukrainian naval infantry fought protracted campaigns
and battles where they were singled out as notably skilled combatants but rarely
conducted amphibious landings.129
e lack of Soviet post-WWII amphibious landings leads to the rst and largest
caveat: this chapter cannot judge the eectiveness of Soviet concepts. It can say the
Soviets had a robustly provisioned capability that suited their understanding and
intentions, but of course being well suited to a concept of use and way of war is not
inherently a recipe for success.130 In addition, the sourcing for this chapter is broadly
imperfect. e most accessible sources are not recent, and due to accessibility issues,
this chapter is largely interacting with Soviet professional literature as interpreted by
secondary sources.
ese secondary sources are high uality, but few in number and lack exploitation
127 Karpenko, “Project 11780 Universal Landing Ship.”
128 at this all happened against the backdrop of Gorbachev’s rise and the war in Afghanistan should
not be forgotten.
129 ere were a fairly large number of amphibious landings in the Black Sea and Azov region in WWII,
including at Mariupol, but Mariupol is mentioned here for the participation of the Ukrainian 36th
OBrMP and Russian 810th Gv. OBrMP. e Ukrainian 35th OBrMP fought in Kherson Oblast during
late October early November 2022, and at least four Ukrainian Naval Infantry Brigades have taken part
in the Ukrainian summer 2023 counteroensive.
130 Notably, the Soviets put little eort into developing eld rations.
Red Tide over the Beach
63
of post-Soviet access to archival material. ey also focus uite heavily on the Northern
Flank, the Barents and Norwegian Seas from the Kola around the North Cape and
down to southern Norway. Fundamentally, Soviet and Russian naval infantry have
been understudied. ere is great room for further research and writing to be done on
the topic, and on non-Soviet Warsaw Pact (NSWP) and Soviet-aligned amphibious
forces. For example, Poland especially had signicant naval infantry forces. Nor
should Soviet theory/concepts be directly extrapolated to NSWP or “Soviet Pattern”
forces such as Vietnam without careful assessment of these countries using their own
primary sources and within their own context.
is chapter should be read as the start of a conversation not the nal word.
ere is much work to be done on the history of Soviet Naval Infantry, especially with
the greater access aorded to materials and sources that had been trapped behind
the Iron Curtain since the dissolution of the USSR. e history and evolution of
Soviet Naval Infantry is a fascinating contrast to the more familiar Western school of
thought. Starting from fundamentally dierent assumptions about the relationship
between the sea and the state, and with a radically dierent combat record, the Soviet
Navy and naval infantry articulated and procured a relatively large, coherent and well-
resourced amphibious force. While the Soviet concept of amphibious warfare would
not make a good t for the needs and missions of a force like the U.S. Navy or Marine
Corps, its study does demand that one interrogate their own core assumptions about
the nature of combat on contested shores.
64
CHAPTER FOUR
Innovative Amphibious Logistics
for the Twenty-first Century
Walker D. Mills
I
don’t know what the hell this “logistics” is that [General George C.] Marshall
is always alking abou, but I want some of i.
~ Admiral Ernest J. King1
A landing on foreign shore in the ace of hostile troops has aways been one of the most
dicult operations of war. It has now become almost impossible.
~ Sir Basil Liddel Hart2
Logistics have always been a governing factor in military operations, as they are the
envelope that denes what is possible and what is not. But, there is perhaps no op-
eration where they are more critical than amphibious operations. It is a truism in
operations that amphibious operations are some of the most dicult to execute, and
that the success or failure of military operations oen rests on logistics more than any
other function. Accordingly, amphibious and expeditionary logistics are perhaps the
most dicult sustainment operations that can be undertaken. In situations where
1 uoted in Moshe Kress, Operational Logistics: e Art and Science of Susaining Miliary Operations (Boston,
MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002), viii, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22674-3.
2 uoted in Jobie Turner, Feeding Victory: Innovative Miliary Logistics from Lake George to Khe Sanh (Law-
rence: University Press of Kansas, 2020), 99.
Innovative Amphibious Logistics for the Twenty-rst Century
65
supply lines are contested by an adversary they are even more so. During the course of
the twentieth century, the United States military earned a reputation for excellence
in amphibious logistics, mostly grounded in the logistical juernaut that the U.S.
military built during the course of the Second World War that sustained simultane-
ous, large-scale, expeditionary operations in multiple theaters.
Today, the U.S. military is shiing to meet the threat of a near-peer or peer con-
ict with China or Russia, with a focus on the former. U.S. military leaders expect
to face challenges from contested logistics unlike anything the U.S. military has dealt
with since the Second World War. In an event with the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, Commandant of the Marine
Corps general David H. Berger told the audience, “We have to assume . . . that our
supply lines will be contested. We . . . haven’t needed to do that in 70 years.”3 In ad-
dition, new operating concepts like the Marine Corps’ expeditionary advanced base
operations (EABO), the Navy’s distributed maritime operations (DMO) concept, and
the Army’s multidomain operations (MDO) will further stress the existing logistics
enterprise by distributing units closer to the enemy, which complicates the ecient
distribution of supplies and materiel.4
is chapter discusses the challenges to U.S. operational logistics in the Pacic
and outlines an array of potential solutions in three broad categories: new concepts,
new fuels and ener, and new platforms. ere are also other innovations in logistics,
particularly data analytics and articial intelligence applications, that will not be dis-
cussed. is chapter focuses specically on the challenges and opportunities for the
Marine Corps’ new EABO and stand-in forces concepts, but also uses examples from
other Services and around the world.5 At the time of writing, the Marine Corps is in
the midst of a major force transformation and redesign that includes how the Corps
does logistics and sustainment.
AMPHIBIOUS LOGISTICS
IN WORLD WAR II AND BEYOND
e logistical support that enabled U.S. operations in the Pacic theater during the
Second World War is unparalleled in history. Logisticians had to package and trans-
port all of the supplies needed to feed, clothe, arm, and supply the millions of U.S.
troops spread across the Pacic, and Allied supply lines in the Pacic were at their
geographic extreme. e U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, is more than 4,000
3 “Maritime Security Dialogue: An Update on the Marine Corps with Commandant Gen. David H. Berg-
er,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2 September 2021.
4 Chris Dougherty, Buying Time: Logistics for A New American Way of War (Washington, DC: Center for
a New American Security, 2023), 10; Tenative Manual for Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations, 2d ed.
(Washington, DC: Headuarters Marine Corps, 2023); and e U.S. Army in Multi-Domain Operations 2028,
TRADOC Pamphlet 525-3-1 (Washington, DC: U.S. Army, 2018).
5 A Concept for Sand-in Forces, Marine Corps Doctrinal Paper (Washington, DC: Headuarters Marine
Corps, 2021).
Mills
66
kilometers from San Diego, California. From Hawaii, Okinawa is 7,700 kilometers
and Manila in the Philippines is nearly 8,900 kilometers. Furthermore, the Imperial
Japanese Navy was a very real threat to U.S. maritime supply lines in the Pacic, and
many of the battles during the war, especially in the South Pacic, were fought on
islands with little to no infrastructure that the Allied forces could rely on, unlike bat-
tles fought in Europe where they could use existing roads, railways, ports and other
infrastructure.
Once military cargo arrived in the area of operations, it then had to be trans-
ferred from ship to shore and distributed to smaller units. is movement over the
shore is particularly dicult because it is inherently intermodal and involves shiing
supplies from ships to land-based transportation. It also usually involves inter-Service
coordination, which has historically been a point of friction in amphibious opera-
tions.6 Over-the-shore logistics are oen at their slowest and most vulnerable in pre-
dictable locations like landing beaches and ports, making it easier for the enemy to
attack them there. Historically, amphibious forces are forced to take an operational
pause as they shi combat power over the shore and transition to operations ashore;
however, Marine Corps concepts from the 1990s, such as Operational Maneuver from
the Sea (OMFTS), advocate for planning operations that do not include an operation-
al pause.7
During the course of World War II, the U.S. military built a logistics empire
capable of sustaining concurrent operations with millions of soldiers, sailors, and
Marines on islands large and small, spread across the 60 million suare miles of the
Pacic Ocean. Allied amphibious operations during the Second World War were en-
abled by a massive industrial base but also by innovative engineering that enabled the
rapid buildup infrastructure like piers, cranes, roads, pipelines, and storage depots.
Military historian Jeremy Black has argued that the amphibious campaigns in the
Pacic was more a “war of engineers” than anything else, and American excellence in
“creating eective infrastructure” was a critical advantage.8 It was also enabled by new
platforms like landing cra with bow ramps and amphibious vehicles like Amtracs
and DUKWs that could uickly carry troops and materiel from ships, through the
surf, and onto or even past the landing beaches.
Highlighting the growth of the U.S. advantage in logistics was the rapid buildup
of U.S. combat power on the South Pacic Island of Guadalcanal in 1942–43, which
contrasts with the slow starvation of the Japanese forces on the island.9 From the
Japanese perspective, the Battle of Guadalcanal was really a contest of logistics, and
6 Geoery Till, Seapower: A Guide for the Twenty-First Century (New York: Routledge, 2013), 193.
7 Operational Maneuver from the Sea, Marine Corps Concept Paper 1 (Washington, DC: Headuarters
Marine Corps, 1996); and Till, Seapower, 272.
8 Jeremy Black, Logistics: e Key to Victory (Havertown, PA: Pen & Sword Books, 2021), 148.
9 Capt Walker D. Mills, USMC, and Erik Limpaecher, “Sustainment Will Be Contested,” U.S. Naval
Institute Proceedings 146, no. 11 (November 2021).
Innovative Amphibious Logistics for the Twenty-rst Century
67
it was the “toll taken on the convoys headed to Guadalcanal” rather than losses sus-
tained ghting on the island, that were the decisive factor according to World War
II historian Phillips P. O’Brien.10 Naval theorist Milan N. Vego made a similar judg-
ment that the battle was decided by the ability “supply and reinforce ground troops
contending ashore for mastery.”11 e Japanese resupply convoys ferrying supplies and
reinforcements to Guadalcanal (a.k.a. Tokyo Express) were, according to military lo-
gistics historian Jobie Turner, “a makeshi logistics failure that ensured the death of
almost two-thirds of the Japanese soldiers on Guadalcanal.”12 e battle was essential-
ly an island siege, and the majority of Japanese casualties came not from combat but
starvation, disease, and exposure. e Japanese logistics failure on Guadalcanal came
from a combination of hubris and poor planning at a point when Japanese forces were
already stretched thin sustaining their forces across the Pacic. It serves as a grim
reminder to contemporary forces that logistics in the Pacic dene what is possible,
wishful thinking notwithstanding.
e Guadalcanal campaign created a logistical gap for the Marine Corps, when
supplies delivered by the Navy to Marines ashore were literally washed away by a ris-
ing tide because of ineective coordination for their ooading and a lack of person-
nel to do the work.13 Furthermore, U.S. Navy vessels supporting the landing le the
area before they had nished unloading their cargo. However, during the next several
months the Marines, eventually replaced by the Army, built and insurmountable lo-
gistics advantage drawing on the massive U.S. industrial base, but also learning from
mistakes and miscalculations earlier in the campaign.
Five months aer landing, U.S. forces were well supplied enough to enjoy spe-
cial meals at anksgiving and Christmas, while Japanese forces on the other end
of the island were starved and reduced to eating grass and weeds.14 And by January
1943, Japanese forces on the island were losing an average of 200 soldiers a day to
death by starvation.15 For the Japanese, who assumed that their navy would be able to
supply soldiers on remote island outposts or that they would be able to live o the
land, starvation became the norm by the end of the war. In the Philippines, as much
as 80 percent of the overall Japanese deaths may have been caused by starvation.16
On other islands like New Guinea, the Japanese military went so far as to authorize
cannibalism.17 Historian Lizzie Collingham estimated that in total, 60 percent of all
10 Phillips Payson O’Brien, How the War Was Won: Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II (Cam-
bridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 385.
11 Milan N. Vego, Naval Strate and Operations in Narrow Seas (New York: Frank Cass, 1999), 119.
12 Turner, Feeding Victory, 146.
13 Turner, Feeding Victory, 111–12.
14 Turner, Feeding Victory, 124–25.
15 Lizzie Collingham, e Taste of War: World War Two and the Battle for Food (London: Penguin Books,
2011), 292.
16 Collingham, e Taste of War, 303.
17 Collingham, e Taste of War, 297–98.
Mills
68
Japanese military deaths between 1941 and 1945, or more than 1 million troops died
of starvation and related illness in what was one of the greatest logistical disasters in
military history.18
But, the culmination of American amphibious logistics would have been the
never-executed amphibious landings planned for Japan in November 1945: Operation
Olympic in southern Kyushu and then Operation Coronet in Tokyo and the Kanto
Plain. e planning for Operation Olympic projected that the operation might land
more than a uarter of a million troops on the assault beaches in the rst three days of
the operation.19 Backing the amphibious assault were preparations of mammoth scale
to sustain their operations, including nearly 150,000 pints of blood for transfusions
in specially designed vessels; a shocking number that highlights both the expected
casualties and the logistical preparations that planners made to accommodate them.20
Since the end of the Second World War, U.S. amphibious and expeditionary lo-
gistics have beneted from new platforms and concepts but have nowhere near the
capacity that the military enjoyed during World War II. e widespread adoption of
the helicopter and the development of Marine Corps and Navy doctrine that incor-
porated it into amphibious operations added signicant logistical capability, but it
still does not match the scale of operations during the Second World War or what
would be reuired to ght a major campaign in the Pacic in the twenty-rst century.
In recent decades, Marines and other amphibious forces have relied heavily on he-
licopters to transport both personnel and supplies directly from amphibious ships to
objectives ashore. In 2001, U.S. Marines ew from an amphibious ready group (ARG)
in the Indian Ocean to seize the aireld that would become Camp Rhino, Afghani-
stan, hundreds of kilometers inland. Even though the assault force was transported
directly from the ship to the objective, the transports had to be refueled en route by
Lockheed Martin KC-130 tankers that were ying out of forward operating bases in
Pakistan. Aer the Marines secured Camp Rhino, a detachment of Navy Seabees was
reuired to repair and maintain the runway so that it could receive daily ights from
Marine Corps KC-130s and Air Force Boeing C-17 Globemasters. Without established
overland supply routes, everything had to be ow in, including thousands of gallons
of water each day, an example that shows how much support is reuired to sustain
even a relatively small expeditionary force by air, and the limits of an all-air sustain-
ment approach.21
e Marine Corps also invested in prepositioned euipment stored aoat on
ships in the Pacic and Indian Oceans that could be uickly ooaded in a crisis and
18 Collingham, e Taste of War, 303.
19 D. M. Giangreco, Hell to Pay: Operation Downall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945–47 (Annapolis, MD: Naval
Institute Press, 2009), 175.
20 Giangreco, Hell to Pay, 191.
21 Col Nathan S. Lowrey, USMCR, U.S. Marines in Afghanisan, 2001–2002: From the Sea, U.S. Marines in
the Global War on Terrorism (Washington, DC: History Division, Headuarters Marine Corps, 2011),
137.
Innovative Amphibious Logistics for the Twenty-rst Century
69
met with personnel own in from the United States as part of the maritime prepo-
sitioning program. And Marines developed innovative concepts like seabasing where
major logistical functions are conducted at sea instead of ashore, and Operational Ma-
neuver from the Sea, where Marines bypass landing beaches and insert directly on their
objectives from helicopters.22
ese concepts assumed that the U.S. Navy would have assured access to the
maritime space adjacent to the area of operations ashore and vessels carrying Ma-
rines and their supplies could maneuver unmolested. Since the Second World War,
the U.S. military fought major conicts in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan with all
of the sustainment for those forces arriving by sea, air, or locally procured. ough
these conicts demonstrated that the U.S. military was able to deploy and sustain
hundreds of thousands of troops in a war anywhere in the world, the supply chain to
those countries was not contested in any serious way and because of that, the United
States could rely on commercial transportation and logistics services to supply the
troops. In fact, in all three examples, U.S. forces were able to move supplies through
intermediate bases that were secure in neighboring countries; and for the wars in
Iraq and Vietnam, the U.S. military was able to build up and mass forces relatively
unmolested before engaging in major combat operations.
CONTESTED LOGISTICS,
A GROWING CONCERN
In recent years, a parade of U.S. military leadership from the Service level down has
repeatedly highlighted the diculty of logistics in a large Pacic conict. e pri-
mary concern is that the U.S. military is overly reliant on large bases, big buildups
of material, and secure cargo handling facilities that are all vulnerable to attacks by
Chinese long-range missiles and aircra.23 Chinese ships and submarines could at-
tack Navy supply ships as they cross the Pacic.24 e Falklands War oers a modern
example that highlights the vulnerability of naval logistics in the missile age, where
Argentinian naval aviation crippled the British expeditionary force by sinking several
ships, including the SS Atlantic Conveyor (1969), which went down with 10 helicopters
aboard. is loss severely limited British forces’ mobility ashore for the entire cam-
paign and was the primary reason that British units marched across East Falkland
from the landing site at San Carlos Bay to Stanley.25
In addition to the vulnerability of logistics facilities in theater, defense contrac-
22 Prepositioning Programs Handbook: Appendix F to Marine Corps Insallations & Logistics Roadmap (MCILR),
(Washington, DC: Headuarters Marine Corps, 2015); and Operational Maneuver from the Sea.
23 Cdr omas Shugart, USN, First Strike: China’s Missile reat to U.S. Bases in Asia (Washington, DC:
Center for New American Security, 2017).
24 Peter Suciu, “e Really Boring Way China Would Try to Win a War Against America,” Buzz (blog),
National Interest, 9 June 2020.
25 Kenneth L. Privatsky, Logistics in the Falklands War: A Case Study in Expeditionary Warare (Yorkshire,
UK: Pen & Sword Books, 2014), 169–71.
Mills
70
tors and factories in the United States might be targets by cyberattacks intended to
disrupt the U.S. supply chain in depth.26 Together, these capabilities would threaten
U.S. supply lines in a way that they have not been threatened since the Second World
War when the U.S. Merchant Marine had to cross the North Atlantic and brave at-
tacks from German wolf packs and U.S. bases in England and Hawaii could be at-
tacked by German and Japanese planes.
Former Commandant Berger has been one of the most vocal military leaders
arguing that the U.S. military needs to modernize its logistical capabilities to oper-
ate the way that it wants to in the Pacic.27 As the deputy commandant for Combat
Development and Integration, he wrote in the Marine Corps’ functional concept for
future installations and logistics development that “in a distributed and contested
environment, logistics is the pacing function for the Marine Corps.”28 In his initial
Commandant’s Planning Guidance (2019), he tasked Marines with reimagining their
“prepositioning, and expeditionary logistics so they are more survivable, at less risk of
catastrophic loss, and agile in their employment.”29
As Commandant, Berger continued his focus on logistics as the critical challenge
for the Corps’ future plans. In his 2021 update to Force Design 2030, Berger wrote, “We
need systemic change in logistics.”30 And argued that “the challenge of providing dis-
tribution and sustainment in the context of our emerging concepts makes logistics
the pacing function for both modernization and operational planning. Logistics will
be contested—in some respects, it is being contested now—by peer and near-peer com-
petitors, along the entire length of the supply chain.”31
Other Marine leaders have also emphasized the need to update the force’s logisti-
cal capabilities. en Assistant Commandant General Eric M. Smith has called con-
tested logistics “a wicked problem” and a “dirty secret” that many leaders would rather
avoid discussing.32 Lieutenant General George W. Smith, commander of the Marine
Corps I Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF), said that he believes the Marine Corps
is “not placing enough emphasis on logistics, and particularly logistics in a distributed
and contested maritime environment” at an industry conference, and echoed Berger
in that “logistics is undoubtedly the pacing function when we talk about operations
26 Securing Defense-Critical Supply Chains: An Action Plan Developed in Response to President Biden’s Executive
Order 14017 (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2022).
27 Rich Abott, “Berger Says Marine Corps Must Modernize Logistics Faster,” Defense Daily, 8 Febru-
ary2022.
28 Gen David H. Berger, Susaining the Force in the 21st Century: A Functional Concept for Future Insallations
and Logistics Development (Washington, DC: Headuarters Marine Corps, 2022), 2.
29 Gen David H. Berger, Commandant’s Planning Guidance: 38th Commandant of the Marine Corps (Washing-
ton, DC: Headuarters Marine Corps, 2019), 20.
30 Force Design 2030: Annual Update (Washington, DC: Headuarters Marine Corps, 2022), 11.
31 Force Design 2030, 11.
32 Gen Eric M. Smith, “Lethal and Eective: Marine Corps Force Design 2030 and U.S.–Japan Defense
Cooperation,” Stimson Center, 15 June 2022; and Parth Satam, “America’s ‘Dirty Secret’: USMC General
Admits ‘Wicked’ Logistics Problems in Western Pacic to Battle China,” EurAsian Times, 19 June 2022.
Innovative Amphibious Logistics for the Twenty-rst Century
71
in the Pacic. When you look at the vast expanse of the Pacic, and all the attendant
challenges, logistics is going to be that pacing function.”33
Leaders in the other Services have expressed concerns about logistics as well. In
2021, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Air Force general John E. Hyten told re-
porters that the Joint Sta had also been focused on contested logistics and what they
had seen forced them to change their “entire logistics approach” in thinking about
conict with China or Russia.34 General Charles Q. Brown, the U.S. Air Force chief
of sta, has also made clear that his Service is focused on operational logistics, saying
in an interview with War on the Rocks that “our aircra are all static displays with-
out combat support. If you don’t have the fuel, you don’t have the maintenance, you
don’t have the airmen then those aircra will stay parked on the ramp. at combat
support is underestimated.”35 U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) is also
interested in pursuing novel ways to keep their forces sustained. At an event in May
2022, a SOCOM representative told reporters that “the term ‘contested logistics’ is at
the very top of a lot of our discussions right now” and asked how special operations
forces would expect to sustain themselves without regular deliveries or the prestaged
stocks that were available in Iraq and Afghanistan.36 e multi-Service focus on con-
tested logistics is a clear transition from decades of laser-sharp focus on lethality and
eciency when logistics were deprioritized.
e concern about contested logistics extends beyond the Pentagon. At an event
hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Dov Zakheim, a for-
mer undersecretary of defense (comptroller), also pointed out the logistical holes in
the Marine Corps’ Force Design 2030 plans.37 Independent analysis from the Center
for Budgetary and Strategic Assessments found that “absent dramatic improvements,
U.S. seali forces would face major challenges and may fail to meet Joint Force de-
mands in a major war,” a truly damning conclusion.38 A report from the Center for a
New American Security (CNAS) found that “the Department of Defense has system-
ically underinvested in logistics in terms of money, mental ener, physical assets, and
personnel” and argued that in a conict with Russia or China, both adversaries would
focus on degrading and destroying U.S. logistics and sustainment capability, a nding
33 Ricard R. Burgess, “Marine General: Exercises Don’t Pressure-Test Logistics for Real-World Opera-
tions,” Seapower Magazine, 17 February 2022.
34 David Vergun, “DOD Focuses on Aspirational Challenges in Future Warghting,” DOD News, 26 July
2021.
35 Ryan Evans, “A Conversation with Gen. CQ Brown, Chief of Sta of the Air Force,” War on the Rocks,
25 April 2023.
36 Stew Magnuson, “SOFIC News: Special Operators Must Learn to Exist without Tethers,” National
Defense Magazine, 16 May 2022.
37 Mark Cancian et al., “On the Future of the Marine Corps: Assessing Force Design 2030,” Center for
Strategic and International Studies, 16 May 2022.
38 Timothy A. Walton, Harrison Schramm, and Ryan Boone, Susaining the Fight: Resilient Maritime Logis-
tics for a New Era (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2019), 76.
Mills
72
supported by the results of numerous wargames.39 e Government Accountability
Oce released similar ndings in a 2017 report on U.S. seali.40
e signicant Russian military logistics failures during the invasion of the
Ukraine have further highlighted the diculty of contested logistics. During the ini-
tial invasion in February 2022, Russian forces struled to resupply without access to
railways in Ukraine.41 Even before the 2022 invasion, analysts predicted that Russian
forces would be “hard pressed” to adeuately sustain oensive operations more than
145 kilometers beyond the Russian border and remained heavily reliant on rail trans-
port to sustain their forces.42 In one now infamous example, a Russian convoy as long
as 64 kilometers stalled for days inside Ukraine because of food and gas shortages.43
Across the front, Russian soldiers who “hadn’t brought enough food, water or other
supplies for a prolonged campaign” turned to widespread looting to sustain them-
selves.44
Berger highlighted the comparison in testimony to Congress: “As we are wit-
nessing in Ukraine, even a numerically superior force will strule to sustain itself
and protect supply routes against persistent attack and disruption. We cannot allow
this occur.”45 Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth made similar comments. In
a speech to the Royal United Services Institute, she said that among the lessons the
U.S. Army was drawing from the war in Ukraine, one was “logistics, logistics, logis-
tics.”46 She continued, “Amateurs discuss strate and experts talk logistics. You can
be the best euipped military in the world, but if you can’t sustain your forces, it
doesn’t matter.”47 Watching the rst year of open warfare in Ukraine has only rein-
forced the prioritization of contested logistics in the Marine Corps and the military
writ large.
Contested logistics have also become a freuent topic of discussion within the
ranks across the Services. Commentary in military and Service-focused publications
has also been highly critical of the military’s preparedness for contested logistics chal-
39 Dougherty, Buying Time, 1, 10.
40 Navy Readiness: Actions Needed to Mainain Viable Surge Seali and Combat Logistics Fleets (Washington,
DC: Government Accountability Oce, 2017).
41 Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds, Operation Z: e Death roes of an Imperial Delusion (London: Royal
United Services Institute, 2022), 4.
42 Alex Vershinin, “Feeding the Bear: A Closer Look at Russian Army Logistics and the Fait Accompli,”
War on the Rocks, 23 November 2021.
43 Bill Chappell, “Russia’s 40-mile Convoy Has Stalled on Its Way to Kyiv, a U.S. Ocial Says,” NPR,
1 March 2022.
44 Michael Schwirtz et al., “Putin’s War,” New York Times, 16 December 2022.
45 “Statement of General David Berger Commandant of the Marine Corps as Delivered to Congressional
Defense Committees on the Posture of the United States Marine Corps” (congressional testimony, CMC
Gen David H. Berger, 9 May 2022), 13.
46 “Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth’s Royal United Services Institute Ground Forces Sympo-
sium (RUSI) Remarks (June 28, 2022) (as Prepared),” Army.mil, 1 July 2022, hereaer Wormuth remarks.
47 Wormuth remarks.
Innovative Amphibious Logistics for the Twenty-rst Century
73
lenges in a Pacic conict.48 In the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, articles on con-
tested logistics have won prizes and contests three years in a row, and an “Asked and
Answered” forum in the April 2022 issue asked the uestion: “What innovation or
asset should the naval services prioritize for future expeditionary warfare?” Dierent
takes on sustainment and logistics were the clear favorite.49 e March 2023 issue of
the Marine Corps Gazette had no fewer than 15 articles focused on logistics and sus-
tainment.50 Commentary in Defense News has urged military leaders to seek “new ways
of thinking” and make “hard choices . . . that the individual military branches would
prefer to avoid” to address logistics challenges in a potential Pacic conict.51 It seems
as though everyone from junior servicemembers to senior leaders is looking for new
and innovative approaches to logistics that can help the Marine Corps and the Joint
forces sustain combat operations in a contested environment.
FORCE DESIGN ,
EABO, AND THE MARINE CORPS
No Service is more preoccupied with the challenges of contested logistics than the
United States Marine Corps, perhaps because as a Service, the Marine Corps is the
most focused on expeditionary operations and does not have the capability for inter-
theater logistics, so it is forced to rely on the other Services to supply it. e Marine
Corps recently unveiled a new operating concept—expeditionary advanced base oper-
ations (EABO)—that envisions deploying Marine units distributed on islands in the
Pacic that can contribute to a larger maritime or Joint campaign through reconnais-
sance, res, and other means.52 Importantly, these units, called stand-in forces, will
be based within reach of adversary weapons like long-range missiles and land-based
aircra, putting not just them at risk but also any units or platforms attempting to
resupply or sustain them logistically.53 e long range and lethality of these adversary
weapons means that the Marines and the Navy will likely not be able to bring large
amphibious or logistics vessels close to shore to resupply Marine forces and they will
have to stay out of reach of existing ship-to-shore connectors. At the same time, dis-
tributed operations will further stretch logistics as units cannot be centrally resup-
plied. While the Marine Corps is in the middle of Force Design 2030 that will allow the
force to operationalized EABO, these logistical challenges remain unsolved.54 Howev-
48 Mills and Limpaecher, “Sustainment Will Be Contested.”
49 Mills and Limpaecher, “Sustainment Will Be Contested”; Maj Dustin Nicholson, USMC, “Marines
Need Regenerative Logistics,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 148, no. 11 (November 2022); LtCol Brian
Donlon, USMC, “Logistics 20203: Foraging Is Not Going to Cut It,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 149,
no. 11 (November 2023); and “Asked and Answered,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 148, no. 4 (April 2022).
50 Marine Corps Gazette 107, no. 3 (March 2023).
51 K. Bremer Maximillian and Kelly Grieco, “e Pentagon Needs Fresh Ideas for Evading Taiwan Logis-
tics Pitfalls,” Defense News, 4 December 2023.
52 Tenative Manual for Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations.
53 A Concept for Sand-in Forces.
54 Force Design 2030 (Washington, DC: Headuarters Marine Corps, 2020).
Mills
74
er, there are a range of platforms, technologies, and concepts that could contribute to
helping EABO and the Marine Corps overcome the challenges of contested logistics
in a Pacic scenario, and Marine Corps leaders have made clear that they believe
overcoming the logistical challenges of EABO is a top priority.
As part of the Marine Corps’ Force Design 2030 eort, the Corps released two key
documents in early 2023 that map how the Service is thinking about logistics. First,
in February 2023, came Insallations and Logistics 2030, which “chart[ed] the way ahead
for [the] Marine Corps Installations and Logistics Enterprise” in the mold of earlier
Force Design 2030 reports on Talent Management 2030 and Training and Education 2030.55
Signed by Commandant Berger, the report was both a roadmap for where the Marine
Corps wants to go with its installations and logistics enterprise and an compilation of
actual tasks for specic suborganizations. Organizationally, the Marine Corps has a
deputy commandant for installations and logistics as a single advocate for both areas.
e report identied ve key objectives that the Marine Corps is pursuing to
reorient its logistics enterprise for contested logistics in a Pacic conict with a
peer adversary. First is an eort to “improve logistics awareness,” that will increase
real-time information sharing on where things are and what is needed by units.56
e second and third focus on “improving sustainment” and “diversify distribution”
to ensure the platforms and services used by the Marine Corps are ready to supply
stand-in forces.57 And the last two objectives concern installations and talent man-
agement—both areas that the Corps recognizes are foundational to the logistics enter-
prise. With a new Commandant expected to replace General Berger in summer 2023,
it remains to be seen how closely his successor will hew to the specic objectives and
tasks in Insallations and Logistics 2030.58
In March 2023, the Marine Corps released a revised version of Logistics, Marine
Corps Doctrinal Publication 4 (MCDP 4). It was the rst time the doctrinal pub-
lication was revised since 1997, and it was rewritten in the style of Warfighting
(MCDP 1), which famously explains how Marines think about war and conict. Sim-
ilarly, Logistics explains how Marines think about logistics, and what logistics are; it
is not an instructional manual that explains how to “do” logistics. As the publica-
tion puts it, the manual “describes the theory and philosophy of military logistics as
practiced by the United States Marine Corps.”59 e manual includes both historical
examples of logistics and ctional vignettes that has Marines ghting a war against
an unnamed adversary in the Pacic and deploying future technolo like unmanned
resupply drones and bladders of fuel anchored to the seaoor. It emphasizes that
Marines need to work on both sides of the logistics euation, by reducing demand
55 Insallations and Logistics 2030 (Washington, DC: Headuarters Marine Corps, 2023), 1.
56 Insallations and Logistics 2030, 1.
57 Insallations and Logistics 2030, 1.
58 Malory Shelbourne, “Senate Conrms Eric Smith as New Marine Corps Commandant,” USNI News,
21 September 2023.
59 Logistics, Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 4 (Washington, DC: Headuarters Marine Corps, 2023).
Innovative Amphibious Logistics for the Twenty-rst Century
75
and increasing self-suciency as well as by leveraging new technolo to push more
supplies to forward units.
e Marine Corps is in a period of rapid transformation that includes how the
Service executes and conceptualizes logistics, but it is clear that the transformation
is a work in progress. Most of the tasks and objectives that the Commandant has laid
out for the Service have not yet been completed and, as the Force Design 2030 name
suests, they are not expected to be completed for several more years. It is also clear
that within the U.S. military, the Marine Corps is out in front of the other Services on
rethinking how it will do logistics in a future conict. Senior Marine Corps leaders
have consistently been the most vocal about the future of contested logistics, and the
Marine Corps is the only one of the Services to have released new, unclassied doc-
uments like Insallations and Logistics 2030 or revamp logistics doctrinal manuals like
Logistics. is makes sense because the Marine Corps concept for stand-in forces will
reuire a transformation of logistics capability to make it feasible, and the Marine
Corps has a history of leaning into new concepts and technolo like amphibious
warfare and helicopter operations.60
NEW LOGISTICS CONCEPTS
New ways of thinking about logistics and new logistics concepts have been developed
and are percolating through the defense establishment. e number of dierent ideas
is proof of both how seriously leaders in the military and defense establishment view
the problem of contested logistics but also evidence that there is no clear solution to
the problem yet or consensus on what one might be.
A CNAS report on contested logistics by Chris Dougherty discusses “adaptive lo-
gistics,” which is “a temporary, conditions-based concept for contested and degraded
environments.”61 He explains that “an adaptive joint logistics enterprise would be ca-
pable of switching from ecient methods to resilient methods depending on threats,
the character of U.S. operations, or the status of U.S. logistical networks.”62
In professional journals like Proceedings and the Marine Corps Gazette, ocers have
put forth a range of award-winning ideas for logistics frameworks and concepts. “Re-
generative logistics” is one idea where Marine units should have logistics akin to “a
lizard that can discard its tail to save its life—and then go on to grow another life-
saving tail.”63 Marines will leverage future and emerging technologies so that stand-in
forces can “produce, consume, reproduce, and reconsume organically with limited
outside support” in a “closed system” to the greatest extend possible.64 Clandestine
forward caching, or “sleeper cell logistics,” is another way that the Corps could try
60 B. J. Armstrong, “e Answer to the Amphibious Prayer: Helicopters, the Marine Corps, and Defense
Innovation,” War on the Rocks, 17 December 2014.
61 Dougherty, Buying Time, 11.
62 Dougherty, Buying Time, 11.
63 Nicholson, “Marines Need Regenerative Logistics.”
64 Nicholson, “Marines Need Regenerative Logistics.”
Mills
76
to overcome logistical challenges. Instead of prepositioning large euipment sets on
prepositioning ships, logisticians could hide or cache critical components forward
with or without the knowledge of the host country so that it would be immediately
available in a conict.65
Twenty-first century foraging refers to an idea that has been introduced by Marine
leaders and pitched as a way to help solve some of the logistical challenges inherent in
EABO, but the origins of foraging as a logistics concept are as old as war. Simply put,
to sustain an army, the army draws on the available supplies of the local population,
usually in recently captured territory, and the army has to keep moving so as not to
exhaust the local supply base.66 In the West, it was not until the end of the irty
Years’ War (1618–48) that armies shied away from a reliance on foraging for their
basic needs and toward other systems of supply.67
Twenty-rst century foraging does not have a formal, doctrinal explanation, but
it is a combination of reducing demand for consumable commodities, local contract-
ing, and scavenging for locally available resources like food and water. In 2021, Assis-
tant Commandant General Eric Smith explained the idea at an industry event:
e first thing about being able to handle a logistics enterprise support you in a
distributed environment is need less. . . . Why would I move water to the South
China Sea? at’s insane, why would I move food? It’s called expeditionary for-
aging.68
Even though it may not be fully eshed out, Marines have already begun to ex-
periment with the concept in exercises.69 It has also been incorporated into training.
e Basic School in uantico, Virginia, where the Marine Corps trains its entry-level
ocers, recently added lessons on foraging for food and butchering animals so that
the students could “consider augmenting their resupply with local resources in order
to sustain their force,” according to an instructor from the course.70
While twenty-rst century foraging is a promising concept that could reduce
the demand for supply by Marine units, the Corps needs to be careful that the em-
phasis falls more on local contracting and less on hunting and preparing game at the
unit level. e Japanese experience on Guadalcanal and at other islands in the Pacic
where units were le to “wither on the vine,” demonstrates the risk associated with
65 Capt Michael Sweeney, “Sleeper Cell Logistics: Sustaining New Warghting Concepts,” Marine Corps
Gazette 105, no. 1 (January 2021): 64–66.
66 Martin van Creveld, Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton, 2d ed. (Cambridge, UK: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2004), 12.
67 van Creveld, Supplying War, 17.
68 Philip Athey, “Is Expeditionary Foraging in the Corps’ Future?,” Defense News, 6 August 2021.
69 Philip Athey, “31st MEU Put Corps’ Littoral Tactics, ‘21st Century Foraging’ to the Test,” Marine Corps
Times, 21 January 2020.
70 Philip Athey, “Marine-style Barbecue?: Marines Add Foraging Class to e Basic School,” Marine Corps
Times, 3 December 2021.
Innovative Amphibious Logistics for the Twenty-rst Century
77
planning that assumes units can adeuately supply themselves locally.71 Logistics chal-
lenges cannot be overcome solely at the tactical level or reduced to an oversimplied
problem of moving “pelican cases and seabags.”72 It is also important to remember
that since the early twentieth century the amount of subsistence reuired by mili-
tary units in combat has been relatively small as a percentage of the total logistical
reuirement, most of the it is ammunition and fuel. Van Creveld notes that by the
end of the Second World War, “subsistence accounted for only eight to 12 percent of
all supplies,” and since then the amount of fuel used per soldier has increased dramat-
ically, with U.S. forces in Afghanistan using as much as 22 gallons of fuel a day per
deployed soldier.73
Other innovative concepts might focus on the production or fabrication of sup-
plies at or near the battleeld. Additive manufacturing, oen called 3D printing, is an
idea that the Marine Corps is already experimenting with; in 2020, it released a Ma-
rine Corps order on additive manufacturing that details “who can print what, where,
part approval process, training and education, and it also covers legal implications.”74
Champions of the technolo have called it a “game changer” and asserted that with
additive manufacturing the Corps “can construct essential components right on the
battleeld, making us nimbler and more responsive in any combat scenario.”75 So far,
the Corps is focusing on using 3D printing to fabricate specic parts and tools that
are otherwise unavailable rather than mass producing things like weapons or muni-
tions.76 In 2022, a group at the University of Maine demonstrated the ability to 3D
print two boats capable of carrying a Marine Rie Suad and their gear in only three
days, but the euipment to do so is so far only available at the university.77 A more
tactical variant of victory gardens is another idea that has been pitched by a Marine
ocer as a way to produce food closer to the battleeld.78 Moving forward, it will be
critical for the U.S. military and militaries around the world to look at innovative
solutions for their logistical challenges. is will reuire a degree of humility and out-
side-the-box thinking for a defense bureaucracy accustomed to being a world leader
in logistics.
Insurgents and traditional adversaries may also oer examples of logistics net-
71 Collingham, e Taste of War, 298.
72 Donlon, “Logistics 20203: Foraging Is Not Going to Cut It.”
73 van Creveld, Supplying War, 233; and Noah Shachtman, “Afghanistan’s Oil Binge: 22 Gallons of Fuel Per
Soldier Per Day,” Wired, 11 November 2009.
74 Gidget Fuentes, “Marine Corps Wants a Digital Blueprint Locker for Access to 3D Printing Plans
Anywhere,” USNI News, 5 July 2021.
75 Johannes Schmidt, “Forging the Future: How Advanced Manufacturing Is Revolutionizing Marine
Corps Logistics,” Marine Corps Systems Command, 4 October 2023.
76 Fuentes, “Marine Corps Wants a Digital Blueprint Locker for Access to 3D Printing Plans Anywhere.”
77 “UMaine Advanced Structures and Composites Center Produces World’s Largest 3D-printed Logistics
Vessel for U.S. Department of Defense,” UMaine News, 25 February 2022.
78 Ben Cohen and Leo Blanken, “Reviving the Victory Garden: e Military Benets of Sustainable
Farming,” War on the Rocks, 20 January 2022.
Mills
78
works in contested environments. For example, are logisticians studying the network
that supported Taliban ghters in their routing of the Afghan National Army in
2021?79 What can the U.S. military learn about logistics from cocaine tracking net-
works?80
Both old and new concepts can help the Marine Corps overcome some of the
logistical challenges associated with EABO, but concepts alone are likely not enough.
ey may also need to be supported by new technologies and logistics platforms to
truly adapt the way the Marine Corps does logistics for EABO.
NEW ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES
Some of the most promising technologies for contested logistics are technologies that
might reduce or replace entirely, the military’s reliance on petroleum-based fuels. In
2019, Marine Corps deputy commandant for installations and logistics, Lieutenant
General Charles G. Chiarotti, told the 24th Annual Expeditionary Warfare Confer-
ence in Annapolis that “fuel is the pacing commodity” for Marine Corps operations.81
Fuel is the single most important commodity for modern operations and oen up to
50 percent by volume of the supplies needed to sustain an operational unit. Histori-
cally, the military has incurred signicant risk and cost transporting that fuel to the
battleeld. An Army study found that in Afghanistan between 2003 and 2007, U.S.
forces suered one casualty for every 24 fuel supply convoys, and that between Iraq
and Afghanistan as many as 18 percent of all casualties occurred during resupply op-
erations.82 Transporting bulk fuel across contested sea lines of communication may
prove even more dangerous than over land, during the Second World War the U.S.
Merchant Marine suered a casualty rate of approximately four percent, the highest
casualty rate of any branch of Service.83
Electric vehicles have been repeatedly pitched as one way to help cut the mili-
tary’s tether to fossil fuels.84 Both the Army and the Navy have committed to acuir-
ing electric vehicles for tactical and nontactical uses in the future. e Department
of the Navy has committed to acuiring 100 percent electric vehicles by 2035, and the
Army has committed to developing “hybrid-drive tactical vehicles” by 2035 and “fully
79 Jonathan Schroden, “Lessons from the Collapse of Afghanistan’s Security Forces,” CTC Sentinel 14, no.
8 (October 2021).
80 Capt Walker D. Mills, “Contested Logistics: Look to the Drug Trade,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings
(August 2021).
81 Todd South, “Not Just Riemen Anymore: Marines Must Self Sustain in the High End Fight,” Marine
Corps Times, 8 November 2019.
82 David S. Eady et al., Susain the Mission Project: Casualty Factors for Fuel and Water Re-supply, Final Tech-
nical Report (Johnstown, PA: Concurrent Technologies, 2009), 2–6.
83 “Supplying Victory: e History of the Merchant Marine in World War II,” National WWII Museum,
7 February 2022.
84 Cdr Michael Knickerbocker, “Military EVs Are a Necessary Awakening–Not ‘Wokeness’,” Hill, 27 April
2022.
Innovative Amphibious Logistics for the Twenty-rst Century
79
electric tactical vehicles” by 2050.85 Oshkosh Defense has already developed a hybrid
version of its Joint Light Tactical Vehicle and there are electric versions of smaller
vehicles as well.86 Hybrid vehicles, while not able to cut their reliance on petroleum
fuels, oer clear savings in eciency over legacy models and would be a relatively easy
way for the military to reduce petroleum consumption reduce some strain on logis-
tics.87 e Air Force has also acuired an “electric passenger aircra capable of taking
o and landing vertically,” marketed as an “air taxi” that it plans to use for testing and
experimentation.88
However, there are serious uestions about the feasibility of all-electric tactical
vehicles with existing technolo, though the Services are collaborating to develop
better lithium-ion battery technolo to support the development of future vehi-
cles. It is not clear how expeditionary forces would charge high numbers of electric
vehicles without relying on large generators running on petroleum fuel that would
only add to the logistics burden. ere are also valid concerns about the safety of
lithium-ion batteries aboard ships, especially aer the car transport ship Felicity Ace
(2005) burned out of control in 2022 because of a re in one of the electric vehicles
it was carrying.89 But the rapid pace of electric vehicle development in the private
sector, including for aircra, may lead to technological breakthroughs or impressive
gains in performance that make eclectic vehicles more attractive for expeditionary
operations.90
Advances in the production of hydrogen have made it possible to produce hy-
drogen from aluminum feedstock at the tactical edge of the battleeld.91 is break-
through, combined with the increasing interest in hydrogen in the commercial sector,
has the potential to make hydrogen attractive for military applications.92 Tactical
platforms running o of hydrogen fuel cells would also have signicant tactical ben-
ets over legacy platforms running on internal combustion engines, much like elec-
tric and hybrid vehicles. Fuel cell-powered platforms would be much uieter, have a
85 U.S. Army Climate Strate (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 2022), 10; and Climate Action
2030 (Washington, DC: Department of the Navy, 2022), 13.
86 Caleb Larson, “Could the U.S. Army and Marine Corps Get Hybrid Vehicles?,” Buzz (blog), National
Interest, 27 January 2022.
87 Marcus Weisgerber, “Hybrid-Electric Troop Transports Are Moving Toward the Battleeld,” Defense
One, 14 October 2022.
88 Niraj Chokshi, “Air Force Receives It’s First Electric Air Taxi,” New York Times, 25 September 2023.
89 “Lithium-ion Batteries ‘Keep the Fire Alive’ on Burning Cargo Ship Carrying Luxury Cars,” ABC News,
21 February 2022.
90 Niraj Chokshi, “Electric Planes, Once a Fantasy, Start to Take to the Skies,” New York Times, 3 Novem-
ber 2023.
91 Jonathan urston Slocum, “Characterization and Science of an Aluminum Fuel Treatment Process”
(diss., Massachusetts Institute of Technolo, February 2018).
92 Walker Mills and Erik Limpaecher, “e Promise of Hydrogen: An Alternative Fuel at the Intersection
of Climate Policy and Lethality,” Modern War Institute at West Point, 27 December 2021.
Mills
80
lower thermal signature, and longer range.93 General Atomics proposed a hydrogen-
powered version of its MQ-1C Gray Eagle unmanned aircra, and the U.S. Army has
expressed interest in the ZH2, a hydrogen-powered Chevrolet Colorado.94 A major
shi to hydrogen-powered vehicles in the Department of Defense would likely take
decades, but units within the Marine Corps like the Marine Littoral Regiment could
make the switch much faster and reap the tactical benets and operational benets
of being freed from the tether to petroleum fuels.
Synthetic fuels are another technolo that could help cut or shi reliance on
fossil fuels. e U.S. Air Force is pursuing synthetic fuels like the Fischer-Tropsch
process fuel as a way to cut its reliance on petroleum fuels.95 Developed in the 1920s,
the Fischer-Tropsch process fabricates synthetic fuel, usually using coal, natural gas
or hydrogen. Today, aircra make up the bulk of petroleum consumption in the
military and are more dicult to transition to electric, hybrid, or hydrogen.96 How-
ever, synthetic fuels can in most case be used as drop-in replacements for petro-
leum that provide more exibility to logisticians because they can be manufactured
on demand and closer to the point of use, and in some cases even produced out of
“thin air.”97
ere is also a long history of eective synthetic fuel production and use at indus-
trial scale. During the Second World War, Germany was heavily reliant on synthetic
fuel. is was made possible by major investments in synthetic production by the
German government and commercial industry in the 1930s, despite the widespread
availability of cheaper, imported fuel.98 Between 1939 and 1945, almost one-half of the
fuel used in Germany and by its military was synthetic fuel produced from coal. Brit-
ish military ocer and historian J. F. C. Fuller went so far as to argue that without
synthetic fuel the Germans “could not have declared war, let alone waged it.”99
e Air Force has used some synthetic fuel mixtures since 2008, and in 2012, it
completed certications for all of its aircra to y on a blend of 50-50 petroleum
fuel and Fischer-Tropsch synthetic fuel.100 In 2020, the Air Force partnered with a
93 Capt Walker D. Mills, Maj Jacob Clayton, and Erik R. Limpaecher, “Powering EABO: Aluminum Fuel
for the Future Fight,” Marine Corps Gazette (August 2022), 82–85.
94 David Vergun, “Army Showcases Stealthy, Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle,” U.S. Army, 30 January 2017.
95 Corrie Poland, “e Air Force Partners with Twelve, Proves It’s Possible to Make Jet Fuel Out of in
Air,” U.S. Air Force Reserve Command, 22 October 2021.
96 Neta C. Crawford, Penagon Fuel Use, Climate Change and the Costs of War (Providence, RI: Watson
Institute, Brown University, 2019).
97 Poland, “e Air Force Partners with Twelve, Proves It’s Possible to Make Jet Fuel Out of in Air.”
98 Adam Tooze, e Wages of Destruction: e Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (New York: Penguin,
2006), 116–18.
99 Robert Gorlaski and Russel W. Freeburg, Oil & War: How the Deadly Strule for Fuel in WWII Meant Vic-
tory or Defeat (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1987; uantico, VA: Marine Corps University
Press, 2022 reprint), 26, 278, https://doi.org/10.56686/9780160953613.
100 “USAF Completes Fleetwide Certication of Fischer-Tropsch Alternate Fuel,” Inside Defense, 26 April
2012.
Innovative Amphibious Logistics for the Twenty-rst Century
81
company that produces synthetic fuel from captured carbon dioxide from “thin air.”101
Since then, testing has conrmed that the synthetic fuel made from captured carbon
dioxide “matches the properties and performance of Jet A-1 [kerosene-based fuel], and
contains all necessary components of jet fuel, including aromatics.”102
In the United Kingdom, the Royal Air Force has become a leader in synthetic
fuels, ying the rst aircra run on 100 percent synthetic fuel in 2021.103 e chief of
the Royal Air Force Sir Mike Wigston believes it could be a logistics game changer
along with other technolo:
Renewable power generation, like solar or small hydrogen power units, removes
the requirement for a massive fuel and logistics supply ail, and the vulnerability
and headaches that attracts. And aking it one step further, just imagine if the
synthetic fuel plant . . . could be deployable too, and we were able to make our own
jet fuel at a deployed operating base or at sea.104
Synthetic fuels are also pitched as a way to help the United Kingdom’s Ministry of
Defense meet its net-zero climate goals, and could be a way to help U.S. forces in Eu-
rope cut their reliance on petroleum fuels sourced from Russia.105
e U.S. Army and Air Force are both pursuing dierent micronuclear reactor
projects to generate power for austere bases and reduce their consumption of petro-
leum fuel. e Army’s Project Pele will demonstrate a “mobile microreactor” and the
Air Force plans to operate a microreactor at Eielson Air Force Base in Fairbanks,
Alaska, by 2027.106 ough these systems may not be small enough to be deployed
to expeditionary advanced bases, they are projected to supply between one and ve
megawatts of power each, more than enough to power a forward operating base or a
base in an austere location.107 ese systems could also provide enough power to make
charging eets of electric tactical vehicles more realistic, but there are concerns about
how they would handle missile or bomb strikes.
ere are several technologies that already exist, such as hybrid, electric, and
hydrogen fuel-cell propulsion, that are under development like microreactors that
101 Poland, “e Air Force Partners with Twelve, Proves It’s Possible to Make Jet Fuel out of in Air.”
102 Maj Nicole Pearl, Paul Wrzeninski, and Capt Kaleb Mitchell, “Project FIERCE Fuels the Future of
Synthetic Jet Fuel Generation,” Air Force Research Laboratory, 8 November 2022.
103 Andrew Chuter, “British Air Force Chief Envisions Synthetic Fuel Produced on Deployments,” Defense
News, 24 November 2021.
104 Chuter, “British Air Force Chief Envisions Synthetic Fuel Produced on Deployments.”
105 “Mapping U.S. Military Dependence on Russian Fossil Fuels,” Climate Solutions Lab, Watson Insti-
tute, Brown University, 28 April 2022.
106 Department of Defense, “DOD to Build Project Pele Mobile Microreactor and Perform Demonstra-
tion at Idaho National Laboratory,” press release, 13 April 2023; and Secretary of the Air Force Public
Aairs, “Reuest for Proposal Released for Eielson Air Force Base Micro-reactor Pilot Program,” press
release, 26 September 2022.
107 “Project Pele Mobile Microreactor to Go Ahead,” World Nuclear News, 14 April 2022.
Mills
82
could dramatically upend how the military gets its operational ener.108 e rapid
advancement of renewable and alternative ener technolo in the commercial sec-
tor also makes it uite possible that the next breakthrough that will change military
ener usage and generation is imminent.
A growing awareness of climate change has also created new reasons for the De-
partment of Defense to reimagine how it manages operational ener. All of the Ser-
vices published climate action plans in 2022 that promise shis to electric and hybrid
tactical vehicles to improve resilience to climate change, but meeting those promises
will take signicant investment and eort.109 Petroleum fuel use is entrenched in not
just the platforms the military uses but also the infrastructure that transports and
stores fuel, and widespread change would take years if not decades and face signi-
cant headwinds.
It is also possible that public and political pressure will push the U.S. military
to invest in renewable and alternative ener technologies to limit the military’s
contribution to greenhouse gas emissions faster than it already is, especially because
the Department of Defense is the world’s single largest institutional contributor of
emissions.110 is has already happened in the United Kingdom, and the Ministry of
Defense has committed to being net-zero by 2040.111
New ener technolo could fundamentally reshape operational logistics in a
way not seen since the mechanization of military formations in the rst half of the
twentieth century in unpredictable ways. Increasing electrication of military plat-
forms is already being promised and with that will come reuirements for electrical
ener storage solutions, like tactical battery banks, and a more diverse set of options
for tactical power generation. ese developments may reduce the reuirement for
petroleum fuels but it will also complicate tactical logistics by reuiring other ways
to source electricity for vehicle eets.
NEW PLATFORMS
e U.S. military has a long history of creating new platforms to meet changing oper-
ational needs. e development of landing ship, tanks (LSTs) and other amphibious
vehicles are examples of how new platforms were adapted or designed to meet the
challenges of amphibious operations.112 Today, there are several platforms that could
potentially help the U.S. military and the Marine Corps meet the challenges of con-
108 Paul J. Kern et al., “An Albatross Around the US Military’s Neck: e Single Fuel Concept and the
Future of Expeditionary Ener,” Modern Warfare Institute at West Point, 29 June 2021.
109 Army Climate Strate: Implemenation Plan, Fiscal Years 2023–2027 (Washington, DC: Department of the
Army, 2022); Department of the Air Force Climate Action Plan (Washington, DC: Department of the Air
Force, 2022); and Climate Action 2023 (Washington, DC: Department of the Navy, 2022).
110 Crawford, Penagon Fuel Use, Climate Change and the Costs of War.
111 Ministry of Defense Climate Change and Susainability Strategic Approach (London: UK Ministry of De-
fense, 2021).
112 William L. McGee, e Amphibians Are Coming!: Emergence of the ‘Gator Navy and Its Revolutionary Land-
ing Cra (Napa, CA: BMC Publications, 2000).
Innovative Amphibious Logistics for the Twenty-rst Century
83
tested logistics. Most of them are specically focused on delivering cargo the last
tactical mile or to the end user on the battleeld, the segment of the supply chain that
is oen the most dicult and dangerous.
e Marine Corps believes that new amphibious platforms will be key to opera-
tionalizing the EABO concept. It wants to acuire up to 35 of a new class of ship, the
Light Amphibious Warship (LAW) also called the Landing Ship Medium (LSM), to
help support the logistical reuirements of its EABO concept. e LAW is intended
to be much smaller than existing amphibious vessels but bier than ship-to-shore
connectors. It will be capable of carrying a platoon or company of Marines with
vehicles and euipment and delivering them to a beach or pier.113 ese vessels are
intended to support interisland movement and bring in supplies to Marine units.
e Marine Corps has made the program a priority, though it is unclear if the Navy
feels the same, and it is unknown when the Corps will receive their new vessels. e
earliest the Corps could see them is 2025, though that may get pushed back.114 Howev-
er, the Marines may be able to use similar vessels from the Army watercra eet for
experimentation in the meantime.115
e Army is also recapitalizing its watercra eet with the acuisition of 36 Ma-
neuver Support Vessel-Light (MSVL) intended to replace Vietnam-era landing cra,
mechanized (a.k.a. LCM-8 or Mike Boat) that carry heavy vehicles and euipment
from larger ships to shore or that could be used to transport troops and euipment
between islands.116 ese vessels are too small for what the Marine Corps needs, but
they will still be useful in experimentation and concept renement. In 2023, the Army
established a cross-functional team focused on contested logistics that will initially
prioritize further watercra recapitalization, including replacing the Maneuver Sup-
port Vessel-Heavy (MSVH), which is used for intertheater li of supplies and heavy
euipment.117
Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) systems have been repeatedly pitched as a solu-
tion to delivering supplies to units in contested environments. David Beaumont, an
Australian military logistics expert, argued that “automation oers military logisti-
cians tremendous advantage and has to be part of their future,” and there are reports
that British-supplied Malloy T400 UAVs have been used for tactical resupply in the
113 Ronald O’Rourke, Navy Light Amphibious Warship (LAW) Program: Background and Issues for Congress
(Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2022).
114 Todd South, “Marines Will Have to Wait at Least until 2025 for Light Amphibious Warship,” Marine
Corps Times, 28 March 2022.
115 Capt Walker D. Mills and Lt Joseph Hanacek, “e US Navy and Marine Corps Should Acuire Army
Watercra,” Defense News, 22 June 2020.
116 Joseph Trevithick, “e US Army Is Buying New Boats to Replace Vietnam-Era Landing Cra,” Drive,
29 June 2019.
117 Jen Judson, “US Army Ocial Reveals Watercra, Networks as Logistics Focus Areas,” Defense News,
11 April 2023.
Mills
84
Ukraine conict.118 ere is growing interest in unmanned aircra, either remotely
piloted or fully autonomous, for use in a logistics role and these platforms are receiv-
ing signicant investment from both the military and the private sector. e Marine
Corps successfully ew a modied, unmanned Kaman KMAX helicopter in Afghan-
istan in 2011 and was pleased with the results, but the program was not continued.119
Marines have also been experimenting with smaller UAVs like the tactical resupply
vehicle TRV-150C to deliver supplies at the tactical edge of the battleeld and plans
to establish a new a military occupational specialty for operators called “Small Un-
manned Logistics System–Air Specialist.”120 e TRV-150C has been used in exercises
with foreign partners like Balikatan in the Philippines, and has a purported useful
range of approximately 14 kilometers with a 150-pound payload.121
Various private companies have also been experimenting with custom built
unmanned aircra of dierent sizes to market to the military, but limitations on
weight and range restrict their utility.122 e opportunity for commercial drone-based
delivery services in the United States will likely continue to drive innovation with
unmanned systems, but over-hyped programs like Amazon Prime Air have so far
delivered less than promised. According to the New York Times, Prime Air “as it cur-
rently exists is so underwhelming that Amazon can keep the drones in the air only
by giving stu away,” and it is limited to delivering a handful of products like canned
soup and breath mints.123 Ideally, UAVs would be a cheap and potentially disposable
option for delivering small amounts of cargo rapidly and in any type of terrain. An ex-
perimental unmanned glider that can be dropped from transport aircra and own
to “within 30 meters of its intended target” that was tested by the Army is an example
of this approach, where payloads are delivered by single-use, relatively cheap means.124
Both sides in the ongoing conict in Ukraine are also pushing the boundaries of what
UAS are capable of and it should come as no surprise if tactically useful UAS resup-
ply comes out of wartime innovation.
A more extreme version of an unmanned resupply is the Air Force’s interest in
rocket-delivered cargo that would y through space and be deliverable worldwide in
minutes; but it is unclear if the Service will move forward with the concept, and it
118 David Beaumont, “Sustaining Machines: Logistics and Autonomous Systems,” Defense.info, 21 April
2021; and “Ukraine to Get a New Batch of Malloy Drones, and in is Case the Size Matters,” Defense
Express, 22 July 2023.
119 Alex Davies, “e Marines’ Self-Flying Chopper Survives a ree-Year Tour,” Wired, 30 July 2014.
120 LCpl David Brandes, “Tactical Resupply Unmanned Aircra System Demonstration,” Marines.mil,
11 April 2023.
121 Cpl Tyler Andrews, “3d LLB Tests Capabilities of TRV-50 TRUAS,” DVIDS, 22 April 2023; and Kelsey
D. Atherton, “e Marines Are Getting Supersized Drones for Battleeld Resupply,” Popular Science, 27
April 2023.
122 David Hambling, “U.S. Army Pushes Ahead with Battleeld Resupply Drones,” Forbes, 16 March 2021.
123 David Streitfeld, “Look, Up in the Sky! It’s a Can of Soup!,” New York Times, 4 November 2023.
124 Jared Keller, “Green Berets Are Testing a Prototype Glider Drone for Speedy Resupply,” Task & Pur-
pose, 31 March 2023.
Innovative Amphibious Logistics for the Twenty-rst Century
85
raises obvious uestions about cost and limits on the amount of cargo that can be de-
livered.125 Rocket-delivered logistics would in some ways contradict what most leaders
are calling for because of the high price tag and low numbers available. Military in-
novation with unmanned systems will likely continue to focus on sensing and strike
roles, with increasingly large and complex systems elded at the tactical level. Inno-
vation with unmanned systems for carrying cargo is more likely to be driven by the
private sector where there will be major market advantages for the rst companies to
make “drone delivery” ecient and low-cost. Military advances in unmanned cargo
capacity will likely follow the commercial sector and feature most prominently at the
tactical edge, with larger, higher-capacity drones as the technolo improves, though
multiple Services are experimenting with dierent capabilities and missions.126
Unmanned submersibles or semisubmersibles have also been suested as a co-
vert and long-range option for resupplying Marines on islands.127 ese vessels would
move slowly but have a 1,600-kilometer or more range and be dicult to detect ex-
cept with advanced sensors for hunting submarines. is idea was inspired by cocaine
trackers in the Caribbean who have been using semisubmersibles and low-prole
vessels since the early 1990s to stealthily move multiton shipments of cocaine through
the Caribbean.128
But unmanned systems and the associated technolo are not and will not be a
logistics panacea. ese systems are key to improvements in military logistics but can-
not address of the challenges presented by contested logistics. Further, to be eective,
unmanned systems need to be integrated into processes and systems that leverage
their uniue advantages and are employed at the organizational level.129 Also, as the
Marine Corps recognizes in the revised Logistics, MCDP-4, human beings are at the
center of the logistics enterprise: “Logistics is about how people interface with ma-
chines.”130 Even while we look to the promise of unmanned systems, they are not an
end themselves, but rather a new set of tools for the logistician to employ as part of
an overarching concept or framework.
Amphibious aircra and seaplanes have also been heralded as an answer to piec-
es of the contested logistics puzzle.131 Seaplane advocates argue that in any conict
with China, one of the rst targets for Chinese air and missile strikes would be the
125 Kyle Mizokami, “e Air Force Wants to Drop 100 Tons of Cargo from Space,” Popular Mechanics, 4
June 2021.
126 Dan Parsons, “Navy Considering Drone Delivery for Essential Parts at Sea,” USNI News, 5 August 2021.
127 Walker D. Mills, Dylan Phillips-Levine, and Collin Fox, “Cocaine Logistics for the Marine Corps,” War
on the Rocks, 22 July 2020.
128 Byron Ramirez and Robert J. Bunker, Narco-Submarines: Specially Fabricated Vessels Used for Drug Smug-
gling Purposes (Fort Leavenworth, KS: U.S. Army Foreign Military Studies Oce, 2015).
129 Robbin Laird, “Shaping the Eco-System for Logistics Innovation: e Impact of Automation and
Autonomous Systems,” Defense.info, 23 March 2021.
130 Logistics, 4-7.
131 Capt Walker D. Mills, USMC, and LCdr Dylan Phillips-Levine, USN, “Give Amphibians a Second
Look,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 146, no. 12 (December 2020).
Mills
86
runways that U.S. aircra rely on; but they acknowledge that seaplanes would be
unaected by the strikes and able to continue operating across the Pacic moving
personnel and supplies where needed.132 Designed for long-range travel, amphibious
aircra could “be a logistical enabler across the Pacic” and help defeat the “tyranny
of distance.”133 Other advocates highlight the major contribution that Allied seaplanes
made to the war eort during the Pacic campaign in Second World War, where they
served in scouting and reconnaissance, search and rescue, and even bombing roles.134
Seaplanes have also been put forward in a tanking role, where they would be able to
provide fuel for land and carrier-based aircra.135
Other countries in the Pacic region already use seaplanes. China has developed
a large AVIC AG600 Kunlong seaplane, the largest own since the famous Spruce
Goose was own in 1947.136 e Japanese Self-Defense Force ies several ShinMaywa
US-2 short-takeo and landing planes for maritime search and rescue missions, and
it has drawn signicant interest from the U.S. Air Force, and there are also Russian
seaplane models in service.137 Within the U.S. military, Special Operations Command
is also exploring the idea of an amphibious version of the venerable C-130 aircra,
called the MC-130J amphibious capability (MAC) that would likely be used to trans-
port troops and supplies within the Pacic.138
A subset of amphibious aircra are wing-in-ground (WIG) eect aircra. ese
aircra are designed to y close to the surface of the water to take advantage of the
WIG eect and have signicant gains in eciency and carrying capacity when they
do. WIG aircra would be an ideal candidate for a logistics aircra because of their
large carrying capacity.139 e Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
is building a prototype WIG aircra for theater logistics called the Liberty Lier.140
e Marine Corps has also expressed interest in a niche class of aircra called “sea
gliders” that operate on a combination of hydrofoil and WIG capability.141
But even the deployment of signicant numbers of amphibious aircra would
132 David Alman, “Bring Back the Seaplane,” War on the Rocks, 1 July 2020.
133 Christopher D. Booth, “Overcome the Tyranny of Distance,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 146, no.
12 (December 2020).
134 David Alman, “Seaplanes Go to War,” Naval History Magazine 35, no. 4 (August 2021).
135 David Alman, “Extend Air Wing Range with Seaplane Tankers,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 147,
no. 5 (May 2021).
136 Bryan Hood, “China Just Flew the Largest Seaplane Since the Spruce Goose,” Robb Report, 28 July
2020.
137 omas Newdick, “U.S. Air Forces Trains with Japan’s US-2 Flying Boat as It Looks Forward to Its
Own Amphibious Plane,” Drive, 23 February 2022.
138 Peter Ong, “USSOCOM Update on MC-130J Amphibious Capability or MAC,” Naval News, 17 July
2022.
139 Walker D. Mills, Joshua Taylor, and Dylan Phillips-Levine, “Modern Sea Monsters: Revisiting Wing-
in-Ground Eect Aircra for the Next Fight,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings (September 2020).
140 Peter Ong, “DARPA Responds on ‘Liberty Lier’ Plane,” Naval News, 16 June 2022.
141 Hope Hodge Seck, “Marine Corps Looks at Ocean Glider for Rapid Resupply to Fight China,” Marine
Corps Times, 30 November 2023.
Innovative Amphibious Logistics for the Twenty-rst Century
87
not solve the logistics problems, as aircra would strule to deliver the volume of
supplies needed to sustain even relatively small forces like a Marine Corps’ littoral
regiment or an Army multidomain task force. During the initial invasion of Afghan-
istan, Marines from Task Force 58 were own into Kandahar to establish a forward
operating base. Almost immediately, they received nightly deliveries from both KC-
130 and C-17 aircra to sustain operations.142 e initial assault force could be deliv-
ered by helicopter, but the force could not be sustained organically. In addition to
aircra and unmanned systems, the Marine Corps will need to be creative and look
for lower technolo platforms to augment logistics capabilities like using clandes-
tine vessels that are outwardly civilian appearing, or they could turn to pack animals
for land-based transportation to cut the reuirements for fuel and spare parts.143
e rapid improvement of logistics technolo, especially with regard to un-
manned systems is an opportunity for the U.S. military and the Marine Corps but not
an end state. e technolo is only going to be as eective as the way it is employed
and the servicemembers who are employing it. Unmanned technolo also presents
new challenges to logisticians who will need to gure out how these platforms are
managed, maintained, refueled, and employed if they do not have crews on board.
Further, any new platforms or systems need to be integrated into logistics concepts
and tactics for their benets to be realized.
CONCLUSION
It is clear from studying the problem that the Marine Corps and the U.S. military are
in desperate need of new ways to sustain forces in a contested environment. However,
there are already a wide range of dierent options for meeting logistical needs rang-
ing from new concepts like twenty-rst century foraging and regenerative logistics
to narco-inspired semisubmersibles and cargo rockets. e challenge for the military
is three-fold. First, the Services need to prioritize acuisition focused on logistics
technologies and decide which technologies and platforms have true revolutionary
potential and which are no better than snake oil. Second, the Services need to inte-
grate these technologies and platforms at scale into new concepts that can maximize
their benets and eectively organize logistics eorts. And third, the Services need to
coordinate with each other to ensure that their eorts are complimentary, and their
concepts can be integrated in a conict. Any true solution will be a marriage of new
platforms and technolo with updated or innovative operational concepts that can
best leverage the capability of new and existing platforms. en these collaborations
will have to be wargamed and tested to rene and validate their eectiveness. Any
eective solution will also be a combination of dierent technologies and platforms
142 Arthur P. Brill Jr., “Afghanistan Diary: Corps Considerations: Lessons Learned in Phase One,” Seapow-
er Magazine, April 2002.
143 Christopher D. Booth, “e Modern Shetland Bus: e Lure of Covert Maritime Vessels for Great—
Power Competition,” War on the Rocks, 29 December 2020; and Capt Walker D. Mills and Christopher
D. Booth, “Marines Need a Few Good Mules,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 148, no. 4 (April 2022).
Mills
88
rather than any single perfect solution. Beyond that, the logistical enterprise needs
to backed by the industrial might of the U.S. economy, because even the most well-
designed platforms will experience losses in a contested environment. e ongoing
conict in Ukraine has proven that logistics and sustainment start at the factory, but
a discussion of the defense industrial base is beyond the scope of this chapter.
Within the Marine Corps, change in the logistics enterprise will reuire signif-
icant reorganization of the support units and the reuisite experimentation to val-
idate and rene those changes.144 e revised version of Logistics, MCDP-4, has laid
the doctrinal foundation for future changes and Insallations and Logistics 2030 has set
the initial guidance for a transformation of the Marine Corps’ logistics enterprise.
An additional challenge for the Marine Corps is that it is reimagining logistics at a
time of overall force redesign, so the logistics enterprise is in competition with other
functions for resources and focus.
Anything less than major changes in how the Marine Corps and the military
are ready to sustain their forces will result in disaster or may even preclude involve-
ment in a major Pacic conict altogether. Adversaries like China and Russia have
made clear that they would target U.S. sustainment capabilities like tanker aircra,
logistics ships, critical infrastructure, and propositioned supplies at the outset of any
conict. ese targets are all vulnerable and at present not easy to replace. is would
leave U.S. forces in a precarious position and without the support they expect and
reuire as they fought in the most intense conict since the Second World War. It
is not just that U.S. forces would strule to sustain themselves, in many cases they
would never be able to deploy in the rst place. Functional logistics are a precon-
dition for military operations. An inability to sustain combat forces in a contested
environment will limit the options for commanders and could tie the hands of polit-
ical leadership. Fortunately, leaders inside and outside of the military recognize the
challenges of contested logistics; and if prudent investments and innovative thinking
follow, the military and the Marine Corps will adapt to meet the challenge. For the
Marine Corps and the U.S. military, amphibious and expeditionary logistics in a con-
tested environment marks a return to the past. And in the past, the military was able
to rapidly adapt and build an unmatched logistics organization capable of projecting
air, sea, and land power thousands of kilometers across the Pacic Ocean into the
heart of Imperial Japan.
144 Paul S. Panicacci, “How to Do Logistics in EABO: It’s a MAGTF, Not a MAGLTF,” Marine Corps
Gazette 104, no. 12 (December 2020).
89
CHAPTER FIVE
Amphibious Juggernaut
How the Landing Ship, Tank, and Landing Vehicle,
Tracked, Created the Most Powerful Amphibious
Assault System of World War II
Douglas E. Nash Sr.
In the modern era, the pace of technological advances has always accelerated
during wartime. e development of the telegraph, railroad, wireless, submarine,
and aircra leapt ahead when put to use on the battleeld, oen vaulting over a
process that would normally take decades during peacetime. Even more inuential
has been the multiplying or synergistic eect that takes place when new technologies
supplement or complement other technologies, achieving an eect far greater than
had they occurred in isolation. An excellent example of this syner of technologies
was the combination of radios with aircra, enabling reconnaissance ights to gather
and relay current information to ground headuarters that can materially aect the
outcome of a battle.
Another example, one from World War II, involves the mutually complemen-
tary synergistic eect that occurred when the Allies’ Landing Ship, Tank (LST) was
joined with the Landing Vehicle, Tracked (LVT) in the Pacic theater of operations.
e resulting combination of two completely dierent systems—each developed for
a specic, limited military purpose—resulted in a completely new method of con-
ducting amphibious assault against a defended beachhead, a syner that dramati-
cally reduced casualties and allowed the Marine Corps and Navy’s amphibious force
to rapidly build up combat power ashore. is chapter focuses on how these plat-
forms were developed separately by the Navy and Marine Corps, and how, almost
by happenstance, they were combined to create a new tactical system for conducting
Nash
90
amphibious assault that enabled the realization of the amphibious warfare theories
espoused by the Marine Corps in the 1930s.
e LVT was rst developed in 1935 by Donald Roebling, an inventor and man-
ufacturer, at his workshop in Clearwater, Florida. Originally intended as a rescue
vehicle designed to operate in swampy terrain as well as on water, the fully tracked
vehicle, known unocially by Roebling as the “Alligator,” attracted the Navy and
Marine Corps’ attention in October 1937 when a Life magazine article was seen by
Admiral Edward C. Kalbfus and Major General Louis McCarty Little, commanding
general of the newly created Fleet Marine Force.1 Both men uickly realized the ve-
hicle’s potential as an adjunct to the amphibious eet.2 Major General Little brought
the Alligator to the attention of Major General John H. Russell Jr., Commandant
of the Marine Corps, who uickly forwarded the information to the Marine Corps
1 “Roebling’s ‘Alligator’ for Florida Rescues,” Life, 4 October 1937, 94–95.
2 Maj Alfred D. Bailey, USMC (Ret), Alligators, Bualoes and Bushmasters: e History of the Development of
the LVT through World War II (Washington, DC: History and Museums Division, Headuarters Marine
Corps, 1986), 34.
FIGURE
Adm Edward C. Kalbfus, commander
battleships, U.S. Navy. He was the rst to
spot the October 1937 Life magazine article
about Roebling’s Alligator when he and
MajGen Little were sharing a drink at his
uarters in Norfolk, VA.
Source: ocial U.S. Navy photo NH48682
FIGURE
MajGen Louis M. Little, commanding general,
Fleet Marine Force, Atlantic. He realized
the signicance of Roebling’s invention and
spurred the Marine Corps to investigate its
potential for use in landing operations.
Source: ocial U.S. Marine Corps photo
Amphibious Juernaut
91
Euipment Board, which sent a representa-
tive to Florida to evaluate the vehicle four
months later. Aer viewing the Alligator in
action, the evaluator, Major John W. Kaluf,
was impressed enough to endorse the project
by stating that it “has possibilities for use in
landing troops and supplies at points not ac-
cessible to other types of small boats.”3 us
began a close working relationship between
the Marine Corps and Donald Roebling that
would last throughout World War II.
Aer several years trying to convince
the Navy that it should spend its Bureau of
Ships design and procurement funds on an
“experimental” oddity, the Marine Corps -
nally succeeded in October 1940, when the
rst prototype Alligator built to military
specications was delivered. is initial LVT
was successfully demonstrated to the Com-
mandant of the Marine Corps and several
other high-ranking Army and Navy ocers
in uantico, Virginia, later that month. e
Navy, however, insisted on modications to
the prototype, such as reuiring that its hull
be constructed from steel instead of alumi-
num to increase its durability. Less than a week later, the Navy awarded a contract
to Roebling to build 100 in cooperation with the Food Machinery Corporation at
its factory in Dunedin, Florida, which would be known thereaer as Landing Vehi-
cle, Tracked Model 1 (LVT-1). A small test detachment was formed in May 1941 at
Dunedin to train and familiarize Marines with the new vehicle. Aer nearly a year of
additional testing and evaluation, the 1st Amphibious Tractor Battalion was formed
by 16 February 1942 and assigned to the 1st Marine Division.4
e initial production run of LVT-1s were all-steel construction, weighing in
at 17,500 pounds empty and 22,000 pounds when fully loaded with fuel, crew, and
cargo. e rst amtracks—slang for amphibious tractor—as they were uickly nick-
named, were 21 feet long, 9 feet, 10 inches wide and 7 feet, 8 inches high. Powered by
a 150-horsepower V-8 Hercules engine, it was capable of 19 kilometers per hour on
land and up to 11 kilometers per hour in the water. Steered manually by dual lateral
controls, it could turn in the water in its own length, an important feature when
3 Bailey, Alligators, Bualoes and Bushmasters, 34.
4 Bailey, Alligators, Bualoes and Bushmasters, 40–42.
FIGURE
Donald Roebling. e eccentric Florida
businessman and inventor who developed
the Alligator as a fully tracked swamp
rescue vehicle that later evolved
into the Landing Vehicle, Tracked (LVT).
Source: ocial U.S. Marine Corps photo
Nash
92
conducting water operations in conned seaways. Its two-person crew consisted of
a driver and assistant driver, both of whom sat in a small crew compartment in the
front of the vehicle.5 It did not have a rear ramp or access doors, reuiring anyone
entering the vehicle to climb up and over the side using scalloped handholds locat-
ed in the otation sponsons (hollow box-like structures built into both sides of the
hull) on either side. e vehicle’s gasoline tank could hold up to 50 gallons, giving it
a limited land cruising range of 193 kilometers. One disadvantage though was that its
engine and drivetrain had a life expectancy of only 200 hours, but the advantages that
the Alligator provided the Fleet Amphibious Force far outweighed its deciencies.6
Viewed by the Marine Corps as primarily a logistics support vehicle, the LVT-1
was capable of transporting up to 4,500 pounds of supplies and troops from ship to
shore, though it uickly proved eually able to negotiate swampy or marshy terrain
beyond the beachhead. Few considered it a combat vehicle, because of its low speed in
the water, lack of armor, and general lack of mechanical robustness that would make
it unreliable in battle. Still, in 1941, the Marine Corps was satised with its purchase
5 Bailey, Alligators, Bualoes and Bushmasters, 43.
6 Bailey, Alligators, Bualoes and Bushmasters, 62, 97.
FIGURE
e earliest version of the Marine Corps’ amphibious tractor or amtrac, the LVT-1. Shown here
in use as a logistics vehicle during the landing operation at Guadalcanal, 7 August 1942, with the
attack transport USS President Hayes (AP 39) at anchor in the distance.
Source: ocial U.S. Navy photo NH97749
Amphibious Juernaut
93
and, in the wake of the country’s entry into World War II, began to raise an additional
battalion, intending to provide each of the two existing divisions—the 1st and 2d Ma-
rine Divisions—an amphibious tractor battalion for support of logistical operations.7
Some senior Marines, though, had other ideas, believing that the LVT-1 could
potentially perform more types of missions than the mundane task of ferrying sup-
plies ashore. Some futuristic thinkers had already been working behind the scenes to
bring about the necessary doctrinal changes that would allow expanded usage of the
vehicle. Already, change 1 to the Landing Operations Doctrine, Fleet Training Publica-
tion 167, the Navy and Marine Corps’ manual for the conduct of amphibious warfare,
issued on 2 May 1941, described how best to employ LVTs in a logistics role during an
amphibious operation.8
One of these visionaries was Major General Holland M. Smith, who had taken
over command of the newly activated headuarters, Marine Amphibious Force, At-
lantic Fleet, on 13 June 1941. Based in uantico, Smith, who was in charge of training
the new 1st Marine Division and the Army’s 9th Infantry Division, was a passion-
ate advocate of amphibious warfare and the Marine Corps’ position as the nation’s
leading specialists in amphibious operations. During the late 1930s, Smith pioneered
many amphibious tactics, techniues, and procedures and had been able to translate
the new Landing Operations Doctrine from doctrine into practice through a series of
realistic amphibious exercises in the Caribbean.9
When he was appointed commander of the 1st Marine Amphibious Brigade in
September 1939, which was expanded into a division two years later, he oversaw sev-
eral large-scale landing exercises at Guantánamo Bay, Culebra, and Vieues Island. By
the time he had been appointed to command Amphibious Forces, Atlantic Fleet, in
the early summer of 1941, Smith had become the nation’s foremost expert on the prac-
tice of amphibious warfare. He uickly set about preparing his new command for the
war that he knew was to come. ough hampered by a shortage of nearly everything,
especially landing cra and troop transports, Smith put his troops through a rigorous
training regimen that would serve them in good stead when committed to battle at
Guadalcanal a year later.
Never content to appear complacent when newer and more promising ways
beckoned, Smith recommended in a letter on 21 March 1942 to the commander of
the U.S. Army’s ground forces, Lieutenant General Lesley J. McNair, that an amtrac
battalion be assigned to each Army and Marine division for beach assault, stating
that “the use of the amphibian tractor permits a wider selection of landing places and
more freedom of maneuver for the attacker.” He followed up two weeks later with a
similar letter to Admiral Ernest King, commander in chief, U.S. Fleet, stating that
7 Bailey, Alligators, Bualoes and Bushmasters, 43.
8 Landing Operations Doctrine, FTP-167, change 1 (Washington, DC: Oce of Naval Operations, Division
of Fleet Training, U.S. Navy, 1942).
9 Holland M. Smith and Percy Finch, Coral and Brass (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949), 83–85.
Nash
94
“these machines . . . will be of inestimable value for direct ship-to-shore movement of
supplies and transportation of tactical units ashore through hydrography or topog-
raphy which will not permit the use of conventional boats or motor transport.”10 But
with initial production proceeding slowly (only 72 were produced in 1941), Smith’s
amphibious dreams would have to wait until the nation’s industrial capacity geared
up to full production.11 Unfortunately, that would not happen until the attack on
Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 awoke the United States from its long slumber.
10 MajGen Holland M. Smith, Letters, 13 and 31 March 1942, in Holland M. Smith: A Register of His
Papers in the Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections, Box 1, Series 1.1, Folder 3, Marine Corps
Archives and Special Collections Branch Library of the Marine Corps Gray Research Center uantico,
VA, 7.
11 U.S. Civilian Production Administration, Ocial Munitions Production of the United Sates by Months,
July 1, 1940–August 31, 1945 (Washington, DC: War Department Production Board, 1947), 102.
FIGURE
LtGen Holland M. Smith (right) pictured in Saipan with Adm Raymond A. Spruance (le), ca. 1944.
Smith was the staunchest advocate of Marine Corps amphibious warfare doctrine
and euipment in the prewar era.
Source: ocial U.S. Navy photo NH80-G-287225
Amphibious Juernaut
95
Smith did not idly stand by and complain however. Due to his insistence and
similar urging from other like-minded Marines, change 2 to Landing Operations Doc-
trine was published on 1 August 1942. is doctrinal change, which appeared the same
month that the invasion of Guadalcanal took place, provided more detailed guidance
concerning the possible employment of LVTs. It stated:
Landing vehicles, track, will be useful and should be available for the following
employment:
a. Crossing water too shoal for regular landing boats.
b. Crossing coral reefs.
c. Negotiating obsacles both under water and on land.
d. Crossing swampy or marshy areas.
e. Movement of personnel, equipmen, and supplies from transports to loca-
tions inland without unloading at the beach.
. In lieu of tractors and trailers in the early phases of an operation before
motor transport has been landed.12
ese signicant additions to landing operations doctrine, particularly the sub-
paragraph pertaining to the “movement of personnel, euipment, and supplies from
transports to locations inland without unloading at the beach,” opened the door for
Marines, such as Major General Smith, to consider the employment of LVTs in an
amphibious assault role. However, the LVT-1 in use at the time was poorly suited for
this purpose, as it was considered too fragile and unreliable to entrust the lives of Ma-
rines let alone to serve as an assault platform. ough some Marines, such as Smith,
sensed the vehicle’s potential, little testing or experimentation was carried out; the
few vehicles then available were used primarily for training and familiarization.13
For the invasion of Guadalcanal and Tulagi islands on 7 August 1942, 13 old troop
transports, 6 cargo ships, and 4 small high-speed transports would carry 19,000 troops
of the 1st Marine Division to their objectives.14 Landing Cra, Vehicle, Personnel
(LCVPs or Hiins Boats for inventor Andrew Hiins) were used to bring the as-
sault troops ashore, a long and laborious process that usually took up to four hours
to complete before the initial assault wave was formed up to begin the landing, thus
spoiling the element of surprise. is process meant that troopships had to lower each
LCVP into the water using shipboard booms, because older ships lacked the new Wel-
in davits, which could carry and launch up to three landing cra each.15
Launching was then followed by the assault troops having to climb aboard the
12 Landing Operations Doctrine, change 2 (Washington, DC: Oce of Naval Operations, Division of Fleet
Training, U.S. Navy, 1942), 61, sect. 401.
13 Landing Operations Doctrine, change 2, sect. 401, para. 3(e), 61.
14 Maj John L. Zimmerman, USMCR, e Guadalcanal Campaign (Washington, DC: Historical Division,
Headuarters Marine Corps, 1949), 24.
15 Mike Whaley, “e Hiins Boat,” Stanford University Department of Engineering, accessed 28 Sep-
tember 2023.
Nash
96
36-foot cra bobbing alongside via the tried-and-true method of cargo nets laid along
the side of the troopships. Aer sailing in a circular pattern until all boats were
loaded, the LCVPs would then form up into assault echelons that would then run in
to shore, a process that could take as long as an hour, even with their top speed of 12
knots. Once ashore, the troops would immediately disembark and begin their assault,
while the LCVP’s coxswain would back the cra o of the beach and return to the
troopship for another load of troops or supplies. ough it signied a tremendous
step forward for the Marine Corps’ amphibious assault capability, the LVCP’s use was
limited to the water’s edge.16
While a number of LVT-1s assigned to the 1st Amphibian Tractor Battalion par-
ticipated in the landing at Guadalcanal, they were used primarily for resupply and
other mundane missions, and not to carry the assault wave of troops ashore.17 Heavy
and ungainly when aboard ship, the LVTs still had to be hoisted over the side of cargo
ships using shipboard material handling euipment. ough LCVPs and LVT-1s were
new and particularly useful additions to the amphibious force, practically everything
else about the landing operation at Guadalcanal from the standpoint of the ship-
ping and euipment involved was carried out in virtually the same fashion as it had
been 44 years earlier during the landings at Guantánamo Bay during the Spanish-
American War in 1898. Fortunately, the landing beach at Guadalcanal was unde-
fended, with the Japanese garrison eeing into the jungle during the initial naval
bombardment. roughout the rest of the campaign, the 1st Marine Division’s LVT-1
battalion provided yeoman service in a variety of logistics-related roles, from carrying
supplies from the beachhead to forwards units, serving as foundations for a mobile
pontoon bridge, and for the evacuation of wounded troops from the jungle. Roe-
bling’s amphibious tractor had indeed lived up to its optimistic expectations.18
e 1st Marine Division’s aer action report for the Guadalcanal campaign,
completed on 19 January 1943, several months aer the initial landings, was not as
sanguine about the nonlogistic employment of the LVT in amphibious assault role,
despite General Smith’s belief. e 1st Marine Division’s aer-action report stated
uneuivocally that LVTs should be used strictly for their intended logistics purpose.19
According to the report’s author, “In the past, the uses of this distinctive vehicle have
been misunderstood in many uarters. e vehicle is denitely a supply unit. . . .
Indiscreet publicity and an inecient investigation of its potentialities have handi-
16 e tactics, techniues, and procedures for conducting an amphibious assault during that period of the
war is described in detail in Gordon L. Rottman, U.S. World War II Amphibious Tactics: Army and Marine
Corps, Pacific eater (New York: Osprey, 2004), 49–53.
17 Zimmerman, e Guadalcanal Campaign, 84.
18 Bailey, Alligators, Bualoes, and Bushmasters, 51, 53; and Victor J. Croizat, Across the Reef: e Amphibious
Tracked Vehicle at War (uantico, VA: Marine Corps Association, 1989), 46–47
19 Guadalcanal Operation aer action report, “Employment of the Amphibian Tractor Battalion in the
Solomons,” 19 January 1943, para. 1, U.S. Marine Corps First Division, “Final Report on Guadalcanal
Operation,” vol. 5 (Norfolk, VA: Library, Armed Forces Sta College), 102, hereaer Guadalcanal aer
action report.
Amphibious Juernaut
97
capped its use.”20 However, the report concluded by stating that “it might be assumed
that employed judiciously, the amphibian tractor has a denite and valuable place in
the present scheme of war, particularly so in tropical areas.”21 e evaluation of the
amtrac would be markedly dierent 10 months later aer the completion of Opera-
tion Galvanic (November 1943), the invasion of the Gilbert Islands that culminated
in the amphibious assault at Tarawa.
e route to Tarawa did not follow a straight line, however, especially with the
use of the LST in an amphibious assault role. is ship, which originated as a British-
inspired design in 1941, featured a at bottom, oodable compartments, and large
bow clamshell doors that would enable it to beach on the objective aer ballasting
20 Guadalcanal aer action report.
21 Guadalcanal aer action report, para. 8.
FIGURE
e old way of unloading. Prior to the introduction of the LST as an amphibious warfare
platform, LVTs were carried as deck cargo or in the lower holds of attack cargo ships and lowered
over the side using the ship’s booms. is method was slow and laborious, leading to the
Marine Corps and Navy’s uest for a better method.
Source: ocial U.S. Marine Corps photo, Archives Branch, History Division
Nash
98
down and disgorge its cargo directly onto the shore over a retractable ramp, thus
eliminating the immediate need for piers and loading docks. Intended to carry out
this task aer a landing beach had been taken, the potential for other uses of the LST
was readily apparent. Aer the Navy’s Bureau of Ships modied the British design
in early 1942 for American shipyards, the keel of the rst LST was laid that summer
in the United States, with the rst production model being launched in September.
ough the rst dozen LSTs were given to Britain under the provisions of the Lend-
Lease Act (1941), the Navy accepted its rst ship, the USS LST-383, on 28 October
1942.22
Exhaustive testing uickly followed. During December 1942, a series of tests,
codenamed “Goldrush,” were carried out by the Amphibious Force, U.S. Atlantic
Fleet, at the Norfolk, Virginia, Navy base in conjunction with the Army, which pro-
vided troops, euipment, and materials to be loaded on the newly commissioned LST-
387. e purpose was to determine how much cargo an LST could carry, how best to
approach a shore for beaching the ship, how to discharge cargo, how best to prepare
the beach to receive the ship, and other related tasks. Judged a success, the results of
the tests were widely disseminated to all of the Services, including the Marine Corps,
which still had forces engaged in combat in Guadalcanal, but was planning follow-on
amphibious operations in the northern Solomons.23 At that time, the possibility of
combining LSTs with LVTs was not yet appreciated, and the increasing demand for
these ships ensured that they would be pressed into service immediately aer be-
ing commissioned for their intended purpose of delivering tanks, other vehicles, and
euipment to the various invasion beaches for the campaigns then being contemplat-
ed, such as New Georgia in the southwest Pacic (June 1943), Sicily (July 1943), and
Salerno in southern Italy (September 1943).24
So, the uestion arises, what were the origins and who were the originators of the
idea of using LSTs as an assault platform for launching LVTs? None of the contem-
porary or postwar accounts describe how this pairing of two such seemingly noncom-
plementary conveyances came about; it seems to have been accepted as a matter of
course or as something so obvious that it bears no further comment or mention in the
22 Brandon C. Montanye, “Analysis of the Landing Ship Tank (LST) and Its Inuence on Amphibious
Warfare During World War Two” (thesis, U.S. Army Command and General Sta College, 2013), 24, 27.
Launched and acceptance are two dierent dates. Launched means when it departs the dry dock where it
was built, with a period of tting out that takes several weeks then follows. A ship is not accepted until
it is fully ready to sail with crew. In this particular instance, the acceptance date is more important than
the launch date, which was September.
23 “Subject: Goldrush Project-Test Debarking of Type Euipment form Tank Landing Ship, 17 December
1942,” Op-30-B6-ISK, Ser. 0327750, Navy Department, Oce of the Chief of Naval Operations, Wash-
ington, DC.
24 VAdm George C. Dyer, e Amphibians Came to Conquer: e Story Admiral Richmond K. Turner, FMFRP
12-109-I (Washington, DC: Headuarters Marine Corps, 1991), 481; and Gen Holland M. Smith, “e
Development of Amphibious Tactics in the U.S. Navy, Part IV,” Marine Corps Gazette 30, no. 9 (November
1946): 39.
Amphibious Juernaut
99
ocial records. However, aer study-
ing how new systems, techniues, or
tactics were introduced into the U.S.
armed forces during World War II,
one comes away with the overall im-
pression that much study, testing, and
analyses were conducted before any
such novel items or ways of ghting
were introduced to the troops, air
wings, or eets operating in the var-
ious theaters of war.
For example, when the Army’s
amphibious 2.5-ton truck, the duplex-
drive DUKW (nicknamed the “Duck”)
was introduced by the General Motors
Corporation in late 1942, it was sub-
jected to exhaustive testing and evalua-
tion on land and sea in December 1942
by both the Navy and Army at their
test facility in Norfolk. Accepted by
the euipment evaluation board, it
uickly became the Army’s preferred
ship-to-shore logistics vehicle, seen as
more versatile, reliable, and eective
than the LVT. e DUKW, however,
was a wheeled vehicle and, as such, not
suited for traversing so landing sur-
faces, such as a sandy beach. Its lack of
armor ensured that it would never be used to carry out amphibious assaults.
Despite a lack of evidence concerning its origins, overwhelming circumstantial
evidence points toward the one person who would become the catalyst for bringing
the LST and LVT together, and that was Marine Corps colonel David R. Nimmer.
While serving as brigade and division G-3 until Smith was promoted to major
general and transferred to command the Amphibious Force, U.S. Atlantic Fleet,
in June 1941, Colonel Nimmer was in daily, even hourly contact with the mercurial
Smith, who mercilessly drove his brigade and then division through a series of in-
creasingly complex amphibious training exercises in the Caribbean. Nimmer would
have been present when amtracs were rst introduced in the 1st Marine Brigade in
25 Commander, Amphibious Force, “U.S. Atlantic Fleet: Tests of 2 1/2 Ton Amphibian Cargo Truck
(DUKW),” 11 December 1942, Archives Collections Branch, Naval History and Heritage Command,
Washington, DC.
FIGURE
BGen David R. Nimmer serves as the senior Marine
Corps planner as a colonel with Joint planning sta
for the Joint Chiefs of Sta in Washington, DC, ca.
1943. e Battle of Guadalcanal veteran was uick
to see the potential of the LVT as an amphibious
assault vehicle and insisted that its inclusion in the
invasion of the Marshall Islands plan was clearly
spelled out as a reuirement in the wake of the
Trident Conference, May 1943.
Source: ocial U.S. Marine Corps photo #113182
Nash
100
1940 and would have been there whenever Smith spoke passionately about his ideas
on amphibious warfare to his sta as well as with Navy ocers involved in the land-
ing exercises; it would have been nearly impossible for an ocer as intelligent and
experienced as Nimmer to not have been impressed with Smith’s ideas on how the
Marine Corps should be prepared to ght the impending war.26
In the spring of 1942, much to his disappointment, Nimmer was transferred out
of the 1st Marine Division, which was sent to ght in the South Pacic, and was in-
stead given command of the Marine barracks at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.27 Here, he
was tasked with the establishment and organization of the new 9th Defense Battalion
beginning on 1 October 1942 and preparing it for overseas deployment. In November
1942, his battalion was nally transferred to Guadalcanal, where it joined his old 1st
Marine Division, which was still involved in heavy ghting against Japanese defend-
ers. During the time he commanded the battalion until his departure in April 1943,
Nimmer gained an enormous amount of combat experience as well as an appreciation
of the capabilities of the LVT-1, which was the workhorse of the Marines’ logistics
eort ashore. Nimmer would also have learned rst-hand how vulnerable amphibious
forces are once ashore and deprived of the necessary naval support reuired to keep
and expand the beachhead. ough he and the 9th Defense Battalion did not partici-
pate in the initial landings the previous August, Nimmer would still have acuired a
healthy appreciation of the conditions existing there and what was reuired to wage
amphibious warfare in the Pacic.28
Much to his surprise, Colonel Nimmer was relieved of command of the 9th De-
fense Battalion on 17 April 1943, and he was transferred from Guadalcanal to Marine
Corps Headuarters in Washington, DC, where he was assigned to the Joint Chiefs of
Sta’s Joint Planning Sta. Here, he would serve in the newly constructed Pentagon
building for a year and a half as the senior ocer of the planning group charged with
the responsibility for craing war plans for the Pacic theater of operations. Based on
his own observation, he uickly ascertained that he had more experience with actual
landing operations than anyone else in his group, including his Navy colleagues, and
had the formal professional military education to back it up.
One of the rst tasks Nimmer faced with his fellow planners was the need to
esh out the details of the general plan for waging the war against Japan. e central
element of this plan, intended to begin by the end of 1943, was a two-pronged oen-
sive designed to bring the war to the enemy’s home islands via the Southwest Pacic,
which would be led by General Douglas MacArthur, and via the Central Pacic, led
by Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. Both of these oensive prongs would reuire that a
26 MajGen David R. Nimmer Oral History, vol. 3 (Washington, DC: History and Museums Division, Head-
uarters Marine Corps, 1970), 1–3, hereaer Nimmer Oral History.
27 e brigade was upgraded to a division and on 1 February 1941; so by the time Nimmer was shipped to
Guantánamo, it had been ocially a division for a year.
28 Nimmer Oral History, 14–15.
29 Nimmer Oral History, 107.
Amphibious Juernaut
101
number of amphibious operations be conducted in close partnership by the Army,
Army Air Forces, Navy, and Marine Corps. e beaches to be seized by MacArthur’s
forces included those in the Solomons Islands, New Guinea, and the Philippines.
ese beaches were generally of the sandy variety, with no surrounding coral reefs
to contend with. ough many of them faced the jungle a few yards o the landing
site, conventional landing cra, including LSTs and LCVPs, could land with little
diculty.
e landing beaches in the Central Pacic, which included the Gilbert, Marshall,
Caroline, Mariana, and Bonin Islands, were altogether dierent. Many of these is-
lands were volcanic in origin and others were little more than coral atolls, surrounded
by reefs that would allow most conventional landing cra to pass through only at
high tide. ough some of these islands had dredged shipping channels that allowed
the approach of large vessels without grounding, many did not, a fact that posed par-
ticular problems to anyone contemplating an amphibious assault.31
For example, there were doubts that the LCVP could pass over a coral reef at
low tide; although it had a dra (clearance) of three feet, this was thought to be in-
sucient should the reef be exposed at low tide, forming an unsurpassable obstacle
that would reuire the embarked assault troops to be landed at the reef and then
wading through several hundred yards of surf before they reached the shore. Should
the enemy survive the preinvasion bombardment, such troops would be exposed to a
withering re all the way to the beach. ere was a general appreciation by the Joint
Sta Planners, particularly anyone with amphibious warfare experience, that some-
thing besides the LCVP was needed if these islands were to be assaulted successfully.32
But what?
Fortunately, Colonel Nimmer remembered his experience using LVTs at Guadal-
canal as well as the exhortations of his former commander, Major General Holland
Smith, that LVTs could potentially be used as an amphibious assault vehicle that was
capable of crossing a coral reef. Additionally, the Landing Operations Doctrine with
change 2, which had been distributed the previous August, recommended their pos-
sible use in such cases. But there was one problem: no one actually knew whether
this could be done, since it had never been tested under real conditions. In late April
1943, shortly aer Nimmer’s arrival and before the Joint Planning Sta began work
on the concept plan for the upcoming Central Pacic drive, he proposed through
Marine Corps command channels that tests be secretly conducted in the Pacic using
LVTs. Within days, a message transmitted through the oce of the Commandant
Lieutenant General omas Holcomb reached the desk of the commander of the I Ma-
rine Amphibious Corps, Major General Clayton B. Vogel, then commanding all Ma-
30 Nimmer Oral History, pt. 3, 143–44, 163–65.
31 Based on author’s study of numerous area maps, Goode’s World Atlas, U.S. CIA Country Studies, and
analysis of the area using a variety of open sources.
32 Bailey, Alligators, Bualoes, and Bushmasters, 82–83.
Nash
102
rine Corps units in the South Pacic.33
On 24 April 1943, within days of
Nimmer’s reuest, Lieutenant Colonel
Victor H. Krulak, commander of the
Marine 2d Parachute Battalion who
had previous experience operating
LVTs while assigned to the 1st Marine
Division in 1941, was ordered by Vogel
to conduct the test using four LVT-1s.
During the next several days, Krulak
and his handpicked team of LVT crew
put the vehicles through the exhaus-
tive tests, driving them over coral reefs
ringing the island of New Caledonia
in a variety of conditions and cong-
urations. Both the vehicles and opera-
tors were beat up, but they had proved
that the LVT could be used to cross
coral reefs at high and low tides while
loaded with troops or euipment.34
Classied as top secret, the test
results were back in the hands of Gen-
eral Holcomb by 5 May 1943. Nimmer,
as Holcomb’s representative on the
Joint Planning Sta, would have re-
ceived the same message that day or
shortly thereaer.35 A month later, the
results were also shared with the com-
manding generals of Camp Pendleton,
California; Camp Lejeune, North Car-
olina; the 4th Marine Division; Ma-
rine Corps Schools in uantico; and
the Amphibious Tractor Detachment
33 I Marine Amphibious Corps was renamed III Amphibious Corps on 15 April 1944. Nimmer Oral His-
tory, vol. 2, 116; and “Report for Commander, First Amphibious Corps: Tests of Amphibian Tractor
under Surf and Coral Conditions,” 3 May 1943, Historical Amphibious File (HAF) 750, Archives Branch,
Marine Corps History Division, uantico, VA, 2.
34 “Report for Commander, First Amphibious Corps: Tests of Amphibian Tractor under Surf and Coral
Conditions,” 3 May 1943, 5–10.
35 LtCol Victor H. Krulak, I Amphibious Corps Report, “Test of Amphibian Tractor under Surf and
Coral Conditions,” 9 June 1943, Historical Amphibious File, Box 42, HAF 750, History Division, Marine
Corps University, uantico, VA.
FIGURE
Capt Cliord G. Richardson, while assigned
to the administrative command, Amphibious
Forces, U.S. Atlantic Fleet in Norfolk. Richardson
supervised a series of experiments (Operation
Goldrush) with the newly introduced LST between
December 1942 and April 1943 that included
launching DUKWs from LSTs while underway.
Richardson, who had been one of the original au-
thors of the Tenative Landing Manual while assigned
as an amphibious warfare instructor at Marine
Corps Schools in uantico, was a visionary and
a persistent advocate of the use of the LST and
LVT as an amphibious assault combination
to carry out amphibious assaults
more eectively in the Pacic.
Source: ocial U.S. Navy photo #NH 84435
Amphibious Juernaut
103
in Dunedin, Florida. For some unknown reason (possibly on account of security), the
results were not shared with the Marine forces assigned to the Pacic, who would be
the ones carrying out the upcoming amphibious assaults. Armed with the results of
Krulak’s test, Nimmer was now ready to move on to the second part of his investiga-
tion: What was the best kind of ship to deliver LVTs to the objective? e time-tested
method of lowering them from cargo ships into the sea using ship’s gear was too slow
and cumbersome. ere had to be a better way.
While the Marine Corps was continuing to broaden its base of knowledge about
LVTs, the Navy had not stood idly by either, especially regarding their new euip-
ment, the LST. Encouraged by the result of their Goldrush project tests the previous
December, Admiral Alan G. Kirk, the commander of the administrative command,
Amphibious Forces, Atlantic Fleet, directed that the LST undergo additional tests
as specied in an order dated 25 January 1943.36 Secure in the knowledge that the
LST could perform the minimum expected tasks (i.e., beaching onto a shore and dis-
charging cargo), the next series of tests, which were to run until 17 March, would be
analyzed by another special investigative board convened on 20 May “for the purpose
of investigating the capabilities of landing cra including experimental loading of
troops, vehicles and supplies with special emphasis on the landing on hostile shores
of well-balanced combat teams.”37
ese experiments involved determining whether LSTs could carry a complete
unit with all its euipment and how many LSTs would be reuired to transport and
land a tank battalion, an antiaircra battalion, and an armored infantry battalion, as
well as other euipment. e tests would involve conducting amphibious operations
under simulated combat conditions in the Solomon Islands, Maryland in the Chesa-
peake Bay, and at Little Creek, Virginia. Here, the LSTs would beach, discharge their
tanks and other vehicles along with their crews, followed by a eld exercise ashore
before reembarking their vehicles, troops, and cargo on the same beach. Another task,
added almost as an aerthought, was to determine whether a U.S. Army DUKW am-
phibious truck could be launched through the bow doors of an LST while underway
at sea.
e investigative board, chaired by Navy captain Cliord G. Richardson, in-
volved 10 LSTs earmarked for Operation Husky, the Allied amphibious operation de-
signed to seize Sicily in July 1943. ese brand-new ships were temporarily docked at
the Norfolk naval base, where they were already being loaded with U.S. Army tanks,
vehicles, and other cargo of the 45th Infantry Division earmarked to join the assault
forces for Operation Husky. Richardson, who had helped write the Marine Corps’
tentative landing manual in 1934 and who had taught Navy-Marine Corps coopera-
36 Amphibious Force, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, Administrative Command, “Board to Investigate Loading of
Landing Cra,” 25 January 1943, Order FE25/A17-5, Serial 314, Naval Operating Base, Norfolk, VA.
37 Amphibious Force, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, Administrative Command, “Capabilities of Landing Cra
Type LST,” 12 June 1943, Naval Operating Base, Norfolk, Reference Branch: Historical Amphibious File,
Box 2, HAF 48, Marine Corps History Division, 1.
Nash
104
tion for two years at the Marine Corps’ sta college in uantico until 1939, drove the
ships and their crews relentlessly from 12 February to 17 March 1943.38
Multiple landings and extractions by LSTs, the even newer Landing Cra, Tank
(LCT), and other small cra were conducted at the Solomon Islands and Little Creek
during those four weeks. Navy and Army crews gained an enormous amount of experi-
ence in operating these vessels, lessons that Richardson shared with the rest of the so-
called “Gator Fleet,” troops, and landing cra comprising the new amphibious force.
e rst recorded launch of a DUKW from an LST took place on 10 March, when
LST-400 launched nine of the Army’s amphibious trucks near Little Creek in less than
20 minutes. When the tests were completed, Richardson provided the results of the
evaluation board on 25 May 1943, to Admiral Kirk, who promptly forwarded the re-
38 “Capabilities of Landing Cra Type LST,” 12 June 1943, Historical Amphibious File, Box 2, HAF 48,
Reference Branch, Marine Corps History Division, 1–2.
FIGURE
An LST launching a duplex-drive DUKW amphibious 2.5-ton truck at Guam.
Capt Cliord Richardson tested the ability of the LST to launch these vehicles while at sea,
giving rise to the proposal to use it to launch LVTs as well.
Source: ocial U.S. Marine Corps photo #87833
Amphibious Juernaut
105
port to a number of senior headuar-
ters sta, including Admiral King and
his Navy sta, the Joint Chie’s Joint
Planning Sta, and the Commandant.
A copy of this report would have land-
ed on the desk of Colonel Nimmer as
a matter of course.39
While much of the contents of
the report might have only conrmed
what Nimmer had already suspected,
based on his previous experience and
reading of the Operation Goldrush
project report, one conclusion near
the end that would have caught his
eye, which stated in paragraph (i) that
“the DUKW can be successfully load-
ed and unloaded from an LST while at
sea” through its bow doors and that up
to eighteen of the amphibious trucks
could be carried aboard an LST at
one time, with room le for addition-
al euipment. To allow a DUKW to
enter the water, the LST rst had to
open its bow doors and lower its ramp
at 50 degrees below the horizontal; the
DUKW would then slowly drive into
the sea, having sucient buoyancy to
keep from sinking, and then engage its
underwater propulsion system. For re-
trieval, the DUKW was at a disadvantage, in that it could not be turned around on
the tank deck of the LST, which lacked a turntable platform and would have to be
retrieved by its stern using ship’s gear (i.e., its towing winch).40
e signicance of this paragraph cannot be overemphasized. Richardson’s tests
proved beyond a doubt that an amphibious vehicle with roughly the same dimensions
39 “Capabilities of Landing Cra Type LST,” 12 June 1943.
40 “Capabilities of Landing Cra Type LST,” 12 June 1943, 5. Emphasis by author.
FIGURE
RAdm Charles M. Cooke, Adm King’s
principal planning ocer. Cooke, considered a
“vociferous advocate of expanded operations in the
Pacic,” was not a member of the Joint
Chie’s Planning Sta, but served unocially as
a sounding board for their ideas and concerns.
According to Nimmer, Adm Cooke worked
behind the scenes to help the Marine Corps
acuire additional LVTs and other cra needed
for Operation Galvanic, the amphibious assault
at Tarawa in November 1943.
Source: ocial U.S. Navy photo #NH 102845
Nash
106
as an LVT could be launched from the bow of an LST while it was underway.41 To
understand the implications of this discovery, a simple calculation revealed that the
LVT-1 in use at that time could carry up to 20 fully euipped Marines and follow-on
models of LVTs could carry even more than that. us, with the ability to carry up
to 18 LVTs (although in practice 16 or 17 were usually carried), a single LST had the
potential of launching up to 360 assault troops in one load, roughly one-half of an
infantry battalion. Just as signicantly, the LVT could continue moving inland, using
its tracks like a tank to allow the assault troops to push even deeper into the enemy’s
defenses, thus expanding the beachhead even farther.
On 12 June 1943, the director, Division of Plans and Policies at Headuarters
Marine Corps, Major General Keller E. Rockey, penned a memorandum on behalf of
the Commandant to the commanding general, I Marine Amphibious Corps (I MAC),
Major General Vogel (who was replaced in July 1943 by Lieutenant General Alexander
A. Vandegri) that simply stated that the results of Richardson’s LST evaluation were
furnished to him “for information.” No other guidance was provided. Also on the
distribution list for Rockey’s memorandum were the commanders of the 1st, 2d, 3d,
and 4th Marine Divisions, as well as the commander of Amphibious Forces, Pacic
Fleet, Major General Holland Smith. But without an adeuate understanding of the
test’s signicance, and without any LSTs available in the Pacic for experimentation,
as well as an overall shortage of LVTs (though the new more capable LVT-2s were
coming o the assembly line), the report of Richardson’s investigative board made
hardly a ripple in the Fleet Marine Force being marshaled in the Pacic at that time.
As for Captain Richardson, who had overseen the tests, aer more than a year of
service in the Atlantic Fleet’s Amphibious Command, he nally was able to secure an
assignment to the Pacic, where he commanded Transport Division 7, taking part in
several amphibious operations, including the landings at Saipan, Tinian, and Leyte.42
Strangely, no additional experimentation of the LST with the LVT by the Atlan-
tic Fleet’s Amphibious Force seems to have occurred aer this test. Despite the distri-
bution of the test’s results to those commands that would have proted the most, no
further tests would be conducted until just prior to their combat debut in November
1943, when the Pacic Fleet expressed interest. Perhaps this was due to the transfer of
41 “Joint Planning Sta (JPS) Document 205/1,” 17 June 1943, Joint Sta Planners Operations against the
Marshall Islands, Report by the Joint War Plans Committee, Enclosure A (Conclusion and Recommen-
dations) and Appendix E, para. 2. Amphibious Tractors LVT(2), National Archives and Records Admin-
istration (NARA), College Park, MD, 11, 34–35. e dimensions of the DUKW were as follows (length
x height x width, in feet): 31 x 8 x 7, versus that of an LVT-1, which was 21’6” x 8’1” x 9’10.” e DUKW
weighed 13,600 pounds empty, while the LVT-1 tipped the scales at 17,300 pounds. us, both vehicles
were roughly similar in size and weight, inviting comparisons in their capabilities as amphibious landing
cra. Norman Friedman, U.S. Amphibious Ships and Cra: An Illustrated Design History (Annapolis, MD:
Naval Institute Press, 2002), 218.
42 Memorandum, Headuarters Marine Corps, Directorate of Plans and Policies, “Results of Evaluation
of Suitability of Landing Ship, Tank (LST),” 12 June 1943, Historical Amphibious File, Box 2, HAF 48,
“Capabilities of Landing Cra, Type LST, Report of,” Reference Branch, Marine Corps History Division.
Amphibious Juernaut
107
nearly all the leading personnel involved in the tests to ll combat leadership assign-
ments during the next several months.
Additionally, the commencement of a series of amphibious operations in the
Mediterranean (the landings at Sicily and Salerno) and in the Pacic (the landings at
New Georgia and Bougainville) would have attracted everyone’s immediate attention
throughout the summer and early autumn of 1943. Nearly all available LSTs and LVTs
also seem to have been put into service in support of these operations, leaving few
available for noncombat use, such as testing or experimentation. Indeed, the record
reveals that little, if any, additional testing and experimentation occurred with these
two landing platforms aer May 1943, with most of the attention thereaer being
devoted to the introduction and initial testing of even newer platforms, such as the
Landing Ship, Dock (LSD), the LVT(A)-1 “Amtank” (an LVT-2 tted with a turret
sporting a 37mm antitank gun), and the LVT-4.43
Back in the United States, if the potential of the LSTLVT combination could
be proven, it would revolutionize how amphibious assaults were conducted. Colonel
Nimmer considered the possibilities and thought about where this newly discovered
capability might t into the upcoming Central Pacic campaign, then in the initial
planning stages. is, and other campaigns, would be subject of the Trident Confer-
ence that would be conducted in Washington, DC, during 12–25 May 1943. is event,
attended by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill,
and the entire combined Allied chiefs of sta, would plot the war’s future course,
including strate for the Pacic theater of operations. Nimmer and the rest of the
Pacic theater planning team would attend and brief the senior leaders to lay out the
fundamentals of what such a Pacic strate would entail.44
One of the results of the Trident Conference was that the Joint Sta Planners
were directed by the Joint War Planning Committee to estimate the forces reuired
for an invasion of the Marshall Islands, the rst major objective to be taken as part
of the projected Central Pacic oensive, and to recommend possible dates. By 23
May 1943, the Joint Sta Planners had delivered a preliminary report suesting that
the invasion of the Marshall Islands should be carried out in three phases, starting
with the Gilbert Islands, to eliminate the Japanese airelds there to protect the ank
of the Marshall invasion force, which might be threatened by their opponent’s still-
considerable air and seapower.45
e Joint War Planning Committee further recommended that the Central Pacif-
ic operation needed to be initiated no later than the end of October 1943 to coincide
with planned Burma operations to force the Japanese to disperse their troops. In its
43 Joint Chiefs of Sta Memorandum JCS 311, “Mobility and Utilization of Amphibious Assault Cra,
Report by Joint War Plans Committee,” 15 May 1943, NARA, 1–2, 3–5.
44 Combined Chiefs of Sta (CCS) Planning Memorandum CCS 239/1, “Operations in the Pacic and
Far East in 1943–44,” TRIDENT Conference, 23 May 1943, NARA.
45 Combined Chiefs of Sta (CCS) Planning Memorandum CCS 239/1, “Operations in the Pacic and
Far East in 1943–44,” 130–31.
Nash
108
conclusion, the Trident Conference
recommended that “operations again
enemy positions in the Marshalls
[should] consist of amphibious opera-
tions initially supported by carrier air-
cra. e success of the operation will
be greatly enhanced by the use of am-
phibious tractors which are capable of
crossing coral reefs.”46 Undoubtedly,
Nimmer had most likely draed this
statement or dictated it to one of his
subordinates, as it very closely aligned
with previous language he had used,
his recent experience in the Southwest
Pacic and his prior service as Major
General Holland Smith’s operations
ocer two years before.
Since the campaign against the
Japanese-held Marshall Islands would
be the rst attempt in U.S. military
history to assault fortied atolls, the
Joint Sta Planners believed that
“battle-tested shock troops with am-
phibious training,” totaling one corps
of two divisions would be needed for
the campaign’s rst phase.47 e Joint
Planning Sta worked diligently for
the next month on a detailed concept
of operations, to include designating how many divisions, types of ships, and number
of air wings would be needed to carry it out. Nimmer and the rest of his team on the
Joint Planning Sta were encouraged in their endeavors by Rear Admiral Charles M.
Cooke, Admiral King’s principal planning ocer at the Navy Department. Cooke,
considered a “vociferous advocate of expanded operations in the Pacic,” was not a
member of the planning sta, but served unocially as a sounding board for their
ideas and concerns.48 According to Nimmer, Admiral Cooke even helped the Marine
46 Combined Chiefs of Sta (CCS) Planning Memorandum CCS 239/1, “Operations in the Pacic and
Far East in 1943–44,” 139.
47 “Operations against the Marshall Islands, 17 June 1943,” Joint Planning Sta Report Nos. 205/1,
NARA, 15.
48 David Rigby, Allied Master Strategists: e Combined Chiefs of Sa in World War II (Annapolis, MD: Naval
Institute Press, 2012), chap. 2.
FIGURE
LtGen Victor H. Krulak.
While commander of the 2d Parachute Battalion,
Krulak carried out a series of experiments
during April 1943 in New Caledonia with the
LVT-1 to determine its ability to cross barrier reefs
with a full load of troops. e results were submit-
ted to Commandant LtGen omas Holcomb, who
ensured that they were uickly passed to
Col Nimmer at the Joint Chiefs of Sta’s
Joint Planning Sta.
Source: ocial U.S. Marine Corps photo
Amphibious Juernaut
109
Corps acuire additional LVTs and other cra needed for the upcoming oensive.49
Conseuently, on 17 and 18 June 1943, Nimmer and the rest of his team issued
their Joint Planning Sta Report numbers 205/1 and 205/2 titled “Operations against
the Marshall Islands,” that were then issued to Admiral Nimitz, commander in chief
of the Pacic Fleet and Pacic Ocean areas, who would be responsible for the con-
duct of the campaign. One of the Joint Planning Sta’s recommendations was that
the new LSTs be used to transport assault troops and LVTs to the objective. e plan-
ning committee, echoing the Trident Conference report, stated in its own planning
documents that the best assault cra for the invasion would be “amphibian” tractors
that, when launched from tank landing ships outside the range of shore batteries,
could “deploy and proceed shoreward without much danger of being stopped by the
fringing reefs so abundant in that part of the world.”50
Meanwhile, the combat debut of the LST in the Pacic took place on 30 June
1943, when several landed elements of the Army’s 43d Infantry Division at Rendova in
the northern Solomon Islands, one phase of the overarching New Georgia campaign.
Since Rendova had narrow sandy beaches and no outlying coral reef, LSTs or LVTs
were not involved in the initial stages of the landing, and the majority of the troops
were landed via LCVPs launched by conventional assault transports. e few LVT-1s
available were used primarily in their original logistical support role. Fortunately, the
landings were unopposed and the tiny Japanese garrison was uickly overwhelmed,
allowing the LSTs to land their cargo aer successfully beaching. One of the chal-
lenges the planners for the assault on the Gilbert Islands (Operation Galvanic, the
prelude to the Marshall Islands campaign), was that there were only 75 operational
LVTs on hand in the 2d Marine Division, which had been chosen to seize Betio Island
in the Tarawa atoll, the most important island in the Gilbert Islands. e Marine
planners, backed up by Major General Julian C. Smith, commander of the 2d Marine
Division, and the new commander of V Amphibious Corps, Major General Holland
Smith, insisted that at least 125 LVTs would be needed to land the rst three waves
of assault troops, approximately 2,500 troops. e remaining waves would land using
conventional landing cra.51
e great unknown about Betio and the coral reef encircling Tarawa were the
tides and whether LCVPs would have enough freeboard (distance from the waterline
to the upper deck) to cross when the assault waves attempted to land. e Marine
planners feared that there would not be enough clearance (at least three feet were
reuired) for the LCVPs, which would run aground and force the assault troops to
dismount and wade the rest of the way to the shore, where they would then have to
face the thoroughly alerted Japanese defenders. erefore, the Marines’ commanders
49 Nimmer Oral History, 116.
50 Nimmer Oral History, 11.
51 Smith’s Amphibious Corps, Pacic Fleet, was renamed on 25 August 1943 as V Amphibious Corps.
Adm Richmond K. Turner was dual hatted at the time as the commander, V Amphibious Force, under
which Smith’s command was subordinated. Dyer, e Amphibians Came to Conquer, 547–48.
Nash
110
believed that having enough LVTs on
hand was essential for the mission to
succeed. ere were 100 more of the
new LVT-2s awaiting shipment on the
West Coast, but it would take time to
move them to the staging area in the
South Pacic and issue 50 of them to
the 2d Amphibious Tractor Battalion,
while the Army’s 27th Infantry Divi-
sion would receive the rest for its Ma-
kin assault.52
Admiral Richmond K. Turner,
who would command Task Force 54,
the combined amphibious task force
for Operation Galvanic, did not want
LSTs to be included in his attack force
for Tarawa, according to General Hol-
land Smith’s autobiography, because
he believed their low 12-knot maxi-
mum speed would jeopardize his ship
formations, which generally cruised
at 18 knots or faster, and lose the el-
ement of surprise. He also stated that
he would not wait for the arrival of
more LVTs, since it would delay the
operation even more. As Turner later
related, “e capabilities of the LVT
were not widely known at the time Galvanic was being planned” and it might be a
mistake to depend too much on them for the attack’s success.53
Doedly, Holland Smith stood rm, telling Turner directly that “I’ve got to have
those amtracks. We’ll take a helluva licking without them. . . . No amtracks, no oper-
ation.”54 He got his way. Perhaps aided by the behind-the-scene machinations of Rear
Admiral Cooke in Washington (as claimed by Nimmer in his 1970 interview), Smith
arranged to have the 50 additional LVT-2s shipped from San Diego on 16 October
1943 via the USS Carter Hall (LSD 3), which dropped them o at the invasion staging
area at Tutuila Island, American Samoa. Aer a 14-day journey from California, they
were immediately delivered to the 2d Marine Division.55
52 Croizat, Across the Reef, 86–87.
53 Dyer, e Amphibians Came to Conquer, 656.
54 Holland M. Smith and Percy Finch, Coral and Brass (New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949), 120.
55 Deck Log, USS Carter Hall (LSD 3), 16 October 1943, World War II Diaries 1941–1945, Logbooks of U.S.
Navy Ships and Stations, RG 24, NARA; and Nimmer Oral History, 115.
FIGURE
Adm Richmond K. Turner, commander
of Task Force 54. Turner initially did not want
LSTs to be included in his attack force for the
Tarawa landing operation. e timely intervention
of Gen Holland Smith averted the disaster that
most certainly would have followed had the
invasion gone forward with only Hiins Boats,
most of which grounded on the island’s barrier reef.
Source: ocial U.S. Navy photo #NH 80-G-309643
Amphibious Juernaut
111
Aer the war, Turner disputed this account, stating that it was Admiral Nim-
itz who did not want LSTs carrying LVTs in the initial attack wave. Nimitz is also
recorded as stating in August, three months before the assault on Tarawa, that he
did not think that LVTs would be needed at all and that there would be sucient
freeboard for LCVPs to negotiate the reefs around Tarawa without having to prema-
turely disembark their assault troops.56 Furthermore, Nimitz did not trust the results
of the tests that Krulak had conducted the previous April, perhaps believing that the
Marines had possibly ried the test to demonstrate that the LVTs had the ability
to negotiate a coral reef. In addition, Turner speculated aer the war that the time
spent having to wait on the arrival of the slow LSTs carrying the additional 50 LVTs
might have been responsible for the torpedoing and loss of the escort carrier USS
Liscome Bay (CVE 56), though he oers no evidence for this except for a statement to
that eect in the U.S. Army’s ocial history of the Gilbert Islands campaign, that on
further examination reveals to be mere speculation on the Army’s part.57
But more importantly, Nimitz demanded that another series of tests be conduct-
ed with LVTs to prove to his personal satisfaction that they could successfully cross
a reef with a load of troops. According to the guidance laid down in the 30 August
1943 Joint Chiefs of Sta order for Operation Galvanic, the skeptical Nimitz’s con-
cerns were outlined almost as if he expected the LVT to fail. e order stated that “if
[the LVT] trial shows that claims made for these cra are justied, it is planned to
employ them in large numbers. Lacking these, it will be necessary to make the ship
to shore movement in cra carried by attack transports (i.e., LCVPs), supplemented
by additional landing cra.”58 at Nimitz could make such statements at that stage
of the war was more of a reection of the general lack of appreciation of what an
amphibious assault against a fortied Pacic atoll would actually involve. No one at
the time, including Nimitz, both Smiths, or Turner, knew what the true human and
material costs would be or what capabilities the LTV would bring to the ght, if any.
Conseuently, on 10 October 1943, Captain Fenlon A. Durand of the 2d Marine
Division was ordered to take a detachment of LVTs from Company C, 2d Amphibi-
ous Tractor Battalion, then awaiting action in New Zealand, to Fiji aboard the attack
transport USS Harris (APA 2) where he and his Marines would spend 13–17 October
practicing crossing reefs using their LVTs. Proving once again that this could be done
with minimum risk to the crew and cargo, the results of the test were provided to
commander in chief, Pacic Fleet. Apparently satised, Nimitz immediately green-
lighted their use for the invasion of the Gilbert Islands.59 Interestingly, the results of
Krulak’s previous test had apparently not been shared with the 2d Marine Division,
forcing Captain Durand to repeat the same tests and relearn the same lessons that
56 Dyer, e Amphibians Came to Conquer, 655–56.
57 Dyer, e Amphibians Came to Conquer, 679–80.
58 Joint Chiefs of Sta Order 451-12, “e Seizure of the Marshall Islands: Report by the Joint Sta Plan-
ners,” 30 August 1943, Enclosure B, NARA, 10.
59 Croizat, Across the Reef, 87.
Nash
112
Krulak had six months earlier. e favorable tests results were also widely disseminat-
ed within the 2d Marine Division, which would be carrying out the attack.
Now that everyone involved in the invasion planning, including senior command-
ers, were convinced to their satisfaction that LVTs could cross a coral reef, such as the
one encircling Tarawa with a load of troops, the last obstacle to combining with LSTs
had to be overcome and that was the uestion as to whether LSTs could launch LVTs
in the seaway. It already had been established the previous spring that LSTs could
launch DUKWs, which were similar in weight and dimensions to an LVT-1, so the
only task remaining was to carry it out using a real LVT. To be fair, the Navy’s Bureau
of Ships was also concerned that if launched improperly at sea, an LVT could cause
irreparable damage to the LST’s ramp, rendering the ship incapable of carrying out
its primary function, as had been discovered in a previous test involving the DUKW.60
60 Navy Department, Bureau of Ships message, “Record of Proceedings of Board to Investigate Loading
of Landing Cra,” 8 February 1943, Reference Library, Rare Book Room, Navy Historical and Heritage
Command, Washington, DC, 1.
FIGURE
e nal pairing: a U.S. Coastguard-crewed USS LST-831 preparing to launch Marine Corps
LVTs during the assault at Iwo Jima, February 1945. e LST normally carried up to 17 LVTs
and 425 Marines and would slow to a speed of 5 knots prior to launching.
Source: ocial U.S. Marine Corps photo #4703
Amphibious Juernaut
113
However, it was not unreasonable to assume that if a DUKW could successfully drive
o the ramp of an LST with a trained crew, then an LVT could do it as well.
But could it? Before committing to using his scarce LSTs in this capacity, Admi-
ral Richmond Turner wanted to know if launching and recovering LVTs from an LST
was feasible and whether an LVT could be raised and lowered using the LST’s eleva-
tor. us, the nal stage of the evolution took place on 14 October 1943, when USS
LST-486 conducted a secret one-day test at Camp Pendleton, with the new, slightly
heavier LVT-2 under the auspices of the Pacic Fleet’s Amphibious Training Com-
mand. e loading and unloading tests were conducted in the Delmar boat harbor
while anchored in nine fathoms of water.61 No LVTs were lost in the test and LST-486,
commanded by Lieutenant E. C. Shea, returned to its base at Port Hueneme, Califor-
nia, without incident.62
ough not uite as demonstrative as launching LVTs while underway, these lim-
ited tests proved that the LST could indeed launch the LVT while at sea. e results
of the tests were transmitted to the Pacic Fleet almost immediately, followed by
a spate of training exercises carried out by the Navy, Marine Corps, and Army in
the weeks leading up to the invasion of the Gilbert Islands. e procedure uickly
became a standard training subject within Training Command, Amphibious Force
Pacic. In fact, on 2 November 1943, the Training Command, located in San Diego,
ordered that ship-to-shore training for LSTs being prepared for service with V Am-
phibious Force in the Pacic include “training in loading and debarking LVTs over
the ramp in open seaways.”63
e rst recorded instance of Marine Corps LVTs being launched from an LST
while underway occurred on 5 November 1943 when USS LST-243, commanded by
Lieutenant F. H. Blaske, was used by Marines from Company A, 2d Amtrac Battalion,
to launch and recover LVTs in the harbor at Pago Pago, American Samoa. Captain
Ray D. Horner, the company commander, oversaw his men’s training on the loading
and unloading of LVT-2s from the bow of the LST both in the harbor and while at
sea until it was time to sail.64 When they rst arrived, they were met by a detach-
61 Deck Log, USS LST-486, 14 October 1943, World War II Diaries 1941–1945, Logbooks of U.S. Navy
Ships and Stations, RG 24, NARA; and Report of Commander, Task Force 13 (Commander Amphibious
Training Command, Pacic Fleet), 14 October 1943, Research Library, Navy Historical and Heritage
Command, 6.
62 It is possible that others had already conducted this type of test using LVTs and LSTs, though as of this
writing, no ocial or unocial evidence has surfaced yet that could conrm this. Incidentally, MajGen
Holland Smith by this time was commanding V Amphibious Corps, whose headuarters was colocated
with that of Adm Turner at the Navy Yard in Pearl Harbor, HI; thus, Smith, a prominent LVT advocate,
would have had ample opportunity to plead his case and convince Turner to order the tests be carried
out at Camp Pendleton with LST-486 before Operation Galvanic, but this remains speculation.
63 “Department History of Training Command, Amphibious Forces, Pacic Fleet,” in Guide to United
Sates Naval Administrative Histories of World War II, comp. William C. Heimdahl and Edward J. Marolda
(Washington, DC: Naval History Division, Department of the Navy, 1976), 25.
64 Deck Log, USS LST-243, 5–7 November 1943, World War II Diaries 1941–1945, Logbooks of U.S. Navy
Ships and Stations, RG 24, NARA.
Nash
114
ment from the 1st Amphibian Tractor Battalion, who had been combined with a few
Marines from the 2d Battalion to form a new amtrac company for the 2d Battalion,
giving it a total of three. It was here in American Samoa where these same 50 LVT-2s
were tted with improvised armor from boiler plate and machine guns to prepare
them for the upcoming assault, since this model of the LVT-2 lacked any armor of its
own.65
As the day of the invasion drew near, Marines, sailors, and soldiers drilled on the
new procedures as much as possible until the time arrived when they would have to
load aboard LSTs and cargo ships for the upcoming operation. Originally, the LSTs
were supposed to arrive with sucient time to transload the LVTs onto attack car-
go ships, while the LSTs took on conventional loads, but their late arrival and last-
minute training reuirements precluded this. Finally, the slow LSTs (USS LST-34,
LST-242, and LST-243) carrying the 2d Marine Division’s new 50 LVT-2s sailed on 8
November for Ellice Island, the staging area for Operation Galvanic.66 ey nally
joined the Tarawa assault force, Task Force 53, under Rear Admiral Harry W. Hill, at
0330 on 20 November 1943, only hours before the assault was to commence. is le
no time to transfer the LVTs on board cargo ships to be launched per the usual pro-
cedure. So instead, the decision was made at the task force level to simply drive them
straight out the bow of the LSTs as they had rehearsed in Samoa, a task that took 15
minutes, despite Japanese re.67 e 75 LVT-1s that traveled with the task force were
launched conventionally from their host ships using the tried-and-true (though slow)
boom and hoist method.
Having demonstrated their ability to negotiate the crossing of coral reefs, the 125
LVT-1s and LVT-2s of 2d Marine Division tipped the balance in the favor of Smith’s
assault troops at Tarawa. ey proved to be the only cra that was able to get ashore
aer the LCVPs in the follow-on waves got hung up on the atoll’s reef exposed during
an exceptionally low neap tide. LVTs were also the only surface cra able to shuttle
desperately needed supplies and ammunition to the beach and take wounded Ma-
rines back to the ships waiting oshore. e victory did not come cheap though,
with nearly 66 percent of the LVTs used at Tarawa damaged or destroyed and their
crews suering proportionately.68 e rst Japanese-held island to be taken by an
amphibious assault, Tarawa, though costly, was an unualied success. According to
Holland Smith, “is was our rst frontal attack on a fortied enemy atoll and we
65 Croizat, Across the Reef, 87; and “e Marines Amphibian,” Marine Corps Gazette 37, no. 6 (June 1953): 45.
66 Deck Log, USS LST-34, 8 November 1943, World War II Diaries 1941–1945, Logbooks of U.S. Navy
Ships and Stations, RG 24, NARA.
67 Report of Action, USS LST-243, Operation Galvanic, 29 November 1944, World War II Diaries 1941–
1945, Logbooks of U.S. Navy Ships and Stations, RG 24, NARA, 5.
68 Maj Henry G. Lawrence, “Report of Battalion Commander, 2d Amphibian Tractor Battalion, 2d Ma-
rine Division, 22 December 1943,” in Second Marine Division Report on Gilbert Islands Tarawa Operation,
FMFRP 12-90 (Washington, DC: Headuarters Marine Corps, 1991), 59–60.
Amphibious Juernaut
115
were ignorant both of its capacity for resistance and of our own oensive limitations.
e Marine doctrine of amphibious assault stood the test.”69
At Tarawa, the LVT had also proven itself as an amphibious assault vehicle. Even
though not intended to serve as such, the improvisation of armored plate and mount-
ing of up to three machine guns by the Marines on the LVT-1s and LVT-2s tipped
the balance in their favor. e Japanese had simply not anticipated their use and had
taken no special defensive measures other than their usual ones (which were deadly
enough) to prevent the LVTs from crossing the reef. ough losses had been heavy,
without the LVT the Tarawa assault probably would have ended in failure. e ma-
jority of the troops embarked in LVTs survived to reach the shoreline; the follow-on
waves of troops in LCVPs suered far more heavily, especially when they were forced
to disembark at the reef and wade nearly 400 yards to the beach, oen in water up to
their necks, as Japanese machine gun re stitched the water around them.70
While few LVTs were able to cross the log barrier barring egress from the beach,
in later amphibious assaults carried out in the Marshall and Mariana Islands during
1944, LVTs were able to penetrate far inland, oen acting as personnel carriers. Addi-
tional modications and newer LVT designs placed armored LVTs, LVTs with 37mm
or 75mm gun turrets, LVTs with rear cargo ramps, or specialized LVTs such as com-
mand or recovery vehicles into the hands of troops. Reliability increased, making
them more seaworthy, and as lessons learned were disseminated throughout the eet,
LVT operators became more skilled.71 e LVT had truly met all expectations placed
on it and in many cases exceeded them.
Nearly overlooked in the success of the operation was the fact that 50 LVT-2s
had been launched directly into the sea from the 3 LSTs participating in the assault;
an eual number were launched at the same time by the Army’s 27th Infantry Divi-
sion during its assault on neighboring Makin Island, where Japanese resistance was
negligible. is was a signicant tactical development and was duly remarked on
in the ocial aer action report, which stated that “this method of transportation
proved highly satisfactory and simplied the execution of the initial ship to shore
movement.” Although the disadvantage of the LSTs low speed was noted, the report
stated that it could be compensated for if the LST task group sailed earlier than the
main body of the assault force, timed such that both forces arrived concurrently at
the objective area.72
69 Smith and Finch, Coral and Brass, 30.
70 Capt James R. Stockman, USMC, e Battle for Tarawa (Washington, DC: Historical Section, Division
of Public Information, Headuarters Marine Corps, 1947), 16.
71 Col Joseph H. Alexander, USMC (Ret), Across the Reef: e Marine Assault of Tarawa, Marines in
World War II Commemorative Series (Washington, DC: Historical Center, Headuarters Marine Corps,
1993), 12.
72 Enclosure C, “Commander Fih Amphibious Force Report of Galvanic Operations: General Notes
on Atoll Attack,” 4 December 1943, C5A/A16-3(3), Gray Research Center, Marine Corps University, 1–2.
Nash
116
While the other 75 LVT-1s on hand, all battered veterans of Guadalcanal, had
been placed into the water alongside troopships and cargo ships using the slow and
tedious hoist and boom method, running LVTs out of the lower hold or tank deck of
an LST could be done uickly (on average, in about ve minutes), as opposed to the
four hours or more reuired to perform the same task from a troopship. Despite this
advantage, the assault troops from the transports still had to be brought aboard their
assigned LVTs while at sea, a risky task accomplished using LCVPs tying alongside
the amphibious tractors. Except for this complication, the LST’s only other disad-
vantage was its already remarked on low speed of 12 knots, which led their crews to
nickname them “Large, Slow Targets.” Despite the LST’s disadvantages, aer action
comments were virtually unanimous in the opinion that launching from LSTs was the
most preferable way to deploy LVTs during the conduct of amphibious assaults. is
lesson was learned well; all subseuent assaults in the Central Pacic were to follow
this procedure.73
With the LST having proven itself as a launch platform at Tarawa and Makin
Island, the nal evolution of the techniue would be worked out during the next
two campaigns. For example, during the invasion of the Marshall Islands that uickly
followed on the heels of the Tarawa landing in 1–23 February 1944, all of the 340 LVTs
used at Kwajalein and Eniwetok Atolls were launched from LSTs, with the assault
troops transferring into them from LCVPs alongside.74 is still proved a slow and
dangerous process, especially when subjected to enemy re. But when the invasion of
the Mariana Islands took place ve months later, not only were all 773 LVTs launched
from 47 LSTs, but the assault troops were transferred on board the LSTs as early as
six days prior to the invasion.75 Once the command for “away all boats” was given, the
assault troops, already crammed aboard their LSTs, would simply climb on board
their LVTs lined up inside the LST’s lower hold and await the command to launch.
With practice, the tempo of the assaults uickened. During the amphibious as-
sault at Saipan in the Mariana Islands on 15 June 1944, for example, up to 17 fully
loaded LTVs were launched from each LST within 10 minutes and less than 1,000
yards from the line of departure. is greatly sped up the pace of operations, since
LTVs could simply drive o the ramp of the LST with its cargo of troops, supplies,
or vehicles instead of being lowered by davits from assault transports.76 Details were
worked out between the Navy, Marine Corps, and Army regarding when and how as-
73 Fih Amphibious Corps, Aer Action Report, Enclosures G and K, 4 December 1944, 2d Amphibian
Tractor Battalion, 22 December 1944; and USS LST-243, Report of Action, Operation Galvanic, 29 No-
vember 1943, HAF 48, Marine Corps Archives Branch.
74 Jeter A. Isely and Philip A. Crowl, e U.S. Marines and Amphibious War: Its eory, and Its Practices in
the Pacific (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1951), 274.
75 Croizat, Across the Reef, 116.
76 U.S. Pacic Fleet Amphibious Forces, Headuarters, Transport Doctrine, 18 September 1944, Refer-
ence Library, Rare Book Room, Navy Historical and Heritage Command, iv–5, para. 427.
Amphibious Juernaut
117
sault troops were loaded on board LSTs, since these ships were neither designed with
sucient berthing spaces nor life support for so many troops.
But the dierence in the time between the old and new methods was striking.
At Guadalcanal in August 1942, it took four to six hours for assault troops to climb
into their LCVPs and reach the shore; by June 1944, this only took 10 minutes. Not
only did the LSTLVT combination get troops to the beach faster and allow a mass
of troops and materiel to build up and continue the push inland, but it also dramat-
ically lessened the time that troops were exposed to enemy re during the run-in to
the beach. While a savings of four or six hours during an amphibious assault may not
sound like much, in 1944 it spelled the dierence between victory and defeat.
Just as important, this development facilitated the control of the ship-to-shore
movement, always a daunting task even for veteran forces operating in ideal condi-
tions. While the LSTs had to approach to within 6,000 yards of the beach before dis-
FIGURE
An LVT launches from the bow of an LST during the invasion of Okinawa, ca. April 1945.
By the Marianas campaign in June 1944, LSTs could launch 17 LVTs in 10 minutes. Within an hour,
all 47 LSTs taking part in the operation had launched 773 LVTs carrying more than 20,000
Marines to the beach. Japanese defenders uickly learned to base their defenses farther inland,
because any attempt to oppose this tactic would be rapidly overwhelmed.
Source: ocial U.S. Marine Corps photo #126-986
Nash
118
charging their cargoes, the LVTs had to simply exit the LST in column formation and
drive 1,000 yards to reach the line of departure. Once they had reached this imaginary
line, the column of LVTs would be given the command by a nearby control ship to
turn le or right. Here, they would then form into precise assault waves, orienting on
the sea-lanes leading to the landing beach and drive the remaining 5,000 yards to the
beach. Neighboring LSTs with their LVTs would do the same.
Instead of spending hours unloading and forming up for the assault, this new
techniue enabled the amphibious force commander to put thousands of troops
ashore in a matter of minutes, even when assaulting a defended shoreline.77 It also
made achieving surprise far more likely, since the Japanese had little time to react
once the assault began. Any attempt to stop the attack at the water’s edge resulted
in a uick defeat, with the defenders being uickly overwhelmed by the amphibious
juernaut, as they had been at Kwajalein and Eniwetok during January and February
1944. ough there were many errors made during the seizure of the Marshall Islands,
the eectiveness of the LVT as an assault vehicle proved its worth. Additionally, once
LSTs had discharged their loads, they could now recover and service LVTs, receive
wounded, or shuttle additional troops from the transport area to the shore.
is techniue, coupled with preinvasion naval and air bombardment, better
communications, and more control ships brought even more success during the Mar-
iana campaign. Having studied the lessons learned from the loss of the Marshall Is-
lands, the Japanese commanders at Saipan, Tinian, and Guam had learned to avoid
attempting a defense at the water’s edge. Instead, they chose to defend farther inland,
as they did at Peleliu, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa; and rather than face this amphibious
juernaut, they chose to ght a war of attrition, designed to make the Americans pay
dearly for every inch of ground. In addition to the advantages LSTs provided in their
ability to uickly launch waves of LVTs, LSDs also lent their weight. e medium
tanks carried on board LSDs could be just as uickly landed from Landing Cra, Me-
dium (LCMs) or LCTs once the rst assault wave had secured a beachhead.78 Paired
with infantry carried by the LVTs, the work of reducing the enemy’s inland defenses
using their tank cannon or amethrowers could begin in earnest once a beach foot-
hold had been secured.
In summation, amphibious warfare had come a long way since 1934 with the
draing of the Tenative Landing Operations Manual. Advances in doctrine, ship con-
struction, naval gunre, close air support, communications, and landing cra had
made the ship-to-shore movement the ultimate expression of the art of amphibious
77 Edwin H. Simmons and J. Robert Moskin, eds., e Marines (uantico, VA: Marine Corps Heritage
Foundation, 1998), 196.
78 LCMs were used during WWII and aerward. Aectionately known as “Mike” boats, they were one-
third larger than the standard Hiins boat used to land infantry. e LSM was much larger and was a
true seagoing vessel.
Amphibious Juernaut
119
warfare. It can be said with some degree of certainty that by 5 August 1945, amphib-
ious warfare, as practiced by the United States armed forces in the Pacic theater of
operations, had reached its highest state of development, far beyond anything that its
earliest advocates could ever have envisioned. Central to the success of the Central
Pacic drive from the invasion of the Gilbert Islands to its culmination at Okinawa
a year and a half later, the LSTLVT combination was a one-two punch that paired a
launch platform with a vehicle capable of negotiating a coral reef with a full load of
assault troops.
at neither of these tools—the Landing Ship, Tank nor the Landing Vehicle,
Tracked—was designed to perform these tasks, having been designed for completely
dierent roles, speaks volumes for the ingenuity and improvisational genius of the
Marine Corps–Navy team. With Marines such as Generals Smith and Nimmer, and
sailors such as Admiral Richardson, as well as countless others, the Marine Corps
and Navy’s ability to improvise, adapt, and overcome the technological and doctrinal
challenges they faced as well as its ener and drive to succeed, the generational as-
piration of the Marine Corps and Navy to become the world’s foremost amphibious
assault force had become a reality. While both Nimmer and Smith retired from the
FIGURE
Amphibious juernaut unleashed. Amphibious tractors, jammed with 4th Marine Division,
churn toward Iwo Jima at H-hour. ese troops served as the initial assault force, riding
aboard LVT-4 Bualoes.
Source: ocial U.S. Marine Corps photo, History Division #110128
Nash
120
Marine Corps shortly aer the war ended (Nimmer as a one-star general in 1947,
Smith as a four-star general in 1946, and Richardson as a rear admiral in 1949), they
le their mark on how the Marine Corps and the Navy would practice amphibious
assault up to the present day.
POSTSCRIPT
Aer the war, the LST was replaced as an LVT launch platform by the Landing Ship,
Dock (LSD), which was far superior in every specication, especially in speed. It
could not only sail at 18 knots compared with the 12 knots of the LST, but the LSD
could carry as many as 40 LTVs, as compared to the LST’s 17. e relative scarcity of
the LSD (fewer than 20 were commissioned before the war ended) and its utility as
the primary launch platform for the Landing Cra, Tank (LCT) and Landing Cra,
Medium (LCM), both of which carried tanks, meant that it would be dedicated to
this purpose during World War II in the Pacic. Once the war ended, LTV operations
shied entirely to the role formerly carried out by LSTs, and the LST reverted to its
original role as a logistics vessel. When the LTVs of the 1st Marine Division landed at
Inchon in September 1950, they were all launched by LSDs.
121
CHAPTER SIX
The Union Defence Forces’ Amphibious Invasion
of German South West Africa, 1914
David Katz
INTRODUCTION
The Union of South Africa’s amphibious invasion of German South West Afri-
ca (GSWA) in 1914 predates the Australian naval and military expeditionary
force Battle of Bita Paka on the island of New Britain in September. However,
the latter is known as the rst amphibious operation of the First World War. Military
historians have relegated the invasion of GSWA as African operations, far from the
epicenter of the European conict, to mere sidebars in the wider historiography of
the First World War. Contemporary attempts to elevate their importance refer to
the conict outside of Europe as the “wider war.” Historians must acknowledge that
the African conict was undoubtedly more than a minor curiosity for hundreds of
thousands of its participants and victims.
Eually guilty of amnesia are contemporary South African historians—together
with the various South African military academies and colleges—who have consigned
South Africa’s invasion of GSWA to the historiographical landll. Readers will be
hard-pressed to nd details on the amphibious aspects of the operation in the second-
ary sources. Ocial historians deliberately protected reputations for political reasons
Katz
122
and obfuscated the details of South Africa’s amphibious operation.1 Academic histo-
rians have fared little better, resorting to cross citations rather than engaging in the
research process and consulting the primary evidence lying undisturbed in archives.2
is chapter breaks the trend by using primary documents from the National Ar-
chives of South Africa Pretoria (NASAP), the South African National Defence Force
Archives (DODA) and the National Archives of the United Kingdom (TNA) and
underutilized regimental histories to reconstruct the Union Defence Forces’ (UDF)
rst amphibious operation. e narrative is pitched at the strategic and operational
levels of war as the landings were unopposed. e strategic aspects of the campaign
were rooted in a long, deep-seated desire for territorial expansion shared successively
by the colonial government of the Cape Colony, the British Empire, and then by the
newly formed dominion, the Union of South Africa in 1910.3 is chapter aims to
reveal the operational concepts underpinning the amphibious invasion, conceived by
the British as early as 1902, and examine the nal iteration of the operational plan de-
veloped by the UDF’s defense minister, General Jan Smuts. Also under examination
will be the performance of South Africa’s edgling UDF, formed a mere two years
before the outbreak of war in 1912. e deeply politically divided UDF was an im-
perfect instrument of war in many ways, not least in possessing a contested doctrine
represented by the former enemies who made up the UDF’s numbers in 1914.
THE GENESIS OF THE PLAN
TO INVADE GSWA
As early as 1902, shortly aer signing the Peace of Vereeniging treaty bringing
the South African War (1899–1902) to an end, the British conceived a plan for the
occupation of Swakopmund (Namibia) “in GSWA in the event of war with Germa-
1 e ocial histories concerned include: BGen J. J. Collyer, e Campaign in German South West Africa,
1914–1915 (London: Government Printing and Stationery Oce, 1937; Nashville, TN: Battery Press, 1997
reprint); and e Union of South Africa and the Great War, 1914–1918 (London: Government Printing and
Stationery Oce, 1924; Nashville, TN: Battery Press, 2004 reprint).
2 Other contemporary historians who have tackled the subject of the invasion of German South West
Africa but have preferred to concentrate on the operations aer the amphibious landings include: I. van
der Waag, A Miliary History of Modern South Africa (Johannesburg and Cape Town: Jonathan Ball, 2015);
I. van der Waag, “e Battle of Sandfontein, 26 September 1914: South African Military Reform and the
German South-West Africa Campaign, 1914–1915,” First World War Studies 4, no. 2 (2013): https://doi.org/1
0.1080/19475020.2013.828633; R. Warwick, “Reconsideration of the Battle of Sandfontein:e First Phase
of the German South West Africa Campaign, August to September 1914” (thesis, University of Cape
Town, 2003); and Antonio Garcia, e First Campaign Victory of the Great War: South Africa, Manoeuvre
Warare, the Afrikaner Rebellion and the German South West African Campaign, 1914–1915 (Warwick, UK:
Helion, 2019).
3 e Union of South Africa was created on 31 May 1910 and included four provinces: Cape Colony,
Natal, the Orange Free State, and Transvaal. Bill Freund, “South Africa: e Union Years, 1910–1948–
Political and Economic Foundations,” in Robert Ross, Anne Kelk Mager, and Bill Nasson, eds., e
Cambridge History of South Africa (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 211–53, https://doi
.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521869836.007.
e Union Defence Forces’ Amphibious Invasion
123
ny.”4 Although it is beyond the scope of this chapter, it is interesting to speculate
the underlying motivation for the United Kingdom’s appetite for Germany’s African
territory given their recent costly and near-disastrous war with the Boer republics.5
However, despite the remote possibility of a war with Germany in 1902, the British
military in South Africa went ahead with a plan for invading GSWA in the event
of war.
e GSWA terrain was particularly challenging for a landward or seaward in-
vasion force (map 1). Any seaborne invasion along the GSWA coast would have to
navigate through the harsh desert terrain of the Namib before reaching the more
forgiving Central Region Plateau, where water and natural game were more plentiful
(map 2).6 e GSWA was bounded by the Kalahari Desert on the east, making any
attempt to traverse it a tough challenge. e southern part of GSWA bordering the
Union of South Africa was eually inhospitable, making a landward invasion a logis-
tical nightmare. Map 1 shows the extensive railway system built by the Germans and
still in existence in 1914. However, when the rst plan was proposed in 1902, the only
railway in existence ran from Swakopmund-Karibib-Windhoek and Lüderitzbucht
was not fully developed as a port or linked by rail into the interior, making a British
landing there pointless. e only viable option in 1902 for a seaborne operation was
Walvis Bay/Swakopmund.7
e British identied Walvis Bay—a British colony on the GSWA coast—a mere
19 kilometers from the German coastal settlement of Swakopmund, as a preferable
point of disembarkation. Besides the open nature of the anchorage at Swakopmund,
compared to the well-sheltered anchorage at Walvis Bay, other considerations favored
the prospects of the latter. e sheltered coastline of Walvis Bay extended for 22.5
kilometers, with suitable landing spots at any point. It would be impossible for the
thinly spread Germans to successfully fortify or entrench across the entire length. e
depth of the bay also allowed for the naval forces to anchor close enough to give the
ground troops supporting re. e bay was also eminently suitable to house the nu-
merous logistic ships bringing in essential water supplies and other provisions needed
to support the invasion force (map 2).8
e British could not count on the element of surprise since Walvis Bay and
Swakopmund were the only two possible landing options on the GSWA coast. ere-
4 “Paper on the Occupation of Swakopmund German South West Africa,” 17 October 1902, War Oce
(WO) 106-47, the National Archives of the United Kingdom (TNA).
5 Boers, or Afrikaners, are settlers from as early as the 1600s of Dutch, German, or Huguenot descent
who lived in Cape Colony, Transvaal, Natal, and Orange Free State.
6 e Namib is waterless desert varying in width from 32 to 209 kilometers, covered with shiing sand
dunes and without vegetation. See Evert Kleynhans, “A Critical Analysis of the Impact of Water on
the South African Campaign in German South West Africa, 1914–1915,” Historia 61, no. 2 (2016), http://
dx.doi.org/10.17159/2309-8392/2016/v61n2a2. Kleynhans illuminates the fundamental role of water, its ac-
cessibility, and its protection in shaping the strategic and operational conduct of the campaign.
7 “Paper on the Occupation of Swakopmund German South West Africa,” 17 October 1902, 68–69.
8 “Paper on the Occupation of Swakopmund German South West Africa,” 17 October 1902, 62.
Katz
124
fore, the entire operation’s feasibility depended on the eectiveness of naval artillery
on the opposing German forces. e British expected that the Germans would oppose
the amphibious invasion with between 1,000 and 2,000 mounted troops, two to three
MAP
e harsh terrain of GSWA and the extensive railway line as it was on the eve of war in 1914.
Source: “Miliary Report on German South West Africa, 1906,” WO 33-416, TNA
e Union Defence Forces’ Amphibious Invasion
125
batteries of guns, and some friendly
“native” militia.9 ere were no exist-
ing defense works or entrenchments
at Walvis Bay/Swakopmund. Still, the
British considered it prudent to plan
for the area’s maximum German con-
centration and defensive measures.10
e Germans could expect little
assistance from the indigenous pop-
ulation due to their heavy-handed
manner in dealing with the local pop-
ulation. Concentrating their forces
against a British invasion would take a
month due to the Schutztruppe (protec-
tion force) being scattered throughout
GSWA. Conseuently, the British did
not expect much German resistance at
Walvis Bay/Swakopmund, but rather
that the Germans would retreat in-
land to a point of concentration. ey
aimed to conne the British at Walvis
Bay/Swakopmund and then attempt
to recapture one or both ports should the opportunity present itself. e British plan
called for 1,500 mounted infantry accompanied by artillery to capture the ports of
Walvis Bay/Swakopmund if the Germans had no time to concentrate their forces.
ereaer, the force would be reinforced with three battalions of regular infantry,
three batteries of artillery, four machine guns, and a detachment of the Corps of
Royal Engineers. Walvis Bay was preferred for the initial landing and thereaer Swa-
kopmund would be occupied via an advance from the bay. e plan emphasized the
diculties of dealing with the scarcity and poor water uality. e invasion force
would rely on receiving fresh water supplies and other logistics via the sea from the
cape, as the area oered very little water or other supplies.11
THE REVAMPED PLAN
TO INVADE GSWA,
Eight years passed before the British revisited their GSWA invasion plan, just prior to
9 e use of the term native is a colonial construct and in modern times is construed as being pejorative.
e authors use of the word is limited to direct uotes from the primary sources.
10 “Paper on the Occupation of Swakopmund German South West Africa,” 17 October 1902, 64–65.
11 “Paper on the Occupation of Swakopmund German South West Africa,” 17 October 1902, 73–76.
MAP
Availability of water and pasturage in GSWA.
Source: “Miliary Report on German South West Africa,
1906,” WO 33-416, TNA
Katz
126
the formation of the Union of South Africa on 31 May 1910. e German protection
forces in GSWA were weak, and they could not expect any reinforcements from Ger-
many in the event of a war. It remained unlikely that the Schutztruppe would be able
to launch an invasion of South African territory.12 erefore, the strategic purpose of
invading GSWA would be rst to secure and deny the German Navy secure ports on
the west coast of Africa, and second to acuire the entire territory for expansionist
purposes.
General Paul Sanford Methuen, the British commander in South Africa in 1908,
was determined that the British would not remain on the defensive regarding GSWA
but would assume the oensive as soon as it was possible aer the outbreak of hos-
tilities. Although Methuen remained bullish on the prospects for a British oensive
into GSWA, the fact remains that British forces in South Africa had experienced a
steady reduction since the end of the South African War (a.k.a. Second Boer War) in
1902. ose British forces remaining in South Africa were earmarked for deployment
to Ept in the event of European hostilities. Any future oensive operation into
GSWA would, of necessity, comprise troops belonging to the yet-to-be-formed Union
of South Africa. e invasion of GSWA would need the cooperation of the British
Royal Navy to establish sea superiority of the GSWA coast and provide the bulk of
troop carriers, naval artillery support, and logistics, including the provision of fresh
potable water.13
Methuen drew on the 1902 plan to invade GSWA and the fact that, because of the
strain in British/German relations, plans to meet any threat emanating from GSWA
were embedded in the Cape Colony western frontier defense scheme of 1907.14 On
30 November 1908, Methuen addressed a letter to the naval commander in chief of
the Cape Station, Admiral George Egerton. He focused on an oensive action by a
joint naval and military expedition landing on the coast of GSWA. Methuen stressed
the importance of Lüderitzbucht—developed by Germany as a signicant port since
1902—and reuested information on the naval policy in the event of war, particularly
regarding the defense of Walvis Bay. Methuen expressed his strong disagreement with
the defensive policy adopted in 1907, and on 27 December 1908, Egerton, agreed to
taking oensive action against GSWA in the event of war. However, the Admiralty
refused to guarantee assistance for any particular purpose, signaling discord between
the views of the British General Sta and the Admiralty on naval policy. On 8 March
1909, Methuen addressed a letter to the secretary of the War Oce that included a
paper on preparing a plan of operations against the German forces in GSWA. He
stressed the desirability of oensive action and cooperation of the imperial troops in
12 “Memorandum on Project for the Despatch of an Expeditionary Force to GSWA,” April 1910, WO
106-47, TNA.
13 “Major General Ewart (Director of Military Operations) to Admiral Alexander Bethell (Director of
Naval Intelligence),” April 1909, WO 106-47, TNA.
14 “Memorandum General Methuen ‘War with Germany: Operations in South Africa’,” 5 March 1909,
WO 106-47, TNA.
e Union Defence Forces’ Amphibious Invasion
127
such action while admitting that the military strate to be adopted must be subser-
vient to the general policy of the British Empire.15
Methuen tried to force the hands of the imperial government and the General
Sta, and by insisting on an oensive stance, he may have overstepped the mark. He
should have constructed plans to meet all reasonable contingencies, oensive and
defensive, by land or sea, with or without imperial troops. Instead, he meddled in the
political aspects of the problem when protocol demanded that the Committee of Im-
perial Defence should lay down the overall strategic planning regarding German col-
onies.16 Once the Command of Army Council reached a decision, they would inform
Methuen of their policy and the forces at his disposal and then reuest an operational
plan to meet the strategic objectives. ere was a distinct lack of unity of command in
1910, even when the strategic and operational plans were a wholly British aair. e
situation was certainly exacerbated when the South Africans took over the operation-
al planning of the campaign but remained reliant on British naval support.17
A major development since the 1902 plan was the German construction of a ser-
viceable port at Lüderitzbucht. e port contained reasonable landing facilities con-
sisting of two piers with three ve-ton cranes, good anchorage, and several tugs and
lighters that could assist an invasion force with disembarkation. Water availability at
the port consisted of three condensers yielding approximately 200 tons a day—wholly
inadeuate for sustaining an invasion force of any size. Water would have to be trans-
ported by sea from Cape Town. e port was linked to the interior via a railway line
to Keetmanshoop (see map 1).18 e Germans had also extended their railway line,
thereby connecting their capital Windhoek with both ports and the far northern and
southern interior of the colony. e extensive railway network would enable them
to conduct an eective defense using interior lines of communication (see map 1).19
e British estimated that the German military strength then stood at a maxi-
mum of 7,379 personnel, including 935 indigenous troops, 170 artillery pieces of vari-
ous caliber, and 27 machine guns. e report noted a steady improvement in German
military eciency as they became more accustomed to local conditions and colonial
warfare. Further construction of the German railway line network had considerably
enhanced their ability to concentrate their forces and meet an invasion at any point.
Previous estimates of eight days to concentrate Schutztruppen at Swakopmund or
Lüderitzbucht were now estimated at a fraction of that time.20 e latest iteration
15 “Precis of Correspondence in the Subject of Military Operations against GSWA,” 28 April 1909, WO
106-47, TNA.
16 For more on the records of the committee, see “Minister for the Co-ordination of Defense,” Records of
the Cabinet Oce, CAB 64, TNA.
17 “Precis of Correspondence in the Subject of Military Operations against GSWA,” 28 April 1909.
18 “Memorandum on Project for the Despatch of an Expeditionary Force to GSWA,” April 1902, WO
106-47, TNA, 12–15.
19 “Memorandum on Project for the Despatch of an Expeditionary Force to GSWA,” April 1902, 16.
20 “Memorandum on Project for the Despatch of an Expeditionary Force to GSWA,” April 1902, 37–44.
Katz
128
of the plan contained a fundamental change in Schwerpunkt, as the main body of the
invasion force would emanate from the south converging on Kalkfontein from two
dierent directions (see map 1). A seaborne landing at Port Nolloth would advance
to Sandfontein and then Kalkfontein, while a second southern prong would proceed
from Upington and follow a northwesterly route toward Ukamas-Kalkfontein.
e British considered that the invasion of Lüderitzbucht would have little pros-
pects of success owing to the lack of water at that port. However, the forces advanc-
ing from the south on Keetmanshoop could transfer its line of communication to
Lüderitzbucht. e seaborne landings at Walvis Bay threatening Swakopmund would
serve as a diversion and hopefully compel the Germans to detach some troops to its
defenses. Furthermore, the occupation and blockade of the GSWA ports would cut
the Germans o from all communication with Europe. erefore, using the landings
at Walvis Bay/Swakopmund merely as a diversionary tactic, the rst operational ob-
jective would be the surprise seizure of Kalkfontein to prevent a rapid concentration
of German troops in the south. e plan called for 2,500–3,000 mounted troops for
the rst portion of the invasion, accompanied by two batteries of eld artillery, 12
machine gun detachments of two guns each, two mountain batteries, one company of
bridging and railway engineers, and a company of signalers. Interestingly, the order of
battle called for an additional two camel corps of 1,000 troops each.21
THE PENULTIMATE PLAN,
Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914. e next day, the oensive sub-
committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence agreed that there were signicant
strategic and political advantages to be gained by capturing GSWA and destroying
the German wireless stations situated at Lüderitzbucht, Swakopmund, and Wind-
hoek. Great importance was attached to securing the cooperation and participation
of the Union of South Africa. On 6 August, His Majesty’s Government approached
the South Africans to render a “great and urgent Imperial service” and “seize such part
of GSWA as would give them the command of Lüderitzbucht, Swakopmund, and the
wireless stations there and in the interior.”22
e latest British conceptualization of the plan relied on a limited invasion of
GSWA to seize the German wireless stations at the coast and in the interior as the
initial objective. ey were more interested in depriving the German Navy of its com-
munications and ports in the southern oceans rather than a land grab of German ter-
ritory. eir plan, reliant on limited naval resources, called for the speedy deployment
of a relatively small task force. e South Africans, however, envisaged an operation
on a much grander scale that would encompass nothing less than the complete con-
uest of the entire GSWA. erefore, the manpower and resources conceived for the
21 “Memorandum on Project for the Despatch of an Expeditionary Force to GSWA,” April 1902, 44–49.
22 “Operations in the Union of South Africa and GSWA August 1914–August 1915—Narrative of Events,”
5 August 1914, CAB 44-2, TNA.
e Union Defence Forces’ Amphibious Invasion
129
South African plan would signicantly exceed that reuired to complete the limited
British objectives or seizing the ports and rendering the wireless stations inoperable.
e dierent South African and British objectives would lead to confusion and frus-
tration between the parties as soon as the initial operations got underway.23
e urgent seizure of the wireless stations at Lüderitzbucht and Swakopmund
could only be achieved in a reasonable amount of time by undertaking a joint naval
and military expedition. e British considered that capturing the wireless station
at Windhoek would be a more serious military undertaking reuiring much time in
preparation. ey suested that such an operation should only be undertaken aer
the wireless stations on the coast had been destroyed or seized and that an opera-
tion into the interior should form a separate expedition altogether. e British were
adamant that the operational details must be le to the Union government and the
naval aspects to the senior naval ocer at the Cape Station. e South Africans were
encouraged to work together with the senior naval ocer in formulating a joint plan
of operations, as they possessed no naval assets of their own, and would be completely
reliant on the British Navy.24
e rst indication that the South Africans intended to launch an operation
beyond that which the British expected was a reuest by the Union on 11 August that
they retain in South Africa either the whole or part of the imperial artillery, which
was then under orders to move to the United Kingdom. Intelligence sources revealed
on the same day that the Germans had evacuated Swakopmund, blown up its jetty,
and scuttled its tugs. A similar situation was said to exist at Lüderitzbucht.25 On 12
August, the secretary of state for the colonies informed the union government that
the imperial artillery serving in South Africa was urgently reuired in the United
Kingdom. However, under the false impression that the South Africans were limit-
ing their operation to the seizure of the points of main importance, the British were
“condent that the Union forces would, as they stood, proved eual to the task.”26 e
British believed that German resistance and either Swakopmund or Lüderitzbucht
was improbable, and they were anxious that the expedition to seize these ports should
be expedited.27
e South Africans informed the British on 17 August of their arrangements for
a force of 1,600 troops with artillery to land at Swakopmund and Lüderitzbucht. An
additional force of 1,600 personnel was to land at Port Nolloth and thereaer proceed
23 “Operations in the Union of South Africa and GSWA August 1914–August 1915—Narrative of Events,”
6 August 1914, CAB 44-2, TNA.
24 “Operations in the Union of South Africa and GSWA August 1914–August 1915—Narrative of Events,”
8 August 1914, CAB 44-2, TNA.
25 “Operations in the Union of South Africa and GSWA August 1914–August 1915—Narrative of Events,”
11 August 1914, CAB 44-2, TNA.
26 “Operations in the Union of South Africa and GSWA August 1914–August 1915—Narrative of Events,”
12 August 1914, CAB 44-2, TNA.
27 “Operations in the Union of South Africa and GSWA August 1914–August 1915—Narrative of Events,”
13 August 1914, CAB 44-2, TNA.
Katz
130
to Steinkopf and then to the Orange River on the GSWA border. Another force of
1,000 troops was to march from Upington to the Orange River. e South Africans
would construct a railway from Prieska to the GSWA border.28 On 20 August, the
South Africans once again informed the British of their intention to increase the
force earmarked for Swakopmund and Lüderitzbucht to 5,000 dismounted ghters
and a force of 3,000 soldiers to Steinkopf.29
Smuts’s ambitious invasion plan, designed to deliver the entire GSWA territory
into South Africa’s hands, drove the feverish uest for military assets and manpow-
er. e original seaborne invasion allowed for four separate columns to converge on
Windhoek (map 3). e plan called for the C Force under Colonel P. S. Beves with
approximately 2,000 troops to land at Lüderitzbucht, and with the help of the British
Royal Navy, its primary task was to destroy critical infrastructure such as the wire-
less station.30 e next objective for this group would be to advance inland toward
Aus along the railway line with the objective of capturing Seeheim/Keetmanshoop.
Farther south, Brigadier General Henry T. Lukin commanded A Force with 2,500
troops, and he would land at Port Nolloth and threaten the southern border of the
colony. e capture of Sandfontein thereaer would provide Lukin with a gateway
into southern GSWA, since this rst staging post had excellent water resources. A
farther advance northward to Kalkfontein would take the A Force to the southern
terminus of the German railway system (map 3.) Lukin’s next objectives were Warm-
bad and then farther along the railway line, to join forces with Beves’s column at
Seeheim/Keetmanshoop.31 Joining Lukin and protecting his right ank would fall to
the B Force under General Salomon Gerhardus Maritz with 1,000 mounted troops.
He would invade GSWA from the southeast, with Upington as his base of operations,
and he would protect Lukin’s exposed right ank.32
e most signicant and crucial formation in terms of size and its ultimate role
was D Force commanded by Colonel Duncan McKenzie with 4,000 troops. He was
to land at Walvis Bay, capture Swakopmund, and then advance toward the nal
28 “Operations in the Union of South Africa and GSWA August 1914–August 1915—Narrative of Events,”
17 August 1914, CAB 44-2, TNA.
29 “Operations in the Union of South Africa and GSWA August 1914–August 1915—Narrative of Events,”
20 August 1914, CAB 44-2, TNA.
30 Ivan S. Uys, South African Miliary Who’s Who, 1452–1992 (Germiston, South Africa: Fortress, 1992), 18.
Beves served in the Rand Pioneer Regiment and started his military life in the UDF as the commandant
of cadets.
31 “Lukin’s Report on A Force, 19 August 1915,” DC Group 2, Box 252, Folio 17138, South African National
Defence Force Archives (DODA). Lukin describes his strength on 25 August 1914 as 135 ocers, 2,463
other ranks, 522 Black troops, 12 eld guns, and 12 machine guns.
32 e Union of South Africa and the Great War, 1914–1918, 13. See also Collyer, e Campaign in German South
West Africa, 1914–1915, 28–29.
e Union Defence Forces’ Amphibious Invasion
131
MAP
Smuts’s original bold plan for the seaborne and landward invasion of GSWA.
Source: courtesy of the author, adapted by MCUP
Katz
132
objective—Windhoek.33 e capture of Windhoek would sever the rail links to Keet-
manshoop in the south and render the German defense south of Windhoek untenable
(see map 3). Opposing the 9,500 converging Union forces would be the 5,000 Schutz-
truppe defending GSWA territory. D Force was fundamental to the success of the en-
tire delicately balanced operation. Failure to land the D Force and seize Swakopmund
would allow the Germans unfettered opportunities to concentrate their forces either
against Lukin in the south or Beves at Lüderitzbucht. For as long as McKenzie held
Swakopmund in force, thereby threatening Windhoek, the Germans would have to
second guess any intentions of attacking either Beves or Lukin.
It is D Force and its intended deployment that ocial historians have wittingly
—and later contemporary historians unwittingly—written out of the history books.
Its omission renders Smuts’s original plan nonsensical and obfuscates the mechanics
of the operational plan he intended. Brigadier General J. J. Collyer, in the ocial
history, identied the need for close cooperation and for a “simultaneous” advance of
A, B, and C Forces to overcome a concentrated enemy over any one of the advancing
forces. Collyer also identied the need before any forward movement in the south of
GSWA be undertaken until that force was either considerably reinforced or for “ar-
rangements made and put into eect for a diversion elsewhere which would compel
the enemy to detach heavily.” e diversion Collyer refers to is of course the missing
D Force to be landed at Walvis Bay/Swakopmund (see map 3).34
e British grew impatient with the steady increase in expedition manpow-
er and chose to remind the South Africans of the urgent nature of the expedition.
ey demanded to know whether the proposed increase in troop numbers on the
account of the additional transports reuired would cause any delay in the sailing
of the force.35 e South Africans replied that they expected no delay, and that the
expedition would be ready to sail on 5 September. However, a lack of escorts meant
that the senior naval ocer could only sail on 12 September.36 e South Africans es-
timated that, given the size of the expedition, the naval escorts should not be less than
one warship and one armed merchant cruiser. Sailing without the reuired escorts
33 “Buxton to Harcourt,” 8 October 1914, ADM 137-13, Folio 50, TNA. See W. S. Rayner and W. W.
O’Shaughnessy, How Botha and Smuts Conquered German South West: A Full Record of the Campaign (Lon-
don: Simpson, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, 1916), 9. e ocial histories make no mention of D Force in
their initial lineups and orders of battle. Mention of D Force can be found in the work of the embedded
journalists and the primary sources. is is perhaps the reason for historians overlooking its existence.
S. Monick, A Bugle Calls: e Story of the Witwatersrand Rifles and Its Predecessors, 1899–1987 (Johannesburg:
Witwatersrand Ries Regimental Council, 1989), 87. e regimental history identies that the rein-
forcements received at Lüderitzbucht were originally designated D Force and destined for Walvis Bay;
however, the outbreak of the rebellion led to a revision of Smuts’s plans.
34 Collyer, e Campaign in German South West Africa, 30–31.
35 “Operations in the Union of South Africa and GSWA August 1914–August 1915—Narrative of Events,”
23 August 1914, CAB 44-2, TNA.
36 “Operations in the Union of South Africa and GSWA August 1914–August 1915—Narrative of Events,”
24 August 1914, CAB 44-2, TNA.
e Union Defence Forces’ Amphibious Invasion
133
would pose a considerable risk to the expedition as the enlarged task force would
provide the German Navy with a tempting target.37 In an attempt to maximize the
use of scarce naval assets, the British suested that the expedition sail together
with the transport ship HMHS Dover Castle (1904) transporting the Essex and East
Lancashire regiments to the United Kingdom. Both forces would be escorted by
the cruiser HMS Astraea (1893), which, aer seeing the expeditions safely landed at
Swakopmund and Lüderitzbucht, would then proceed with the Dover Castle to the
United Kingdom.38
Meanwhile, Lukin’s expedition to Port Nolloth landed on 31 August and immedi-
ately experienced delays in disembarkation partly because of the state of the port and
partly to disorganized sta work.39 e UDF could expect the same or longer delays at
Lüderitzbucht and Swakopmund.40 Lack of planning, organization, and experienced
sta ocers took an early toll on eorts.41 Chaotic disembarkation procedures at
Port Nolloth—10 days to land the stores—delayed the rest of the GSWA expedition a
few days beyond 12 September. e expectation was that disembarkation at the other
ports would be a lengthy process too. e regimental history alludes to the chaos of
disembarkation at Port Nolloth. It seems that it took the Transvaal Horse Artillery
from 31 August to 9 September to fully assemble at the port before making their
way to Steinkopf. e regimental author attests to the disorganization that accom-
panied the embarking at Cape Town and disembarking at Port Nolloth. e move to
Steinkopf began on 4 September, but Lukin only established his headuarters there
on 10 September. Lukin reports that all troopships had arrived by 3 September, and
their disembarkation was not completed until 17 September.
Roland M. Bourne, the secretary of defense, belatedly formed a Joint Operational
Command in Pretoria on 9 September to alleviate the logjam, which a senior naval
37 “Operations in the Union of South Africa and GSWA August 1914–August 1915—Narrative of Events,”
31 August 1914, CAB 44-2, TNA.
38 “Royal Navy Log Books of the World War I Era: HMS Astraea,” Naval History Homepage, updat-
ed 29 September 2017. e HMS Astraea was a light cruiser of 4,360 tons with an armament of: two
6-inch, eight 4.7-inch, eight 6-pounders, and three 18-inch guns. Its armor consisted of a 2-inch deck
and 4.5-inches for the guns. “Operations in the Union of South Africa and GSWA August 1914–August
1915—Narrative of Events,” 1 September 1914, CAB 44-2, TNA.
39 “Lukin’s Report on A Force,” 19 August 1915, DC Group 2, Box 252, Folio 17138, DODA. Disembar-
kation, according to Lukin, took more than two weeks and was not completed before 16–17 September
1914. e major delay occurred with the disembarkation of the animals that were slung twice from ship
to lighter and then lighter to shore. See “Letter from Secretary for Defence to Unknown,” 19 September
1914, DC Group 2, Box 252, DODA, which refers to the great diculties of disembarkation. See also
“Methods and Points to be Observed in Embarking and Disembarking,” GSWA Group, Box 14, DODA.
40 “Telegram Ocer Advising Gov of SA to H. B. Jackson,” 2 September 1914, ADM 137-9, TNA.
41 “Letter from Secretary for Defence to Unknown,” 19 September 1914. e letter refers to great loss of
euipment for lack of care and the unsuitability of donkeys compared with mules. ere was the prob-
lem of inferior uality euipment such as artillery harnesses.
Katz
134
and army ocer and a senior representative of the South African railways staed.42
Delayed timetables clashed with the British eorts to repatriate their garrison forces
using the same scarce shipping resources. e British informed the South Africans on
7 September that they would not delay the departure of the ships conveying troops
back to the United Kingdom beyond 14 September. e South Africans were encour-
aged to make suitable arrangements to meet the deadline.43
e British determination to keep to a strict timetable exasperated the South
Africans. When Sydney C. Buxton assumed the role of governor general on 8 Septem-
ber, he sent an impassioned plea to the British that the nonavailability of naval escorts
would scupper the whole expedition with disastrous eects on public opinion. Smuts
asked personally and informally whether the repatriation of the imperial garrison
could be delayed by a few days to facilitate the GSWA expedition.44 Political pressure
forced the British to weigh the cost of delaying the repatriation of the imperial gar-
rison for a couple of weeks, against dampening enthusiasm for the expedition within
the Union. Admiral Henry B. Jackson, the advisor on overseas expeditions and plan-
ning attacks on Germany’s colonial possessions, concluded that the importance of the
expedition outweighed any benets of early repatriation of the imperial garrison.45
e considerable benets of destroying three German radio stations compared to re-
patriating one-and-a-half battalions to the United Kingdom won the day.46 e Brit-
ish uneuivocally decided on 9 September that HMS Astraea would be available for
escort duties for the expeditions to Lüderitzbucht and Swakopmund and the repatri-
ation of the cape garrison to the United Kingdom would not be allowed to interfere.47
With the GSWA expedition back on track, and British patience restored, the next
problem on the horizon was of the considerable delays at Port Nolloth. e South
Africans claimed that bad weather caused the delays in disembarkation.48 However,
large-scale disorganization meant that the Walvis Bay part of the expedition would
take place one week aer the landings at Lüderitzbucht on 14 September.49 A combi-
nation of bad weather and worse planning intervened, delaying the departure for the
42 “Joint Naval and Military Operations, Secretary of Defence,” 9 September 1914, DC Group 2, Box 252,
DODA.
43 “Telegram S. S. for Colonies to Gov of SA,” 7 September 1914, ADM 137-9, TNA.
44 “Telegram Governor of Union of SA to Secretary of State for the Colonies,” 8 September 1914, ADM
137-9, TNA.
45 “Telegram C-in-C Cape to H. B. Jackson,” 9 September 1914, ADM 137-9, TNA.
46 “Telegram S. S. for Colonies to Gov of SA,” 9 September 1914, ADM 137-9, TNA.
47 “Operations in the Union of South Africa and GSWA August 1914–August 1915—Narrative of Events,”
9 September 1914, CAB 44-2, TNA.
48 “Operations in the Union of South Africa and GSWA August 1914–August 1915—Narrative of Events,”
12 September 1914, CAB 44-2, TNA.
49 “Telegram C-in-C Cape to H. B. Jackson,” 11 September 1914, ADM 137-9, Folio 426, TNA.
e Union Defence Forces’ Amphibious Invasion
135
Walvis Bay/Swakopmund to 26 September.50 e landing at Walvis Bay/Swakopmund
would only be complete by 11 October, causing considerable delay to the repatriation
of the imperial garrison.51
Further delays at Port Nolloth meant the naval transports could only get back
to Cape Town by 17 September, which delayed Beves’s occupation of Lüderitzbucht
to 18 September.52 ere was also no luxury of a wharf in Lüderitzbucht as late as
March 1915, and horses disembarking there had to swim to the shore. Colonel James
Irvine-Smith of the British Army Veterinary Division reports that, by 17 March 1915,
disembarkation of horses had improved by avoiding slinging and using a special gang-
way, allowing 900 animals to be ooaded in 10 hours.53
Adding signicantly to the rapidly thickening fog of war—before Beves set out
for Lüderitzbucht—the South African political horizon became increasingly clouded
following the resignation of General Christiaan Frederik Beyers, a senior member
of the Union Defence Force and chief of its Active Citizen Force (conscripts) with
another senior UDF ocer, Jan Kemp, on 13 and 15 September, respectively. eir
resignations and the worsening political situation in the Union, which included the
looming prospect of rebellion, cast a shadow on the GSWA campaign.54
FIASCO AT SANDFONTEIN,
SEPTEMBER
e failure to secure Walvis Bay/Swakopmund placed Beves at Lüderitzbucht in a pre-
carious position. e occupation of Swakopmund would have placed the Germans in
50 “Telegram Botha to Buxton,” 11 September 1914, PM 1/1/32, File 4/95/14-4/97/14, Minute no. 868, Cor-
respondence le, National Archives of South Africa Pretoria (NASAP). Gen Louis Botha cautioned that
it was unlikely the landing at Walvis Bay would be completed before 30 September 1914.
51 “Telegram Botha to Buxton,” 12 September 1914, PM 1/1/32, File 4/95/14-4/97/14, Minute no. 875, Corre-
spondence le, NASAP; and “Telegram Governor of Union of SA to Secretary of State for the Colonies,”
12 September 1914, ADM 137-9, Folio 434, TNA.
52 Collyer, e Campaign in German South West Africa, 28–29; and “Letter from Rear Admiral H. K. Hall
to the Secretary of the Admiralty,” 15 October 1914, ADM 137-8, TNA. e harbor at Lüderitzbucht was
reported as excellent and the piers, lighters, and cranes were all intact. e Germans failed to destroy
the facilities. e navy provided three 4.7-inch guns to protect the port from sea and land attack. It was
regarded as a protected port and a secure land base.
53 “Telegram C-in-C Cape to H. B. Jackson,” 5 September 1914, ADM 137-9, TNA; Neil Orpen, e History
of the Transvaal Horse Artillery, 1904–1974 (Johannesburg: THA Regimental Council, 1975), 14; F. B. Adler,
e History of the Transvaal Horse Artillery (Johannesburg, South Africa: Specialty Press, 1927); “Lukin’s
Report on A Force,” 19 August 1915, DC Group 2, Box 252, Folio 17138, DODA; Mark Coghlan, History
of the Umvoti Mounted Rifles, 1864–2004 (Durban, South Africa: Just Done Productions, 2012), 1162; and
“Veterinary Services GSWA Campaign and Rebellion August 1914 to July 1915, Report by Colonel James
Irvine-Smith,” AG 14, Box 13, File 2, DODA, 15.
54 “Telegram, Buxton to Harcourt,” 15 September 1914, ADM 137-9, Folio 472, TNA. Beyers published his
manifesto on his resignation in Gen James B. M. Hertzog’s newspaper, Oago Daily Times. See Piet van der
Byl, From Playgrounds to Battlefields (Cape Town, South Africa: Howard Timmins, 1971), 92, for a physical
description of Maritz.
Katz
136
a dilemma. ey could now concentrate their forces on Lüderitzbucht. Smuts’s pred-
icated his plan on the ability to advance his forces simultaneously on exterior lines
thereby preventing the concentration of German forces using interior lines.55 Beves,
facing the might of the Schutztruppe alone, would have to rely on Lukin ensconced
at the southern border to create a diversion to distract the Germans. e threat of a
ank attack by Lukin prevented German concentration against the port. However,
Lukin faced problems of his own beside the prospect of moving his troops over many
kilometers of inhospitable, arid terrain. Maritz with B Force guarded Lukin’s vulnera-
ble right ank, but he grew increasingly hostile to the idea of invading GSWA.
A perfect storm was brewing that placed Beves in considerable jeopardy. e
government took note of Maritz’s recalcitrant behavior and, coupled with delays in
the seaborne operations, an uneasiness descended on the entire operation.56 Smuts ca-
joled Lukin to proceed with his advance to discourage the Germans and keep Maritz
onside. Cooperation between these two forces would be crucial as Maritz would pro-
tect Lukin’s right ank. e advance along exterior lines called for Lukin to strike
through Raman’s Dri on the Orange River and successively capture the towns of
Warmbad and Kalkfontein. e latter was the southern terminus of the German rail-
way system (map 4). Such a thrust by Lukin would further thwart any German inten-
tions of invading the Union.57
It soon became apparent that Maritz would not cooperate in covering Lukin’s
ank. Furthermore, strong indicators emerged that he was about to declare open
rebellion. Instead of his force bolstering Lukin’s right ank, it began instead to men-
ace him. Maritz posed a real danger if he could add his force to the enemy, thereby
destroying the delicate balance of ghting power. Instead of his usual decisiveness,
Smuts took no action to remove Maritz immediately despite all the evidence of his
wavering attitude.58 Instead, he ordered Maritz to advance to Schuit Dri from Ka-
kamas and then head to Ukamas to assist and cooperate with the force under Lukin
on 23 September. Smuts’s decision to test Maritz’s loyalty rather than replace him
is a testament to the challenging political climate, where his usual decisiveness and
indeed, ruthlessness occasionally gave way to expediency.
55 “Letter Smuts to McKenzie,” 6 January 1915, DC Group 2, DODA. Smuts stressed to Duncan McKenzie,
commanding the Central Force at Lüderitzbucht, of the need to advance his forces “simultaneously” with
those under Botha at Walvis Bay/Swakopmund of the Northern Force. is is strong evidence of Smuts’s
intention of the simultaneity of advances.
56 Judicial Commission of Inquiry into the Causes of and Circumsances Relating to the Recent Rebellion in South
Africa: Minutes of Evidence, December 1916 (Cape Town, South Africa: Cape Times, 1916), 11–16.
57 “Slaag van Sandfontein,” 26 September 1914, AG 14, Box 13, File 7, DODA, 1. e aer action report
clearly states that the operational objective of A Force was the capture of Warmbad and then Kalkfon-
tein. It was “anticipated” that this would lessen the chances of an invasion from GSWA and “materially
assist” the forces landing at Lüderitzbucht. See “Lukin’s Report on A Force,” 19 August 1915, DC Group
2, Box 252, Folio 17138, DODA. Lukin states his immediate objective was Warmbad.
58 Earl Buxton, General Botha (London: John Murray, 1924), 45. Buxton asserts that the rebellion came as
a complete surprise to the South African government and that no preparations were made to meet it.
e Union Defence Forces’ Amphibious Invasion
137
Smuts pressed Lukin to advance
to Sandfontein expeditiously to create
a diversion to relieve Beves of pressure
at Lüderitzbucht and allow reinforce-
ments to arrive at the scene. e ocial
history describes Smuts’s communica-
tion with Lukin as one verging on a
reuest for “self-sacrice.”59 Lukin was
under no illusion as to the precarious-
ness of the situation. He possessed re-
liable intelligence showing the enemy
was determined to oppose his advance
to Kalkfontein and that they would
use the railway to concentrate con-
siderable forces against him.60 How-
ever, Lukin paints a dierent picture
in his report, blaming his predicament
on intelligence failure. He felt that
scouts should have detected the large
force of 1,800 Germans and 10 guns. If
he knew of the impending attack by such a force, he would have withdrawn the Sand-
fontein force within three or four hours. Lukin pointed out that the disaster would
have been greater had the Germans delayed their attack and allowed him to advance
on Warmbad.61 When Lukin did advance, contrary to what Smuts expected, he did so
with only a fraction of the force available to him.
Inevitably and not unexpectedly, Maritz disobeyed Smuts’s order to advance,
leaving Lukin alone deep inside German territory. Maritz was aware that 2,000 Ger-
59 e Union of South Africa and the Great War, 14; and Collyer, e Campaign in German South West Africa,
32, 48. Collyer goes to great lengths to explain that Lukin must have expressed his reservation to division
headuarters on being ordered to Sandfontein. e extent of his reservation is contained in this line:
“Headuarters had to reuest high pressure to the verge of self-sacrice on the part of General Lukin to
which he most loyally responded.” Collyer cites the fact that Lukin did not receive vital intelligence that
the Germans were gathering a force in proximity to him because of a bungle at headuarters. Lukin is
uoted as saying that if he received this intelligence in time, he would have been apt to withdraw from
Sandfontein promptly. e fact is that Lukin should have expected a strong German response to his
advance in any event, and he did not provide a sucient force forward.
60 “Buxton to Harcourt,” 25 September 1914, ADM 137-9, Folio 580, TNA; and Collyer, e Campaign in
German South West Africa, 48. Collyer has a dierent take on the events pertaining to the intelligence of
a German threat to Sandfontein. Collyer, who was Lukin’s brother-in-law, blames a nameless sta ocer
at headuarters who posted instead of telegraphed the intelligence summary to Lukin, so it only reached
him on 7 October 1914. See Ian van der Waag, “e Battle of Sandfontein, 26 September 1914: South Af-
rican Military Reform and the German South-West Africa Campaign, 1914–1915,” First World War Studies
4, no. 2 (2013): 22n84, https://doi.org/10.1080/19475020.2013.828633.
61 “Lukin’s Report on A Force,” 19 August 1915, DC Group 2, Box 252, Folio 17138, DODA.
MAP
Sandfontein: southern gateway into GSWA.
Source: adapted from Gerald L’ange, Urgent
Imperial Service: South African Forces in German
South West Africa, 1914–1915 (Johannesburg:
Ashanti, 1991), 85
Katz
138
man troops were advancing on Lukin’s forces, and he rebued Lukin’s reuest for
reinforcements. Smuts immediately summoned Maritz to Pretoria on 30 September
and instructed him to step down from command. Maritz atly refused to cooperate,
and Smuts eventually transferred the command of the A and B Forces, including the
troops under Maritz, to Colonel Coen Jacobus Brits on 2 October. His action eec-
tively deducted 1,000 soldiers from the UDF strength and added them to that of the
Germans.62
On 26 September, Lukins A Force, unsupported by Maritz and understrength for
the task allotted, suered a severe defeat at the hands of the Germans at Sandfon-
tein.63 e advance in such small numbers to Sandfontein was an operational error
considering the uncertainty of Maritz’s allegiance, knowing that the Germans were in
force in the vicinity and contrary to the rules of concentration. Furthermore, Lukin
committed grave tactical errors such as the lack of adeuate reconnaissance. Smuts
revealed the overall strategic concern of the operation when he pressed Lukin to hold
the Orange River and not retire farther south in the wake of the Sandfontein asco.
Smuts was concerned that Lukin would no longer pose a threat to the German ank,
thereby leaving them free to deal with the forces at Lüderitzbucht. Further commu-
nication instructed Lukin to move most of his forces from Steinkopf to the Orange
River and adopt an aressive posture to keep the enemy away from an increasingly
vulnerable Beves. In the wake of these developments, Smuts nally abandoned the
Walvis Bay/Swakopmund expedition on 29 September and despatched McKenzie’s
D Force, originally earmarked for Walvis Bay, to bolster Lüderitzbucht on 30 Sep-
tember.64
e delayed landing at Walvis Bay was a combination of an initial lack of British
naval escorts, the UDF’s disorganization at the sta level, and nally the outbreak
of the Afrikaner Rebellion a few weeks aer the Sandfontein debacle.65 e German
naval eet roaming rampant in the South Atlantic in mid-December added to the
heightened alarm later in the campaign but was not the principal reason for delays in
August/September. Smuts together with Buxton concurred with the suestion of the
Vice Admiral Herbert King-Hall, the naval commander in chief of the Royal Navy’s
Cape Station, to abandon the idea of the Walvis Bay/Swakopmund expedition on 29
62 Judicial Commission of Inquiry, 19–21.
63 Collyer, e Campaign in German South West Africa, 36–49.
64 “Buxton to Harcourt,” 29 September 1914, ADM 137-9, Folio 624, TNA; and “Telegram Buxton to Naval
C in C Cape Station,” 28 September 1914, PM 1/1/32, File 4/95/14-4/97/14, Correspondence le, NASAP.
A further indicator that the operation to Walvis Bay was abandoned was a suestion by Smuts and
Buxton that HMS Kinauns Castle (1899) remain at Walvis for a few days longer to fool the Germans that
it was proposed to land a force there. is would alleviate some of the risk Beves at Lüderitzbucht faced
in light of the Sandfontein asco and the cancellation of the Walvis Bay landing.
65 “Telegram Buxton to Secretary of State,” 8 September 1914, PM 1/1/32, File 4/95/14-4/97/14, Corre-
spondence le, NASAP. Smuts informally through Buxton called for another warship, HMS Cumberland
(1902), to be dispatched to the area and cover the landings at Walvis Bay.
e Union Defence Forces’ Amphibious Invasion
139
September.66 King-Hall believed that a landing would be untenable considering the
chaos experienced at Lüderitzbucht and the diculty of protecting Walvis Bay from
the sea because of its vast defensive perimeter. Furthermore, he could not account for
all German shipping in the area.67
e British were growing increasingly concerned with poor organization and
bungled logistics at Lüderitzbucht. e rapidly deteriorating political situation with-
in the Union, soon to experience open rebellion, coupled with the disastrous reversal
at Sandfontein, did not inspire condence. Finally, on 28 September, the British sug-
gested altering the plan. Smuts concurred that these factors, together with a rapid-
ly developing Afrikaner Rebellion in the Union, which included Maritz’s treachery,
placed Lüderitzbucht in a precarious position.68 ere was thus little option but to
bolster the defenses of Lüderitzbucht with D Force formerly earmarked for Walvis
Bay/Swakopmund. Smuts would only reinstate the expedition to Walvis Bay/Swa-
kopmund on 25 November aer he and Botha registered decisive successes against
the rebels.
POSTSCRIPT
e invasion of GSWA was an ambitious undertaking, and more so, as the amphib-
ious aspects added a layer of complexity. e Smuts plan called for a simultaneous
landing of South African forces at three ports. South Africa lacked naval resources
and would have to rely on the British Navy to transport and protect the amphibious
landings. e plan called for a joint operation in its true sense, and furthermore, it
involved the military assets of two nations, South Africa and the United Kingdom.
An amphibious operation of this nature reuires the highest communication and
cooperation between the participants. At the outset of the invasion, e South Afri-
cans and United Kingdom possessed diering intentions, with the United Kingdom
having limited objectives while the South Africans sought to conuer GSWA in its
entirety. Sound communication between the participants, a prereuisite in amphib-
ious operations, remained poor during the planning and operational phases of the
initial invasion.
e South African objective reuired manpower and resources that overbur-
dened the limited British naval assets earmarked for the amphibious operation. e
South African reuirement for a simultaneous amphibious landing at Port Nolloth,
Lüderitzbucht, and Walvis Bay to overwhelm the German defenders was impossible
66 “Telegram Buxton to Naval C in C Cape Station,” 28 September 1914, PM 1/1/32, File 4/95/14-4/97/14,
Correspondence le, NASAP.
67 “Telegram Naval C in C Cape Station to Buxton,” 27–28 September 1914, PM 1/1/32, File 4/95/14-
4/97/14, Correspondence le, NASAP.
68 “Buxton to Harcourt,” 5 October 1914, ADM 137-13, Folio 32, TNA; and “Buxton to Harcourt,” 8 Octo-
ber 1914, ADM 137-13, Folio 50, TNA. Buxton cites the reversal at Sandfontein, Lukin’s challenges regard-
ing water and transport, and Maritz’s “unreliability” and the delays on disembarkation at the landings as
“destroying all possibility of simultaneous action.”
Katz
140
given the limited British naval resources. Exacerbating the problem was the UDF’s
poor planning and preparation for the operation. Amphibious operations reuire
a high degree of sta work. e UDF did not possess sucient sta ocers, and
those they had were poorly ualied and inexperienced for the job. Poor discipline
and planning played havoc at the landings, and the disembarkation at the ports took
much longer than anticipated, which in turn, tied down British naval assets.
e GSWA campaign’s postponement allowed the original Smuts plan to be re-
vised between 5 and 8 October. e plan retained most of Smuts’s original objectives,
but this iteration contained a massive fourfold increase in numbers deployed.69 e
whole operation depended on the availability of British Royal Navy ships to support
the extended operation.70
e new incarnation of the Smuts plan contained fundamental dierences from
the original. Besides Maritz’s former B Force, Smuts initially relied mainly on the
UDF’s Active Citizen Force units. ese possessed a distinct colonial/British structure
and doctrine. ey had a formal rank structure, trained in British methods, and were
led by English ocers with a distinctly British command style. e Boer commandos
were more informal, led by Afrikaners, with a less rigid structure and a directive com-
mand style that encouraged initiative and the devolution of decision-making down to
the lower levels of command. Smuts boosted the invasion’s second iteration by add-
ing the Boer Republican-style commandos of the second line ACF Reserve (Class B)
Rie Association members. ese units played a signicant role in extinguishing the
Afrikaner Rebellion a mere few weeks before their deployment to GSWA. Predom-
inantly Afrikaner and veterans of the South African War, these mounted infantry
forces were earmarked for deployment to Walvis Bay/Swakopmund (Northern Force)
to be commanded by Botha, leading from the front.71 Botha and Smuts decided that
the commandos, who proved loyal in extinguishing the Afrikaner Rebellion, could
now be used to good eect in GSWA. Once nimble and supported by 10,000–12,000
colonial/British-orientated units, Smuts’s plan became bloated with a cumbersome
compliment of 40,000 troops.
Unlike the original plan, Smuts now consulted the British on matters connect-
ed with the expedition.72 Smuts was impatient about reinvigorating the stalled pro-
ceedings and proposed that the Walvis Bay expedition launch date be 12 December.
e British issued a cautionary note that the expedition should not start until the
69 “Letter Smuts to Crewe,” 18 December 1914, JSP, Box 196, Folio 156, NASAP. In this letter, Smuts con-
rms the appointment of J. L. van Deventer to command the whole Orange River and the raising of six
further mounted brigades for GSWA. e hand of Smuts in directing and recruiting for the campaign
was everywhere.
70 “Buxton to Harcourt,” 8 October 1914, ADM 137-13, Folio 51-53, TNA; “Memorandum Admiral H. B.
Jackson,” 8 October 1914, ADM 137-13, Folio 88, TNA; and “Telegram Botha to Buxton,” 7 October 1914,
PM 1/1/32, File 4/95/14-4/97/14, Minute no. 994, Correspondence le, NASAP.
71 “Appointment of Botha,” AG 1914–1921, Box 8, Folio G5/305/9199, DODA.
72 “C in C Cape to Admiralty,” 9 October 1914, ADM 137-13, Folio 70, TNA.
e Union Defence Forces’ Amphibious Invasion
141
German naval suadron in the Southern Ocean (Antarctic Ocean) was located and
neutralized.73 Smuts insisted that further delays would have severe repercussions for
the campaign and morale on the home front.74 Despite Smuts’s obvious irritation, the
British delayed the expedition by an additional two weeks. In the interim, Duncan
McKenzie, commanding the forces at Lüderitzbucht, received a further 2,000 rein-
forcements.75 Intelligence sources conrmed that the German eet set sail from South
America and made its way to South Africa on 7 December.76 However, the German
naval threat was nally eliminated in the Battle of the Falklands on 8 December,
when the SMS Gneisenau (1906), SMS Scharnhorst (1906), SMS Leipzig (1905), and SMS
Nurnberg (1906) were sunk by the British Royal Navy.77
Colonel P. C. B. Skinner, on loan from the British Army, with two infantry bri-
gades under his command disembarked at the undefended harbor of Walvis Bay
on Christmas day 1914.78 Skinner oversaw the invasion until Botha assumed overall
command of the Northern Force.79 e invaders immediately set about building a
defensive line around Walvis Bay.80 e landing surprised the Germans and went
unopposed. e Germans, who had long since abandoned Walvis Bay/Swakopmund
in favor of making their defense farther into the interior, allowed for a bloodless
occupation.
73 “C in C Cape to Admiralty,” 25 November 1914, ADM 137-13, Folio 573, TNA; and “C in C Cape to
Admiralty,” 27 November 1914, ADM 137-13, Folio 621, TNA. e British Royal Navy had four duties
regarding the expedition to GSWA that involved the conveyance of troops to Walvis Bay, to protect
Walvis Bay, to cover and protect Lüderitzbucht, and to guard the lines of communication from the cape
to Lüderitzbucht and Walvis Bay. e British were reluctant to split their forces or undertake the expe-
dition until such time as the enemy force were dealt with.
74 “C in C Cape to Admiralty,” 30 November 1914, ADM 137-13, Folio 649, TNA.
75 “Buxton to Harcourt,” 30 November 1914, ADM 137-13, Folio 651, TNA.
76 “Sir R. Tower, Buenos Ayres to Admiralty,” 7 December 1914, ADM 137-13, Folio 710, TNA. e tip-o
was received from a correspondent of the New York Times.
77 “India Oce to Admiralty,” 9 December 1914, ADM 137-13, Folio 728, TNA.
78 e expeditionary force consisted of the Imperial Light Horse, Grobbelaar’s scouts, and an artillery
brigade. Col P. C. B. Skinner, formerly of the Northumberland Regiment, was loaned from the British
government to support Botha, and during the GSWA campaign, Botha asked him to set up a general
sta. He was previously the commandant of the South African Military Academy.
79 Rayner and O’Shaughnessy, How Botha and Smuts Conquered German South West, 164.
80 “Letter of Proceedings from Captain of HMS Astraea to C in C Cape Station,” 29 January 1915, ADM
123/144, general letters and proceedings Walvis Bay, TNA. British seapower would form an integral part
of the early defense of Walvis Bay and Swakopmund, with the ship guns and the infantry cooperating in
a ring scheme should the Germans approach the beachhead.
142
CHAPTER SEVEN
Operation Albion
The German Amphibious Landing
on the Baltic Islands, 12–17 October 1917
Eric Sibul
INTRODUCTION
Operation Albion, the German amphibious landing on the Baltic (Estonian)
Islands during 12–17 October 1917, was an important and uniue operation
in the First World War warranting greater historical examination.1 Despite
the fact that the Russian Provisional Government granted Estonia autonomy on 12
April 1917, substantial Russian forces remained on Estonian soil to defend the mar-
itime approaches to Petrograd (now St. Petersburg). Estonia was also important for
Triple Entente oensive naval operations from the port of Tallinn (Reval).2 A goal of
Operation Albion was to end the Anglo-Russian submarine threat to German iron
ore trac from Sweden to Germany.
In autumn 1917, the German General Sta had the greater strategic problem of
uickly ending the war on the eastern front to shi resources westward. In the Rus-
sian maritime defense scheme, positions on the Estonian islands and Estonian shore
1 ese islands included Saaremaa (Ösel), Muhu (Moon), and Hiiumaa (Dagö). Referred to by Germans
as the Baltic Islands, referred to by the Estonians as the Estonian Islands. On 12 April 1917, the Russian
Provisional government endorsed the law draed by Estonian leaders for the autonomy of Estonia. is
law joined the islands that had been administered as part Livonia to Estonian administration as most of
the population were Estonians.
2 e Triple Entente refers to the formal association between Russia, France, and Great Britain during
World War I. Michael Wilson, Baltic Assignment: British Submariners in Russia, 1914–1919 (London: Leo
Cooper, 1985), 38–39.
Operation Albion
143
of the Gulf of Finland were the “hinge to the door” to the Russian capital of Petro-
grad. Operation Albion was successful as it caused panic and government collapse in
Petrograd.3
Operation Albion illustrates the importance of an armed forces’ ability to adapt
to new situations uickly. e German armed forces planned and executed Operation
Albion in a few weeks despite having no amphibious doctrine or experience. It was
3 E. Laaman, “Langemine 20 aasta eest” [e Fall of Saaremaa 20 Years Ago], Sõdur, 40–41 (1937): 978; and
William S. Lind, “Operation Albion,” On War #318, Defense and National Interest, 19 October 2009.
MAP
Defense positions, coastal artillery, and mineelds.
Source: ocial Estonian Navy map, adapted by MCUP
Sibul
144
also perhaps the rst true joint operation including selection of a joint air command-
er. e success of the operation had the ultimate strategic result of collapsing the
Russian Provisional Government and ending the war on the eastern front on German
terms in 1917.
TRIPLE ENTENTE
SUBMARINE OPERATIONS
During the rst months of the war in 1914, Russian submariners, although profes-
sionally competent, were handicapped by old and dated vessels. By the end of 1914,
Russian submarines had made 14 patrols but failed to have any success against Ger-
man shipping. erefore, the British Admiralty decided that best way they could
immediately assist their Russian ally was by reinforcing the Russian submarine eet
in the Baltic. In addition to carrying out maritime reconnaissance and attacks on
German warships, an important aim for the British submarines was to disrupt the vi-
tal trac of high-grade hematite iron ore from the Swedish port of Luleå on the Gulf
of Bothnia to north German ports. Luleå was the site of the Svartön ore docks and
the terminus of the railway line to the Malmberget ore elds in northern Sweden.4
In October 1914, two British E-class submarines ran the Danish Belts and Sounds
and operated out of Tallinn.5 A third E-class successfully made the run through the
Belts and Sounds, one was lost as German antisubmarine warfare techniues im-
proved. Autumn 1915 was perhaps the most successful period for British submarine
otilla operating in the Baltic. e HMS E8 (1913) sank the armored cruiser SMS
Prinz Adalbert (1901) and HMS E19 (1915) sank four German aed ore carriers. To
follow up on the success of 1915, the British Royal Navy opted for a risk-free route
from Archangel, Russia, via inland waterways to the Gulf of Finland to reinforce their
Baltic otilla in July 1916 with four small C-class submarines.6
RIGA FRONT
At the end of August 1914, the Russians suered a huge defeat with the invasion of
East Prussia. Half of the Russian 2d Army Corps was annihilated, 92,000 troops were
captured, and large stocks of artillery and transport euipment were lost.7 A series of
4 “Sweden Aiding Germany with Iron Ore, Claim,” Chicago Daily Tribune, 19 July 1917, 5; “Electric Rail-
way in Sweden,” Railway Age Gazette 59, no. 21 (November 1915): 942; and Capt Donald Macintyre, “A
Forgotten Campaign—IV: Forlorn Hope,” RUSI Journal 106, no. 624 (1961): 65, https://doi.org/10.1080
/03071846109420730.
5 What have historically been known as the Belts and Sounds are also known as the Danish Straits, which
are narrow, shallow, island-dotted sea areas that lie between the Baltic and the North Sea. ey are a
classic maritime chokepoint. e Belts and Sounds comprise three general areas, there is the 5 km-wide
Öresund between the island of Zealand on which Copenhagen is situated and the western coast of Swe-
den, the Great Belt, which has a width of 18 km, and the Little Belt. Malcolm W. Cagle, “e Strategic
Danish Straits,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 86, no. 10 (October 1960): 36.
6 Macintyre, “A Forgotten Campaign—IV,” 66; and Wilson, Baltic Assignment, 38–39.
7 Edgar Anderson, “e Military Situation in the Baltic States,” Baltic Defence Review 6, no. 2 (2001): 117.
Operation Albion
145
follow-up battles kept the Russians o balance until the spring of 1915. Lithuania was
largely occupied and Kurzeme (Courland) fell to the Germans, the broad Daugava
(Düna, Western Dvina) River would hold the German advance to the northeast for an
extended period. Latvian territory was cut in two by the front lines. Latvian territory
falling fully under German control did not bode well for the future of Latvia and its
national leaders pushed tsarist authorities for the formation of Latvian units under
the command of Latvian ocers. ey were able to achieve the creation of national
Latvian light-infantry units. Starting in August 1915 with two battalions, the Latvian
units grew to eight combat regiments and one reserve regiment that were combined
in two brigades for a short period in one division. ese units, commanded by Latvi-
an ocers, broke through the German front lines several times by using new inltra-
tion style tactics. Due to their bravery and success, they drew the attention not only
of Triple Entente military observers, but also of the international press. ese Latvian
units holding the Daugava line paid a heavy price in lives during the battles of July
1916, Christmas 1916, and New Year 1917.8
OPERATION ALBION
In spring 1917, the coordinated oensive of Triple Entente Powers had broken down.
On the western front, the great spring oensive of the British at Arras, and that of
the French along the Aisne River, failed. On the eastern front, continuous military
setbacks since August 1914, and the stress of the war on the economy and society
forced Tsar Nicolas II to abdicate in March 1917 and a republican provisional govern-
ment was formed under liberal Petrograd lawyer Aleksandr Kerensky. Kerensky’s pro-
visional government kept Russia in the war against the Central Powers, starting an
oensive in July on the banks of the Dniester River.9 It was so successful that it caused
a crisis for the Central Powers on the Austrian front. erefore, German troops were
rushed to the Dniester region in the support of the Austrians. ese German troops
were able to go on the counteroensive advancing some 144 kilometers within 13
days. With the Russian Empire increasingly in internal chaos since March 1917, the
German General Sta planned to strike decisive blows against the Russians to bring
about complete disruption of their war eort. e capture of Riga was a key step in
striking these blows. e northern portion of the eastern front was along the Daugava
(Düna, Western Dvina) River with German forces holding the southern bank and
Russian forces holding the northern bank. e Russian 12th Army, consisting of eight
divisions, was still holding a bridgehead on the south bank of the Daugava west of
Riga. As it presented a threat, the German General Sta decided to try to eliminate
the bridgehead, but it could not be done by merely launching a frontal attack. For this
8 Anderson, “e Military Situation in the Baltic States,” 118.
9 Aleksandr Kerensky (1881–1970) was a moderate socialist revolutionary who served as head of the Rus-
sian Provisional Government from July to October 1917. Before becoming the leader of the provisional
government, he had been a member of the Duma and a prominent lawyer, freuently defending revolu-
tionaries accused of political oenses.
Sibul
146
reason, the Germans decided to cross the river east of Riga, at a point in the river that
was 410–500 meters in width, with the idea of capturing the city and cutting o the
bridgehead garrison from a northeasterly direction. e river crossing was successful-
ly carried out on 1 September and Riga fell to the Germans soon aer. However, the
Russian 12th Army was able to withdraw from the bridgehead and establish new front
lines along the Gauja (Livländische Aa) River north of Riga. e northern portion
of the front was secured by the Germans and the capture of Riga was a considerable
blow to the Russian side due to the long and stout defense put up by the Latvian rie
regiments of the 12th Army. Anger in Latvian ranks grew as they blamed the Russian
High Command and the Provisional Government for the disaster. While the ank on
the land was secured for Germans, they did not control the Gulf of Riga and their
advance northward could still be menaced from the Baltic Sea. ere were two chan-
nels aording access to the Gulf of Riga: Irbe Strait, approximately 27 kilometers in
width and situated between the southernmost point of the Island of Saaremaa and
the Kurzeme (Courland) coast.10
As the situation unfolded in September 1917, the Russians decided they would
concentrate all available naval forces into Muhu (Moon) Sound and the Gulf of Riga
as the means to disrupt German oensive land operations northward. e Russian
right ank of the land front was protected from the sea, while the situation of the
Germans was comparatively dicult because their le ank, ending on the coast, was
constantly under the danger of being attacked from the sea. To eliminate this danger,
the Germans had to obtain the control of the Gulf of Riga. For this, it was necessary
to be the master of the two entrances: the Irbe (Irben) Strait and the Suur (Great)
Sound. Capture of Saaremaa (Ösel)and Muhumaa (Moon) would enable German
control of the two straits. us, on 19 September 1917, German emperor Wilhelm II
issued the following order:
In order to control the Gulf of Riga, and for the purpose of aording protection to
the flank of the field forces in the eas, the islands of Ösel [Saaremaa] and Moon
[Muhu] will be captured in a joint atack by the land and naval forces; moreover,
the Great [Suur] Sound will be blocked so that hostile naval forces cannot pass
through i.11
Lieutenant General Oskar von Hutier, commander of the German 8th Army, was
charged with the overall direction of the operation, for which was given the codeword
“Albion.” While the orders mentioned only the protection of the ank of eld forces,
the German leadership were looking for Operation Albion to have a larger opera-
10 Erich von Tschischwitz, e Army and Navy in the Conquest of the Baltic Islands in October 1917, trans.
Henry Hosseld (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Command and General Sta School Press, 1933), 2–3; and An-
derson, “e Military Situation in the Baltic States,” 118.
11 von Tschischwitz, e Army and Navy in the Conquest of the Baltic Islands in October 1917, 5.
Operation Albion
147
MAP
Sealanes, channels, and defensive positions.
Source: Nikolai Reek, Saaremaa Kaitsmine Ja Vallutamine A. 1917
(Tallinn: Tallinna Eesti Kirjastusühisus, 1937)
Sibul
148
tional and strategic eect, ending the submarine threat to ore supplies coming from
Sweden and ultimately ending the war on Germany’s eastern front.12
THE MUHU SOUND FORTIFIED POSITION
e area of the main Estonian islands—Saaremaa (Ösel), Muhu (Moon), and Hiiumaa
(Dagö)—eualed 3,972 suare kilometers, with the largest of the islands Saaremaa at
2,714 suare kilometers. Saaremaa (Ösel) had a series of peninsulas jutting out to sea,
allowing for construction for coastal artillery positions that project re far into the
Baltic. For the defense of the islands, the Russian armed forces formed an extensive
defensive organization that consisted of coastal batteries, land forces, and naval mine-
elds. e land forces, known as the Muhu Sound Fortied Position (Moonzundskaya
ukreplennaya positziya), were a joint force in the command structure of the Russian
Baltic Fleet. e position’s commander was Rear Admiral Dimitry Aleksandrovich
Sveshnikov, a former cruiser captain and his chief of sta was the army sta cap-
tain Nikolai Reek, a 27-year-old native of Tallinn. Reek would go on later to have an
inuential career with the Estonian Army. e Estonian islands had approximately
60,000 inhabitants, with the Estonians forming the greater part of the population
and the Baltic Germans forming a smaller minority. Both the Baltic Germans and the
Estonians had been loyal to the Russian Empire’s war eort, but by autumn 1917, Es-
tonians were looking toward national independence and the Baltic Germans increas-
ingly saw their future with the German Empire.13 e Estonians formed their rst
national military unit on 25 April 1917, the 2d Naval Fortress Regiment that in May
1917, became the 1st Estonian Infantry Regiment, two battalions of which would take
part in defense of the islands.14 e islands had no great elevations, so Saaremaa (Ösel)
as the largest island that aorded the ability to deploy sizable ground forces with
space to maneuver. Total land forces on Saaremaa consisted of two infantry divisions
and 20 heavy coastal guns.15 e heavy coastal guns on Sõrve Peninsula represented a
critical defensive capability of fortied position as it controlled the Irbe Strait, the
gateway to the Gulf of Riga; thus, the gun positions were organized into the special
12 Nikolai Reek, Saaremaa Kaitsmine Ja Valluamine A. 1917 [e Defense and Conuest of Saaremaa in 1917]
(Tallinn: Kindralstaab IV Osakond, 1937), 5–6; and von Tschischwitz, e Army and Navy in the Conquest
of the Baltic Islands in October 1917, 5.
13 e Baltic Germans were decedents of Teutonic Order and formed the ruling aristocracy and land-
owners. By 1914, the Estonians owned their own farms vice being tenant farmers and entered a growing
professional and mercantile middle class. e inhabitants of the islands made their livings from raising
livestock and crops, shing, boat building, shipping, and commerce. Prior to Estonian autonomy, the
islands were administratively under the province of Livonia. Zigmantas Kiaupa, e History of the Baltic
Countries (Tallinn, Estonia: Avita, 1999), 130; and von Tschischwitz, e Army and Navy in the Conquest of
the Baltic Islands in October 1917, 12.
14 Anderson, “e Military Situation in the Baltic States,” 118.
15 Land forces on Saaremaa consisted of 9 infantry battalions, 4 cavalry suadrons, euipped 108mm
machine guns, 24 trench mortars, 6 heavy mortars, 42 light eld guns, 4 heavy eld guns, 44 antiaircra
guns, and 3 companies of marine guards with 4 machine guns. Reek, Saaremaa Kaitsmine Ja Valluamine
A. 1917, 19–20.
Operation Albion
149
autonomous sector. e special autonomous sector was under a separate command-
er and logistics were organized separately so that it would be able to operate inde-
pendently if it was cut o from the rest of Saaremaa by the Germans. e units in the
special autonomous sector consisted of 4th Coastal Defense Artillery Battalion and
MAP
Road network with white arrows marking potential German landing zones as wargamed by Russian
sta and black arrows marking German planned landing zones.
Source: Reek, Saaremaa Kaitsmine Ja Vallutamine A. 1917
Sibul
150
the marine guards.16 e commander of the special autonomous sector, Russian Navy
captain M. G. Knüpfer, had the task of defending the Irbe Strait and harmonizing his
action with the activities of the Russian eet. e guns were exposed, with the mag-
azines and shelters protected only against smaller aerial bombs.17 While the special
autonomous sector had its self-contained logistics, supporting the rest of Saaremaa
was a dicult task due to the comparatively large size and long coastline of the island
making movement and communications dicult.
e hub of transportation and communication on Saaremaa was in Kuressaare
(Arensburg), the provincial capital. It was the only sizable town on Saaremaa with
approximately 5,000 inhabitants. Kuressaare had an electric power plant and sub-
marine telegraphic cables connecting it with Pärnu on the mainland. Kuressaare was
directly served by two harbors: the old harbor and the port at Roomassaare. e old
harbor was shallow and lled with silt, thus suitable only for launches and shing
boats. Roomassaare was about 2.2 kilometers south of the Kuressaare with a new uay
accommodating vessels with a draught up to three meters. Five highways led from
Kuressaare, two in the direction of Muhu; one north toward the Pammana Peninsula;
one to Kihelkonna, situated on the northwest coast; and one on the southernmost
point of the Sõrve Peninsula. e most direct route from the road hub in Kuressaare
to the mainland was the post road to Orissaare, from where the 3.5-kilometer stone
causeway took it to Muhu. e post road continued from the causeway to the east
coast of Muhu, where a steam ferry ran 7.2 kilometers across Muhu Sound to Virtsu
on the mainland.18 is route was the main route of supply and reinforcement for
Russian forces and defensive position on Saaremaa. No railways were constructed
on Saaremaa or Muhu, and the main supply route was dependent on eight oen-in-
operable motor trucks and three widely dispersed horse transport units that lacked
healthy horses. Conseuently, it was not possible to use the transport units for uick-
ly moving reserves. Telephone and telegraphic communications were also a problem
because of shortages of materials and skilled technical personnel. e very long wires
connecting outlying units were dicult to repair uickly and messages overloading
the submarine cable to the mainland made communications very dicult.19
Not all communications and movement problems were due to a lack of material
or infrastructure. e war weighed heavily on the leadership of the Russian Army.
Junior leadership suered particularly because of high casualties and replacement
ocers had to be uickly trained. e company commanders in the two Russian
divisions on the islands were mainly ensigns who had nished ocer training during
16 4th Coastal Defense Artillery Battalion with four 12-inch coastal guns. Reek, Saaremaa Kaitsmine Ja
Valluamine A. 1917, 21.
17 Reek, Saaremaa Kaitsmine Ja Valluamine A. 1917, 14–16.
18 Reek, Saaremaa Kaitsmine Ja Valluamine A. 1917, 9; Karl Schlossmann, Estonian Curative Sea-Muds and
Seaside Health Resorts (London: Boreas, 1939), 36–37; and von Tschischwitz, e Army and Navy in the
Conquest of the Baltic Islands in October 1917, 13.
19 Reek, Saaremaa Kaitsmine Ja Valluamine A. 1917, 102–8.
Operation Albion
151
the war. e number of experienced senior ocers was very limited. e swampy and
thickly forested terrain on Saaremaa presented a high reuirement for unit maneuver
for which the leadership was unprepared.20
Support of air operations were also aected by movement problems between
outlying air stations and depot/workshop facilities and shortages of materiel and
skilled mechanics. Aircra operating in the Muhu Sound Fortied Position’s area
belonged to the Russian naval air service. e two main air stations in the area were
at Kihelkonna on west coast of Saaremaa and the other at Haapsalu (Hapsal) on the
Estonian mainland. Haapsalu served as the headuarters and depot for seaplane sta-
tions at Tahkuna and Kõrgessaare on Hiiumaa (Dagö). e Kihelkonna Air Station
was a well-prepared facility, it served as the headuarters and depot for naval aviation
on Saaremaa.21 Aircra engines reuiring major repairs were brought to the work-
shops at Kihelkonna from other air units on the island. e station was defended by
antiaircra guns, which were placed so that they could also re out to sea on surface
targets. However, the station was situated outside of the positions of land forces on
Saaremaa, so it was not actually defended in the event of a German landing elsewhere.
Aircra maintenance was dicult as there were deciencies in technical training of
personnel and a shortage of skilled mechanics, supplies, spare parts, and tools. While
there were a good number of skilled pilots among naval aviation personnel, they oen
could not put their abilities to use due to the constant aircra maintenance problems.
e morale of aviation ocers was low, according to a British Royal Flying Corps re-
port in August 1917, due to “the entire absence of authority on the part of any senior
ocer at any station, and . . . slackness and indierence shown by other ocers.”22
e Russian naval vessels committed to support the Muhu Sound Fortied Position
suered from similar maintenance problems to the air arm.23
e Russian Baltic Fleet committed to operations in the Gulf of Riga and Muhu
Sound with 121 vessels of dierent types. e largest ships were the older battleships
Slava (1905) and Grazhdanin (1903, originally Tsesarevich). ey were older and small-
er predreadnought battleships that could go through the dredged channel in Muhu
Sound due to their small draught. Attached to the Russian Navy were also three Brit-
ish C-class submarines. With the limited range of the C-class boats, the British had
established an advanced base at Rohuküla (Rogokul) on the Estonian mainland six
kilometers south of Haapsalu. Rohuküla was nearer than Tallinn to the Muhu chan-
20 Reek, Saaremaa Kaitsmine Ja Valluamine A. 1917, 35–36, 105.
21 Facilities included large hangars, workshops, storehouses, a radio station, an independent water works,
an electric power plant, and petroleum stores. Reek, Saaremaa Kaitsmine Ja Valluamine A. 1917, 106.
22 “Osel Island Naval Air Station, Reports on, with General Remarks on Russian Air Services,” 5 Novem-
ber 1917, AIR 1/36/15/1/241, United Kingdom National Archives, hereaer Osel Island Naval Air Station
reports.
23 Reek, Saaremaa Kaitsmine Ja Valluamine A. 1917, 105; and Osel Island Naval Air Station reports.
Sibul
152
nel and Gulf of Riga.24 While the submarines could sortie the central Baltic to operate
against German shipping, the primary task of the rest the naval force was to maintain
control of the Gulf of Riga. Mineelds closing the Irbe Strait were key in this task.
e Russian eet laid mines at the beginning of the war and continuously renewed
and improved the mineelds. However, by autumn 1917, maintaining the mineelds
and other Russian naval operations were nearly paralyzed due to disorder within the
ranks and a lack of morale. Crews did not put the necessary emphasis on maintenance
euipment and materiel. Discipline was entirely lacking, and crews did not trust their
ocers. Daily shipboard political meetings and negotiations by semaphore and signal
lamps with other ships took away from critical tasks and kept things in a constant
state of tension. Incapable of establishing and maintaining the discipline, many naval
ocers had become apathetic or abandoned the ships, leaving others to take on an
overwhelming number of additional tasks.25 e Imperial German Navy had its own
morale problems, and this became a consideration in the German planning for Op-
eration Albion.
GERMAN PLANNING
One of the considerations for launching Operation Albion as a major amphibious ef-
fort was to engage the German eet, as much of it was inactive in port and the morale
among the ranks was plummeting. Germans had little experience with amphibious
operations to draw on for planning. Crossing the Daugava in September 1917 and the
Danube and other rivers did give them some experience moving a large force across a
body of water relevant to the disembarkation of forces, such as using horse boats that
had a ramp in the bow. e horse boats provided a comfortable platform for landing
horses or vehicles.
Each boat could carry 70 soldiers with full euipment, or 10 horses, or 2 eld guns
with ammunition, or a 6-inch artillery piece. Diculties in landing a large number of
horses or motor vehicles led to the use of bicycle-euipped light infantry, which could
be loaded easily in conventional landing boats pulled by lighters. Once on Saaremaa,
they could move uickly over relatively large distances. e deployment of bicycle
troops was relatively new and had never been used by an amphibious landing force.26
As the German joint sta considered the places for landing on Saaremaa, Taga
Bay (Tagalaht) was uickly determined to have the most advantages. Capturing
Roomassaare uay was initially considered as ships could be readily o loaded at
the port facility. However, Sõrve coastal batteries would rst have to be silenced to
penetrate the Irbe Strait and thus surprise would have been lost. erefore, the idea
24 Described as “an unlovely place,” meager support facilities at Rohuküla consisted of a pier and fuel and
ammunition storehouses in Wilson, Baltic Assignment, 106; and Reek, Saaremaa Kaitsmine Ja Valluamine
A. 1917, 102–3.
25 Reek, Saaremaa Kaitsmine Ja Valluamine A. 1917, 102–8; and Wilson, Baltic Assignment, 160.
26 Bruce I. Gudmundsson, On Armor (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing, 2004), 42–43.
Operation Albion
153
of landing at Roomassaare was abandoned. On the western coast of Saaremaa Taga
Bay was determined as the best location as it allowed troop transports to approach
very near to shore and it allowed ready re support from the eet. Taga Bay was
sheltered against the dominating autumn westerly winds. Furthermore, the beach in
the bay and the terrain features immediately inland were favorable for the landing as
good roads led to Kuressaare. Taga Bay was 300 kilometers away from Liepāja (Libau)
in Latvia (the main embarkation port), 60 kilometers overland from Kuressaare, and
120 kilometers from the southern-most tip of the Sõrve Peninsula. A drawback of
landing at Taga Bay was that it presented a long open sea crossing for the transport
eet. Additionally, the entrance was guarded by two Russians coastal batteries, which
had to be silenced before landing operations could commence. e second alternative
considered for the landing was the Pammana region. Pammana was uite favorable
in terrain for a landing, but it was more open to the winds than Taga Bay. From
Pammana, the roads went toward Kuressaare and the causeway to Muhu. Given these
considerations, the German concept of operations was as follows: (1) main landing
in Taga Bay with forces moving inland in the direction of Kuressaare; (2) secondary
landing at Pammana with forces moving inland in the direction of Orissaare and light
forces to cut the causeway to Muhu; and (3) naval bombardment of Kihelkonna and
FIGURE
German troops and their horses disembarking from a horse boat at Taga Bay.
Source: Imperial War Museum photo IWM Q 87079
Sibul
154
on the western coast of the Sõrve Peninsula as a deception to keep Russian forces o
balance. e landings reuired surprise, speed, and decisive action once on shore and
very strong cooperation between the army and navy.27 erefore, the Germans formed
a special army and navy command that included a joint air command. e army com-
ponent consisted of an expeditionary corps and had as its nucleus the 42d Inantry
Division, which had participated in the crossing of the Daugava in September 1917.
e light infantry bicycle companies of this force would push uickly along roads to
interdict Russian reinforcement or withdrawal and serve as a mobile reserve. Portable
radio transmitters would allow units to coordinate actions once landed. e 24,600
personnel, 8,500 horses, 2,500 vehicles, and 55 guns of the expeditionary corps would
be transported in two echelons.28 In addition, the expeditionary corps needed great
uantities of ammunition and engineering material as well as subsistence for 30 days,
which represented 2,300 tons alone.29 To gain sea control and land the expeditionary
corps, the German Navy organized a force of 181 ships, 124 small motor vessels, 94 air-
cra. and 5 airships. e backbone of the naval force was 10 of the most modern bat-
tleships of the König and Kaiser classes. Because of their heavy caliber guns, they were
eective against coastal batteries. e additional value of the battleships was that
they had well engineered watertight compartments, thus mine explosions presented
minimal damage to them. e main tasks for the air component included reconnais-
sance, close air support, bombing, and screening. e air command made well-
organized arrangements for dropping messages from airplanes to ground troops so
that air reconnaissance information could be uickly relayed to ground forces. With
their air strength, the Germans would have continuous surveillance over the area
of operations. Airships gave strategic reach to the reconnaissance and provided the
capability for long-range bombing raids. e large Friedrichshafen FF41A seaplanes
would carry out long range reconnaissance and bombing as well as aerial mining and
even the carrying of troops and supplies.30
OPERATION ALBION EXECUTED
e troops of the expeditionary corps embarked at Liepāja, which had harbor facili-
ties adeuate for the purpose of accommodating not only the eet of transports but
also the numerous mine-hunting and mine-sweeping otillas, together with other
27 Reek, Saaremaa Kaitsmine Ja Valluamine A. 1917, 112–13; and Cdr William C. I. Stiles, “e German Op-
eration against the Baltic Islands” (thesis, Army War College, 1930), 6; and von Tschischwitz, e Army
and Navy in the Conquest of the Baltic Islands in October 1917, 30–31.
28 Weaponry of the expeditionary corps included 220 machine guns and 84 mortars. Stiles, “e German
Operation against the Baltic Islands,” 6.
29 Capt G. von Kobinski, German Navy (Ret), “e Conuest of the Baltic Islands,” U.S. Naval Institute
Proceedings 58, no. 7 (July 1932): 976.
30 “e conuest of the Baltic Islands: Translation of Vice-Admiral Schmidt’s dispatch November 1919,”
ADM 186/594, United Kingdom National Archives; and Reek, Saaremaa Kaitsmine Ja Valluamine A. 1917,
109.
Operation Albion
155
units.31 e preparatory period and concentration of forces took place between 21
September and 8 October, while the actual embarkation of forces took place 8–10
October. German intelligence spread information that the actual destination of the
expeditionary force was Kronstadt and, as preparations were taking place in Liepāja,
German aircra bombed gun positions on the Sõrve Peninsula. Airships kept obser-
vation over the Gulf of Riga and the entrance to the Gulf of Finland as well as car-
rying out air raids on Pärnu and Viljandi on the Estonian mainland. On 11 October,
31 Liepaja had served as principal base of the Russian Baltic Fleet before its capture by the Germans.
At Liepaja, facilities oered protection against attack, and the available wharves ensured rapid loading
during the process of embarkation.
MAP
German landings, 12 October 1917, with German forces in blue, Russian forces in red.
Source: Reek, Saaremaa Kaitsmine Ja Vallutamine A. 1917
Sibul
156
the naval forces with transports and supply ships departed Liepāja for the crossing
to the islands. e advance through a channel cleared of mineelds went without
incident, and the transport and escorts arrived at Taga Bay at 0300 on the morning
of 12 October. At 0530, the landing began when German battleships opened re on
FIGURE
German battleship SMS Bayern, accompanied by a Zeppelin on scouting duties, en route, October 1917.
Source: Imperial War Museum photo IWM Q 87082
Operation Albion
157
the Russian coastal batteries defending the entrance of Taga Bay. e batteries were
uickly silenced and in the hands of German troops.32
At 0845, the transports were ordered into Taga Bay, and by 1000 the disembarka-
tion was in full swing. As the transports entered Taga Bay, German destroyers opened
re on the Kihelkonna Air Station. About the same time, two battleships opened
re on the western coast of the Sõrve Peninsula. German aircra also joined the
operations against Kihelkonna. Despite naval bombardment and presence of Ger-
man aircra, some Russian seaplanes succeeded in taking o to attack the German
ships, but they were uickly driven o. Nevertheless, the Russians were able to car-
ry out air reconnaissance and, based on the location of German forces, the Russian
headuarters at Kuressaare was able to discern the German concept of operations.33
e reaction of the Russian command was to try to reinforce from the mainland to
undertake a counteroensive to throw the German expeditionary corps back into
the sea. As the landings started, Admiral Sveshnikov le Kuressaare for Haapsalu to
organize reinforcements, leaving Captain Reek in Kuressaare to direct command up
to the last possible moment. Reek knew the German course of action as the Russian
sta had wargamed German landings on Saaremaa and actions generally followed a
predictable course. e Germans came to their decision to use bicycle troops through
their own wargaming of the problem. e only great surprise was the use of bicycle
troops, which gave unexpected speed to the German advance to the causeway.34 Two
battalions of bicycle troops went ashore along with the 18th Shock Company and a
naval landing party with secondary landing force landed in the Pammana region be-
tween Liiküla and Tuhkana.35 e landing started at 0830 and was not met with any
opposition. e cyclists moved uickly in the general direction of the town of Oris-
saare and the bridgehead to the Muhu causeway. To advance more uickly, the 18th
Shock Company rode carts taken from the local residents.36
By the evening of 12 October, Germans landed four infantry regiments, three
bicycle battalions, and one artillery battery ashore. ese forces advanced 10–12 ki-
lometers from the beachhead and captured the Kihelkonna Air Station. Meanwhile,
German forces continuously came ashore. e bicycle battalions held Orissaare while
the Russians still held the causeway. In the next two days, German forces advanced
southward from Taga Bay toward the Sõrve Peninsula. Moving uickly, the Germans
succeeded in cutting o the peninsula, which caused the main Russian forces on the
island and the two infantry divisions in Kuressaare to withdraw in disorder toward
32 Reek, Saaremaa Kaitsmine Ja Valluamine A. 1917, 119–24; and von Tschischwitz, e Army and Navy in the
Conquest of the Baltic Islands in October 1917, 30–31.
33 Reek, Saaremaa Kaitsmine Ja Valluamine A. 1917, 125.
34 Reek, Saaremaa Kaitsmine Ja Valluamine A. 1917, 135–36.
35 A total of 1,900 troops landed.
36 Reek, Saaremaa Kaitsmine Ja Valluamine A. 1917, 126–31; and von Tschischwitz, e Army and Navy in the
Conquest of the Baltic Islands in October 1917, 61–62.
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158
Muhu. e German cyclists and shock troops held their position in Orissaare with the
Russians holding the Muhu end of the causeway. Withdrawing Russian forces from
Kuressaare concentrated in the Pöide region just south of Orissaare, which initiated
desperate actions by the Germans to hold out at Orissaare and for the Russians to
breakthrough and hold the causeway. However, Russian forces around Pöide gave up
hope as the Germans closed in from two directions. On the aernoon of 15 October,
the commander of the Russian 107th Infantry Division gave permission to all ocers
for their units to surrender. ose who did not want to surrender could attempt to
penetrate the German lines and escape.37
By 16 October, Saaremaa fell entirely under the control of the Germans. e
continuous naval shelling and air attacks had demoralized the Russian forces trapped
on the Sõrve Peninsula. at morning, the Russian 425th Infantry Regiment surren-
dered, allowing the Germans to gain control of the entire Sõrve Peninsula, its coastal
batteries, and the Gulf of Riga. e next morning, the Germans completed sweeping
the Irbe Strait so they could send a force of 28 ships, including the battleships SMS
König (1913) and Kronprinz (1914), into the Gulf of Riga. To boost the morale of de-
fenders on Muhu, the Russian vessels on the gulf engaged the German Navy, despite
their material inferiority, before withdrawing through Muhu Sound. e battleships
37 Reek, Saaremaa Kaitsmine Ja Valluamine A. 1917, 191–92; and von Tschischwitz, e Army and Navy in the
Conquest of the Baltic Islands in October 1917, 99–102.
FIGURE
German troops going ashore at Saaremaa.
Source: German Federal Archives, Sammlung von Repro-Negativen (Bild 146)
Operation Albion
159
Slava and Grazhdanin, the armored cruisers Admiral Makarov (1908) and Bayan (1902),
and 13 destroyers engaged in a running battle. e battleship Slava received a se-
ries of eective hits, dropped out of the line, and ran aground in Suur Sound. e
crew abandoned the ship and blew up the remaining ammunition. e Russian force
withdrew, blocking the Muhu Sound by sinking a number of blocking ships in the
channel. Despite the fact that the bulk of the Russian naval force had successfully
escaped, the naval battle had a paralyzing eect on the defenders of Muhu. Seeing the
ships retreating, some of which were burning, the defenders lost the last bit of hope.
On the morning of 18 October, the ve battalions defending Muhu surrendered to
the Germans.38 e Russians planned to evacuate their forces from Hiiumaa. How-
ever, as Muhu forces surrendered, Hiiumaa’s defenders le their positions to await
transports arriving on the eastern shore of the island to take them to the mainland.
With the delay of the evacuation transports, panic set in and the Russian forces sur-
rendered to German forces that had landed at Pammana. e German capture of the
two other small islands warrants mention. Ruhnu, in the center of the Gulf of Riga,
and Abruka, south of Kuressaare, were occupied on 13 and 15 October, respectively.
Friedrichshafen FF41A naval aircra accomplished this by landing troops in perhaps
the rst air assault in history.39
Operation Albion ended with German losses of about 400 troops, including na-
val personnel. e Russian casualties were relatively light as well, despite losing a
strategically key location. e Germans captured 20,000 Russian prisoners and 140
artillery pieces. Russian naval losses were light as only the battleship Slava and the
destroyer Grom (1916) were lost.40
AFTERMATH
Despite its low cost in lives and material, Operation Albion achieved great strategic
eects. Capturing the islands opened the route to the Russian capital of Petrograd,
which was the ultimate German strategic goal associated with Operation Albion. In
danger of attack from the rear, Tallinn’s fortications protecting the entrance to the
Gulf of Riga were evacuated. On 19 October, the Provisional Government made the
announcement that the Russian capital was to be moved from Petrograd to Moscow
illustrating the gravity of the situation for the Russians. German possession of the
Estonian islands put Petrograd within range of German air attacks.41 According to
historian Eduard Laaman, who the witnessed events,
e Russians saw this assault on the Estonian islands as the opening of the gates
38 e defenders of Muhu included two battalions each of the 470th Infantry and the 471st Infantry, and
two battalions of the 1st Estonian Regiment and the Death Battalion, which consisted of volunteers only.
39 von Tschischwitz, e Army and Navy in the Conquest of the Baltic Islands in October 1917, 193.
40 Reek, Saaremaa Kaitsmine Ja Valluamine A. 1917, 195–206; and von Tschischwitz, e Army and Navy in
the Conquest of the Baltic Islands in October 1917, 184–93.
41 “Peace with Russia May Be German Goal: Operations in Baltic Possibly Have is End in View as Well
as the Inuencing of Sweden by Seizing Aland Islands,” New York Times, 21 October 1917.
Sibul
160
to Petrograd. A mindless panic seized the centers of Russian sate power, the Bol-
sheviks took advanage of this and carried out their coup d’éat a few weeks later
and then immediately asked for a truce.42
With control of the Gulf of Riga, the German ore shipments from Sweden vital
for war industries were protected from Allied interference. It also opened the Äland
(Ahvenanmaa) Islands to Swedish occupation, which culminated with landing oper-
ations from 18 February to 2 March 1918. Despite the 1856 dictates of the Treaty of
Paris, the Russians had established a submarine forward operating base in the Älands
to project power to the mouth of Gulf of Bothnia, which was now lost.43
Control of the Gulf of Riga also secured the le ank of the German land forces
on the Riga front, while endangering the right ank of the Russian lines manned
by the Latvian riemen along Gauja (Livländische Aa) River. In late October 1917,
the Latvian riemen were partially pulled o the front lines and were now in Petro-
grad, Moscow, and on various important points on the Russian railway network. De-
spite widespread embitterment in the ranks at the Russian Provisional Government
for heavy casualties and the disastrous fall of Riga, the Latvians, for the most part
remained a disciplined force as the Russian Army largely disintegrated. Bolshevik
leader Vladimir I. Lenin was able to convince Latvian riemen commander Jukums
Vācietis to support the Bolshevik power play. As the Bolsheviks seized key buildings
in Petrograd, the Latvian rie regiments took control of key railway junctions to
prevent the movement of troops to Petrograd to thwart the coup d’état. Due to the
demoralized condition of the Russian Army, the Latvians accomplished their task
with ease.44 On 25 November 1918, Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky negotiated the Trea-
42 Laaman, “Langemine 20 aasta eest,” 978.
43 Part of Finland, ethnic Swedes inhabited the Åland Islands, which the 1856 Treaty of Paris had de-
militarized. However, in 1914, the Russian Empire disregarded the treaty and fortied the islands with
10 coastal artillery positions, two piers for submarines, two airelds, barracks, and a telephone system
connecting the installations. e Russians established a forward operating base for submarines sup-
ported by submarine tender Svjatitel Nikolai for the use of British and Russian navies in the archipelago.
is treaty violation was greatly resented in Sweden, where there was growing pro-German sentiment.
On 15 February 1918, the Swedes landed 700–800 troops on the strategic islands using the icebreaker
Isbryaren I, the gunboat or, and the transport steamer Runeberg. ey were later reinforced by the
gunboats Sverige, Svenkund, and Oscar II. Some 1,200 Russian soldiers were disarmed in the islands. e
British submarine campaign in the Baltic came to an end, as on 1 April 1918 Germans landed a force of
13,000 troops under Prussian general Rüdiger von der Goltz in western Finland. e British submarines
had been harbored in Helsinki and, with the Germans on the way, LtCdr Francis Newton Allen Cromie
oversaw the towing of the seven submarines out of Helsinki harbor into the Gulf of Finland, where they
were scuttled between 3 and 8 April 1918. e nal 30 British bluejackets in Finland departed by rail to
Murmansk for evacuation back to Britain. “Peace with Russia May Be German Goal”; Lauri Sauramo,
“Ahvenanmaan sotilaallinen ja sotilaspoliittinen merkitys” [e military and defense signicance of the
Ahvenanmaa Islands], Tiede ja Ase 5 (1937): 198–99; and Macintyre, “A Forgotten Campaign—IV,” 559.
44 Edgar Anderson, “e Role of the Latvian Riemen during the Russian Civil War,” Strenlnieks, nos.
34–35 (1974): 7–10; and Uldis Ģērmanis, “Zemgallian Commander: Colonel Vācietis and the Latvian Ri-
emen in World War I and the October Revolution,” Jaunā Gaia, no. 92 (1973).
Operation Albion
161
ties of Brest-Litovsk with the Germans, which allowed Germany to move the bulk of
their forces from the eastern front to the western front in December 1917.45 Although
Russia was now knocked out of the war, it came too late for Germany as the entrance
of American manpower and resources tipped the balance to the Triple Entente side.
THE LEGACY OF OPERATION ALBION
Although peace with Russia did not result in a German victory in World War I, Op-
eration Albion was widely studied in 1920s and 1930s as an amphibious operation.
It stood in sharp contrast to the failed British amphibious operations at Gallipoli
from 25 April 1915 to 9 January 1916. As it was the most successful example of am-
phibious landings in the war, the Americans—Army and Marine Corps—the British,
Germans, Argentinians, Swedes, Danes, Estonians, Soviets, and Japanese all studied
Operation Albion during the interwar period. What makes it somewhat uniue as
subject of study in professional military education is that chiefs of sta for both sides,
Erich von Tschischwitz and Nikolai Reek produced detailed, operationally oriented
accounts available in the English language.46 ese records later served as the basis of
case studies and battleeld sta ride prereading. During World War II, various pow-
ers heeded the example of Operation Albion to diering extents. American planners
were perhaps more under the inuence of French baaille conduite (methodical battle)
concepts adopted into American doctrine.47 With the post–Vietnam War military re-
form movement in the U.S. armed forces, interest in Operation Albion was renewed,
notably from reform movement luminaries, military theorist William S. Lind and
45 von Kobinski, “e Conuest of the Baltic Islands,” 984.
46 e Army War College oers a translation of von Tschischwitz, e Army and Navy in the Conquest
of the Baltic Islands in October 1917, from the German, as does the Army Command and General Sta
School version, and the original in German was published in 1931. e original version of Reek, Saaremaa
Kaitsmine Ja Valluamine A. 1917, is published in Estonian; the English translation of Reek, an unpublished
typescript, most likely for the benet of the British and perhaps the Japanese was recently published as
an English translation of Reek’s account of events in Art Johanson, General Nikolai Reek Writings Including
Operation Albion and Battle of Cēsis (Tartu: Baltic Defence College, 2021). Reek became an important g-
ure in the Estonian Army and was heavily involved in professional military education. In the immediate
aermath of Operation Albion, the Russian High Command gave him the task of writing the aer
action report for which he had copious notes and collected material. Secondary works on Operation Al-
bion include Michael B. Barrett, Operation Albion: e German Conquest of the Baltic Islands (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2008); and Gary Sta, Battle for the Baltic Islands 1917: Triumph of the Imperial
German Navy (Barnsley, UK: Pen & Sword Maritime, 2008).
47 Baaille conduite (methodical battle) emphasized infantry advances in slow stages covered by massive
artillery support. e United States replicated the concept during the interwar years and its accompa-
nying process-focused education. Donald E. Vandergri, “e US Army Culture Is French!,” Small Wars
Journal, 16 June 2018. As according to Mark E. Grotelueschen, “the results of the Army’s Field Manual
Project, begun in 1927 by then chief of sta Charles Summerall, led to the creation in 1930 of the Man-
ual for Commanders of Large Units a document that relied heavily on French doctrine and advocated the
French Army’s repower-based concept of ‘methodical battle’.” Mark E. Grotelueschen, “e AEF Way
of War: e American Army and Combat in World War I” (PhD diss., Texas A&M University, 2003),
286.
Sibul
162
Marine Corps colonel Michael D. Wyly. According to Lind, American amphibious
operations in World War II were characterized by landings that came in waves to
take a beachhead, followed by stopping and building up combat power for an advance
resembling World War I land tactics such as those used at the Battle of the Somme
(1916) applied to landing operations.48 According to Wyly, such American operations
usually focused on terrain and attrition, while Operation Albion focused on maneu-
ver and the destruction of the enemy’s will to resist. As a result, American casualties
were oen high despite heavy advantages in sea and airpower, manpower, repower,
and logistics.49 In the Marine Corps Amphibious Warfare School (later Expeditionary
Warfare School), for which Lind and Wyly developed curriculum, Operation Albion
provided a ready example of German operational art, Sturmtruppen (storm trooper)
tactics that led to so-called “blitzkrieg” tactical concepts and the practice of the Ger-
man command philosophy of auragsaktik or mission command in an amphibious
environment. is shi came at a time when the Marines were adopting these Ger-
man concepts and moving away from detailed command and baaille conduite. Op-
eration Albion remains a relevant example of how armed forces can adapt to new
and unfamiliar situations uickly. e operational improvisation of the Germans also
remains a relevant example, as with the decline of specialized amphibious eets, the
improvised use of commercial shipping will be likely in future landing operations.
As the development of modern antiaccess/area-denial (A2/AD) weapon systems have
made World War II-style contested amphibious assaults and mass parachute drops
largely obsolete, the “indirect approach” of Operation Albion, which focused on en-
tering permissive landing zones and isolating enemy strong points, has taken on new
value as an operational planning example.
48 William S. Lind, “Operation Albion,” On War #318, Defense and National Interest, 21 October 2009.
49 Michael Duncan Wyly, “Landing Force Tactics: e History of the German Army’s Experience in the
Baltic Compared to the American Marines in the Pacic” (thesis, George Washington University, 1983),
717.
163
CHAPTER EIGHT
Beyond Cold Shores
Inland Maneuver in Historical Polar Amphibious Operations
Lance R. Blyth
The Arctic and Antarctic polar regions, along with their near-polar contiguous
areas, are at risk of becoming sites of conict, potentially reuiring military
forces to conduct polar campaigns.1 Polar geography—the Arctic surrounds
an ocean, Antarctica is surrounded by ocean—combined with limited infrastructure
and the distance from power projection points means any polar campaign will in-
clude amphibious operations. Landings on such cold shores will reuire forces able to
survive and be mobile in the extreme environment to maneuver inland. is chapter
examines inland maneuver during three historical polar or near-polar amphibious
operations: the Germans at Narvik, Norway, in 1940; the Americans and Canadians
in the Aleutians in 1943; and the British in the Falklands in 1982. In each case, the
author analyzes how the forces survived, maintained mobility, and maneuvered in-
land. Each case study reveals that the better a landing force was trained for mountain
warfare under winter conditions, the better it performed polar and near-polar inland
maneuver.
NARVIK,
e Narvik landing force, consisting of the German 3d Mounain Division Sta com-
1 Ryan Patrick Burke, e Polar Pivot: Great Power Competition in the Arctic and Anarctic (Boulder, CO:
Lynne Rienner, 2022). Also see Ryan Burke and LtCol Jahara Matisek, “e Polar Trap: China, Russia,
and American Power in the Arctic and Antarctica,” Journal of Indo-Pacific Aairs (October 2021): 36–64.
Blyth
164
manded by General Eduard Dietl and the 139th Mounain Inantry Regiment (a.k.a. Bat-
tle Group Dietl), embarked on 10 destroyers in the port of Hamburg on 6 April 1940,
headed for Narvik, located more than 160 kilometers (km) north of the Arctic Circle.
Aer a rough sea voyage, due to using a storm front for concealment from the British
Royal Navy, during which waves swept the regiment’s infantry guns o the decks, the
naval task force entered the ord leading to Narvik on the night of 8 April.2 Finding
no coastal defenses blocking their way, the destroyers steamed onward, laying o
Narvik in the early morning of 9 April, sinking two Norwegian coastal defense ships
and delivering the landing force directly onto the Narvik uay. Within two hours, the
2d Batalion, 139th Mounain Inantry, secured Narvik, the initial objective of the am-
phibious landing, without incurring a single casualty.3 e remaining two battalions
and regimental sta landed north of Narvik and seized a Norwegian supply depot.
However, British naval counterattacks on 10 and 14 April sunk all the German de-
stroyers, leaving the landing force isolated.4
Battle Group Dietl continued to advance inland, seizing control of the iron ore rail-
way from Narvik to the border crossing to neutral Sweden at Bjørnell by 16 April, a
strategic goal of the campaign, and pushed farther north.5 As they did, the mountain
troopers found themselves in “a pure alpine landscape in an artic environment.”6 e
mountains ran from sea level to peaks of more than 4,600 feet, with tree line at 2,000
feet, and all covered with 3–6 feet of snow. ere were clis and glaciers, canyons with
mountain streams and lakes, and only a thin layer of soil over granite rocks. North
of the Arctic Circle, Narvik’s nights were bright, and the sun would stay above the
horizon until the end of May. e deep snow, storms, and cold would all turn into
rain and damp by that same time.7
Cut o hundreds of kilometers from reinforcements, facing stiening Norwe-
gian resistance, and concerned with the possibility of an allied landing, Battle Group
Dietl went on the defensive from mid-April.8 e 139th Mounain Inantry, with 2,000
troops, deployed two battalions to the north and one to the south by Narvik. e
2,600 beached sailors, organized into naval battalions armed with seized Norwegian
2 Alex Buchner, Narvik: e Strule of Battle Group Dietl in the Spring of 1940, trans. Janice W. Ancker
(Philadelphia, PA: Casemate, 2020), 1–22.
3 Henrik O. Lunde, Hitler’s Pre-Emptive War: e Battle for Norway, 1940 (Philadelphia, PA: Casemate,
2009), 151–87, 194–217, 263–70; and Earl F. Ziemke, e German Northern eater of Operations, 1940–1945,
Army Pamphlet 20-271 (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 1959), 44–48.
4 For the entire amphibious invasion of Norway in 1940, see James K. Greer, “Operation Weserubung:
Early Amphibious Multidomain Operations,” in Timothy Heck and B. A. Friedman, eds., On Contested
Shores: e Evolving Role of Amphibious Operations in the History of Warare (uantico, VA: Marine Corps
University Press, 2020), 186–99, https://doi.org/10.56686/9781732003149.
5 Buchner, Narvik, 35–38.
6 Buchner, Narvik, 24.
7 Buchner, Narvik, 23–35.
8 Lunde, Hitler’s Pre-Emptive War, 274–310.
Beyond Cold Shores
165
weapons and uniforms, held positions scattered along the coasts and the railway.9
From late-April, the battle group held o British, and then Polish and French, attacks
from the south, and Norwegian, and then French, attacks from the north. As the
Germans did not have enough troops to cover all potential landing sites, the Allied
amphibious landings in mid- and late-May anked them, forcing the battle group to
pull back in the north and give up Narvik in the south. A trickle of reinforcements,
namely hastily trained mountain troops and airborne infantry, parachuted into the
pocket.10 By the start of June, Battle Group Dietl was pressed back along the Swedish
border. But on 8 June, the Allies, reacting to German successes in the Battle of France
9 Lunde, Hitler’s Pre-Emptive War, 346–73.
10 Lunde, Hitler’s Pre-Emptive War, 404–36.
MAP
e Situation at Narvik.
Source: Earl F. Ziemke, e German Northern eater of Operations, 1940–1945
(Washington DC: Department of the Army, 1959), 100
Blyth
166
(10 May–25 June 1940), withdrew their forces and the Norwegians were forced to sur-
render. e battle group held, if just barely, for two months.11
Why was this ad hoc amphibious force successful in their inland maneuver? In
large part, it was because they were familiar with the mountain environment. e
mountain troops at Narvik, in the words of their chronicler, “looked upon the mas-
sive arctic mountains and immediately felt at home.”12 Most of the German moun-
tain troops of the 139th Mounain Inantry were in fact Austrians, recruited from the
mountainous provinces of Styria and Carinthia. e 3d Division had its headuarters
in Graz, Austria, which sits in a basin on the edge of the Eastern Alps.13 e 139th
Regiment was based in and around Klagenfurt, Austria, between the Karawanken
Mountains to the south and the Gurktal Alps to the north. e entire 3d Division had
been built aer the Anschluss (annexation of Austria) in 1938 on the foundations of
Austrian mountain troops based in the region.14
e Austrian mountain troopers also possessed a deep doctrinal knowledge of
mountain warfare from the experiences on the Alpine front during World War I.15
From the rst winter of the war, the Austro-Hungarians issued a series of directives
to units serving in the Alps, which were consolidated into mountain warfare man-
uals in 1917 and 1918.16 e German military, drawing on their mountain warfare
experiences in the Alps and Carpathians, also possessed mountain warfare doctrine,
including the Provisional Training Instruction for Mounain Troops of 1935.17 Battle Group
Dietl certainly followed the precepts of these mountain warfare doctrines. e moun-
tain troops organized their defenses into a string of machinegun positions emplaced
for mutual support on any potential avenue of approach: paths, passes, and ridge
junctions. Counterattacks by reserves proved decisive, but they had to be kept close
to the front.18 Delaying actions proved crucial at Narvik, with withdrawing troops
establishing numerous consecutive ring points, as the battle group fell back on three
separate occasions to avoid being outanked and to shorten the lines to ensure re-
serves were available.
e basing of the mountain troops and their doctrine allowed for training in
11 Lunde, Hitler’s Pre-Emptive War, 461–513.
12 Buchner, Narvik, 26.
13 James Lucas, Hitler’s Mounain Troops: Fighting at the Extremes (London: Cassell, 1999), 16, 199–200.
14 Roland Kalteneer, Die Geschichte der deutschen Gebirgstruppe 1915 bis heute: vom Deutschen Alpenkorps
des Ersten Weltkrieges zur 1. Gebirgsdivision der Bundeswehr (Stuttgart, Germany: Motorbuch Verlag, 1980),
89, 99–100.
15 Alexander Jordan, Krieg um die Alpen: Der Erste Weltkrieg im Alpenraum und der bayerische Grenzschutz in
Tirol (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot GmbH, 2008); and Mark ompson, e White War: Life and Death on
the Ialian Fron, 1915–1919 (New York: Basic Books, 2010), 193–206, 294–327.
16 Adams Carter, trans., Manual for Service in the Mounains (Vienna: War Ministry, 1917); and Adams
Carter, trans., Mounain Warare (Vienna: War Ministry, 1918), 26–33.
17 Kalteneer, Die Geschichte der deutschen Gebirgstruppe 1915 bis heute, 16–78.
18 War Department, German Mounain Troops (Washington, DC: Military Intelligence Division, 1944),
17–20.
Beyond Cold Shores
167
the high mountains, where conditions replicated those in the Arctic surroundings of
Narvik.19 Mountain troops trained to cross and climb ice and snow, using crampons,
ice axes, and ropes, and operations in the face of potential avalanches, skills useful in
the Norwegian wilderness. About 25 percent of each unit received ski training, but
this proved adeuate as, once in Norway, each battalion only mounted one or two pla-
toons on skis for reconnaissance, counterattack, and rear-guard actions.20 e remain-
der, holding defensive positions, had to dig their own paths or posthole (sink through
the snowpack) through the snow. e mountain troops learned to make improvised
shelters in the rocks and spend winter nights in snow shelters at high altitudes, allow-
ing them to survive in the Arctic mountains of Norway. Mountain units trained to
deliver supplies via vehicle, then cart, then pack animal, then porter, supplemented
by air-delivery.21 Sailors functioning as porters and air-dropped supplies ultimately
sustained the frontline mountain troops in Narvik.22
e mountain troops also had trained with the individual combat euipment
needed for the high mountains and, in Norway, for operations in the Arctic.23 ey
knew to dress in layers, wearing little on the move and then adding clothing once biv-
ouacked. In addition to the standard army issue, the mountain troops received spe-
cialized caps, shirts, sweaters, wind jackets, anoraks, overmittens, trousers, and boots.
Mountaineering euipment also included sun goles, snowshoes, sleeping bags, and
air mattresses, all of which were carried in a rucksack.24 However, the mountain
troops who landed at Narvik only had their mountain caps, boots, and rucksacks.25
e Swedes did allow three rail cars of clothing to cross the border on 26 April and
captured Norwegian Army stocks provided many other articles, resulting in a motley
appearance.26 e battle group also purchased or stole from Norwegian civilians many
items, particularly skis and anything white that could be used for snow camouage.27
While the mountain troopers may not have had all their specialized euipment, they
knew what they needed, why they needed it, and how to use it.
e ability of mountain troopers to adapt reected not just their training but
also their leadership. General Dietl, the battlegroup commander, was an experienced
civilian mountaineer and skier, captaining the 1936 German Olympic ski team.28
He had combat experience as a company commander on the Western Front during
World War I. Dietl also had more than a decade of experience as a mountain troop
19 Wilhelm Hess, Arctic Front: e Advance of Mounain Corps Norway on Murmansk, 1941, trans. Linden
Lyons (Havertown, PA: Casemate Publishers, 2021), 51.
20 War Department, German Mounain Troops, 54–62, 125–31, 156–67.
21 War Department, German Mounain Troops, 10–12, 63–78.
22 Buchner, Narvik, 51–53, 60, 66, 158.
23 War Department, German Mounain Troops, 11–15.
24 War Department, German Mounain Troops, 84–90.
25 Buchner, Narvik, 29.
26 Ziemke, e German Northern eater of Operations, 88; and Lunde, Hitler’s Pre-Emptive War, 291.
27 Buchner, Narvik, 32, 36.
28 “Olympic Winter Games Garmisch-Partenkirchen 1936,” Olympics.com, accessed 3 August 2023.
Blyth
168
commander between the wars. Dietl’s experiences made him a calm, controlled, in-
spiring commander.29 Similarly, the 3d Division’s junior leaders had combat experience
from the 1939 invasion of Poland in the High Tatras Mountains and on the plains
around Lemberg (Lviv, Ukraine).30 e battlegroup also beneted from another form
of leadership. Drawing on Austrian experiences and practices, German mountain
units gave a portion of their personnel, ideally one in four, more mountaineering
and ski training, designating them military mountain guides (Heeresbergführer).31 e
primary purpose of the military mountain guides was to serve as specialists in moving
units through mountain terrain, while managing mountain risks. ese guides led
patrols, emplaced mountaineering routes or ski tracks, took communication teams to
high points, or served as assault unit commanders.32
Furthermore, the Narvik battlegroup was able to operate with the air and naval
services. e mountain troops worked well with the navy during their initial landing,
but the sinking of the destroyers ended any more cooperation. Airpower ultimately
proved crucial for the mountain troops. A battery of eld artillery air-landed on a
29 Lunde, Hitler’s Pre-Emptive War, 152–53. A Bavarian, Dietl was an early supporter of the Nazi Party.
30 Lucas, Hitler’s Mounain Troops, 18–26.
31 War Department, German Mounain Warare, 79–83.
32 Kurt Pügl, “Soldaten im Hochgebirge (III),” Truppendiens, Folge 293 (Ausgabe 5/2006).
FIGURE
Battle of Narvik: German mountain troops.
Source: German Federal Archive, Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-2005-1202-500
Beyond Cold Shores
169
frozen lake in mid-April, which soon melted, eliminating it as an aireld for further
resupply. By early May, the German Air Force (Luwae) occupied air bases within
range of Narvik, bombing Allied warships and supply depots, disrupting their build-
up.33 And, as noted earlier, reinforcements arrived by air from the end of May in the
form of a parachute battalion and two mountain troop companies, uickly trained
as parachutists, totaling nearly 1,000 men. Luwae operations allowed the German
mountain troops at Narvik to hang on, just long enough.
ALEUTIANS,
On 11 May 1943, four battalions of the U.S. 7th Infantry Division came ashore on Attu
in the Aleutians, an island chain that, while south of the Arctic Circle, is generally
considered part of the Arctic.34 Two battalions landed in the northeastern part of the
island, while two landed in the southwest, aiming to link-up and attack the Japanese
garrison at the eastern end. Ultimately reinforced by another four battalions during
the following week, the American infantry struled up basins covered by muskeg—
an impassible, spon soil of moss over water-loed peat and mud—beneath ridges
as high as 3,000 feet, many covered with snow.35 For a week, the two landing forces
painfully advanced, hindered by the terrain, the weather, a lack of supplies and sup-
port, and doed Japanese resistance from dug-in positions below the military crest
on ridges, which were regularly obscured by fog. Finally linking up on 18 May, the
now-unied force turned east and spent another week ghting its way up, onto, and
down snow-covered ridges and across rain-soaked valleys. e Japanese fell back in
good order but, with no relief forthcoming and refusing to surrender, they launched
a counterattack on the night of 29 May. When that failed, most of the survivors com-
mitted suicide with hand grenades, U.S. forces only took 28 Japanese captives, and
Attu fell on the next day.36
While the American landing force captured its objective, the inland maneuver in
this near-Arctic environment was less than successful. e landing force ultimately
totaled 15,300 troops, sustaining 3,829 casualties. Cold injuries—mainly frostbite and
trench foot—made up the single largest category of losses at 1,200, exceeding the 1,148
wounded in action.37 e force encountered a cold and wet environment on Attu.
e air was continuously cold, with constant wind and regular strong gusts. Light
rain and snow fell regularly during the attack, and fog for eight hours a day was not
33 Ziemke, e German Northern eater of Operations, 88, 92, 94.
34 Niels Einarsson et al., Arctic Human Development Report (Akureyri, Iceland: Arctic Council, 2004), 17–18.
35 Stetson Conn, Rose C. Engelman, and Byron Fairchild, e Western Hemisphere: Guarding the United
Sates and Its Outposts, U.S. Army in World War II, CMH Pub 4-2 (Washington, DC: Center of Military
History, 2000), 279–95.
36 Brian Gareld, e ousand-Mile War: World War II in Alaska and the Aleutians (Fairbanks: University
of Alaska Press, 1995), 273–340.
37 Cold Injury, Ground Type (Washington, DC: Medical Department, Oce of the Surgeon General, De-
partment of the Army, 1958), 84–85. In addition to the 1,148 wounded in action and 1,200 cold injuries,
the landing force lost 549 troops killed in action, 614 to diseases, and 318 to other nonbattle injuries.
MAP
Capture of Attu, 1943.
Source: George L. MacGarrigle, Aleutian Islands, 3 June 1942–24 August 1943, U.S. Army Campaigns
of World War II (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Miliary History, 2019)
Beyond Cold Shores
171
uncommon. Temperatures in the valleys ranged from 25° to 30° F, but between 10°and
24° F on the ridges, where much of the combat took place.38 e landing force was
constantly exposed to cold and dampness for days at a time for which they were un-
prepared.
e U.S. Army did have doctrine by 1943 that could have prepared them. Opera-
tions, Field Manual 100-5, published in 1941 had sections on “Mountain Operations”
and “Combat in Snow and Extreme Cold.” e former insisted that “mountainous
terrain oers no insuperable obstacles to the conduct of military operations, even in
cold weather, if the troops are properly euipped, clothed, supplied, and trained.”39
e section on snow and extreme cold opened with the admonition that “severe
weather conditions handicap movement and reuire special tactical and logistical
measures for successful operations.”40 While there was no mountain operations eld
manual at the time—it was under preparation by the sta of the Mountain Training
Center at Camp Hale, Colorado, and would not be issued until 1944—there were oth-
er amplifying manuals.41
e U.S. Army’s rst-ever Operations in Snow and Extreme Cold eld manual, a
slim volume of 85 pages, noted three major problems for operating in snow and ex-
treme cold, pertinent for the Attu invasion:
(a) Keeping men and animals warm.
(b) Moving troops across snow and ice.
(c) Transporting and preserving supplies and equipmen.42
Additionally, the U.S. Army Air Corps prepared a two-volume Arctic Manual,
likely to prepare yers for potential survival situations in the far north. Drawing
on the work of Arctic explorers, it included chapters on geography, food and drink,
clothing and personal euipment, health, accident, and disease, travel, and transpor-
tation.43 However, there is no evidence that the 7th Infantry Division made any use of
any of these sections or manuals.44
Part of the reason the 7th Infantry Division did not look at the mountain op-
erations or the cold weather sections in Operations or the Arctic Manual was that it
38 Cold Injury, Ground Type, 86–88.
39 Operations, Field Manual (FM) 100-5 (Washington, DC: War Department, 1941), 213, emphasis in orig-
inal.
40 Operations, 225.
41 John C. Jay, History of the Mounain Training Center, Study no. 24 (Fort Monroe, VA: Historical Section,
Army Ground Forces, 1948), 91–93. Mounain Operations, FM 70-10, was not published until December
1944.
42 Operations in Snow and Extreme Cold, FM 31-15 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Oce, 1941), ii.
43 Arctic Manual, 2 vols. (Washington, DC: Army Air Corps, U.S. Army, 1940).
44 Maj Joshua D. Walters, USA, “e Impact of Training and Euipment at the Battle of Attu, Aleutian
Campaign–Historical Study and Current Perspective” (master’s thesis, U.S. Army Command and Gen-
eral Sta College, 2015), 26–31, 33.
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172
had been busy conducting desert, motorized training.45 e Army assigned the 7th
Infantry Division to the Attu landing not because of its training, but because it was
near full strength and was near amphibious training sites along the California coast.46
With only three months to prepare, the division sta understandably focused on
training for the unfamiliar amphibious landing. On the beaches and o the coast of
Monterrey, under Marine Corps trainers, the division practiced embarkation, wet
and dry net debarkations, and boat landings.47 Training to get on the shore took up
most of the time available, so little eort was devoted to moving beyond the shore,
never mind how cold and wet that shore would be.
e clothing issued to the division reveals that lack of preparation and under-
standing of the near-Arctic environment. e olive-drab woolen trousers were chemi-
cally treated to be water-repellent, but it wore o and, in a few days, they were soaked.
Men received an Arctic M41 eld jacket that was hip-length and made of wind-proof,
water-repellent cotton with a wool lining, but it did not provide full protection as it
was too short and lacked a hood. Despite the jackets being designed to be worn over
sweaters, as described in the supply catalog, the division did not issue any sweaters
or additional layers.48 Footwear was a 12-inch-high Blucher boot, which did not keep
the feet warm, was not waterproof, and whose soles wore out uickly. Once wet, the
boots could not be dried under eld conditions and then shrank, constricting blood
ow to the feet, exacerbated by the fact that the boots were issued at the proper size,
making it impossible for soldiers to wear the recommended two pairs of socks.49 e
Arctic sleeping bags issued were too bulky, consisting of two down-lled cases, and
so were le in rucksacks, along with rain gear, to be brought up to the landing troops
later. Few men ever received their rucksacks. Eventually, sleeping bags were pushed
forward, but only aer four or ve days.50
e landing force had not received any training on how to use this euipment
or how to deal with the climate they would face beyond the beach. In particular, the
soldiers received no training on how to care for their feet. ey had not been instruct-
ed to remove their boots as oen as possible, to change socks, and dry the insoles.
Many men on Attu did not remove their boots for ve days aer the landing. Some
threw away their wet socks without trying to dry them.51 ey had not been taught to
dry their sleeping bags aer use, and many discarded their cold-weather clothing to
45 Bruce Gardner and Barbara Stahura, Seventh Inantry Division, 1917–1992: World War I, World War II,
Korean and Panamanian Invasion—Serving America for 75 Years, rev. ed. (Nashville, TN: Turner Publishing,
1997), 10.
46 Conn, Engelman, and Fairchild, e Western Hemisphere, 277–78.
47 Walters, “e Impact of Training and Euipment,” 23–36.
48 Cold Injury, Ground Type, 90; and uartermaster Supply Caalog, Sec. 1, Enlisted Men’s Clothing and Equip-
ment, OQMG Circular no. 4 (Washington, DC: Army Service Forces, 1943), 8.
49 Cold Injury, Ground Type, 90; and uartermaster Supply Caalog, 3.
50 Cold Injury, Ground Type, 90; uartermaster Supply Caalog, 31; and Walters, “e Impact of Training
and Euipment,” 30–31.
51 Cold Injury, Ground Type, 92–93.
Beyond Cold Shores
173
lighten their combat loads.52 A key part of why none of this training was provided is
that the division executed a deception plan for the landing, giving lectures on tropical
diseases and issuing summer clothing, while the specialized cold-weather euipment
was loaded onto ships in sealed crates, only to be opened at sea.53
Further, the division did not take full advantage of Aleutian bases. e United
States began the campaign with a base at Cold Bay on the tip of the Alaska Peninsula,
a naval facility at Dutch Harbor on Unalaska Island, and an aireld farther east on
Umnak.54 Support facilities were pushed forward to facilitate landings, with island
bases established on Adak in August 1942 and then Amchitka in January 1943.55 But
when the Attu landing force steamed into Cold Bay on 24 April aboard ve cramped
transports, they stayed on ship. Only the division’s Provisional Scout Battalion, or-
ganized to protect the ank of the Northern Landing Force, debarked, as it was to
board submarines for the landing. e battalion spent a week training in the snow
52 Cold Injury, Ground Type, 93–94.
53 Walters, “e Impact of Training and Euipment,” 32.
54 Conn, Engelman, and Fairchild, e Western Hemisphere, 223–76.
55 Department of the Navy, Building the Navy’s Bases in World War II: History of the Bureau of Yards and
Docks and the Civil Engineer Corps, 1940–1946, vol. 2 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Oce, 1947),
163–90.
FIGURE
Hauling supplies on Attu.
Source: ocial Department of Defense photo
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174
and muskeg and reuisitioning jackets, socks, and boots, as they had not received any
winter euipment.56 Even so, while the 350 men of the battalion took 30 battle casual-
ties, only 40 of the remaining 320 were able to walk ve days aer landing.57
Finally, Army-Navy coordination was in its infancy in May 1943 and neither Ser-
vice yet truly understood the other. When calling for naval gunre, Army observers
reuested destruction of the target, vice neutralization, leading the Navy to expend
large numbers of rounds, ammunition it might have needed had the Japanese eet
sortied. e weather, particularly the persistent fog and high winds, inhibited naval
gunre and carrier aviation.58 While Colonel William O. Eareckson of the U.S. Army
Air Forces served as a particularly aressive air-ground liaison oce, borrowing
Navy oat planes to y as an airborne forward air controller and on one occasion
ring an infantryman’s rie on the Japanese, he could not overcome the weather,
which prevented any air support on 11 of the 20 days of the battle.59 While the Navy
and Army Air Forces understood the challenges the weather would bring, the landing
force did not, failing to incorporate conditions into its planning, limiting interoper-
ability between the Services.60
Even as the battle for Attu raged, the Alaskan Defense Command (ADC) planned
for landings on Kiska, which held an even-larger Japanese garrison. Learning from
Attu, ADC organized a large force and ensured it was trained and euipped for the
conditions. e task force consisted of the 184th Infantry Regiment transferred from
Fort Ord, the 17th Infantry Regiment from Attu, ADC’s 53d Infantry Regiment, the
Canadian 13th Infantry Brigade, the U.S. 87th Mountain Infantry Regiment, and the
U.S.-Canadian 1st Special Service Force (FSSF).61 e latter two units were at the in-
sistence of the U.S. Army chief of sta, General George C. Marshall. Marshall realized
the Aleutians campaign was essentially a winter mountain operation given the cli-
mate, environment, and topography. When the Kiska task force assembled, Marshall
personally gave orders sending the 87th Mountain Infantry Regiment, which had
just completed ve months of winter mountain training at Camp Hale, Colorado.62
Marshall also ordered the FSSF, a commando unit organized and trained in Montana
to ght on the glaciers of Norway, to join the landings.63
Given their winter training, albeit in the high, dry, cold snow of the Rocky
56 Gareld, e ousand-Mile War, 263–64.
57 Cold Injury, Ground Type, 94.
58 e Aleutians Campaign, June 1942–August 1943: Combat Narratives (Washington, DC: Oce of Naval
Intelligence, U.S. Navy, 1945), 83–84.
59 Gareld, e ousand-Mile War, 293.
60 Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate, eds., e Army Air Forces in World War II, vol. 4, e Pacific:
Guadalcanal to Saipan, August 1942 to July 1944 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Oce, 1950), 386.
61 Cold Injury, Ground Type, 96.
62 McKay Jenkins, e Last Ridge: e Epic Story of America’s First Mounain Soldiers and the Assault on Hitler’s
Europe (New York: Random House, 2003), 122.
63 Saul David, e Force: e Legendary Special Ops Unit and WWII’s Mission Impossible (New York: Hachette
Books, 2019), 128–29.
Beyond Cold Shores
175
Mountains, the 87th Mountain Infantry Regiment and FSSF were better prepared
than the 7th Infantry Division had been. e 184th Infantry Regiment, training at
Fort Ord, California, had regular contact with the units on Attu, so it too was far
better trained.64 A small handbook, Soldier’s Manual (How to Get Along in the Field),
distributed to all troops in the landing force, distilled much of the experience on Attu
and cold weather doctrine. It included instructions on the care of the feet, especially
the use and care of socks, clothing, and cold-weather euipment, the importance of
nutrition and hydration, and how to keep ghting positions dry.65 Finally, the entire
task force trained on Adak and Amchitka for several weeks in Aleutian conditions,
conducting amphibious landings and marches across the muskeg.66
e Kiska landing force’s clothing and footgear were also an improvement. Many
of the units had longer, hooded parkas to provide better protection. Others kept the
Arctic eld jacket, but with a wool knit hood or toue to protect the head and neck
from the cold.67 All wore wool-lined trousers and carried full rain gear in their packs.
Shoepacs, a boot with a rubber bottom and leather upper, were universally worn.68
Issued in larger sizes to accommodate two pairs of socks and a felt insole that could
be replaced and dried, the shoepacs kept the feet dry but did not provide much sup-
port.69 Conditions on Kiska, due to the timing of the landing in August, were also
much better as the snow had melted and the runo had subsided, so most of the
ground was drier than it had been on Attu.70
As a result, the 28,450 troops who landed on Kiska only suered 130 cold casual-
ties, or 1 exposure injury per 219 troops. By comparison, the Attu landing force took
1 cold casualty per 13 men. Of more than 5,000 men of the 87th Mountain Infantry
Regiment Combat Team, only 7 experienced trench foot.71 e inland maneuver on
Kiska went unopposed, as the Japanese had evacuated the island two weeks prior to
landing, so the force spent a week searching the island, losing 17 Americans and 4 Ca-
nadians killed and another 50 wounded to booby traps and friendly re incidents.72
But it was the careful preparations for the near-polar conditions on Kiska, whether in
the Aleutians or in the mountains in winter, that kept the environment from proving
even more dangerous.
FALKLANDS,
On 21 May 1982, Great Britain’s 3 Commando Brigade went ashore in San Carlos
64 Gareld, e ousand-Mile War, 376.
65 Soldier’s Manual (How to Get Along in the Field) (n.p., 1943); and Gareld, e ousand-Mile War, 377.
66 Gareld, e ousand-Mile War, 378–79.
67 Cold Injury, Ground Type, 97.
68 Cold Injury, Ground Type.
69 Cold Injury, Ground Type.
70 Cold Injury, Ground Type.
71 Cold Injury, Ground Type, 98.
72 Gareld, e ousand-Mile War, 380–87.
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176
Sound on the western shore of East Falkland Island. Seven weeks to the day aer the
Argentine seizure of the islands, the Amphibious Task Force landed three Royal Ma-
rine commandos (battalion-size units) and two parachute (para) battalions.73 While
the Falkland Islands lay more than 1,287 km north of the Antarctic Circle, they are
sub-Antarctic with a generally cold, wet, and windy climate. Concerns with facing a
near-polar winter (June–August in the South Atlantic) was a key factor in Great Brit-
ain’s speedy dispatch of a task force to retake the Falklands.74 e Amphibious Task
Force uickly came under daylight Argentine air attack, costing most of the landing
force’s helicopters when the SS Atlantic Conveyor (1969) sunk on 25 May, and forcing
the logistical ooad into the night hours, taking until the 27th.75
Faced with the loss of much of its helicopter li, and under political pressure to
engage the enemy, 3 Commando Brigade ordered 45 Commando and 3 Para to walk
the nearly 80 km across East Falkland to the main Argentine garrison at Port Stan-
ley.76 e 2 Para would protect the ank of this foot maneuver by attacking what was
thought to be a small Argentinian garrison at the settlement of Goose Green. e gar-
rison proved to be much larger, forcing 2 Para into a 12-hour ght on 28 May before
ultimately forcing an Argentine surrender.77 For three days, 45 Commando yomped
and 3 Para tabed across a rocky peatland in the wet and cold of an oncoming winter.78
Screened by special operations forces, the battalions reached the outer Argentine
defenses on 30 May. e next day, 42 Commando helicopter-lied in to seize a critical
height of Mount Kent. And 2 Para, assigned to the just-arrived 5th Infantry Brigade,
ew forward on 3 June.79
Continuing the buildup of forces, 5th Infantry Brigade landed the 2d Battalion
of the Scots Guards from assault ships during the night of 5–6 June at Blu Cove, to
be followed by the 1st Battalion of the Welsh Guards the next night. An Argentine
airstrike the morning of 8 June caught the Welsh Guards ooading, hitting one ship,
killing 48, and injuring 115.80 e 1st Battalion, 7th Gurkha Ries, joined 5th Infan-
try Brigade and, by 11 June, the two British brigades closed on the outskirts of Port
73 Lawrence Freedman, e Ocial History of the Falklands Campaign, vol. 2, War and Diplomacy (New York:
Routledge, 2005), 50, 463–92.
74 Stephen Badsey, “An Overview of the Falklands War: Politics, Strate and Operations,” NIDS Miliary
History Annual (2013): 139–66.
75 Michael Clapp and Ewen Southby-Tailyour, Amphibious Assault Falklands: e Battle of San Carlos Water
(Barnsley, UK: Pen & Sword Military, 1996), 132–90.
76 Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins, e Battle for the Falklands (New York: W. W. Norton, 1983), 231–53.
77 Hastings and Jenkins, e Battle for the Falklands, 262–74.
78 e term yomp refers to a lengthy and strenuous hike across dicult terrain carrying a loaded pack.
e term ab refers to World War II-era British slang for a tactical advance to battle (tab) by leaving a
drop zone, assembling into designated units, and moving as uickly as possible in full gear to the objec-
tive.
79 Gregory Fremont-Barnes, e Falklands 1982: Ground Operations in the South Atlantic (New York: Osprey
Publishing, 2012), 43–54.
80 Robert S. Bolia, “e Blu Cove Disaster,” Miliary Review (November–December 2004): 66–72.
Beyond Cold Shores
177
Stanley. ey launched a series of battalion night attacks, seizing Argentine ridgetop
positions: three on the night of 11–12 June and two more on the night of 13–14 June.
is precipitated negotiations and then the surrender of the Argentine force on the
Falkland Islands on 14 June, ending the campaign.81
For their inland maneuver during sub-Antarctic conditions in the face of a loom-
ing winter, the British landing force did have a doctrinal base to refer to. e British
armed forces emerged from World War II with a set of ve military training pam-
phlets for snow and mountain warfare. ese developed from learning the lessons of
Narvik, the occupation of Iceland, the training of a mountain division in Scotland,
and the experiences of mountain warfare schools in Lebanon and Italy.82 e pam-
81 Freedman, e Ocial History of the Falklands Campaign, vol. 2, 596–661.
82 Rob Granger, “British Army Cold Weather and Mountain Warfare Training in the Second World War,”
British Journal for Miliary History 8, no. 1 (2022): 69–86, https://doi.org/10.25602/GOLD.bjmh.v8i1.1606;
and see, for example, Snow and Mounain Warare, pt. 4, Whiteshod Training and Operations, 1945, Military
Training Pamphlet no. 90 (London: General Sta, War Oce, 1945).
MAP
Falkland land operations.
Source: Eric Gaba, adapted by MCUP
Blyth
178
phlets emphasized the need for forces to be mentally and physically prepared to oper-
ate in the cold and mountains. ese were updated in the 1970s into two operational
manuals on mountainous country and cold climate.83
e 3 Commando Brigade made the most use of this doctrine as it had the NATO
mission of reinforcing northern Norway. By 1982, the Royal Marines had spent al-
most a decade developing their mountain and cold weather warfare skills. Between
1973 and 1981, 45 Commando and its attachments deployed every winter to Norway
and were based the rest of the time in the comparably cool and damp environs of
Scotland.84 e 3 Commando Brigade, albeit with only 42 Commando due to budget-
ary constraints, spent January–March 1982 training in Norway, returning just before
they deployed to the Falklands.85 Many of the brigade’s ocers, noncommissioned
ocers, and older commandos (both Army and Royal Marine) had experienced ve
to six Norwegian winters.86 e two parachute battalions attached to the brigade for
the landing, while not having comparable training, were able to take advantage of
3 Commando Brigade’s collective experience.87
e 5th Infantry Brigade, the other component of the landing force, had little
opportunity to apply existing doctrine or do much of anything else, as it had been
organized only in January 1982. Intended to operate outside of northwestern Eu-
rope, the brigade had two parachute battalions and a Gurkha battalion and had only
conducted one exercise by April 1982, which mainly showed the inexperience of the
brigade sta.88 Losing the two parachute battalions to 3 Commando Brigade, 5th
Infantry Brigade received two guard battalions just o of public ceremonial duties.
ese units, while disciplined and well-led, were not formed as light infantry and had
not been on cold weather exercises. e brigade trained in Wales at the end of April
but focused on platoon and company training evolutions.89 Setting sail a month aer
the rest of the task force, the brigade was uncertain if it would be a second landing
force, an operational reserve, or a garrison force. Concerns the guardsmen would not
be able to walk across East Falkland, and a lack of vehicles or helicopters to move
their euipment and supplies forward, led to the decision to move them forward by
assault ship, leading to the deadly disaster at Blu Cove.90
83 Land Operations, vol. 5, Operational Techniques under Special Conditions, pt. 1, Mounainous Country (Lon-
don: Ministry of Defence, 1972); and pt. 4, Cold Climate (London: Ministry of Defence, 1977).
84 Julian ompson, No Picnic: 3 Commando Brigade in the South Atlantic, 1982 (London: L. Cooper with
Secker & Wargurg, 1985), 8–9.
85 Nick Vaux, Take that Hill!: Royal Marines in the Falklands War (Washington, DC: Pergamon-Brassey’s
International Defense Publishers, 1986), 11.
86 Ian Gardiner, e Yompers: With 45 Commando in the Falklands War (Havertown, PA: Pen & Sword,
2012), 11, 30–31.
87 Hugh McManners, Falkland Commando (London: William Kimber, 1984), 25.
88 Hastings and Jenkins, e Battle for the Falklands, 267–74.
89 Freedman, e Ocial History of the Falklands Campaign, vol. 2, 596–601.
90 Nick van der Bijl and David Aldea, 5th Inantry Brigade in the Falklands (Barnsley, UK: Pen & Sword,
2014).
Beyond Cold Shores
179
As commander, 3 Commando Brigade, Brigadier Julian ompson, Royal Ma-
rines, noted, the landing force had the material for the conditions in the Falklands
and, “as important, the knowledge of how to use it properly.”91 Proper use meant
dressing in layers—insulating, windproong, and waterproong—and altering them
based on conditions. For insulation, there was a wide variety of long underwear, civil-
ian jackets, issued sweaters, and combat trousers and jackets, along with cold weather
vests, jackets, and trousers of uilted pile. e 3 Commando Brigade wore Arctic
windproof hooded smocks and trousers, while 5th Infantry Brigade had Army cold
weather hooded parkas and trousers, both made of closely woven cotton gabardine.92
Initially, 5th Infantry Brigade was only issued 2,000 pairs of trousers and 1,000 parkas,
and it took an informal intervention by the House of Lords to complete the issue
for all 2,000 men.93 Waterproof nylon-treated jackets and trousers were issued in the
standard disruptive pattern material (DPM) camouage to 5th Infantry Brigade, but
3 Commando Brigade wore reversible green and white waterproofs.94 Most of the
force wore the regular leather direct molded sole (DMS) boot with short puttees
(wraps or leings), though many replaced those with civilian gaiters. Some Royal
Marines wore the dual-purpose leather Arctic ski march boot, while others had civil-
ian hiking boots. e 45 Commando, given its Scottish base and regular forays into
Norway, purchased Hawkins Cairngorm hiking boots.95 A survey aer the campaign
found 46 dierent types of boots in the 3 Commando Brigade alone.96
e landing force needed this kit and knowledge as the campaign took place
during generally cold, wet, and windy conditions. Temperatures hovered around
freezing most of the time, dipping down to 10° F on the mountains. ere were reg-
ular bouts of rain, sleet, and snow. e forced march across the island began with a
blizzard on the night of 29 May, and by 5 June, the weather deteriorated even more
with wind-driven rain and snow. Winds gusted upward of 45 mph. ese conditions,
combined with wading ashore from landing cra, meant the force started the cam-
paign wet and stayed wet for 25 days.97 Unable to dry out their clothing, particular-
ly socks, meant about one-half of the force, particularly in 3 Commando Brigade,
91 ompson, No Picnic, 8.
92 William Fowler and Michael Chappell, Battle for the Falklands (1): Land Forces (London: Osprey, 1982),
32–33.
93 Freedman, e Ocial History of the Falklands Campaign, vol. 2, 592; and Hastings and Jenkins, e Battle
for the Falklands, 268.
94 Rieman Moore, “Falklands Kit & Uniform–Combats & Windproofs,” YouTube video, 16 August
2017; Rieman Moore, “British Arctic Windproof Combat Smock & Trousers,” YouTube video, 5 June
2022; and Rieman Moore, “Falklands Kit & Uniform–Waterproofs,” YouTube video, 14 September 2017.
95 Rieman Moore, “British Boots, Ski March,” YouTube video, 29 May 2022; and Rieman Moore, “Haw-
kins Cairngorm Boots,” YouTube video, 29 April 2019.
96 A. R. Marsh, “A Short but Distant War–e Falklands Campaign,” Journal of the Royal Society of Medi-
cine 76 (November 1983): 972–82, https://doi.org/10.1177/014107688307601119.
97 Francis St. Clair Golden et al., “Lessons from History: Morbidity of Cold Injury in the Royal Marines
during the Falklands Conict of 1982,” Extreme Physiolo & Medicine 2 (2013), https:doi.org/10.1186/2046-
7648-2-23.
Blyth
180
suered some level of nonfreezing cold injury or trench foot, regardless of the boot
worn. Twenty percent of those with trench foot had to seek medical attention and 70
severe cases were transferred to a hospital ship, but the evacuated represented only 14
percent of the battle casualties.98
e cold injuries could have been much higher, except for the generally high
uality of personnel and leadership. e British landing force was professional, well-
trained, and motivated.99 e enlisted men were volunteers, and most were under
the age of 20. eir noncommissioned ocers had long service records, and their
ocers well-versed in their tasks. Ocers expected that the men would take care
of themselves and their buddies as best as possible, overseen by noncommissioned
ocers.100 e Royal Marine units also likely beneted from their Mountain Leaders.
ese were ocers and noncommissioned ocers trained by the Mountain and Arc-
tic Warfare Cadre to serve as unit survival, skiing, rock climbing, and mountaineering
instructors.101 While concentrated in the reconnaissance (recce) troops of the three
commandos, and the cadre deployed as the brigade recce troop, there were mountain
leaders across the entire force, advising and instructing as necessary.102
e landing force could have suered much more from the near-polar conditions
had it not made maximum use of the minimum logistical facilities available. One
aireld and one stone jetty were the only established facilities available to support
the landing, and they were on Ascension Island, 6,365 km north of the Falkland Is-
lands and 6,746 km south of the United Kingdom. Aer the landing, the amphibious
task force struled, as noted, to build up a brigade maintenance area at Ajax Bay
in San Carlos Water. But once inland maneuver began, the landing force had the
services of what was then a uniue unit: the Commando Logistics Regiment. A de-
cade of experience with limited infrastructure in the mountains of Norway enabled
the joint British Army-Navy-Marines regiment to establish and maintain multiple
forward support areas to receive helicopter-lied supplies and move them onward
to unit distribution points.103 To do the latter, the landing force had an unexpected
capability in 76 Swedish Bandvagn (BV 202) tracked over-the-snow vehicles assigned
to 3 Commando Brigade.104 However, the commandos ultimately organized porter
platoons to carry supplies and ammunition forward to support their attacks.105 As a
98 Marsh, “A Short but Distant War,” 976, table 3.
99 Freedman, e Ocial History of the Falklands Campaign, vol. 2, 736–37.
100 Nora Kinzer Stewart, Mates & Muchachos: Unit Cohesion in the Falklands/Malvinas War (Washington,
DC: Brassey’s, 1991).
101 Mark Bentinck, Vertical Assault: e Story of the Royal Marines Mounain Leaders’ Branch (Hants, UK:
Royal Marines Historical Society, 2008), 57–58.
102 Rod Boswell, Mounain Commandos at War in the Falklands: e Royal Marines Mounain and Arctic War-
are Cadre in Action during the 1982 Conflict (Philadelphia, PA: Pen & Sword Military, 2021).
103 Kenneth L. Privratsky, Logistics in the Falklands War: A Case Study in Expeditionary Warare (Philadel-
phia, PA: Pen & Sword, 2014).
104 ompson, No Picnic, 11.
105 ompson, No Picnic, 161, 164.
Beyond Cold Shores
181
nal analysis, it is dicult to argue with Brigadier ompson’s assessment that “it is
hard to imagine a brigade more suited to the tasks that lay ahead,” including inland
maneuver in a sub-Antarctic environment, due to its organization, training, euip-
ping, and experience in mountain winter warfare.106
CONCLUSION
ese three historical cases unsurprisingly demonstrate that forces prepared for
conditions—the Germans at Narvik and the British in the Falklands—were able to
conduct successful inland maneuver aer polar or near-polar amphibious landings.
Forces that were not prepared—the Americans at Attu—suered greatly from the con-
ditions, potentially putting their maneuver at risk. Prepared forces had supporting
doctrine for the extreme conditions. ey were organized primarily as light infantry
with sucient support weapons, including artillery. ey had suitable material, cru-
cially clothing and boots. e force’s leadership and personnel were familiar with
the euipment, its use, and how to mitigate the risks of extreme conditions. ey
also were able to rely on facilities mainly outside of the region, placing a premium
on logistical support utilizing multiple means down to the use of porters for the last
few kilometers. And successful landing forces were interoperable with their air and
naval Services.
ese elements of doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and edu-
cation, personnel, facilities, and interoperability (DOTMLPFI) were gained histor-
ically by preparing for mountain warfare, particularly in winter. In the winter, the
combination of cold and wind at elevations above the tree line in the mountains cre-
ates analogous polar conditions.107 Forces trained, prepared, and euipped for winter
mountain warfare are thus better prepared to operate in the Arctic and Antarctic.
While the challenges of these regions are uite severe, mountain-trained forces will
at least arrive in the polar regions with a 70-percent solution for the conditions.108 Fi-
nally, given the limited infrastructure and far distances that dene the polar regions,
mountain warfare training is a way to prepare forces for polar conditions outside of
the poles. Mountain warfare is thus historically demonstrated invaluable preparation
for an amphibious force to perform inland maneuver beyond cold shores.
106 ompson, No Picnic, 8.
107 Raimund Lechner, omas Küpper, and Markus Tannheimer, “Challenges of Military Health Service
Support in Mountain Warfare,” Wilderness & Environmenal Medicine 29, no. 2 (2018): 266–74, especially
table 1, 267, https://doi.org/ 10.1016/j.wem.2018.01.006.
108 For the challenges of operating in the region, see Capt Nathan Fry, “Survivability, Sustainability, and
Maneuverability: e Need for Joint Unity of Eort in Implementing the DOD Arctic Strate at the
Tactical and Operational Levels,” Miliary Review 94, no. 6 (November–December 2014): 54–62.
182
CHAPTER NINE
Soviet Preparations for a Naval Landing
against Israel in June 1967 and
Their Partial Implementation1
Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez
The Arab-Israeli crisis and war of May–June 1967 exemplied the sea change,
literally, both in the USSR’s Cold War strate and in its naval doctrine aer
the ouster of Nikita Khrushchev less than three years before. In the authors’
book, Foxbats over Dimona, they demonstrated that far from blundering into this
conict—a belief held by most Western literature, based largely on Kremlin propa-
ganda—the Soviets instigated it deliberately. ey prepared a direct military inter-
vention, which was intended to ensure an Arab, and especially Eptian, victory that
would promote Moscow’s global and regional interests. e amphibious operations
described here were part of this plan. Aer the scheme’s failure in the Six-Day War,
naval infantry and other elements of amphibious warfare became a xture of the peak
Soviet presence in Ept until well aer the Yom Kippur War in October 1973.
Khrushchev’s ouster from the Soviet leadership freed Admiral Sergey G. Gorsh-
kov, whom he had appointed as navy commander, to pursue his own strategic con-
cept. It aimed to recreate an oceangoing surface force capable of power projection
1 is chapter expands on the relevant passages of Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez, Foxbats over Dimo-
na: e Soviets’ Nuclear Gamble in the Six-Day War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007); Isabella
Ginor and Gideon Remez, “e Six-Day War as a Soviet Initiative: New Evidence and Methodological
Issues,” Middle East Review of International Aairs 12, no. 3 (September 2008); and Isabella Ginor and
Gideon Remez, e Soviet-Israeli War, 1967–1973: e USSR’s Miliary Intervention in the Eptian-Israeli
Conflict (London: Oxford University Press, 2017), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190693480.001.0001.
Soviet Preparations for a Naval Landing
183
worldwide by conventional means, which had been downgraded in favor of Khrush-
chev’s focus on nuclear-missile submarines.2 Gorshkov had allies in the increasingly
powerful Communist Party secretary Leonid Brezhnev and the rising Marshal Andrei
A. Grechko, soon to be appointed defense minister. Both had collaborated closely
with Gorshkov when the latter commanded a series of successful landing operations
against the German invaders on the Black Sea coast during World War II.
e USSR’s Naval Infantry (morskaya pekhoa), the Russian term for marines, who
like paratroops are called desantniki (descent) or landing troops, were disbanded aer
that war. eir reestablishment, barely begun in Khrushchev’s last years in power,
was accelerated aer his downfall. Independent marine battalions (OMBPs, later ex-
panded to brigades) were attached to each of the navy’s eets. ey were initially
assembled from land formations, which may account for the marked disparity in
professional competence between their role in the operations described here and that
of the slapdash landing parties that were raised on the navy’s warships, for whom this
was a recent and unfamiliar departure.
2 A. B. Shirokorad, Flo, kotory unichtozhil Khrushchev [e eet that Khrushchev destroyed] (Moscow:
Vzoi-AST, 2004).
FIGURE
A Soviet Marine poses in front of the Suez Canal Company’s headuarters, Port Said, Ept, ca. 1969.
Source: Evgeny Nazarov, “Arab-Israeli Wars,” VK. com discussion board, 22 July 2020
Ginor and Remez
184
Topping a range of amphibious cra, a new class of large landing ships (bolshoi de-
santny korabl’ or BDK, North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO] reporting name
Alligator and the euivalent of landing ship, tank or LST) was introduced in 1966 as
the marines’ long-range operational platform. e Black Sea Fleet’s rst brigade of
desant ships, the 197th Brigade, was formed in July of that year.3
Ships from the Black Sea and Baltic eets made rotating tours of the Mediter-
ranean for two years, becoming in May 1966 a permanent presence designated tem-
porarily as the combined suadron. Its high-prole formal incorporation as the Fih
Eskadra (suadron), reporting directly to navy command in Moscow, was postponed
until 14 July 1967, just aer the Six-Day War, which was to be its rst combat test.
e Eskadra’s main anchorage, at Antikythera west of Crete, lacked shore facilities,
and fullling the centuries-old Russian aspiration to warm-water bases beyond the
bottleneck of the Turkish straits was one of the Soviet goals in the joint planning with
Ept that began in 1965. Despite—or rather, because of—the plan’s overall failure,
this goal was attained for close to 20 years. e Soviet buildup in the Mediterranean
thus combined Gorshkov’s overarching concept with such regional specics as halting
Israel’s nuclear project and intensifying Eptian dependence on Soviet arms and
support as a hedge against U.S. inuence.4
Aer sinking as low as a single ship in 1963, the Soviet Navy’s Mediterranean
average daily presence increased to 10 in 1965 and rose to 24 in 1967.5 is was accom-
plished by sending in new otillas while keeping the previous “watch” in place. By
mid-1967, there were more than 30 armed warships in addition to a similar number
of auxiliary cra. Submarines were introduced for the rst time since 1961, when Al-
bania closed the base it had provided. Nuclear submarines, too big for the Black Sea,
were sent in through Gibraltar under the keels of surface vessels.
e Soviets’ heightened assertiveness in shadowing the U.S. Sixth Fleet caused
increasing concern for the American commanders. Sixth Fleet commander Vice Ad-
miral William I. Martin warned publicly on 17 May 1967 that “a Soviet naval build-up
in the Mediterranean is threatening” his eet. However, his concern was mainly that,
“the Fleet [is] now no longer able to devote itself entirely to mounting strike opera-
tions against the Soviet Union.” If he was aware of the actual Soviet preparations for
a Middle East intervention, he did not mention it.6 Subseuent analyses have ascribed
3 VAdm A. A. Tatarinov et al., ed., Shab Rosiyskogo Chernomorskogo Floa: 1831–2001: Istoricheskiy ocherk
(Simferopol: Tavrida, 2002), 77; and Norman Polmar, Guide to the Soviet Navy, 3d ed. (Annapolis, MD:
Naval Institute Press, 1983), 13, 16.
4 Vladimir Zaborsky, ”Sovetskaya Sredizemnomorskaya Eskadra [Soviet Mediterranean Suadron],” Ne-
zavisimoye Voennoye Obozreniye [military supplement of Nezavisimaya Gazea], 13 October 2006.
5 Gordon H. McCormick, e Soviet Presence in the Mediterranean (Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 1987), 7.
6 Reuters report on Martin’s address to the American Club, Rome, 17 May 1967, uoted in Cdr Robert
Waring Herrick, Soviet Naval Strate: Fiy Years of eory and Practice (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval In-
stitute, 1968), 154n13.
Soviet Preparations for a Naval Landing
185
the overall buildup during 1967 as an eect, rather than a precursor and cause, of the
crisis and war that erupted at midyear.7
However, the newly recommissioned marines were already in the Mediterranean
as an essential part of the naval component in the intervention plan, which also in-
cluded the other desantniki, paratroops.8 e marines’ role in the planned naval op-
eration against Israel was covered up so thoroughly for almost 30 years that it only
came to light aer the unveiling of another, seemingly much unlikelier, amphibious
component. Captain Yuri N. Khripunkov was then the gunnery ocer on a brand-
new frigate, yet “unchristened” and still known only by its generic appellation, SKR-6.
His interview in a Ukrainian newspaper in 1994 rst revealed this entire operation,
which had never been ocially disclosed by the USSR or post-Soviet Russia.9
In 1966, Aleksandr Kislov was a Middle East correspondent for TASS, the Soviet
news agency that played a key intelligence and propaganda function in the crisis. By
2002, Kislov was a professor and head of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Center for
Research of Peace Problems. Citing “personal observation,” he disputed Khripunkov’s
claim whereby Moscow’s preplanned operation against Israel included improvised
landing parties of “volunteer” seamen. Kislov’s postscript held that the USSR intend-
ed to intervene only “in dire necessity, to stop Israeli aression.” is conrms that a
Soviet landing force was prepared to strike at Israel. In disputing that claim, he wrote
that “desant ships with marines who were well-prepared both operationally and psy-
chologically” were present and prepared.10
Subseuent references conrmed and detailed these marines’ presence and mis-
sion. By mid-May a second BDK joined its sister ship and two SDKs (sredny desantny
korabl’ medium landing cra) that were already attached to the Eskadra. Naval histori-
7 McCormick, e Soviet Presence in the Mediterranean, 9.
8 A paratroop division was trained in Crimea (and another in Azerbaijan) for a month before the Six-
Day War for a drop in Israel, and they were kept in readiness on the runways for its duration. LtCol
Anatoly Isaenko, “Polety na Blizhniy Vostok [Flights to the Middle East],” NVO (Nezavisimoye Voyennoye
Obozreniye—Nezavisimaya Gazea military supplement), 15 December 2006. Unlike the marines, these
units included Jewish conscripts. Two of these later immigrated to Israel and, in interviews with Zeev
Katz of the Hebrew University, reported that they spent several days in transport aircra on the run-
ways prepared for a drop in the Middle East. Professor Katz, personal communication with the authors,
June 2000. In a retrospective top-secret assessment, the CIA conrmed reports of this as well as the
naval-marine component of the planned Soviet intervention, but in versions that reect the Soviet
propaganda line more than direct knowledge of the actual preparations. “Soviet Policy and the 1967
Arab-Israeli War (Reference Title: Caesar-XXXVIII),” CIA Directorate of Intelligence, 16 March 1969.
9 e late Capt Khripunkov’s account is assembled from a copy he provided of his article, “Khodili my
pokhodami . . . : vospominaniya otsera ota [e missions we carried out . . . : Memoirs of a naval
ocer],” Vecherny Donetsk, 1994, and subseuent interviews we held with him, as well as his appearance
that we arranged in an Israeli documentary: Ilan Ziv, “1967 Six Day War,” YouTube video, episode 12, 4
December 2012.
10 Aleksandr Kislov, “Ne v ladakh s faktami [Incompatible with the facts],” aerword to Isabella Ginor,
“ ‘Shestidnevnaya voyna’ 1967 g. i pozitsiya SSSR [e “Six-Day War” and the position of the USSR],”
USA and Canada (Moscow: Russian Academy of Sciences, USA and Canada Institute, 2002), 76–91.
Ginor and Remez
186
an Aleksandr Rozin points out that by 10 June BDK-6 (later named Krymsky Komsomo-
lets) was in Port Said with marines of the 309th OMBP on board.11 is too predates
the ocially announced postwar entry of a Soviet otilla into this northern gateway
of the Suez Canal, aer a renewed Israeli “aression” on 9 July.12
However, an earlier entry conrms a uniue but authoritative testimony from
the commander of the naval infantry formation’s heavy-weapons company, which ap-
peared in 2003 in an online organ of the Belarus Ministry of Defence. en Lieutenant
Colonel Viktor Shevchenko’s company was armed with mobile rocket launchers. It
would be the rst detachment of the new Soviet Naval Infantry to go into combat in
the only part of the Soviet intervention plan that is known so far to have produced an
actual clash with Israeli forces in the Six-Day War.13
Shevchenko was motivated to speak out by a combination of economic hardship
and old soldiers’ honor, like much of the veterans’ literature that by that time was
near the end of its “golden age” in the years around the dissolution of the USSR.
ough still in uniform as a military academy instructor, he broke the longstanding
coverup with a demand for recognition of his troops’ battleeld sacrice, especially
those who were killed or injured. As Moscow had never ocially acknowledged its
failed intervention in 1967, no reference to it was registered in the marines’ papers.
Neither they nor their survivors received even the small extra allowance for combat
veterans over other former servicemember’s pensions never mind citations or med-
als.14 His protest was therefore short on detail, including even an exact date. But aer
an initially positive reply from his interviewer when the chapter authors inuired for
more information, the entire article was deleted—the copy in the authors’ collection
may be the only trace—and they were denied access to Shevchenko.
However, once alerted by his startling account, the authors soon discovered cor-
roborating evidence in post-Soviet naval documentation. One such reference dates
the dispatch of a roa (company) from the 309th OMBP, presumably Shevchenko’s,
with a number of PT-76 amphibious tanks, to Ept on 26 May on board its usual
BDK operational platform, either the Krymsky or the Voronezhsky Komsomolets. e
11 Aleksandr Rozin, “Sovetsky VMF v sderzhivanii i prekrashchenii ‘chestidnevnoy voiny’ v 1967g [e
Soviet Navy in Deterrence and Termination of the ‘Six-Day War’ in 1967],” in A. O. Filonik, ed., Blizhniy
Vostok: Komandirovka na voyn: Sovetskie voennye v Egipte [Middle East: Mission to War: Soviet Military in
Ept] (Moscow: Academy of Sciences and Moscow State University, 2009), 188; and MajGen Vladimir
A. Zolotarev, Rossiya (SSSR) v lokalnikh voynakh i voyennykh konflikakh vtoroi poloviny XX veka [Russia
(USSR) in local wars and armed conicts in the second half of the 20th Century] (Moscow: Russian
Federation Institute of Military History, 2000), 185.
12 Ginor and Remez, e Soviet-Israeli War, 1967–1973, 20–29.
13 Andrei Fyodorov, “Neizvestnaya voyna ‘egiptyanina’ Shevchenko [e unknown war of ‘the Eptian’
Shevchenko],” Vo slavu rodine, no. 93, 22 May 2003.
14 Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez, “Veterans’ Memoirs as a Source for the USSR’s Intervention in the
Arab-Israeli Conict: e Fluctuations in eir Appearance and Character with Political Change in
Post-Soviet Russia,” Slavic Miliary Studies 29, no. 2 (2016): 279–97, https://doi.org/10.1080/13518046.2016
.1168136.
Soviet Preparations for a Naval Landing
187
latter ship had been attached to the Baltic Fleet since its completion in Kaliningrad
in 1966 and is listed as “based in Eptian ports from June 1967.”15
But the regular marines’ available force was still inadeuate for the impending
mission. Just before the crisis was sparked by an ostentatious warning from the USSR
to Ept that Israel was massing forces to attack Syria, the deputy commander of
the Black Sea Fleet arrived at Antikythera to take command of the “combined” Es-
kadra. Viktor Sysoev’s rank, vice admiral, was higher than the suadron’s usual chief,
indicating preparation for an extraordinary mission. He brought sealed orders for
the skippers of the Eskadra’s warships that were to be opened aer receiving a coded
signal. ey were to raise landing parties of purported “volunteers” and send them on
raids against Israeli coastal targets.16
Khripunkov’s SKR-6, a Petya II-class antisubmarine frigate of the fastest and most
advanced model in the Soviet Navy (the rst to be powered by gas turbines), was
a typical component of the Eskadra’s buildup. It had just been completed at Kalin-
ingrad’s Yantar shipyard and delivered to Baltiysk. On 3 May, well before the overt
outbreak of the crisis, it was dispatched to the Mediterranean, along with the SKR-13,
on their maiden voyage. ey were supposedly en route to the Black Sea, “but when
we reached the Med, we were told to stay there,” Khripunkov recalled.17
In interviews held with Khripunkov, the authors were even more astounded to
hear the target that he was assigned. His 30-person landing party—one-uarter of
his ship’s company—was aimed at no less than Haifa port, Israel’s main harbor and
naval base. Unrealistic as this seemed initially to the authors, it was no less so than
to Kislov. Once alerted to it, the authors collected multiple similar testimonies from
other ships and ocers. ey include the published memoir of Ivan Kapitanets, a
future admiral of the eet who was then a destroyer captain. He took on board about
100 naval cadets who were in training on the suadron’s agship, the cruiser Slava.18
Another authoritative source reports that on the submarine tender Magomed Gadzhiev
(1969), which normally carried a crew of about 450, the landing party of 75 included
“every available hand, including medics and even cooks.”19
On a professional level closer to the marines’, a naval commando team was prep-
15 A. B. Morin, “Bol’shye desantnye korabli tipa ‘Voronezhsky Komsomolets’ pr. 1171 [Large landing ship
Voronezhsky Komsomolets, project 1171],” Taifun, 47 (2005).
16 O.S. Pevtsov and Yu A. Portnov, “A bylo eto, pomnitsya, tak” [so it was, I remember],” Podvodnya
Flot [submarine eet] magazine, no. 9, 2001; and Tatarinov et al., Shab Rosiyskogo Chernomorskogo Floa:
1831–2001, 81.
17 Capt Yuri N. Khripunkov, telephone interview with authors, August 1999; and Capt Yuri N. Khripun-
kov, personal interview with authors, October 2006.
18 Adm Ivan M. Kapitanets (Ret), Na sluzhbe okeanskomu flotu, 1946–1992: zapiski komandujuschego dvumja
floami [In the service of the oceanic eet, 1946–1992: Notes of the commander of two eets] (Moscow:
Andreyevsky Flag, 2000), 174–76; and Ivan M. Kapitanets, telephone interview with authors, 11 January
2003.
19 Adm V. A. Kravchenko, ed., Podvodnye sily Chernomorskogo floa [Submarine forces of the Black Sea
Fleet] (Simferopol, Crimea: Tavrida, 2004), 125, 422.
Ginor and Remez
188
ositioned on a Soviet submarine. Its leader was Gennady Zakharov, a future admi-
ral and the deputy commander of President Boris Yeltsin’s guard during the latter’s
confrontation with the Russian Parliament in 1993. He related a decade later that as
a lieutenant in 1967, he commanded a detachment of naval special forces (spetznaz):
“During the war in the Middle East, we were sitting in a submarine close to shore.
Our mission was to destroy Israeli oil terminals and reservoirs,” which were located
near Haifa. is means they must have been assigned their target and dispatched from
their Black Sea base considerably earlier.20
Even with inputs like Khripunkov’s from 30 ships for a total of about 1,000 mostly
untrained and uneuipped troops, what could these landings have achieved? All of
Israel’s able-bodied reservists had been called up and its outnumbered military was
stretched to the limit along the borders. A series of such raids might cause serious
disruption, damage morale, and drain forces from the front. is might be exacer-
bated by support for an expected uprising among Israeli Arabs, for which Arabic
interpreters attached to the Soviet advisors’ apparat in Ept were summoned to the
embassy in Cairo, transferred to Alexandria and informed that they would be posted
to ships cruising o the Israeli shore. “One of the interpreters . . . said he knew for
sure that we would be attached to a desant force that would be landing in Haifa or
slightly northward,” to handle liaison with Israeli Arabs, “who were longing for us.”21
e orders (Plan Victor) that were issued to Soviet-advised Syrian formations,
which were poised to invade Israel from the Golan Heights in the northeast, called
for cutting across the country or less than 80 kilometers. ey were to link up with
an “Eptian” landing force on the coast north of Haifa, which actually could only
have been Soviet.22
e entire operation was to be unleashed once Ept, on signal from Moscow,
initiated a series of such provocative moves that Israel would be goaded into a rst
strike. It was anticipated as a ground oensive, which the Eptian forces concen-
trated in Sinai would have to contain until Israel was branded as the aressor, thus
legitimizing a Soviet intervention. When Israel dallied, the Soviets added their own
provocation by sending their most advanced aircra, the still-experimental MiG-25
20 Evgeny Zhirnov, “Rutskogo v Lefortovo ya soprovozhdal sam [I Personally Escorted (Vice President
Aleksandr) Rutskoi to Lefortovo; interview with Zakharov],” Kommersant Vlast’, 16 April 2002. RAdm
Shlomo Erel, who commanded the Israeli Navy in 1967, recalled to the authors a still-mysterious incident
on 8 June in which the Israeli destroyer INS Haia (K 38) engaged a submarine 24 kilometers o the naval
base of Atlit, south of Haifa. “It was attacked with depth charges . . . oil slicks and debris were spotted,
and the engagement was broken o.” e submarine’s initially assumed identication as Eptian was
later ruled out, but the incident was not investigated further. Shlomo Erel, personal communication
with the authors, 7 August 2004; and Ginor and Remez, Foxbats over Dimona, 178–79.
21 Aleksandr Khaldeyev, “Nesostoyavshiisya desant [e landing that did not occur],” Okna (Tel Aviv), 14
September 2000.
22 Syrian documents, some in Russian, reproduced in Yehezkel Hameiri, Mishnei evrei harama [On both
sides of the heights] (Tel Aviv: Lewin-Epstein, 1970). e rendezvous with a landing force is detailed on
p. 58; analysis in Ginor and Remez, Foxbats over Dimona, 70–71.
Soviet Preparations for a Naval Landing
189
or Foxbat, on two sorties over Israel’s nuclear complex at Dimona. is spurred Isra-
el’s preemptive air oensive on 5 June, and the Soviets had the pretext they desired.
Khripunkov’s captain opened his orders, and ordered the frigate set course for
Haifa. e landing party was recruited and received vague orders. Once depth de-
creased to 15–20 meters, they were to head ashore on the ship’s kater (cutter, motor
launch). Two trips might be needed, which would leave the rst 15 troops alone to face
whatever awaited them on shore. e personnel were neither trained nor euipped
for land warfare, and their leader was given no maps or specic targets. As Khripun-
kov told the authors, “What were we supposed to accomplish, with my pistol and
the sailors’ AK-47s? ‘Get in there and see,’ they told us. ‘row your RG-42s [depth
grenades designed for use against frogmen]. Wipe out the enemy forces’.”23
Wait for reinforcements, they were told in general terms. Khripunkov was al-
ready aware of the marines’ presence with the Eskadra—another indication that their
deployment preceded the war: “there was also a BDK with about 40 tanks and maybe
a battalion of infantry.” But “nothing concrete was said” about the marines’ mission.
Likewise, “the air force was going to support us.” Not that Khripunkov and his men
expected much from the promised air support. “How could we contact them? We had
nothing ready—no radio gear, no codes, no signal rockets, nothing.”24
Khripunkov and his troops were thus well aware that they were expendable. “Los-
ing 1,000 men,” he remarked at the height of anti-Soviet backlash in newly indepen-
dent Ukraine, “was nothing for the USSR. ey started counting at ve million. Each
side wanted to demonstrate its dominant role. . . . e United States sends in the
[Sixth] Fleet. We bring in our Black Sea Suadron. ey send in spy planes. We start
preparing a landing in Israel. e Israeli tanks move through Sinai and are ready to
skip over the Suez Canal. What then? We land our force and World War III begins?”
Still, on board SKR-6, only one sailor refused to “volunteer”; he was later transferred
to another unit but, as far as Yury Nikolaevich knew, was not otherwise disciplined.
“I was a foolish young man then. Today, I too would probably have refused such a
mission.”25
Shevchenko mentioned no such ualms among his marines. e blackout that
was reimposed on his account le it unclear whether his outt’s original mission was
to engage Israel’s frontline forces, as it wound up doing when the Soviet-Eptian
plan backred spectacularly. Soviet advisors and pilots who were already in Ept
reported not only the near-total devastation of its aircra but also the destruction
23 Capt Yuri N. Khripunkov, telephone interview with authors, August 1999; and Capt Yuri N. Khripun-
kov, personal interview with authors, October 2006.
24 Capt Yuri N. Khripunkov, telephone interview with authors, August 1999; and Capt Yuri N. Khripun-
kov, personal interview with authors, October 2006.
25 Capt Yuri N. Khripunkov, telephone interview with authors, August 1999; and Capt Yuri N. Khripun-
kov, personal interview with authors, October 2006.
Ginor and Remez
190
of the runways in its bases.26 e Soviet ghter suadrons and strategic bombers that
had been readied at the USSR’s southernmost bases had nowhere to land and insu-
cient range for the round trip. While the Eskadra already had an amphibious force to
match the Sixth Fleet’s, it had no aircra carriers—a situation hardly changed since
then. e air component of the Soviet intervention became unfeasible, including the
vital air support that had been promised to the landing parties.
As the Eptians had feared, shorn of any airpower—never mind air superi-
ority—they had no hope of stemming the Israeli ground attack and launching a
counteroensive, even with Soviet support. As remnants of the routed Eptian
Army ed westward across the canal, Shevchenko’s BDK anchored at Port Said,
the marines went ashore, and attempted to cross it eastward. But as Shevchenko
related, his company was ravaged by an Israeli air raid, leaving 17 killed and more
than 30 injured, including their commander, who 35 years later was still nicknamed
“the Eptian.”27
is appears to correspond with a report that, on 8 June, “two battalions of Ep-
tian artillery which opened re from the far side of the Canal” at the rst Israeli force
to arrive “were hit by an Israeli air strike and destroyed.” Were these Shevchenko’s
Katyushas? e episode was mentioned only in a “uickie” history of the war by au-
thors who enjoyed privileged access.28 Its disappearance from subseuent versions,
including the ocial Israeli record, appears to reect Israeli reluctance to highlight
direct Soviet involvement and losses, which might provoke retaliation. Together with
the Soviets’ own censorship, this created a “perfect storm” for obscuring the marines’
role. But a coded reference to Shevchenko’s engagement appears to be preserved in the
Voronezhsky Komsomolets’ combat record: “Its name was gloried in Port Said during
the Arab–Israeli conict. e ship gave internationalist support to the armed forces
of Ept . . . in repulsing Israeli aression.”29
at Shevchenko’s engagement took place no later than 9 June is conrmed by
the subseuently published account of another marine ocer who was then based in
Baltiysk. At 0400 on 10 June, then-lieutenant Valery Mallin relates, the remainder of
his 309th OMBP was ordered into combat readiness and was urgently transported
overland to the Black Sea. e next day, it sailed for Port Said, evidently in relief of
Shevchenko’s shattered force; and since their formation’s usual BDK platform was
already in the arena, these marines embarked on a destroyer and a tanker. is osten-
sibly responsive move—rather than the politically sensitive and therefore undisclosed
26 Zolotarev, Rossiya (SSSR) v lokalnikh voynakh i voyennykh konflikakh vtoroi poloviny XX veka [Russia
(USSR) in local wars and armed conicts in the second half of the 20th Century], 183.
27 Fyodorov, “Neizvestnaya voyna ‘egiptyanina’ Shevchenko [e unknown war of ‘the Eptian’
Shevchenko].”
28 Randolph S. Churchill and Winston S. Churchill, e Six-Day War (London: Heinemann/Penguin,
1967), 176.
29 Morin, “Bol’shye desantnye korabli tipa ‘Voronezhsky Komsomolets’ pr. 1171.”
Soviet Preparations for a Naval Landing
191
earlier involvement in a preplanned oensive—opens Mallin’s list of 25 “combat mis-
sions in various areas of the world’s oceans,” in which the Baltic marines formed part
of landing forces.30
But for lack of air support, any desant on the Israeli coast became not merely sui-
cidal but pointless, even though the U.S. Sixth Fleet had been ordered away from the
eastern Mediterranean in a display of neutrality. e Eskadra had the entire basin vir-
tually to itself, and the landing parties’ orders were put on hold, though not entirely
rescinded. For the coming ve days, their ships cruised up and down the Israeli coast,
just outside territorial waters. e head of Israeli signal intelligence at the time told
the authors that his stations monitored signals from 42 Soviet vessels, but could not
break their code.31 When, on 8 June, Israeli planes and patrol torpedo (PT) boats at-
tacked the single U.S. Navy ship that was le behind, the signal-gathering vessel USS
Liberty (AGTR 5), o the Sinai coast, the rst ship to approach and oer help was
a Soviet destroyer. e improvised naval landing parties continued to train aboard
ship. “As an ocer, I knew how to use small arms, but the sailors had not red more
than ve bullets in target practice, and never had thrown a grenade.”32
e landing operation in Israel was reactivated when, on 9 June, having overcome
both the Eptian threat and a Jordanian attack, Israel responded to days of Syrian
shelling and sent its forces to the Golan Heights. Making its rst use of the hotline
to Washington, the Soviet leadership threatened “action, including military” if the
Israeli advance toward Damascus were not halted. is was not empty bluster; what
remained of the Soviet intervention, which had originally been a top-secret opera-
tional plan designed to win a war, now became an overt deterrent move to end it.
Khripunkov’s frigate was once again turned toward Haifa.33
In Lyndon B. Johnson’s White House situation room, it was decided to reverse the
Sixth Fleet’s course and order it back toward the war zone. Defense Secretary Robert
S. McNamara and (less plausibly) CIA chief Richard Helms have claimed credit for
this decision and thus for deterring Moscow from making good on its threat. In fact,
the decision was implemented too late to make any dierence. e order to the Sixth
Fleet, “reecting telephoned instructions from McNamara,” was transmitted from
the Joint Chiefs of Sta at 1522 hours Washington time, that is 2122 Israel time, well
aer Israel, fearing a direct confrontation with the USSR, accepted and observed a
30 Col Valery Bakirovich Mallin’s survey “Boevye Sluzhby Baltiskoy Morskoy Pekhoty [Combat Services
of the Baltic Marines]” has appeared in several versions since 1997. e version most accessible at present
was posted on Taifun, 31 August 2015. An abridged form was included in Filonik, Blizhniy Vostok, 143–51.
31 BGen Yoel Ben-Porat, interview with the authors, 8 March 2002.
32 James M. Ennes Jr., Assault on the Liberty: e True Story of the Israeli Atack on an American Intelligence
Ship (New York: Random House, 1979), 116.
33 Capt Yuri N. Khripunkov, telephone interview with authors, August 1999; and Capt Yuri N. Khripun-
kov, personal interview with authors, October 2006.
Ginor and Remez
192
ceasere.34 SKR-6 was halted a half hour’s sail from its objective. As Zakharov retold
it, his submarine-based force “would have carried out [the mission], but the war end-
ed before the nal order to act was received.”35
is, however, was not the end of the Soviet Marines’ involvement. In Moscow,
Brezhnev and his allies decided to double down on their commitment to Ept rath-
er than cut their losses. A massive airli of materiel to replace the lost hardware
was launched while the war was still in progress. A military delegation led by Chief
of Sta Matvei Zakharov toured the new front line along the canal to establish its
defense, and the Soviet Marines became the rst of their country’s 50,000 regular
troops—distinct from individual advisors—to be stationed in Ept by 1973, up to
20,000 at a time.36
On 9 July, the Soviets took advantage of the rst renewed areup at Ras el-Ish
on the Suez Canal to overtly aunt the Eskadra’s entry into Alexandria and Port Said,
where its ships had actually been present since before the war. ese ports now eec-
tively became Soviet naval bases, fullling one of the USSR’s main war aims despite
the overall asco. Whether Mallin’s marines took part in the Ras el-Ish engagement,
they now took up positions on the canal’s northern sector to hold the line until the
Eptian army could regroup. eir rotating presence in three-month tours of duty
became part of the Soviet regulars’ combat deployment in Ept, to be reinforced
several times when tensions peaked, as during the latter’s War of Attrition with Israel
in 1969–70.37
e outbreak of this conict added special urgency to the otherwise routine dis-
patch described by then-lieutenant V. I. Dmitriev. His outt’s departure on 15 May
1969 followed the start of massive artillery barrages on 9 March. It included two in-
fantry companies (of which he commanded one), one each of amphibious tanks and
of mortars, and a platoon of “shoulder-red anti-tank missiles”—the earliest known
appearance of the Malyutkas (Saers) in Ept, where they would play a crucial role
in the cross-canal oensive of October 1973.38
As in 1967, “the personnel and euipment boarded . . . two destroyers, two mine-
sweepers, a large landing ship and two medium landing ships, and on May 15, 1969
headed for the Mediterranean.” On the BDK, “the marines were uartered under the
tank deck on three-tiered canvas bunks. eir kit was folded into helmets that hung
34 Harriet Dashiell Schwar, ed., Foreign Relations of the United Sates, 1964–1968, vol. 19, Arab-Israeli Crisis
and War, 1967, doc. 253, “Telegram from the Joint Chiefs of Sta to the Commander-in-Chief European
Command (Lemnitzer),” Recorded Date 10 June 1967, 1522Z. Original in National Security File, Country
File, Middle East Crisis, vol. 9, 422, Lyndon B. Johnson Library, Austin, TX.
35 Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez, “e Six-Day War as a Soviet Initiative: New Evidence and Meth-
odological Issues,” Middle East Review of International Aairs 12, no. 3 (September 2008).
36 Ginor and Remez, e Soviet-Israeli War, 5–52.
37 Zolotarev, Rossiya (SSSR) v lokalnikh voynakh i voyennykh konflikakh vtoroi poloviny XX veka [Russia
(USSR) in local wars and armed conicts in the second half of the 20th Century], 185.
38 V. I. Dmitriev “Zapiski leytenanta morskoy pekhoty [Notes of a lieutenant of the Marine Corps],” in
Filonik, Blizhny Vostok.
Soviet Preparations for a Naval Landing
193
over their heads.”39 ey arrived on the 19 May in Port Said, where on the next day
“we took up combat duty.” is included defense “in the second echelon of Eptian
troops” as well as “protection of ships, and evacuation of Soviet military advisers in
the event of an [Israeli] breakthrough.” e latter was considered so imminent that
“on the ships located in Port Said, measures were immediately taken against under-
water saboteurs, the sentries threw live grenades over the side of the ship” and divers
began daily descents to inspect the hulls. On 9 June, the entire formation carried out
an “amphibious landing” at Port Fuad, the Eptians’ only remaining foothold east of
the canal facing the Israeli positions. “e uniform of the landing party was ‘tropical’
and consisted of a cap, shorts and a short-sleeved tunic, all blue. For action in combat
conditions there was an army fatigue uniform, and for ceremonial purposes a black
eld uniform.”40
On 20 July, the Eptians’ initial, massive numerical advantage in repower was
reversed when Israel launched its air force into action as “ying artillery.” e relative
immunity that Port Said had enjoyed thanks to the Soviet naval presence was ended.
Two days into the Israeli air oensive, Dmitriev witnessed an attack on Eptian
missile boats, even though they had “nestled up to [his] BDK for shelter. One burst of
aircra [cannon] re perforated a UAZ-452 ambulance that was on the upper deck.”41
e same day, British sources reported “Soviet marines sighted in Port Said” from
among the “thousands of marines” on Soviet warships and landing cra in that har-
bor. is was an exceptional item, as Western media had little remaining presence in
Ept and none in the canal zone. Both “British and US ocials . . . said that position-
ing Soviet naval commando units outside the USSR is an innovation for Russia and
if true, this fact might be a very signicant event on the way to dangerous confronta-
tion in areas of tension worldwide.” But on the record, the reports were downplayed
as usual: the State Department held that the department “cannot even verify whether
there indeed were marines on board” the Soviet ships.42
On their return voyage in August, Dmitriev relates that his outt took part in
the Fih Eskadra’s “rst joint maneuvers” with the Eptian and Syrian navies. e
Israeli incursion did not materialize, but the marines’ rotating presence remained a
xture at Port Said even aer the bulk of Soviet regulars were withdrawn from Ept
once the ceasere of August 1970 accomplished most of their mission. Much of this
39 Dmitriev “Zapiski leytenanta morskoy pekhoty [Notes of a lieutenant of the Marine Corps],” in Filon-
ik, Blizhny Vostok, 22–26.
40 Dmitriev “Zapiski leytenanta morskoy pekhoty [Notes of a lieutenant of the Marine Corps],” in Filon-
ik, Blizhny Vostok.
41 Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov, e Israeli-Eptian War of Attrition, 1969–70: A Case Study of Limited Local War
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), 57–58; G. V. Karpov, “Vospominaniya sovetskogo voen-
nogo sovetnika v Egipte,” in Filonik, Blizhniy Vostok, 105; and Dmitriev “Zapiski leytenanta morskoy
pekhoty [Notes of a lieutenant of the Marine Corps],” in Filonik, Blizhny Vostok, 22–26.
42 “Ein ishur layedi’ot al nehatim sovietim bate’alah [No conrmation for reports of Soviet marines on
the canal],” Ma’ariv, 21 July 1967, 1, uoting State Department spokesman Robert McCloskey and “U.S.
and British ocials.”
Ginor and Remez
194
withdrawal was disguised as a unilateral “expulsion” of the Soviet “advisors,” as the
result of a ctitious ri with Moscow; however, little pretense was made to conceal
the marines’ continuing presence.43 Aer a talk with the Soviet military attaché and
GRU (military intelligence) rezident, a British counterpart reported that Port Said
still “provided a haven for Soviet commando units as a counter to marine forces of
the Sixth Fleet.” e Briton noted that his Soviet interlocutor, Rear Admiral Nikolay
Ivliev, had been very forthcoming on all subjects except the matter of Port Said, on
which he seemed uncomfortable and conrmed in eect that the main change was
in visibility: “Soviet ratings are still forbidden to go ashore in uniform.” In London,
it was correctly assumed “that there is something peculiar about the use to which the
Russians put Port Said (we have always suspected this).” Ivliev’s aim was understood
“to convince us that the Soviet naval presence . . . was smaller than it really is.”44
is was borne out in less than a year as one of several indications that the
USSR was privy to Eptian preparations for the cross-canal oensive that would be
launched on 6 October. As in 1969, the impending war called for reinforcing the ma-
rines’ presence beyond the usual rota of available naval-infantry units. e procedure
that followed was remarkably reminiscent of the previous instances, going back to
1967, that included makeshi landing parties of seamen.
As early as 28 September—a week before the Eptian-Syrian surprise oensive
against Israel—the Soviet Baltic Fleet’s marine force was once again put on alert. Some
of its complement was already deployed in West Africa; the remainder, under Lieu-
tenant Colonel V. I. Gorokhov, was own in transport planes to Sevastopol with
personal arms only. ere it was loaded, with full battle gear and weapons borrowed
from the Black Sea Fleet’s counterpart formation, onto a BDK. Additional units fol-
lowed the same day by train, to embark on two SDKs; all of them set sail for the Med-
iterranean. Another reinforced marine battalion followed on the same day directly
from Baltiysk on the Baltic Fleet’s own BDK, Krasnaya Presnya. e urgency and mode
of the additional desantniki’s dispatch indicate preparation for a highly extraordinary
mission: “forming an amphibious assault for operations in the conict area.” Accord-
ing to Captain Vladimir Zaborsky, on 17 October (aer the Israeli canal crossing far-
ther south), “preliminary plans for a limited ‘demonstration’ landing of Soviet naval
infantry on the west bank of the canal were draed. . . . One large and six medium
landing ships were already in the region but they were all being used for euipment
transport”—that is, the resupply seali for Ept that was already in full swing. So,
43 Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez, “e Origins of a Misnomer: e ‘Expulsion of Soviet Advisers’
from Ept in 1972,” in Nigel J. Ashton, ed., e Cold War in the Middle East: Regional Conflict and the Su-
perpowers 1967–73 (London: Routledge, 2007), 136–63, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203945803.
44 Amb Richard Beaumont, Cairo, to Foreign and Commonwealth Oce (FCO), 13 November 1972;
naval attaché J. P. Marriott, Cairo, to Ministry of Defense, “Call on Admiral Ivliev,” 14 November 1972;
D. A. S. Gladstone to A. J. M. Craig, Near East and North Africa Department, FCO, “Soviet/Eptian
Relations in the Military Field,” 21 November 1972, all in le FCO 39/1265, National Archive (Public
Records Oce), London.
Soviet Preparations for a Naval Landing
195
incredibly, once again “Gorshkov ordered . . . a landing force to be assembled of ‘vol-
unteers’ from the crews of all combatant and auxiliary ships.”45
is time, although an Israeli advance on Port Fuad again failed to materialize, it
was not an imaginary scenario; such a move had rst been proposed by the military
command and supported by Defense Minister Moshe Dayan as early as 7 October, on
the mistaken assumption that “the Soviets have evacuated Port Said.” It was repeat-
edly postponed and nally ruled out only on the 22 October.46 Whether the Soviets
were aware of this, they were nally ordered to carry out the mission on 24 October.
Until then, “some thousand men had signed up” for the landing parties. Captain Evg-
eny Semenov, then the Eskadra’s chief of sta, wrote in his journal: “Seems we’re going
to save Port Said from the Israelis.” eir landing was called o “at the last minute”;
Lyle Goldstein and Yury Zhukov, uoting from Semenov’s unpublished manuscript,
conclude that “this resort to volunteers is a sign that the Eskadra was to some extent
in over its head.” But as in 1967, the “volunteer” character of the force was risible, and
the concept had, remarkably, remained an operational option. Semenov wrote that
only aer a “very dicult combat service,” the force made a friendly landing at Tartus
on 7 December.47
Mallin, by then a captain, commanded another such deployment in Syria via
Tartus in August–December 1975. e last marine operation on his list was from Feb-
ruary to August 1989 in Angola. Writing in 2015, he ended his survey on a doleful
note: “Changes in Soviet policy that took place in the second half of the 1980s, the
abandonment by the USSR of its interests in many regions, led to the loss of gains
that had been made over decades” such as the Soviet role as “one of the deterrents in
the permanent Arab-Israeli confrontation . . . the naval infantry ceased to perform
combat service.”48
But this was soon to come full circle. e very same year, Russia’s intervention in
the Syrian Civil War restored Russian naval presence in the Eastern Mediterranean,
including amphibious capability, close to the Soviet peak in the 1960s and 1970s,
with Tartus and Latakia replacing Alexandria and Port Said. Some of the 16 original
45 Zaborsky, “Sovetskaya Sredizemnomorskaya Eskadra [Soviet Mediterranean Suadron]”; Zaborsky,
“Zapiski o neizvestnoy voyne [Notes on an unknown war]”; Popov, “Desantnye korabli osvaivayut
Sredizemnoye more [Landing ships in the Mediterranean]”; and an unpublished journal by Semenov, all
uoted in Goldstein and Zhukov, “A Tale of Two Fleets,” 27–63.
46 Shimon Golan, Kabbalat Hahlatot ba-Pikkud ha-Elyon be-Milhemet Yom Kippur [Decision Making in the
High Command in the Yom Kippur War] (Tel Aviv: Ma’arakhot [Israel Defense Forces publishing] and
Modan, 2013), 436, 453–54, 1146, 1150.
47 is account of the Eskadra’s moves in 1973 is based on Vladimir Zaborsky, “Sovetskaya Sredizem-
nomorskaya Eskadra [Soviet Mediterranean Suadron],” NVO, 13 October 2006; Vladimir Zaborsky,
“Zapiski o neizvestnoy voyne [Notes on an unknown war],” Morskoy sbornik 3 (March 1999); V. I. Popov,
“Desantnye korabli osvaivayut Sredizemnoye more [Landing ships in the Mediterranean],” Taifun, Febru-
ary 2002; and an unpublished journal by Semenov, all uoted in Lyle J. Goldstein and Yury M. Zhukov,
“A Tale of Two Fleets: A Russian Perspective on the 1973 Naval Stando in the Mediterranean,” Naval
War College Review 57, no. 2 (Spring 2004): 27–63.
48 Mallin’s remark is in Russian as uoted from Filonik, Blizhniy Vostok.
Ginor and Remez
196
BDKs were reactivated as troop and materiel transports, aer being mothballed in
the 1990s. Besides exemplifying the continuity from Soviet to Russian strate, these
alligators are among the oldest warships still in service with a major navy. Plus ca
change . . .
197
CHAPTER TEN
Operation Husky
The Challenges of Joint Amphibious Operations
Darren Johnson
In January 1943, leaders from the United States and Great Britain met in Casa-
blanca, Morocco, to solidify Allied strate in the Mediterranean theater of op-
erations (MTO) during World War II. Aer the successful landings in French
Morocco and Algeria (Operation Torch) on 8 November 1942 by Allied forces, Pres-
ident Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill agreed on a
strate that would focus on eliminating the Axis’s military presence in North Af-
rica, securing lines of communication in the Mediterranean, and relieving military
pressure on the Soviet Union by forcing the Germans to shi forces from the eastern
front to the MTO.1
Cooperation between the United States and Great Britain was not a smooth
process. In the summer of 1940, the groundwork for United States and Great Brit-
1 In a joint Anglo-American letter to Soviet premier Joseph Stalin, President Roosevelt and Prime Minis-
ter Churchill said of Operation Husky, “We have made the decision to launch large-scale amphibious op-
erations in the Mediterranean at the earliest possible moment. Preparation for these operations is now
under way and will involve a considerable concentration of forces, including landing cra and shipping
in Eptian and North African ports.” President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill were conscious
of the need to support the Soviet Union not just materially through Lend-Lease but also through direct
military action against the German armed forces. Iskander Magadeyev and Olga Kucherenko, “Casa-
blanca: A Table Just for Two (November 1942 to January 1943),” in e Kremlin Letters: Salin’s Wartime
Correspondence with Churchill and Roosevelt, ed., David Reynolds and Vladimir Pechatnov (London: Yale
University Press, 2018), 169–203, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv7cjvz5.14.
Johnson
198
ain’s military collaboration was laid by U.S. naval observer, Rear Admiral Robert L.
Ghormley, whose mission was to establish naval cooperation between the two nations
should the United States get drawn into the war.2 Aer the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor on 7 December 1941, the United States and Great Britain developed a strategic
framework at the Arcadia Conference in Washington, DC.3 Foundational to the Al-
lied strate was to focus their eorts on the defeat of Germany rst and then defeat
the Japanese in the Pacic.4 Beyond that decision, no substantive agreements were
made by the two Allies at the conference. In the United States’ viewpoint, defeating
Germany reuired immediate action, a drive straight to Berlin from an invasion along
the northwestern coastline of France. In a note on 22 January 1942, future Supreme
Allied Commander in Europe, Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote, “We’ve got to go to Eu-
rope and ght. And we’ve got to uit wasting resources all over the world—and still
worse—wasting time.”5 In contrast to the American sentiment, Churchill warned that
a defeat on the French coast was “the only way in which we could possibly lose this
war.”6 e British approach to defeating Germany lay in ghting on the periphery, or
what they called the “so-underbelly” of Europe.7 While the United States and Great
Britain diered on the strate to defeat Germany, the need to militarily engage with
Germany in the near term became the priority. Operation Torch, the invasion of Axis
occupied North Africa, was a compromise between the two nations. e Americans
were able to nally engage Germany in combat operations on land and British de-
sires for a peripheral strate were placated. is study argues that the challenges in
conducting amphibious operations during Operation Husky in Sicily necessitated an
increased level of cooperation between the United States and Great Britain for the
remainder of the war.
Lieutenant General Eisenhower led Operation Torch, with British ocers serv-
ing as his chief deputies.8 A collective force of 125,000 soldiers, sailors, and airmen
from the United States and Great Britain conducted simultaneous amphibious inva-
2 Gordon A. Harrison, Cross-Channel Atack: e European eater of Operations, U.S. Army in World War
II (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1993), 1.
3 e Arcadia Conference was a series of 12 meetings held by American and British leaders in Washing-
ton, DC. Proceedings of the American-British Joint Chiefs of Sa Conferences, 2 pts. (Washington, DC: Joint
Chiefs of Sta, 1941).
4 LtCol Albert N. Garland and Howard McGaw Smyth, Sicily and the Surrender of Ialy: e Mediterra-
nean eater of Operations, U.S. Army in World War II (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military
History, 1993), 2.
5 Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: e War in North Africa, 1942–1943, vol. 1 (New York: Owl Book, an
imprint of Henry Holt, 2003), 11.
6 Atkinson, An Army at Dawn, 13.
7 e British experience at Dunkirk, France, and the failed Dieppe amphibious raid all contributed to the
British strate of delaying a direct assault against German forces in Western Europe. To many Ameri-
can leaders, the Mediterranean strate was only perpetuating British imperial ambitions in the region.
Atkinson, An Army at Dawn, 14.
8 is would be a normal occurrence during the war, ensuring cooperation and partnership between the
Allies in planning and execution of major operations.
Operation Husky
199
sions at Casablanca, Oran, and Algiers on 8 November 1942. Operation Torch plan-
ners were unsure if the Axis aligned Vichy French forces would ght against an Allied
invasion. Intelligence reports indicated that if the Allies encountered sti resistance,
their advance toward Tunisia may be delayed by up to three months.9 e complexity
of the Operation Torch landings was already high as three separate task forces de-
scended on nine dierent landing sites from embarkation points in the United States
and Great Britain. Navigational errors, delays in landing, darkness, weather, and sea
currents all had an impact on the various amphibious landing locations. Sporadic
Vichy French resistance delayed the Allied advance inland but was isolated and not
well coordinated.10 A more determined enemy may have capitalized on the friction
the Allies experienced during the execution of Operation Torch.11 Despite the vari-
ous challenges the Allies endured during Operation Torch, the experience provided
them, especially the Americans, a blueprint for conducting amphibious operations in
a joint environment.
Inter-Allied disputes came to the forefront once again at the Casablanca Con-
ference in January 1943. e American delegation continued to advocate for a
cross-channel invasion from England in 1943, with U.S. Army Chief of Sta general
George C. Marshall being the most prominent supporter. Given the amount of per-
sonnel and resources already in North Africa aer the Operation Torch and Tunisia
campaigns, the prudent choice was to use these forces against German and Italian
strongholds in the Mediterranean. With reluctance, the American military leader-
ship, with President Roosevelt’s approval, agreed to the British peripheral strate,
and began planning for what would eventually be Operation Husky, the invasion of
Sicily in July 1943.12 e United States gave their support to the invasion of Sicily in
1943 for British assurances (but not guarantees) of a cross-channel invasion of north-
west France in 1944.13
e Combined Chiefs of Sta (CCS), along with their stas, developed plans for
9 Atkinson, An Army at Dawn, 23.
10 Charles A. Anderson, Algeria–French Morocco: e U.S. Army Campaigns of World War II (Washington,
DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 2003).
11 Anderson, Algeria–French Morocco, 30. Anderson highlights that landing ships for infantry could avoid
many sandbars along the landing sites that the heavier landing ships for vehicles could not. is resulted
in many vehicles being o-loaded in water that disabled their electrical systems.
12 e Soviet premier, Joseph Stalin, expressed his displeasure that the “Anglo-American alliance” was not
conducting a cross-channel invasion as was promised in earlier communications. Stalin highlights that
due to the Anglo-American failure to invade Western Europe resulted in the transfer of 36 German divi-
sions to the eastern front, putting additional pressure on Soviet forces. “Operations: Operation Husky:
Stalin to Prime Minister Husky Cannot Replace Second Front in France,” 15 March 1943, vol. 17, folio
326, FO 954/17B/326, National Archives, Kew.
13 Robert M. Citino, “Smashing the Axis: Operation Husky and the Sicilian Campaign,” in e Wehrmacht
Retreats: Fighting a Lost War, 1943 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012), 163–97. Despite the assur-
ance of a cross-channel invasion in 1944, a long-term and unied strate was yet to be determined by
the Allies at this time in the war. e “next step” for actions in the Mediterranean had yet to be planned.
Johnson
200
Operation Husky, all while ghting in North Africa continued.14 General Dwight D.
Eisenhower was named as Supreme Allied Commander, with three British ocers as
subordinates: General Harold Alexander as commander of ground forces, Admiral
Andrew B. Cunningham in command of the naval forces, and Air Chief Marshal Ar-
thur W. Tedder commanding the air forces. Placing British military leaders in direct
command of the invasion forces enabled the British to keep a “watchful” eye on their
American allies.15 e combined Anglo-American stas generated more than eight
plans to invade Sicily, none of which receiving full support from the various ocers
charged with executing the operation. Much of the diculty in planning Operation
Husky was due to the geographic separation of the Allied stas. With the North Afri-
can campaign still on-going, planning cells were scattered across the battleeld with
commanders still focused on defeating the Germans and Italians in Tunisia. Allied
planners relied on imperfect intelligence to determine the composition and disposi-
tion of the German and Italian forces that occupied Sicily.16 Moreover, Allied leaders
could only guess as to the morale of Axis forces on Sicily. Heavy Allied bombard-
ment, coal and food shortages, and logistical constraints were expected to demoralize
Axis soldiers’ morale and their commitment to ght. Regardless of the enemy eorts
on the battleeld, Operation Husky planners identied ports, airelds, and major
population centers as key terrain that needed to be seized and secured to enable a
successful amphibious assault.17
Initially, planners focused on dispersing the Allied landing sites on Sicily. is
was done to avoid concentrating too many naval assets in one area as well as to max-
imize the seizure of airelds for use by Allied aircra.18 At the behest of British Gen-
eral Bernard L. Montgomery, who commanded the British Eighth Army on Sicily,
subseuent invasion plans brought the proposed American landing sites closer to the
British invasion area. By consolidating the entire invasion force along a 160-kilometer
stretch of beach, each amphibious landing force oered mutual support should a
determined German and Italian counterattack occur.19 German forces fought tena-
14 e Combined Chiefs of Sta (CCS) included the senior stas of the United States and Great Britain
that, with head of state approval, established military policy decisions during World War II.
15 Citino, “Smashing the Axis,” 167. In the Tunisian campaign, British Gen Alexander distrusted the
American ghting ability and relegated the American Army’s II Corps to a minor role of ank security
for the British, which was a similar role American forces would have on Sicily. Carlo D’Este, Bitter Victo-
ry: e Battle for Sicily, July–August 1943 (New York: Harper Collins, 1988), 66.
16 Estimates of Axis forces on Sicily ranged from 300,000 to 365,000, with 40,000–62,000 of them being
German. D’Este, Bitter Victory, 606.
17 D’Este, Bitter Victory, 145.
18 Darren Johnson and Claudio Innocenti, e West Point Guide to the Campaigns of World War II: Sicily
(New York: Rowan Technolo Solutions, 2022); and D’Este, Bitter Victory, 113. Considered a double en-
velopment, the British Eighth Army would land along the southeastern coast of Sicily between Augusta
and Gela with the American Seventh Army conducting two distinct assaults: one in the southwest of
Sicily in the Sciacca-Mazara region and another in northwest Sicily near the Castellammare, Capaci,
and Trappeto areas.
19 Garland, Sicily and the Surrender of Ialy, 58.
Operation Husky
201
ciously in Tunisia and General Montgomery, along with General Eisenhower, feared
a more determined Italian defense of their home soil.20 e nal plan called for seven
Allied divisions landing at more than 26 locations in the southeastern portion of
Sicily, between Licata as the most western amphibious landing and Syracuse as the
eastern.21
Moving inland under re, securing the beachhead, and advancing to secure key
terrain was not going to be a simple task for Allied forces on Sicily.22 Prior to the
outbreak of World War II, the United States was ill-prepared for amphibious op-
20 Andrew J. Birtle, Sicily, 9 July–17 August 1943 (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History,
2021), 10.
21 Johnson and Innocenti, e West Point Guide to the Campaigns of World War II; and Keys and Cummings,
“Report of Operations: Initial Plan, 1 October 1943.” In addition, elements of two Allied airborne di-
visions would land behind the amphibious landings to facilitate securing the beachhead. Birtle, Sicily,
9 July–17 August 1943, 10.
22 Rick Atkinson, e Day of Battle: e War in Sicily and Ialy, 1943–1944, vol. 2 (New York: Henry Holt,
2007), 52.
MAP
Operation Husky invasion plan.
Source: courtesy of the Department of History, United Sates Miliary Academy
Johnson
202
erations at the magnitude of Operation Husky. Amphibious operations had been
limited to river crossings or raids on enemy-held terrain.23 Between World War I and
World War II, the United States military sought to develop its amphibious landing
doctrine.24 e U.S. Marine Corps and Army each developed amphibious warfare
doctrine that placed an increased emphasis on the decentralization of decision-
making aer landing.25 In June 1940, aer the collapse of France, American military
planners recognized that large scale amphibious operations would be necessary to
ght a European conict. Much of the Marine Corps and Navy doctrine that was
developed in the 1930s was eventually adopted by the Army in preparation for an
increased role in amphibious operations.26 e Army established the Amphibious
Training Center (ATC) at Camp Edwards, Massachusetts, in May 1942 to develop its
own doctrine and experience in ship-to-shore and shore-to-shore amphibious opera-
tions from embarkation to expansion of the beachhead.27 Once the Army developed
their own training centers and doctrine, coordination between the Army and Navy
was almost nonexistent, though the Army was reliant on the Navy for future amphib-
ious operations.28
ere was also a lack of coordination between the Allied ground and air forc-
es in the months preceding Operation Husky. e Allies unied their air forces in
the Mediterranean theater under British Air Marshal Arthur Tedder in February
1943. e Mediterranean Air Command adhered to the doctrine of theater airpower,
23 Capt Marshall O. Becker, e Army Ground Forces, Amphibious Training Center Study no. 22 (Washing-
ton, DC: Historical Section, Army Ground Forces, 1946), 1.
24 Milan Vego, “On Major Naval Operations,” Naval War College Review 60, no. 2 (2007): 101. e U.S.
Marine Corps published the Tenative Manual for Landing Operations in 1934. e manual used lessons
learned from the failed Gallipoli landings by the entente powers in World War I and contrasted it with
the successful amphibious landing (Operation Albion) by the German Army and Navy in World War I.
Tenative Manual for Landing Operations, 1934, HAF 39, COLL/3634, MCHD, uantico, VA
25 Bruce Gudmundsson, “Ambiguous Application: e Study of Amphibious Warfare at the Marine
Corps Schools, 1920–1933,” in On Contested Shores: e Evolving Role of Amphibious Operations in the History
of Warare, ed., Timothy Heck and B. A. Friedman (uantico, VA: Marine Corps University Press, 2020),
184, https://doi.org/10.56686/9781732003149.
26 John T. Greenwood, “e U.S. Army and Amphibious Warfare during World War II,” Army History,
no. 27 (Summer 1993): 3.
27 Becker, e Army Ground Forces, 5. In addition, the Army was directed to train 12 divisions by February
1943 to be capable of conducting amphibious operations. Unfortunately, no plan was developed with
the Navy to produce landing cra to facilitate this training. e ATC, from its inception, suered from
a lack of trained personnel, available landing cra, and proper facilities to support the training of an
Army division. American military leaders disbanded the ATC and made their facilities available for the
Navy by June 1943, ending the short-lived Army-centric ATC. Becker, e Army Ground Forces, 17.
28 Field Service Regulations: Operations, May 22, 1941, Field Manual 100-5 (Fort Leavenworth, KS: U.S. Army
Command and General Sta College Press, 1992). Field Service Regulations: Operations and Joint Action of
the Army and the Navy (Washington, DC: Government Printing Oce, 1927) were the predominant doc-
trine of the United States when conducting combined arms or Joint operations. e Army referenced
Landing Operations on Hostile Shores, FM 31-5 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Oce, 1941) when
developing their own methods in conducting amphibious operations.
Operation Husky
203
which placed emphasis on “air superiority missions, battleeld interdiction tasks, and
close air support, in that order of importance.”29 Securing the Sicilian airelds with-
in days of the landings was of paramount importance. If Sicilian airelds remained
in Axis control, they posed a signicant risk to the success of Allied amphibious
landing. Axis air elements would be able to operate over the landing locations for 45
minutes every hour, while the Allies could only provide 15 minutes of air coverage.30
Allied ground commanders expected the air contingent of Operation Husky to focus
on close air support, as opposed to “deep strike” targets in the Axis rear elements in
Sicily and on mainland Italy.
e Army’s Field Service Regulations: Larger Units, Field Manual (FM) 100-15, from
1942, outlines the need for air forces to perform both the “deep strike” and close air
support functions.31 U.S. Army ground and air leaders interpreted Larger Units to t
their own idea of air support, resulting in frustration and ineciency in the planning
and execution phases of Operation Husky. Historian Alexander Fitzgerald-Black, ar-
gues that Tedder’s focus on gaining air superiority over Axis air forces was militarily
sound, but his lack of clear details on how the Allied air forces would provide direct
air support of the amphibious landings was a failure.32 Tedder’s emphasis on gaining
air superiority was valid because it would, inevitably, aid the landings by preventing
Axis air and ground movement to and from the beachhead that would enable greater
Allied freedom of maneuver from the beachhead. However, Army planners had dif-
culty understanding when and where they should expect air support in the tenuous
beginning stages of the invasion. e lack of detail and specics in Tedder’s plan led
to distrust between the Allied Service components that remained during the execu-
tion phase of Operation Husky.
In April 1942, prior to Operation Torch, the U.S. Army published, Basic Field
Manual: Aviation in Support of Ground Forces, FM 31-35.33 Using Aviation in Support of
Ground Forces as a guide, the Army ground forces developed a nine-week air-ground
coordination training exercise at Fort Benning (now Fort Moore), Georgia, that was
intended to further integrate the ground and air elements of the U.S. Army. e com-
prehensive training included observation, bombing and strang, communications,
29 Alexander Fitzgerald-Black, Eagles over Husky: e Allied Air Forces in the Sicilian Campaign, 14 May to 17
August 1943 (Solihull, UK: Helion, 2018), xxi.
30 Fitzgerald-Black, Eagles over Husky, 35.
31 Field Service Regulations: Larger Units, FM 100-15 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Oce, 1942).
Larger Units was used as a guide for commanders and stas of air forces, corps, armies, or groups of
armies.
32 Fitzgerald-Black, Eagles over Husky, 37.
33 Basic Field Manual: Aviation in Support of Ground Forces, FM 31-35 (Washington, DC: Government Print-
ing Oce, 1942).
Johnson
204
identication, control, defense, and exploitation.34 While comprehensive in nature,
as with the ATC, the actual execution of the air-ground coordination exercises lacked
realism due to a variety of factors. e most signicant limitation was the pressing
need for ualied air crews and functioning aircra to support the war eort over-
seas. Air-ground coordination ineciencies were not solely related to wartime neces-
sity but rather mistrust and skepticism. In a statement to General George Marshall
in December 1942, Major General Lesley J. McNair, the commanding general of Army
Ground Forces said, “We have made little progress in air-ground cooperation, in spite
of our eorts, if we view frankly the conditions that must obtain in order to secure
eective results in combat . . . [and] the trouble is that the air side of the setup has
been too sketchy to permit eective training. I say this without criticism of the air
forces.”35 McNair’s comments provide a glimpse into the mentality of some ocers
with respect to the eectiveness of the Army Air Corps and the potential for integra-
tion with ground elements overseas.
For the United States during the North African campaign, lack of experience
and coordination with air support hindered the Army in achieving mission success.
In March 1943, in the latter stages of the North African campaign, Major General
John P. Lucas, a former corps commander serving as a deputy under Eisenhower in
the Mediterranean, was tasked by the Army Ground Forces to provide a report on
his observations and to provide recommendations for doctrinal changes. Lucas spe-
cically identied weaknesses in air-ground integration and aerial reconnaissance
during operations in North Africa. He recommended liaison ocers be placed within
the echelons of command to improve Joint coordination.36 roughout the planning
process, fractures in coordination between Allies and Services was evident. e suc-
cess of Operation Husky necessitated the Allies and Services have unity of eort,
especially during the initial stages of the amphibious invasion.
e Combined Chiefs of Sta approved the nal plan for Operation Husky on
13 May 1943.37 To be completed in ve phases, American, British, and Canadian forces
would:
1 – Gain naval and air supremacy around Sicily. 2 – Airborne and glider elements
34 Kent R. Greeneld, Army Ground Forces and the Air-Ground Battle Team Including Organic Light Aviation,
Forces Study no. 35 (Fort Monroe, VA: Historical Section, Army Ground Forces, 1948), 9. e Army
Ground Forces were the precursor to the modern-day Army Forces Command and Army Training and
Doctrine Command. ey were created in March 1942 under the command of MajGen Lesley McNair.
35 Greeneld, Army Ground Forces and the Air-Ground Battle Team Including Organic Light Aviation, 18.
36 Johnson and Innocenti, e West Point Guide to the Campaigns of World War II: Sicily; and John P. Lucas,
“Report of Visit to the North African eater of Operations, 28 April 1943,” in Observer Report [Army
Ground Forces] (Carlisle, PA: Army War College, 1943), 4. In addition, MajGen Lucas mentioned that the
U.S. Army was signicantly less capable than the Germans in air-ground integration.
37 e Combined Chiefs of Sta were American and British military leaders, with approval from Presi-
dent Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill, set the major policy decisions for the two nations during
World War II.
Operation Husky
205
would land on 9/10 July to disrupt Axis movement and communications inland
near airfields while Allied forces conduct amphibious assaults on the southeastern
coast of Sicily. 3 – Esablish a secure lodgment for future operations. 4 – Capture
the ports of Augusa and Caania and the Gerbini airfields. 5 – Secure Sicily
through the reduction of Axis forces.38
For General Montgomery, Eighth Army’s initial objectives were to seize and
secure the port of Syracuse and the area near Pachino. Once the beachheads were
secured, British and Canadian forces were to establish a general front in the Syracuse–
Pozzallo–Ragusa region, make contact with the U.S. Seventh Army, and rapidly move
forward to capture the Catania plain and the Gerbini airelds.39 e U.S. Seventh
Army, under the command of Lieutenant General George S. Patton, were initially
tasked with securing the port and aireld at Licata along with the airelds of Ponte
Olivo, Biscari, and Comiso. Once those tasks were complete, the Seventh Army was
expected to make contact with the British Eighth Army, secure the airelds, and pro-
tect the British le ank from Axis interference.40 For the Allies, the initial objectives
culminated in reaching the “Yellow Line,” a notional location roughly 32 kilometers
inland that would deny Axis forces from using indirect res on seized ports and air-
elds.41
Planners anticipated the most dangerous phase for the Allies during Operation
Husky was the initial landing. As such, they developed a comprehensive plan to inte-
grate the air, naval, and eld artillery res plan to secure the beachhead and expand
the lodgment. As noted earlier, the air support plan for Operation Husky focused
on three primary tasks: 1) negate the enemy air forces’ ability to seriously inuence
shipping, projected landing locations, and subseuent operations; 2) impede the en-
emy’s freedom of maneuver on land and at sea; and 3) provide the maximum support
to Allied land forces in the assault and subseuent phases of the operation. For the
Allied air forces, destroying the enemy air forces had priority over all other tasks.42
Naval gunre was to provide support down to the division level, which could assign
priority of res to their subordinate units. Naval gunre was to eliminate shore bat-
teries to protect shipping and the landings as well as to support the advance inland.
Field artillery support was also at the division level and could be assigned as needed
by the division commanders.43
38 D’Este, Bitter Victory, 144–45.
39 D’Este, Bitter Victory, 148.
40 D’Este, Bitter Victory, 150–51.
41 Atkinson, Day of Battle, 69.
42 Johnson and Innocenti, e West Point Guide to the Campaigns of World War II; and Fitzgerald-Black,
Eagles over Husky, 36–37.
43 Johnson and Innocenti, e West Point Guide to the Campaigns of World War II; and Hewitt, “Annex #8
to Field Order #8: Air Support Plan, 23 June 1943,” 2.
Johnson
206
In the constantly changing environment of combined arms warfare and the com-
plexity of amphibious operations, having a “method of marking” enemy and friendly
forces was paramount. In planning documents issued to II Corps, under the com-
mand of Lieutenant General Omar N. Bradley, the air support method of marking
emphasized that ground teams would use pyrotechnics, large alphabetic symbols, and
landmarks to identify enemy and friendly locations in the event of radio failure.44
While not as comprehensive in detail as the air support plan, naval gunre used for-
ward observers, pyrotechnics, and landmarks to shi their res in the event of friend-
ly forces in the area.45
To minimize confusion during the invasion, training centers were established in
North Africa for ship-to-shore and shore-to-shore amphibious rehearsals. Soldiers
were trained on loading and unloading personnel and vehicles from Landing Ship,
Tanks (LSTs), Landing Cra, Tanks (LCTs), Landing Cra, Infantry (LCIs), and
Landing Cra, Vehicle, Personnel (LCVPs).46 e U.S. Army’s 1st Infantry Division
and 45th Infantry Division conducted full rehearsals during 23–25 June 1943 that would
replicate conditions they would face during the amphibious invasion of Sicily. Navi-
gational errors, delays in timelines, and general operational friction during rehearsals
provided these units experience with what they could expect during Operation Hus-
ky.47 As with many actions during World War II, Joint amphibious operations were
a relatively novel endeavor. Doctrine for conducting amphibious operations was new
and untested. Major General Lucian K. Truscott, the 3d Infantry Division command-
er, remarked that Operation Husky would be “the rst real test of shore-to-shore
operations under actual conditions of war with adeuate euipment.”48
e Allies faced an enemy coalition on Sicily that was strained, not only under
the weight of the Allied bombardment, but by distrust and resentment. In the rst
half of 1943, tensions between Germany and Italy increased as the Allies captured
Tunis and expelled the Axis forces from the African continent. Adolf Hitler, along
with many German military leaders, viewed the Italians as the weak link in the Axis
coalition.49 On Sicily, disagreements between the Italian Sixth Army commander Al-
fredo Guzzoni and German eld marshal Albert Kesselring on how to defend the
44 Johnson and Innocenti, e West Point Guide to the Campaigns of World War II; and Hewitt, “Annex #3
to Field Order #8: Air Support Plan,” 2.
45 Johnson and Innocenti, e West Point Guide to the Campaigns of World War II; and Hewitt, “Annex #8
to Field Order #8: Air Support Plan,” 2.
46 “War Cabinet and Cabinet: Chiefs of Sta Committee: Minutes, 30 January 1943,” CAB 79-59-8, Na-
tional Archives, Kew. Notes from a secret British document pertaining to the need to transport a variety
of additional landing cra to the Middle East to facilitate training multiple brigade-size elements in
preparation for Operation Husky.
47 Johnson and Innocenti, e West Point Guide to the Campaigns of World War II; and Atkinson, Day of
Battle, 40.
48 Barbara Brooks Tomblin, “Gearing up for Operation Husky,” in With Utmost Spirit: Allied Naval Opera-
tions in the Mediterranean, 1942–1945 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004), 132.
49 D’Este, Bitter Victory, 193.
Operation Husky
207
966 kilometers of Sicilian coastline further fractured Axis unity. Guzzoni believed
the Allies would attack on the southeastern coastline of Sicily and sought to position
German armored units near the coastline once the Allies invaded. Kesselring agreed
on the templated location of the Allied attack but argued to maintain a mobile re-
serve of German forces that could counterattack the Allies in the event of multiple
amphibious landings.50
On paper, the estimated 300,000–350,000 Axis soldiers scattered along the Sicil-
ian coastline and key areas inland appeared formidable, but many suered from a lack
of training, poor morale, and indiscipline.51 Carlo D’Este, in Bitter Victory: e Battle
for Sicily, 1943, reports that, “during surprise visits guards were found asleep at their
posts, telephones inoperable and at one battalion headuarters the duty telephonist
was found sleeping soundly.”52 In the rst days aer the amphibious invasion, intelli-
gence reports from the U.S. 3d Infantry Division emphasized the Italian soldiers low
morale as mass numbers willingly surrendered to American forces aer the landing.53
Much of the demoralization among the Axis forces was due to the aerial bombard-
ment by the Allies in the weeks leading up to Operation Husky. Italian and German
prisoners of war, when interviewed by Allied intelligence ocers, complained of the
seemingly constant bombing they endured day and night, which contributed to their
willingness to surrender.54 In an interview aer the war, former commanding general
of the German Air Force in Italy, General Maximillian von Pohl spoke of the oper-
ational changes Axis forces had to make due to the Allies bombing eorts in Italy.
General von Pohl remarks that the evacuation of Sicily “was caused by the air force
attacks on railroads in southern Italy and the sea area o Messina, which eective-
ly delayed the arrival of German reserves and supplies.”55 Allied bombing prevented
Axis forces on Sicily from being resupplied from mainland Italy, eectively isolating
them prior to the amphibious invasion.
e Allies made concerted eorts to deceive the Germans and Italians about
where subseuent operations would take place at the conclusion of the North Afri-
can campaign. In preparation for Husky, Operations Barclay and Mincemeat were
50 D’Este, Bitter Victory, 196–98.
51 Walter Fries, General Der Panzertruppen, e Battle for Sicily, U.S., WWII Foreign Military Studies,
1945–1954, Record Group 338, National Archives, 8–9.
52 D’Este, Bitter Victory, 194–95.
53 Johnson and Innocenti, e West Point Guide to the Campaigns of World War II; and Atkinson, Day of
Battle, 40.
54 On 12 July, an Italian ocer oered the following ditty to a U.S. 3d Infantry Division intelligence
ocer: “It certainly would be a treat, when Hitler and Mussolini meet, in the armored train at Brenner
Pass, their lair, to nd a bomb awaiting them there, what would the outcome be? Why, of course, the
salvation of humanity!” Johnson and Innocenti, e West Point Guide to the Campaigns of World War II; and
Walter, 3d Infantry Division G2, “Enemy Situation at End of Period,” 6–7.
55 Headuarters, MAAF, Intelligence Section, Mediterranean Allied Air Forces: Air Surrender Documents, pt.
3,. World War II Operational Documents, Combined Arms Research Library, 21.
Johnson
208
launched.56 Both operations were used to inuence Germany to shi forces away from
Sicily and the eastern front, with Western Europe, the Balkans, Greece, and Crete
being the ruse amphibious invasion locations.57
Admiral Andrew B. Cunningham, the commander of Allied naval forces during
Operation Husky, split his force into an Eastern Task Force (British and Canadian)
and Western Task Force (American). Led by British Admiral Bertram H. Ramsey, the
Eastern Task Force was organized into three assault forces designated as A, B, and V,
which carried British and Canadian Army units to the various beaches in the Brit-
ish sector.58 American Vice Admiral Henry Kent Hewitt’s Western Task Force was
similarly organized into three attack forces; Cent, Dime, and Joss, which brought the
American forces to Sicily in both ship-to-shore and shore-to-shore capable landing
cra.59 e Allied invasion eet needed cooperative weather as they all navigated
to their assigned beaches. Weather studies were conducted in the months preceding
the invasion that examined cloud cover, precipitation, winds, and seas and surf that
would impact the invasion. Until 9 July, the weather in the western Mediterranean
was typical for the season, but hours before the invasion eet approached the Sicilian
coastline, winds averaged 31 knots with gusts up to 37 knots.60
A Western Task Force “Action Report” from August 1943 described the weather
as being “most unfavorable for cra convoys” to maintain their formations and time-
lines for the invasion.61 Despite the dicult weather, the Dime, Cent, and Joss attack
forces reached their rendezvous locations, generally, at their prescribed times.62 Much
of the credit was attributed to the use of “beacon submarines” that acted as naviga-
tional guides for the attack forces as well as reconnaissance in the event of Axis naval
forces in the region.63
H-hour for the amphibious invasion was planned for 0245 on 10 July, for both the
56 D’Este, Bitter Victory, 181–91.
57 Maj Donald J. Bacon, Second World War Deception: Lessons Learned for Today’s Joint Planner, Wright Flyer
Paper no. 5 (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air Command and Sta College, 1998), 2–3.
58 Assault Force A consisted of the British 5th Infantry and 50th Divisions; Assault Force B included the
British 51st Division and 231st Infantry Brigade; and Assault Force V was made up of the 1st Canadian
Division. A submarine force would also support the task forces by potentially intercepting Axis warships
and guiding the assault forces to the correct beaches for invasion. D’Este, Bitter Victory, 153.
59 D’Este, Bitter Victory, 153. Named the DUKW, this shore-to-shore landing cra carried troops and
euipment from the departure to embarkation to debarkation points in an amphibious invasion. Attack
Force Cent consisted of the 45th Infantry Division; Dime included the 1st Infantry Division; and Joss was
made up of the 3d Infantry Division. D’Este, Bitter Victory, 151.
60 Aerolo and Amphibious Warare: e Invasion of Sicily, NAVAER 50-30T-1 (Washington, DC: Aerolo
Section, Chief of Naval Operations, 1944).
61 VAdm H. K. Hewitt, Action Report: Western Naval Task Force—e Sicilian Campaign: Operation “Husky”
July–August 1943, Combined Arms Research Library, 36, hereaer e Sicilian Campaign.
62 While the weather did not severely impact the amphibious invasion, Atkinson in e Day of Battle, 86,
highlights multiple incidents where soldiers and sailors lost their lives due to severe winds and waves
during the process of ship-shore operations. e high seas did cause diculties as supplies and vehicles
were being transported to the beaches aer the invasion forces landed.
63 Hewitt, e Sicilian Campaign, 37–38.
Operation Husky
209
Western and Eastern Task Forces, slight delays in landing was followed by sporadic
Axis resistance, generally concentrated in the Dime beach landing. Preassault naval
gunre on designated targets enabled the relative ease in assault by the Cent force
consisting primarily of 45th Infantry Division soldiers.64 British seaborne forces from
Assault Force A landed around 0400 on 10 July near their assigned beaches. Soldiers
there found many of the defensive positions unmanned and came under very little
organized resistance as they moved inland from the landing. Most of the defenders
were Italians who were eager to surrender, not seeking to ght.65 In terms of planning
for Operation Husky, the success of the amphibious invasion hinged on the neutral-
ization of beach defenses. e primary means to accomplish this task fell on naval
and air bombardment. As seaborne soldiers moved inland to secure the beachhead,
the risk of friendly re by naval or air bombardment to support soldiers was too high.
e task of “soening” the beach defenses fell on the airborne contingent of Opera-
tion Husky.
While the amphibious invasion forces were scheduled to reach their assigned
landing sites by 0245 on 10 July 1943, Allied paratroop and glider forces reached Si-
cilian air space a few hours prior to the seaborne forces.66 For the British glider el-
ements, problems arose immediately when the 1st Airlanding Brigade of the British
Army prematurely released the gliders from the towplanes, resulting in 47 gliders
crashing into the Mediterranean Sea.67 Elements of the U.S. Army’s 504th Parachute
Infantry Regiment of the 82d Airborne Division successfully landed on Sicily in the
late evening hours of 9 July, causing confusion among Axis forces and disrupting their
eorts to reach the beaches as Allied seaborne forces waded ashore.68 e relatively
successful preamphibious invasion airborne assault by Allied forces was followed by
another airborne assault by further elements of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regi-
ment in the late evening hours of 11 July.
Major General Matthew B. Ridgway, commanding general of the 82d Airborne
Division, warned of the potential for friendly re in the weeks preceding Operation
Husky. Ridgway did not receive conrmation for an air corridor for the 144 Douglas
C-47 Skytrain transport aircra by the Navy until 5 July, just days before the planned
invasion.69 Delays in the dissemination of the planned airborne drop resulted in some
Army and Navy units not knowing of the operation until hours before it began, and
64 Hewitt, e Sicilian Campaign, 40–41.
65 Tomblin, “Gearing Up for Operation Husky,” 152.
66 Operation Ladbroke (British glider landing on Syracuse) and Operation Fustian (British airborne
insertion at the Primosole Bridge) were supplemental operations that preceded the larger airborne in-
sertion of Operation Husky.
67 Tomblin, “Gearing Up for Operation Husky,” 149. e weather and enemy re have both been blamed
for the premature release of the gliders.
68 “United States Army 82nd Airborne Division narratives from operations in Sicily, Italy, Normandy,
Holland, Ardennes, and Central Europe, August 1942–May 1945,” D78 Item nos. 2000–2019, Maneuver
Center of Excellence, Donovan Research Library, Fort Moore, GA, 33–38.
69 Atkinson, e Day of Battle, 108.
Johnson
210
some not at all.70 At 2240 on 11 July, the rst group of C-47s entered Sicilian airspace
through their prescribed air corridors and dropped each of their 12 paratroopers on
their assigned drop zones. Soon aer, red tracers from friendly naval antiaircra bat-
teries lit up the sky and wreaked havoc on the transport planes. e severity of the
antiaircra re broke up aerial formations as each plane sought to avoid the deadly
re. Having endured repeated Axis air attacks in the daytime, naval gunners were
ready to repel what they believed to be further attacks on the tenuously held Al-
lied beachhead. ere was no safe refuge for the pilots and paratroopers as “men
died in their planes, men died descending in their parachutes, and at least four were
shot dead on the ground by comrades convinced they were Germans.”71 e resulting
friendly re incident destroyed 23 planes and severely damaged another 37. Investiga-
tors estimated the casualties to be 410, although that number has not been conrmed.
No one was found personally culpable for the tragedy on 11 July. Patton described the
incident as “an unavoidable incident of combat.”72 is thought process minimizes the
responsibility of leaders to mitigate the risk to the mission and the force.
Major General Matthew Ridgway, Commander of the 82d Airborne Division,
wrote a memorandum on 27 November 1943 outlining the use of airborne units in
operations. e memorandum reads as a brief aer action report of Operation Husky
from the airborne perspective and highlights recommendations for future operations
involving airborne forces. Emphasizing concerns that many leaders in Operation
Husky held, Ridgway believes that “there must be continuous detailed coordination
between airborne, air, ground, and sea forces throughout the entire planning and op-
erational stages of an operation.”73 American Seventh Army aer action reports out-
line that during amphibious operations, or any operation, the failure to coordinate
between services “results in confusion, ineciencies, and unwarranted delay.”74 With
the case of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, the lack of coordination between
the Services resulted in the death of American soldiers, which hindered the success
of the operation.
By the conclusion of the initial 48 hours of Operation Husky, Allied beachheads
were established from Licata in the American sector to Syracuse in the British sec-
tor.75 e situation was not all satisfactory, however. Fighting remained erce in the
70 Atkinson, e Day of Battle, 107. Patton signed the nal approved order at 0845 on 11 July but delays in
the signal room resulted in the order not being disseminated until close to 1620, much too late to ensure
all antiaircra batteries both on sea and on land were informed of the operation.
71 Atkinson, e Day of Battle, 109.
72 Atkinson, e Day of Battle, 109, 112.
73 LtCol John T. Ellis Jr., e Army Ground Forces, Airborne Command and Center Study no. 25. (Wash-
ington, DC: Historical Section, Army Ground Forces, 1946), 136.
74 Johnson and Innocenti, e West Point Guide to the Campaigns of World War II; and Keys and Cummings,
“Operations,” 1 October 1943, in Seventh Army Sicily Source Packet, Report of Operations, author’s
collection, 1.
75 Kent Roberts Greeneld, e War against Germany and Ialy: Mediterranean and Adjacent Areas, U.S.
Army in World War II, Pictorial Record (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1988).
Operation Husky
211
American 1st and 45th Infantry Divisions’ sectors and German aircra remained a
constant harassment over the Allied positions in within the rst 36 hours of the in-
vasion. German and Italian forces counterattacked in force against the American 1st
Infantry Division near Gela and the Ponte Olivo aireld. Elements of the Hermann
Goering Panzer Division penetrated the 1st Infantry Division lodgment and threatened
the beachhead with dozens of heavy tanks on 11 July. 76 e Navy, having been margin-
alized in the bombardment of known or suspected enemy targets to neutralize beach
defenses, were called on to provide indirect re support to halt the advancing Ger-
man tank formations near the Gela (Dime) beachhead, which they did with devastat-
ing results on their German counterparts.77 In a similar situation, Paul A. Disney, then
a reconnaissance battalion commander during Operation Husky, later commented
how Navy observers with vehicle-mounted radios provided supporting res from two
cruisers to dislodge enemy tank formations that were threatening his position on 18
July.78 ese accounts provide clear examples of how Joint coordination and coop-
eration between the Services in the initial stages of the operation was successful to
accomplishing the mission and sustaining the force on the ground.
Despite not being the rst amphibious operation for the Allies during World
War II, Operation Husky was a crucible of learning that necessitated greater uni-
ed eort in the planning and execution phases of future Joint amphibious assaults.
Multiple shortfalls occurred in the planning and execution of Operation Husky,
including the lack of unied command. Allied planners were scattered across the
North African landscape and planned in a series of relative vacuums that did not
involve in-depth planning and coordination between the various Services and Allied
partners. Liaison ocers, within the command structure of Operation Husky, may
have prevented some of the operational and tactical failures that were experienced.
A British liaison that was embedded with the U.S. Seventh Army in the planning
stages of Operation Husky highlighted that “ocers employed on such duties must
be ualied by ample operational experience, should already have the condence of
one Army Commander, and should be capable of rapidly gaining the condence of
the other.”79 e liaison ocer can keep their “parent” element informed and provide
substantial benet to the gaining organization, freeing up commanders to make de-
cisions in a rapidly developing operational environment. Specically for the Western
Task Force, despite repeated reuests, no air representative attended any of the Joint
76 D’Este, Bitter Victory, 295–97.
77 Hewitt, e Sicilian Campaign, 44–45.
78 Paul A. Disney, Operations of the 82nd Armored Reconnaissance Batalion in Sicilian Campaign, July 10–22,
1943 (Personal Experience of a Batalion Commander) (Fort Leavenworth, KS: U.S. Army Command and
General Sta College, 1947), 12.
79 Johnson and Innocenti, e West Point Guide to the Campaigns of World War II; and Combined Opera-
tions Headuarters, “Notes on Planning and Assault Phases of the Sicilian Campaign,” 1 October 1943,
COHQ Bulletin No. Y/1, Combined Arms Research Library, 2.
Johnson
212
planning board that the Joss Force commanders established.80 By not having an air
liaison ocer embedded within the Joss force, uncertainty about the air aspect of the
operation resulted in mistrust and confusion. A Seventh Army aer action report
from Operation Husky identied the liaison shortfall and emphasized the impor-
tance of having a liaison ocer “available and function at the inception of planning”
in all facets of the operation.81
e Allied air forces were blamed for much of the lack of coordination during the
invasion due to their insistence on focusing on the deep targets inland as opposed to
supporting the shipping, beachhead, and subseuent objectives inland.82 British Air
Marshal Arthur Tedder emphasized the importance of destroying enemy airelds
and aircra while Allied ground commanders desired greater close air support. e
Allied air forces were determined to carve out their own strategic role rather than
serve as support to the ground and sea elements of Operation Husky.83 From the Joss
Force perspective, the naval leadership “le North Africa with very little idea of what
part our air forces were to play in the initial assault.”84 e lack of clarity of the air
support plan created an unnecessary level of friction between the Services that de-
graded the mission eectiveness of all levels of command.
From specically the naval perspective, the decision to marginalize the Navy
during the initial invasion was under the belief that surprise on the assault beaches
should be achieved and the use of naval gunre would violate that. Hewitt’s action
report highlighted that the “old-fashioned military concept that naval guns are un-
suitable for shore bombardment needs revision.”85 e employment of naval gunre
to neutralize enemy defenses during the initial invasion would bring greater re-
power to bear than all of the organic artillery capabilities that the assault forces could
bring ashore.86 For future operations, mobile naval guns can be used to overwhelm
the opposing force to facilitate a rapid seizure of the beachhead and assault objectives
inland.
Operation Husky oers a learning experience for the Allies in Joint amphibious
operations. e lessons from Sicily were carried forward to subseuent amphibious
operations on mainland Italy and eventually in Normandy in June 1944. e failings
during Operation Husky were substantial and were suered at tremendous cost, but
the lessons of coordination, unity of command, and trust between partner nations
and services were further solidied as a result.
80 “Notes on Planning and Assault Phases of the Sicilian Campaign,” 2.
81 Johnson and Innocenti, e West Point Guide to the Campaigns of World War II, 1.
82 David Jablonsky, Donald Kagan, and Frederick Kagan, “Unity in Practice: Sicily and Italy, May–
December 1943,” in War by Land, Sea, and Air: Dwight Eisenhower and the Concept of Unified Command (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 96–97.
83 Tomblin, “Gearing Up for Operation Husky,” 138.
84 “Notes on Planning and Assault Phases of the Sicilian Campaign,” 2.
85 Hewitt, e Sicilian Campaign, 44.
86 Hewitt, e Sicilian Campaign, 44.
213
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A New Zealand-led “Commando Raid”
in the South Pacific
The Green Islands, 30–31 January 19441
Shaun Mawdsley
The Green Islands “Commando Raid” has been called “the largest and most
complex New Zealand-led special operations mission of the Second World
War.”2 e mission serves as a classic example of the utility of amphibious
raids, with a uniue international avor, and aligns with raiding characteristics pro-
mulgated in Amphibious Operations, Joint Publication 3-02.3 Conducted in late-January
1944, the raid was the only one of its kind involving U.S. and New Zealand forces. It
originated from a need for accurate intelligence on the Japanese-held Green Islands,
located about 63 kilometers northwest of Bougainville in the northern Solomon Is-
lands, which were then the target of an amphibious assault, Operation Suarepeg,
set for mid-February 1944. However, unlike other amphibious operations in the Solo-
mons, which benetted from an established intelligence gathering network of coast-
watchers, Allied planners lacked basic information on the islands, their inhabitants,
and the waters surrounding them. Even aerial reconnaissance proved inadeuate ow-
1 Parts of this chapter appear in Shaun Mawdsley, “ ‘With the Utmost Precision and Team Play’: e 3rd
New Zealand Division and Operation ‘Suarepeg’ ” (MA thesis, Massey University, 2013).
2 Rhys Ball and Shaun Mawdsley, “Australasian Special Operations in the Second World War,” in e
Routledge History of the Second World War, ed., Paul Bartrop (Oxon, UK: Routledge, 2022), 616.
3 Amphibious Operations, Joint Publication 3-02 (Washington, DC: Joint Chiefs of Stas, 2019).
Mawdsley
214
ing to the density of the vegetation.4 Subseuently, no accurate threat estimation
could be provided from which to base the amphibious planning; an unacceptable
scenario for a type of operation that reuired intricate and detailed planning proce-
dures. ere were also uestions around the allegiance of the local islanders, with the
4 “Photo Intelligence Unit, 12th AAF Photo Intelligence Detachment, USAFISPA–COMSOPAC, APO
502, Green Island: Photo-Interpretation Study,” 30 December 1943, Headuarters 3d Division–Oce
records–Suarepeg Operations, DAZ 121/9/A50/4/2, 1512, WAII1, 18886, ADQZ, Archives New Zealand
(ANZ); Douglas Ford, “US Assessments of Japanese Ground Warfare Tactics and the Army’s Campaigns
in the Pacic eatres, 1943–1945: Lessons Learned and Methods Applied,” War in History 16, no. 3 (2009):
330, https://doi.org/10.1177/09683445091041; Matthew Wright, Pacific War: New Zealand and Japan, 1941–45
(Auckland, NZ: Reed Publishing, 2003), 123–24; and Oliver A. Gillespie, e Pacific, Ocial History of
New Zealand in the Second World War, 1939–45 (Wellington: War History Branch, Department of In-
ternal Aairs, 1952), 170.
MAP
Postwar map of Bougainville, the Solomon, Santa Cruz, and New Hebrides Islands,
and the Green Islands (top le corner).
Source: U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, Perry-Casañeda Library Map Collection: Solomon Islands Maps,
University of Texas at Austin, University of Texas Libraries
A New Zealand-led “Commando Raid”
215
general assumption that they were hostile toward the Allies. With no knowledge of
the Japanese garrison, potentially hostile islanders, and inaccurate naval and marine
charts, the Green Islands were shrouded in mystery.
In late 1943, shipping limitations created by the United States Pacic Fleet re-
uirements in Micronesia risked imposing an operational downturn to Admiral
William F. Halsey’s (commander, South Pacic area) forces in the Solomons until
mid-1944.5 Fearing a loss of initiative, Halsey and his sta—Navy rear admiral Robert
B. Carney, Navy commander H. Douglas Moulton, Marine Corps colonel William
E. Riley, and Navy captain W. F. Ris Jr.—consulted with Army general Douglas
MacArthur and his sta at Port Moresby, New Guinea, on 20 December 1943 for
possible intermediate operations.6 Aer reaching an understanding, Halsey sent per-
sonal messages to Rear Admiral T. S. Wilkinson (commander, ird Amphibious
Force, Task Force 31), Vice Admiral Aubrey W. Fitch (commander, aircra in the
South Pacic), and Major General Roy S. Geiger (I Marine Amphibious Corps) on 22
December, advising them of his desire for an interim operation aimed at the Green Is-
lands by employing elements of the 3d New Zealand (NZ) Division.7 On 24 December
1943, Wilkinson, Fitch, Geiger, and members of their respective stas met to discuss
Halsey’s proposal.8
Aer thoroughly deliberating, they remained unconvinced of Halsey’s suestion
and instead recommended investigation of other islands. For the next four days, the
sta wrestled with the options set before them. During that time, Geiger visited the
headuarters 3d NZ Division and its commander, Major General Harold E. Barrow-
clough, on Vella Lavella, an island about 435 kilometers west-northwest of Guadal-
canal. Geiger remained close-lipped about the possible future operation and revealed
nothing to Barrowclough, his visit likely an information-gathering activity to check
on the state of the New Zealanders.9 With Geiger’s opinion satised, on 28 Decem-
ber, Colonel Riley, Halsey’s operations ocer, wrote a memorandum noting the
5 Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United Sates Naval Operations in World War II, vol. 6, Breaking the
Bismarcks Barrier: 22 July 1942–1 May 1944 (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1989), 413, hereaer Breaking the
Bismarcks Barrier.
6 John Miller Jr., Cartwheel: e Reduction of Rabaul, U.S. Army in World War II: e War in the Pacic
(Washington, DC: Oce of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1959), 313; and Maj
John N. Rentz, Bougainville and the Northern Solomons (Washington, DC: Historical Section, Division of
Public Information, Headuarters Marine Corps, 1948), 114–15.
7 Halsey to Wilkinson, 22 December 1943, Appendix A, “Memorandum for Commander South Pacic,”
28 December 1943, Folder 8, Box 9, Wilkinson Papers, Library of Congress; and Henry I. Shaw Jr. and
Maj Douglas T. Kane, History of the U.S. Marine Corps in World War II, vol. 2, Isolation of Rabaul (Washing-
ton, DC: Historical Branch, G-3 Division, Headuarters Marine Corps, 1963), 178, 507, hereaer Isolation
of Rabaul.
8 “Memorandum on Conference at COMAIRSOPAC on December 24,” 25 December 1943, Folder 8, Box
9, Wilkinson Papers, Library of Congress.
9 Ocial War Diary of Gen Barrowclough, 20–27 December 1943, Acc. No. 1998.834, Kippenberger Mil-
itary Archive, hereaer Barrowclough diary, date.
Mawdsley
216
alternative operations as too resource-intensive (Borpop Harbor) or oering lesser
opportunities for future operations (Boang Island) and therefore endorsing Halsey’s
preference for the Green Islands.10
e next day, Barrowclough received a signal to report to Wilkinson’s headuar-
ters on Guadalcanal. On 30 December, Barrowclough, his general sta ocer 1 (senior
operations ocer), and his assistant adjutant and uartermaster general, the divi-
sion’s senior logistics ocer, departed Vella Lavella. Aer their arrival on Guadalca-
nal, they were informed that Wilkinson was in New Caledonia, an indication of the
challenges of commanding dispersed forces in the South Pacic as well as Wilkinson’s
condence in his sta’s planning abilities.11 On New Year’s Eve, with Wilkinson still
away, the New Zealanders met Lieutenant General Millard F. Harmon (commander
of U.S. Army forces in the South Pacic area), Rear Admiral George H. Fort (com-
mander of amphibious cra in the South Pacic area), and the rest of headuarters
10 “Memorandum for Commander South Pacic. Subject: Intermediate Operations to Precede Forearm
or its Euivalent,” 28 December 1943, Folder 8, Box 9, Wilkinson Papers, Library of Congress; Gillespie,
e Pacific, 169; and Shaw and Kane, Isolation of Rabaul, 507.
11 Barrowclough diary, 30 December 1943.
MAP
Map of the northern Solomons and the Bismarck Archipelago, with the Green Islands
located roughly halfway between Bougainville and New Ireland.
Source: Headquarters 3d Division G Branch, War Diary, February 1944, DAZ 121.1/1/13,
1092, WAII1, 18886, ADQZ, ANZ
A New Zealand-led “Commando Raid”
217
Task Force 31 sta to discuss “the nature of the proposed operation,” particularly as
it pertained to the construction of airelds.12 is conference became an impromptu
mission analysis with details presented in a preliminary manner, including objec-
tives, the criteria for the end state ashore, and an (initially proposed) invasion date of
25 January.
According to Barrowclough, it was Harmon, not Fort, who “desired to send a
reconnaissance party to report” on suitable landing beaches, aireld sites, and ene-
my dispositions.13 For security and planning reasons, Barrowclough insisted that the
reconnaissance mission and the main landing (then still set for 25 January) occur as
close together as possible so as not to provide too much forewarning to the Japanese
yet still allow sucient time to incorporate new information into the operational
plan. However, it was clear within the rst week of January that all the components
reuired for the main landing could not be gathered by the original date and the
main operation was twice postponed (apparently by MacArthur).14 Of course, this
complicated matters, as any postponements to the main landing reuired the main
amphibious force components be notied, in addition to the reconnaissance force
elements, which had to be stood-down. Evidently, the New Zealanders harbored some
frustrations at this time as no denite conrmation was released to them until aer
10 January, despite having already relocated sections of their divisional headuarters
to Guadalcanal to assist planning with Task Force 31.15 In the meantime, the New
Zealanders continued with their own preparations.
e U.S. Navy’s 1938 Landing Operations Doctrine (FTP 167)—the doctrine to which
the New Zealanders adhered—emphasized the importance of intelligence collection
ahead of the main landing.16 e Americans in particular were mindful of this re-
uirement, being anxious to avoid a repeat of Tarawa in November 1943, when failure
to conduct adeuate hydrographic reconnaissance contributed to excessive casualties
12 Fort was well-known to the New Zealanders, having commanded the rst echelon of the task force that
invaded the Treasury Islands in October 1943 for Operation Goodtime. Miller, Cartwheel: e Reduction
of Rabaul, 69; Barrowclough diary, 31 December 1943; and Morison, Breaking the Bismarcks Barrier, 294.
13 Barrowclough diary, 31 December 1943.
14 Letter from Barrowclough to Puttick, 6 January 1944, Ocial Papers kept by General Barrowclough,
Acc. No. 1998.835, Kippenberger Military Archive; Gillespie, e Pacific, 170–71; Barrowclough diary, 1–9
January 1944; and FlAdm William F. Halsey and LtCdr J. Bryan III, Admiral Halsey’s Story (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1947), 188.
15 ese included the chief royal artillery, assistant director medical services, chief royal engineers, assis-
tant adjutant and uartermaster general, GSO 3 (intelligence), GSO 2, commander signals, deputy di-
rector medical service, typists, miscellaneous sta, and the 14th Brigade liaison ocer. Headuarters 3d
NZ Division, G Branch–War Diary, 1–7 January 1944, DAZ 121.1/1/15, 1089, WAII1, 18886, ADQZ, ANZ.
16 Landing Operations Doctrine, FTP 167 (Washington, DC: Oce of Naval Operations, Division of Fleet
Training, 1938), 6; and letter from RAdm R. K. Turner to Barrowclough, 16 May 1943, Folder 14: Corre-
spondence, Box 1, Series 1, Papers of Adm Richmond Kelly Turner, USN, Operational Archives Branch,
Naval Historical Center.
Mawdsley
218
among the assaulting Marines.17 Such failure was enhanced by earlier operational ex-
periences that had emphasized the importance of intelligence collection in creating
the necessary conditions for successful mission execution, a good example being the
lessons of the 1942 Makin Island raid controversy.18 e New Zealanders were also
aware of these bitter experiences and the 3d NZ Division could not aord excessive
casualties as New Zealand did not have the reserves of manpower, or the political
willpower, to withstand heavy losses in the Pacic. Conducting a thorough reconnais-
sance mission was therefore a high priority.
As mentioned previously, a key intelligence shortcoming was accurate data on
the Green Islands, especially hydrographic information. Preliminary reports advised
no landings should be attempted on the exterior of the main atoll, owing to extensive
reefs and rued clis 60 feet high. Many of these contained caves, which could have
formed natural defensive positions for the Japanese; however, insucient informa-
tion was available on alterative landing sites.19 e dearth of information forced in-
telligence personnel to cast a wide net, and they resorted to interviewing any known
visitors to the islands, with uestions pertaining to tides and water depth being high
on the agenda.20 Most charts described the Green Islands as consisting of four densely
forested islands 14.5 kilometers in length and 8 kilometers wide, which formed an
oval shape with a central lagoon, where the largest island, Nissan, served as the site
of prewar plantations and thus was probably best suited for the construction of an
aireld.21 Importantly, there was no source of fresh water, which had to be taken into
account by the reconnaissance force.22
e personnel who would comprise that force were decided when Barrowclough
met with Brigadier Leslie Potter, commanding ocer of 14th NZ Brigade, who imme-
diately nominated his 30th Battalion for the mission.23 It was at this time that security
17 “Memorandum for Commander South Pacic. Subject: Intermediate Operations to Precede Forearm
or Its Euivalent”; Col Joseph H. Alexander, Utmost Savagery: e ree Days of Tarawa (Annapolis, MD:
Naval Institute Press, 1995), 73, 76–78; Reg Newell, Operation Squarepeg: e Allied Invasion of the Green
Islands, February 1944 (Jeerson, NC: McFarland, 2017), 19; and Kenneth Macksey, Commando Strike: e
Story of Amphibious Raiding in World War II (London: Guild Publishing, 1985), 173, 198.
18 VAdm George C. Dyer, e Amphibians Came to Conquer: e Story of Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner, vol.
2 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Oce, 1972), 681.
19 “Photo Intelligence Unit, 12th AAF Photo Intelligence Detachment, USAFISPA–COMSOPAC, APO
502, Green Island: Photo-Interpretation Study,” 30 December 1943.
20 Commander ird Amphibious Force, Intelligence Section: “Objective Data–Green (Nissan) Island,
9 January 1944”; “Interview with Capt Fairfax Ross, AIF (8 January 1944)”; South Pacic Force of the
United States Pacic Fleet, Headuarters of the Commander, 14 January 1944, Nissan (Green) Island
Group–Objective Data on: “Report of Interview with Capt W. A. Forman, AIF”; “Report of Interview
with Lt A. C. Medlrum, RANVR(s)”; “Report of Interview with Bishop Wade”; and “Report of Interview
with Cdr Robert Crookshank, RN (Ret),” all in DAZ 121/9/A50/4/2, 1512, WAII1, 18886, ADQZ, ANZ.
21 Gillespie, e Pacific, 168.
22 Letter from Barrowclough to Puttick, 6 January 1944, Ocial Papers kept by General Barrowclough,
Acc. No. 1998.835, Kippenberger Military Archive.
23 Barrowclough diary, 1 January 1944.
A New Zealand-led “Commando Raid”
219
concerns convinced Barrowclough to call the reconnaissance a “commando raid” in
the hopes of deceiving Japanese intelligence as to its true purpose. e mission was
designed to be interpreted by the Japanese as a raid: the reconnaissance force was
meant to be discovered, hence them planting fake operation orders to substantiate
the presence of a “raiding” force. Moreover, the troops were to imitate raider-type
actions while the specialists conducted their surveys. If a small force was used to
conduct the mission, the likelihood of it being destroyed by the enemy garrison was
unacceptably high. Indeed, as the locals were believed sympathetic to the Japanese,
Barrowclough could not hope to land a small team without it being noticed and if
this occurred the force would reuire a certain degree of repower for its defense.24
e 30th Battalion was an odd choice for the raid as it was the only infantry unit
in the division without combat experience; however, Barrowclough was eager to give
the battalion an opportunity to prove itself before the formation was disbanded due
to New Zealand’s manpower pressures.25 Only 308 troops of the battalion were select-
ed, and they readily embraced the mantle of commandos, helping to foster a sense of
pride for an otherwise green unit. ey were accompanied by mortar, signals, intel-
ligence, reconnaissance, medical personnel, engineers, artillery specialists, hydrogra-
phers, photographers, native scouts, and radar technicians, bringing the total force to
362, including 51 ocers.26 e types of personnel selected illustrated the broad na-
ture of the tasks reuired, even an Australian ocer was attached for his local knowl-
edge and expertise in pidgin.27 Any forewarning this large force may have provided
the Japanese once ashore was outweighed by the crucial information it could collect.28
Heading this force was Lieutenant Colonel Frederick C. Cornwall, commanding
ocer 30th Battalion. At 52 years old, Cornwall was well over the usual age of com-
mando raid leaders. Moreover, although a decorated Great War veteran, Cornwall’s
last combat experience was in 1917, and his last hostile landing was Gallipoli in 1915.29
Ostensibly, he held no special distinguishable characteristics that would have uali-
ed him for such a mission. Fortunately, Cornwall’s relative inexperience was oset
by the presence of Navy commander J. McDonald Smith (Landing Cra, Infantry
Flotilla 5), who controlled the naval units, and Navy captain Ralph Earle (commander
24 Barrowclough diary, 1 January 1944.
25 Barrowclough diary, 1 January 1944; and Letter from Barrowclough to Puttick, 6 January 1944, 5, 1,
PUICK5, 8477, ACGR, ANZ.
26 “30 NZ BN ‘Commando’ Force OO No. 1, 24 January 1944,” 30th Battalion–War Diary, February 1944,
DAZ 156/1/40, 1154, WAII1, 18886, ADQZ, ANZ. e gure usually reported is 360 but see amendments
in Appendix A, to “C.O. 30 Bn ‘Commando Raid,’ 24 January 1944,” Appendix VI, Headuarters 14th NZ
Brigade–War Diary, January 1944, DAZ 155/1/25, 1151, WAII1, 18886, ADQZ, ANZ.
27 e term pidgin refers to the combination of several languages to simplify communication between
people who do not share a common language.
28 “Report on Operations–3 N.Z. Division. 1 Jan. 44 to 30 June 44,” MajGen Barrowclough (Personal),
March 1944–August 1944, S1, WAII9, 18907, ADQZ, ANZ.
29 Newell, Operation Squarepeg, 23.
Mawdsley
220
Destroyer Suadron 45), who held overall command of the raid, with the three levels
of command illustrating the inherent complexities of amphibious operations.30
Even with such experienced U.S. Navy commanders, planning could not move
forward without preliminary assessments of the area. Subseuently, two patrol-
torpedo (PT) boats conducted soundings of the main channel on 10–11 January to
assess its depth for the raid’s landing cra. Satised, Wilkinson signaled for prepa-
rations to continue.31 On 12 January, aer further discussions between Barrowclough
and U.S. commanders and sta, an operations memorandum was dispatched to 14th
NZ Brigade advising the date of the raid as 30 January.32 is was followed by another
10 days of intense meetings and conferences involving personnel from all Services and
at all levels of command from battalion to theater task force. A photographic mosaic
(and later a sand model) of the Greens Islands was shown to 30th Battalion ocers
to assist their planning.33 Evidently, Cornwall was keen to get things rolling and, in a
reversal of the usual planning process, submitted his operation order on 22 January,
preempting Divisional Headuarters’ Operation Instruction No. 53 by two days.34
ese set out the raiders’ main tasks as “(a) Recce Green I[sland]. with a view to
est[ablish] an Air Base and P.T. Base; (b) Recce [reconnaissance o] landing facilities
for cra and ships; (c) Make general terrain and hydrographical recce as may be prac-
ticable under the circumstances.”35 e raiding force was to make its way through the
main channel at night, turn to starboard, land, and establish a defensive position
in Pokonian Planation. ere they were to wait until sunrise before separating into
three groups: one remaining at Pokonian to conduct base reconnaissance, the second
moved to Barahun Island to identify suitable landing sites, while the last proceeded
across the lagoon to reconnoiter Tangalan Planation and the possible aireld loca-
tion. All the while, ghting patrols were to destroy enemy euipment and stores
without becoming heavily engaged. With the tests completed, the detachments were
to regroup at Pokonian before reembarking their landing cra to rendezvous with
30 “Seizure and Occupation of Green Is Report of ird Amphibious Force,” 16 April 1944, Appendix 1,
DAZ 121.1/1/15, 1089, WAII1, 18886, ADQZ, ANZ; and Newell, Operation Squarepeg, 24.
31 Capt Robert J. Bulkley Jr., At Close uarters: PT Boats in the United Sates Navy (Washington, DC: Naval
History Division, 1962), 147–48.
32 “Operations Memorandum 26,” 12 January 1944, Appendix 9, DAZ 121.1/1/15, 1089, WAII1, 18886,
ADQZ, ANZ.
33 Headuarters 14th NZ Brigade–War Diary, 10 and 17 January 1944, DAZ 155/1/25, 1151, WAII1, 18886,
ADQZ, ANZ; and Clive B. Sage, Pacific Pioneers: e Story of the Engineers of the New Zealand Expeditionary
Force in the Pacific (Wellington: A. H. & A. W. Reed, 1947), 99.
34 “30 NZ BN ‘Commando’ Force OO No. 1,” 22 January 1944, Headuarters 14th NZ Brigade–Oce
records–Commando Raid–30 Battalion Commando Forces Raid on Nissan, DAZ 155/9/1, 1551, WAII1,
18886, ADQZ, ANZ; and “3 NZ Div Op Instn No. 53 Op ‘Suarepeg’–Orders for Commando Raid,”
24 January 1944, Appendix 26, DAZ 121.1/1/15, 1089, WAII1, 18886, ADQZ, ANZ.
35 “C.O. 30 Bn ‘Commando Raid,” 24 January 1944, Appendix VI, DAZ 155/1/25, 1151, WAII1, 18886,
ADQZ, ANZ.
A New Zealand-led “Commando Raid”
221
MAP
Green Islands depicting the raiders’ landing beaches. Beaches blue and red were not used.
Source: Headquarters 14th NZ Brigade–Oce Records–Commando Raid–30 Batalion Commando
Forces Raid on Nissan, DAZ 155/9/1, 1551, WAII1, 18886, ADQZ, ANZ
Mawdsley
222
the awaiting destroyers.36 Prisoners were to be taken if possible but not if it reuired
excessive eort, which demonstrated the planners’ low expectations in actually cap-
turing Japanese soldiers. Additionally, placing greater emphasis on taking prisoners
may have unnecessarily jeopardized the mission and could have resulted in enemy
reinforcements being sent to the islands. Understandably, therefore, defended local-
ities were also to be bypassed where possible. To foster good relations with native
islanders, and to prevent an accidental confrontation before the main landing, the
local population was to be le alone “unless denitely hostile.”37 e mission was to
last no longer than 24 hours.
Although the 30th Battalion was without combat experience, it had undergone
further jungle warfare and amphibious training that euipped it for such a mis-
sion.38 Drawing on New Zealand’s recent lessons on Vella Lavella, and spurred on by
headuarters 14th NZ Brigade, training directed rehearsing for landings on hostile
beaches, establishment of beachhead and perimeter defense at night, silent diing
techniues, information collection, and beach reconnaissance.39 With these eorts,
and once established in a “bush line,” each man knew the exact position of their
platoon members, and most importantly, their commander.40 Orientation was also
assisted through the use of the sand table map in relief shown to every person before
departure.41 Despite the additional training, the soldiers had not undergone any spe-
cialist selection in the traditional sense, and were thus very much ordinary soldiers
designated to conduct an extraordinary task.
e infantry platoons were reduced to 25 soldiers to accommodate the attached
technicians and specialists, which was not appreciated as many were “Le Out of
Battle.”42 As was the standard for jungle warfare, grenades and automatic weapons
ammunition were a priority with 525 Bren machine gun, 500 ompson submachine
gun rounds, and 62 grenades distributed per section, alongside 100 rie rounds per
person. Each carried 48 hours of rations and full water bottles, a further two two-
gallon tins of water per section was issued, along with emergency rations, which were
held aboard the landing cra, everything else was kept to a minimum.43 Five Wire-
36 “30 NZ BN ‘Commando’ Force OO No. 1,” 24 January 1944, DAZ 156/1/40, 1154, WAII1, 18886, ADQZ,
ANZ.
37 “30 NZ BN ‘Commando’ Force OO No. 1,” 22 January 1944, DAZ 155/9/1, 1551, WAII1, 18886, ADQZ,
ANZ.
38 Letter from Barrowclough to Puttick, 6 January 1944; and Ocers’ Book 14th Brigade New Zealand Expe-
ditionary Force in Pacific (n.d.), Kippenberger Military Archive.
39 Frank Rennie, Regular Soldier: A Life in the New Zealand Army (Auckland: Endeavour Press, 1986), 50;
“Training Memorandum No. 2,” 14 January 1944, Appendix IV; and “Training Directives–Island Patrols,”
5 January 1944, Appendix I, DAZ 155/1/25, 1151, WAII1, 18886, ADQZ, ANZ.
40 H. L. Bioletti, Pacific Kiwis: Being the Story of the Service in the Pacific of the 30th Batalion, ird Division,
Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force (Wellington: A. H. & A. W. Reed, 1947), 88.
41 Bioletti, Pacific Kiwis, 89.
42 Gillespie, e Pacific, 170–71.
43 “30 NZ BN ‘Commando’ Force OO No. 1,” 22 January 1944.
A New Zealand-led “Commando Raid”
223
less Set No. 48s were carried, and a divisional signals detachment was also assigned
to maintain long-range communications with Task Force 31 and coordinate a uick
withdrawal should it be reuired.44
Discussions between 30th Battalion, 3d NZ Division, and Task Force 31 contrib-
uted to the issue of specially designed topography uestionnaires to the raiding force,
which assisted in noting observations and recording data.45 Strict security measures
were enacted while preparations were underway; however, reports indicated that
many ocers and enlisted breached security by revealing details of the upcoming
raid to other personnel. is was uite a serious matter considering the operational
risks and was an indication of a general lack of security awareness among members of
the 14th NZ Brigade.46
On 25 January, Cornwall briefed his troops, and four days later on 29 January,
the mission began with the assembly of three auxiliary personnel destroyers (APDs)
(converted destroyers modied to carry around 185 personnel) and four escorting
destroyers. e presence of APDs indicated that speed during the movement phase
was of the utmost importance, as APDs were faster and more seaworthy than the
larger landing cra specically designed for amphibious landings. e Landing Cra,
Infantry (LCI) could carry the same number of personnel but were notoriously prone
to excessive yawing and rolling in even moderate seas, as well as being about 25 per-
cent slower than APDs.47 Once aboard the APDs, U.S. Navy and New Zealand com-
manders held a nal conference for the rehearsal later that night. However, despite
their best eorts, the (rst) rehearsal landing was abandoned as the original beach
could not be identied in the darkness, and the troops were forced to land on another
beach—further evidence of the necessity for alternate plans and the reuirement for
adeuate communications to enact them.48 e near failure of the rehearsal phase
went unmentioned within the action report of the commander for Task Group 31.8;
no doubt an attempt by Captain Earle to brush o responsibility for the mishap, but
also one that was adeuately rectied.49
Aer the rehearsal, the task force seuenced its movement north, escorted by
Consolidated PBY Catalinas (ying boats), and rendezvoused with two PT boats—
44 Gillespie, e Pacific, 174; and “30 NZ BN ‘Commando’ Force OO No. 1,” 24 January 1944.
45 “30th NZ Battalion, Report on Operations Jan/Feb 1944–Green Island Group,” n.d., Headuarters 14th
NZ Brigade–Oce Records–Unit Reports Suarepeg Operation Including Signals Report, DAZ 155/9/4,
1551, WAII1, 18886, ADQZ, ANZ.
46 “Breaches of Security,” 25 January 1944, Appendix V, DAZ 155/1/25, 1151, WAII1, ADQZ, ANZ.
47 “Characteristics of Landing Cra Likely to Be Used for Move to Forward Area,” 8 September 1943,
Headuarters 14th NZ Brigade–Oce Records–Amphibious, DAZ 155/9/2, 1551, WAII1, 18886, ADQZ,
ANZ.
48 Bioletti, Pacific Kiwis, 88–89.
49 “Narrative of APD Activities during Raid and Reconnaissance in Force–Green Islands, B.S.I.,” 4 Feb-
ruary 1944, Commander Transport Division 12, in “Action Reports Covering Operations of Task Force
31 from 28 January 1944 to 17 February 1944,” 24 March 1944, Serial 00177, Box 126, Record Group 38,
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
Mawdsley
224
the same boats that had conducted the preliminary soundings and were thus able to
provide navigational marks for the larger landing cra.50 e passage was unevent-
ful except for the unexpected rescue of one U.S. Marine Corps reservist, Lieutenant
Ranegan, from a rubber boat, aer his Vought F4U Corsair had “been forced down
by engine trouble.”51 On arrival o the Green Islands, the troops descended into the
lowered landing cra and proceeded to the rendezvous area a few hundred yards
oshore. Some of the landing cra had diculty forming up, leaving a number to
continue with the scheduled timetable without them. It was decided that the landing
cra would be towed through the main channel by a PT boat to minimize the noise
of multiple engines. Aer gathering speed, and when the tide was right, the boat cut
its engines on approaching the main channel entrance and used the inward current to
dri through almost silently before executing a near perfect landing.52 ere was con-
siderable angst during the movement through the narrow channel, as testied by an
ocer, who commented that “it would have been disastrous if we had been red upon
. . . as the 12 barges went through the gap.”53 Within 30 minutes of boarding the land-
ing cra, the rst “commandos” were ashore. eir training kept them in good stead
as they established a defensive perimeter without a detectable sound, which was uite
a feat on a moonless night in the jungle and with many suering from seasickness.
eir success and speed can be attributed to the insistence on training for night am-
phibious landings, something regular American forces did not ordinarily conduct.54
e soldiers and specialists dug-in and waited four hours until sunrise before
setting o on their tasks, by which time inuisitive islanders had inltrated the pe-
rimeter happy to engage in conversation. e U.S. Navy hydrographic team inves-
tigated the two channels leading into the lagoon for depth and ran sounding lines
along the shore to assess landing sites for the larger landing cra and vessels.55 Some
troops protected the specialists while others imitated raider tactics to deceive Jap-
anese eyes. One group set out across the lagoon to the site of the potential aireld,
where they were buzzed by a New Zealand aircra dropping a roll of toilet paper.
e commandos, not impressed with what they thought a poor joke, were unaware
50 Morison, Breaking the Bismarcks Barrier, 414.
51 “Action Report, covering operations of Task Group 31.8 from January 28, 1944 to February 1, 1944,”
Commander Destroyer Suadron 45 (Commander Task Group 31.8), 10 February 1944, Serial 0048, in
“Action Reports Covering Operations of Task Force 31 from 28 January 1944, to 17 February 1944,” 24
March 1944, Serial 00177, Box 126, Record Group 38, NARA.
52 “Narrative of APD Activities during Raid and Reconnaissance in Force–Green Islands, B.S.I.,” 4 Feb-
ruary 1944.
53 Rennie, Regular Soldier, 50. Contemporary documents use the terms barge and landing cra interchange-
ably.
54 Gordon L. Rottman, US World War II Amphibious Tactics: Army & Marine Corps, Pacific eater (Oxford-
shire, UK: Osprey Publishing, 2005), 6.
55 “e WWII Recollections of Captain Junius T. Jarman, USC&GS of the Wartime Experiences of the
USS Pathnder Forward,” in Pathfinder: Recollections of ose Who Served, 1942–1971 (Silver Spring, MD:
Oce of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Corps Operations, 1994).
A New Zealand-led “Commando Raid”
225
of the message tucked inside, alerting them to the presence of Japanese barges on the
opposite shore.56
In addition, the battalion reconnaissance party journeyed along the western edge
of the lagoon in three landing cra, searching for suitable landing areas, and in the
process discovered suspicious silhouettes near the waterline. Aer observing the ob-
jects through binoculars, and seeing no movement, they decided to investigate.57 Un-
fortunately, the landing cra pilots initiated a frontal approach and on nearing the
shore, they came under accurate Japanese re at close range, killing three and wound-
ing four of the raiders including one of the cra pilots. e decision to investigate the
suspicious objects was sound, but in retrospect the frontal approach was risky, and it
was fortunate that the cra withdrew without further casualties. is was a serious,
yet simple, error by Commander Smith and New Zealand lieutenant Patrick O’Dowd
who had controlled the landing cra.58
e area was later engaged with mortar re and a counterattack launched, but
not before Cornwall ordered Smith to stand down and await the completion of re-
connaissance activities, indicating the two commanders’ very dierent levels of ag-
gression. In late aernoon, two landing cra with one infantry platoon each sailed
toward the enemy positions, while four other landing cra engaged the area with
automatic re. Unfortunately, just aer depositing the platoons ashore, the land-
ing cra were strafed by Japanese aircra, demonstrating the precarious position
of assaulting amphibious troops during the ship-to-shore or shore-to-shore phases
of a landing. e Japanese air retaliation was serious enough for the small force to
break radio silence and send an uncoded message: “Being heavily strafed. Reuest air
support.”59 e attack shook the New Zealanders’ condence, and soon aer they dis-
embarked at the locality, the troops were recalled due to fears of further enemy aerial
attacks.60 For some unknown reason, the enemy aircra failed to make a second pass.
It was fortuitous. Had they done so, casualties could have been severe.
As night fell on 31 January, and with reconnaissance tasks completed, the troops
prepared to reembark for rendezvous with the returning ships. uite astutely, the
decision had been taken to place Wilkinson’s chief of sta aboard one of the APDs
on this night. Senior New Zealand ocers had also taken the opportunity to observe
conditions rst-hand, with Potter and three of his sta ocers watching from a de-
stroyer.61 eir presence provided additional observation of operating conditions that
56 Newell, Operation Squarepeg, 32–33.
57 e objects were actually two well-camouaged Japanese landing cra.
58 Smith redeemed himself by extracting his landing cra from the kill zone while under re, but O’Dowd
died of his wounds two hours later. Gillespie, e Pacific, 174–76; and Bioletti, Pacific Kiwis, 91–94.
59 Headuarters 14th NZ Brigade–War Diary, 31 January 1944, DAZ 155/1/25, 1151, WAII1, 18886, ADQZ,
ANZ.
60 Rennie, Regular Soldier, 54–55; and Gillespie, e Pacific, 176.
61 Headuarters 14th NZ Brigade–War Diary, 1 February 1944, DAZ 155/1/26, 1151, WAII1, 18886, ADQZ,
ANZ.
Mawdsley
226
may have aected the main landing. One nal drama occurred when, as the landing
cra returned to the APDs, they encountered heavy seas that impeded the recovery of
the cra.62 is experience, in conjunction with the rough surf encountered on 10 Jan-
uary, further indicated the diculty of landing on the beaches of the outer coastline.
Once the raiding force returned to Vella Lavella, Barrowclough reported that
“the whole operation was daringly conceived and splendidly carried out.”63 Indeed,
the raid had the desired eect by uickly enabling U.S. and New Zealand forces to
dra operational orders for the main amphibious landing.64 In particular, it veried
the viability of the key objectives for the main operation, namely securing a suitable
area for the construction of an aireld and a PT boat base. is, along with the beach
analysis, identied the operation’s decisive points around the main channel and the
main landing beaches at Pokonian and Tangalan Plantations. It also evidenced the
smooth interoperability between U.S. and New Zealand forces at the planning and
tactical stages, demonstrating a common grasp of doctrine and sta work, which was
uite a feat considering the New Zealanders hailed from the British system, with its
dierent sta designations, relationships, cognitive approaches, and traditions. at
New Zealand and U.S. personnel operated eectively together despite having been
awake for the better part of two days was testament to their tness and training and
the experience of the U.S. Navy crews.
From the moment Barrowclough returned to Vella Lavella and informed his sta
of the mission on 1 January until the issuance of Wilkinson’s operation order on 25
January, it had taken 25 days to plan the raid. Considering proper naval planning
could not begin before 11 January, when the channel was found accessible to landing
cra, the coordination and gathering of resources was impressive. e value of the
raid could also be measured by the acuisition of information and data “of inestima-
ble value in planning the main operation” at a cost of four killed, six wounded and
three injured during the process of embarking and disembarking landing cra.65 e
mission’s contribution to the main landing was aptly demonstrated on the morning
of 15 February, when elements of the 3d New Zealand Division and various U.S. units
uickly established themselves on the islands. e occupation nally severed Japa-
nese lines of communication between Rabaul and Bougainville and brought potential
landings zones in the Bismarck Archipelago within range of Allied air power. is led
Admiral Halsey to declare that “the entire Green [Islands] operation was thoroughly
62 “Narrative of APD Activities during Raid and Reconnaissance in Force—GREEN ISLANDS, B.S.I.,”
4 February 1944.
63 “Letter from Major General Barrowclough to the Prime Minister, 5 August 1944: Report on Opera-
tions–3d New Zealand Division, 1 January 1944 to 30 June 1944,” in Documents Relating to New Zealand’s
Participation in the Second World War, 1939–45, vol. 3 (Wellington: Department of Internal Aairs, War
History Branch, 1963), 447.
64 Headuarters 14th NZ Brigade–War Diary, 4–5 February 1944, DAZ 155/1/26, 1151, WAII1, 18886,
ADQZ, ANZ.
65 “Letter from Major General Barrowclough to the Prime Minister,” 5 August 1944, 447.
A New Zealand-led “Commando Raid”
227
planned and was executed with the utmost precision and team play.”66 e mission
vindicated the benchmark cost eectiveness of Second World War amphibious raids
in that it reuired limited time in which to train and prepare personnel, the low
casualty rates justied the information obtained, and it did not prove a drain to
supporting services.67 Lastly, the raid was uniue by employing regular soldiers on a
special operations-type mission. To be sure, they did not face severe resistance, but
some of the U.S. Navy’s nest commanders sought to assign such specialized tasks to
these troops, which signaled signicant condence in the New Zealanders’ capabili-
ties. In the end, with sucient training, these regular soldiers adapted their normal
mission skillsets to suit operational reuirements, demonstrating that regular forces
held more exibility than ordinarily presumed.
66 Commander, South Pacic to Commander in Chief, United States Fleet, “Seizure and Occupation of
GREEN ISLANDS, 15 February to 15 March 1944,” S14, 1, WAII9, 18907, ADQZ, ANZ.
67 Maj Peter Evans, RM, “e Value of Amphibious Raiding in the Twentieth Century: A Historical
Perspective,” Defence Studies 1, no. 3 (Autumn 2001): 103, https://doi.org/10.1080/714000047.
228
CHAPTER TWELVE
PLA Amphibious Campaigns and the
Origins of the Joint Island Landing Campaign
Xiaobing Li
In August 2022, the world witnessed the fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis as the People’s
Republic of China (PRC) launched one of its largest military exercises by sending
more than 100 warplanes, deploying 10 destroyers, and ring 12 missiles around
Taiwan (the Republic of China, ROC) aer two U.S. congressional delegations visit-
ed the island.1 e PRC reaction prompted a greater focus on how the United States
would respond if the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) launched an assault,
particularly an amphibious invasion of Taiwan.2 Aer consolidating power at the
20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), PRC President Xi
Jinping has adopted many of Mao Zedong’s strategies as his own, including those con-
cerning Taiwan. For example, Mao developed a strate to use Taiwan to deal with
America by putting more pressure on Washington. Moreover, Mao designed a local
war (or limited war) doctrine in the Taiwan Strait by concentrating a large landing
force, controlling air and sea, and attacking one island at the time without American
intervention. In the 1950s, the PLA seized 32 Taiwan-controlled islands during Mao
Zedong’s regime. ese historical actions can shed light on the current crisis.
e uestions this chapter examines include: How did the PLA plan, orches-
1 For more on the crisis, see “Taiwan,” in 2022 Report to Congress of the U.S.-China Economic and Security
Review Commission, 117th Cong., 2d Sess. (November 2022), chap. 4.
2 In the People’s Republic of China, the PLA is the term for the army as well as the entire defense force;
so, the navy is known as the PLA Navy, and the air force is the PLA Air Force.
PLA Amphibious Campaigns
229
trate, and execute amphibious landings on Taiwan’s oshore islands? Why were the
Chinese Communist oenses not thwarted by American armed forces? What lessons
do Chinese strategists and tacticians derive and inherit from their past encounters
in the Taiwan Strait? is chapter focuses on the PLA’s Yijiangshan (1955), Hainan
(1950), and uemoy (1949) landing campaigns using ocial Chinese documents, mil-
itary writings, and interviews of both PLA and Taiwanese generals.3 No matter how
antiuated, the PLA’s real experience in the immediate post-World War II period is
the service’s only meaningful reference for its Cold War amphibious capabilities. e
PLA’s experience facing the Taiwanese and U.S. forces in the Taiwan Strait neces-
sitated the Chinese military restructuring and reforms. To match their opponents
and capably improve, Chinese generals shied their concept of classical amphibi-
ous warfare, demanded improvements in naval and air support, and enhanced their
repower, transportation, and logistics. While PLA modernization eorts have im-
proved, this chapter argues for continuity and adaptation in the Chinese joint island
landing campaign concept. Xi Jinping adopted Mao Zedong’s island attack doctrine
like other Chinese leaders, and this was already evident in former PLA general chief
of sta Deng Xiaoping’s amphibious battle against Vietnamese forces on the Paracel
Islands in the South China Sea in 1974, the invasion of the Spratly Islands in 1988, and
former president Jiang Zemin’s Taiwan Strait missile crisis in 1995–96. Deng launched
the “limited” landing campaigns in the South China Sea aer the U.S. armed force
le South Vietnam.4 Jiang Zemin step down from his military threats on Taiwan in
1996 aer the Clinton administration sent U.S. aircra carrier battle groups to the
Taiwan Strait.5
PLA AMPHIBIOUS OPERATION
GUIDELINES: LESSONS LEARNED
Soon aer the Chinese Nationalist forces le the mainland, Nationalist president Chi-
ang Kai-shek deployed 60,000 Kuomintang (KMT) troops on uemoy, 100,000 men
on Hainan, 120,000 along the Zhoushan Island group, and 200,000 on Taiwan aer
the PLA overtook the mainland in October 1949.6 Although taking the small islands
should have been a simple part of the PLA’s attempt to control the strait, the PLA’s
1949 landing on uemoy island was a disaster since the PLA had very little experience
3 Also referred to as Jinmen, uemoy, or Kinmen in some sources.
4 Liu Huaqing, “Carry on Deng Xiaoping’s New oughts to Build a Strong, Modern Military,” in Liu
Huaqing junshi wenxuan [Selected Military Works of Liu Huaqing], vol. 2 (Beijing: PLA Press, 2008),
546–47. Adm Liu was the commander the PLA Navy from 1982 to 1988.
5 Zhang Wannian, Zhang Wannian zizhuan [Autobiography of Zhang Wannian], vol. 2 (Beijing: PLA Press,
2011), 433–35. Gen Zhang was the CMC vice chairman and the commander of the 1996 PLA joint landing
exercise along the eastern coast.
6 To prevent confusion, the more common naming/spelling conventions for people and places will be
used throughout. Guojun houqin shi [Logistics History of the GMD Armed Forces], vol. 6 (Taipei: Bureau
of History and Political Records, Defense Ministry, 1992), 199–200.
Li
230
in amphibious campaigns during World War II or the Chinese Civil War (map 1).7
In 1949, the small island group of uemoy, lying just three kilometers from the
mainland, had a population of 40,000 civilians. e island is not in the open ocean
but lies in Xiamen (Amoy) harbor, the southeast mainland’s largest seaport (map 2).
By 17 October, Xiamen’s nearby mainland KMT garrison was swily overtaken by the
PLA’s 10th Army Group. Unfortunately, PLA ocers did not consider an amphibi-
ous landing much dierent than a ground assault when the army group commander,
General Ye Fei, ordered the 28th Army to attack uemoy. Without updated intelli-
gence, naval assistance, or air support, the 28th Army’s commander positioned 10,000
troops, in three regiments, in a disconcerted rst-wave attack on the evening of 24
October 1949. e commanders felt the landing troops’ perceived element of surprise
would allow for a uick penetration in depth resulting in the defeat of the nationalist
garrison on the island. However, successful mainland tactics relied on during the civil
war were ineective and disastrous on uemoy. First, the 28th Army did not have ad-
euate landing cra and used 200 shing boats that had been gathered from around
Xiamen. e shing boats were promptly destroyed by KMT naval and air forces on
uemoy the next morning.8 Second, the KMT island garrison counterattacked using
armor forces to separate the landing troops into several pockets, inicting heavy ca-
sualties on the PLA forces. e 150,000-strong PLA 10th Army Group le without
transportation, could only listen helplessly to their comrades’ pleas for reinforcement
over the radio. e remaining PLA landing troops were surrounded on the second day
in a small village, Guningtou, near the landing zone, and three days later the landing
party was decimated by the KMT defenders, having lost only 1,000 casualties, and the
PLA losing 9,086 PLA attackers and more than 3,000 prisoners.9
Mao Zedong was shocked when news reached Beijing on 28 October regarding
the 10th Army Group’s losses. e army, which was one of the 3d Field Army’s best
units, lost three regiments on the beaches of uemoy. A circular draed by Mao
warned all PLA commanders, “especially those high-level commanders at army level
and above,” that they “must learn a good lesson from the Jinmen [uemoy] failure.”10
7 Toshi Yoshihara, Chinese Lessons from the Pacific War: Implications for PLA Warfighting (Washington, DC:
Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2023).
8 Gen Hau Pei-tsun (Ret), interview with the author, Taibei, Taiwan, May 1994. Hau was ROC Army
commander on the oshore islands during the PLA attack on uemoy in 1949; he served as the defense
minister of Taiwan in the 1980s.
9 A History of the Republic of China, vol. 2 (Taipei: Modern China Press, 1981), 297. e ROC Army ocial-
ly claimed PLA casualties of about 20,000 troops, including 7,200 prisoners. According to the author’s
interviews both in Taiwan and China, 10,000 PLA casualties seem most acceptable.
10 “Circular on the Setback of Jinmen Battle, 29 October 1949,” Central Military Commission (CMC),
Beijing. is document was sealed and issued by the CMC. In 1987, the Archives and Research Division
of the CCP Central Committee found that Mao draed the original document. e division reprinted
it from Mao’s manuscript and included it in Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao, 1949–1976 [Mao Zedong’s
Manuscripts since the Founding of the State, 1949–1976], vol. 1 (Beijing: CCP Central Archival and Man-
uscript Press, 1993), 100–1, hereaer Mao’s Manuscripts since 1949.
PLA Amphibious Campaigns
231
Mao also ordered 4th Field Army commander Lin Biao to halt all amphibious op-
erations on the South China Sea coast on 31 October, and telegraphed the 3d Field
Army’s deputy commander Su Yu in early November to postpone any East China Sea
MAP
China and the Taiwan Strait.
Source: Xiaobing Li, e Cold War in East Asia (New York: Routledge, 2018), 14, prepared by Brad Watkins
Li
232
island assaults.11 Mao did not want another disaster that might aect the morale of his
forces or provide condence to the nationalists or their allies.
By 14 November 1949, only the eld army headuarters could authorize amphib-
ious landing operations as Su relayed orders to the army group commanders for the
7th, 9th, and 10th Army Groups.12 In demonstrating extreme caution aer uemoy’s
failure, Mao stressed preparedness and calculation to Su for future amphibious op-
erational training. In November, Mao telegraphed the eld army commanders again
that the “cross-strait campaign is totally dierent from all experience our army had
11 Mao, “Telegram to Lin Biao: My Suestions on Your Troops Disposition and Battle Array, October
31, 1949.” In his telegram, Mao alerted Lin: “Do not attack the Leizhou Peninsula, much less a chance
to attack the Hainan Island.” Mao’s Manuscripts since 1949, vol. 1, 107. Two of these CMC telegrams were
draed by Mao to Su Yu. e rst one is the “Telegram for the Operation Plan of the Dinghai Campaign,
November 4, 1949,” and the second is the “Telegram: e Disposition of the Dinghai Campaign, Novem-
ber 14, 1949.” e latter reads, “In view of the military failure on Jinmen, you must check out closely and
seriously all problems, such as boat transportation, troop reinforcement, and attack opportunity on the
Dinghai Landing. If it is not well prepared, we could rather postpone the attack than feel sorry about it
later.” Mao’s Manuscripts since 1949, vol. 1, 118, 120, 137.
12 He Di, “e Last Campaign to Unify China: e CCP’s Unrealized Plan to Liberate Taiwan, 1949–
1950,” in Chinese Warfighting: e PLA Experience since 1949, eds. Mark A. Ryan, David M. Finkelstein, and
Michael A. McDevitt (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2003), 88.
MAP
e uemoy Islands.
Source: Xiaobing Li, A History of the Modern Chinese Army
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007), 181
PLA Amphibious Campaigns
233
in the past.” Mao warned commanders to “guard against arrogance, avoid underesti-
mating the enemy, and be well prepared.”13 In training the 3d Field Army, Su also ad-
vised the high command that it would be “extremely dicult to operate a large-scale
cross-ocean amphibious landing operation without air and sea control.”14 Amphibious
operations, according to Su, presented “a new warfare” or “modern warfare, dierent
from all the wars we have fought before.”15 Of course, most of these lessons had been
explored by Allied forces in the Pacic in the 1940s.
e KMT account of the PLA’s loss on uemoy, nevertheless, diered. According
to Taiwanese generals, rst, the PLA attackers, aer overpowering Xiamen, were con-
ceited and arrogant in their underestimation of uemoy’s defensibility. PLA landing
troops were unprepared for substantial resistance and saw the mere landing on ue-
moy as a success. Second, the KMT garrison received reinforcement from the 18th
and 19th Armies before the PLA’s landing on uemoy, something of which the latter
was unaware. ird, instead of varying landing zones and times, the PLA 28th Army
chose only one landing zone and a detrimental landing time, thereby allowing for
concentrated KMT repower on the landing site. Finally, the PLA’s rst wave land-
ed without antitank guns and supporting re and reserved no boats for potentially
reinforcing the island thereaer. During the author’s interview with KMT General
Chiang Wei-kuo, the general recalled that the Battle of uemoy boosted his father
Chiang Kai-shek’s notion that the KMT could build up a strong defense against PLA
amphibious threats, survive on the islands, and continue as leader of the ROC.16
Mao uickly realized that to successfully execute any signicant amphibious op-
erations, the PLA reuired air and naval support. us, the PLA’s Air Force (PLAAF)
was established on 11 November 1949. According to Xiaoming Zhang, “Chinese Com-
munist concepts for the development of airpower derived primarily from Mao Ze-
dong’s plan for the invasion of Taiwan in 1949.”17 Furthermore, the PLA Navy (PLAN)
headuarters was formed from the 4th Field Army’s 12th Army Group in December
with Admiral Xiao Jinguang as the naval commander.18 Mao desperately needed to
euip the new naval and air forces, and he visited Moscow on 16 December to broker
13 CMC document, draed by Mao, “Circular on the Lesson of Jinmen Battle, October 29, 1949,” in Mao’s
Manuscripts since 1949, vol. 1, 101.
14 Gen Ye Fei, Ye Fei huiyilu [Memoirs of Ye Fei] (Beijing: PLA Press, 1988), 608. e author’s interview of
the sta member of the 10th Army Group headuarters at Hangzhou, Zhejiang, 6 July 2006, hereaer Ye
2006 interview. Ye was the commander of the 10th Army Group in 1949–55. Xinghuo liaoyuan [Composi-
tion Department], Zhonuo renmin jieangjun jiangshuai minglu [Marshals and Generals of the PLA], vol.
1 (Beijing: PLA Press, 1992), 58–59.
15 Ye, Ye Fei huiyilu [Memoirs of Ye Fei], 608; Ye 2006 interview; and Xinghuo liaoyuan [Composition De-
partment], Zhonuo renmin jieangjun jiangshuai minglu [Marshals and Generals of the PLA], vol. 1, 58–59.
16 Gen Chiang Wei-kuo, ROC Army, (Ret), interview with the author, Rongzong Hospital, Taipei, Tai-
wan, 26 May 1994.
17 Xiaoming Zhang, Red Wings over the Yalu: China, the Soviet Union, and the Air War in Korea (College
Station: Taxes A&M University Press, 2002), 6.
18 RAdm Yang Guoyu, Dangdai Zhonuo haijun [Contemporary Chinese Navy] (Beijing: China’s Social
Science Press, 1987), 17. Yang was deputy commander and chief of the sta of the PLAN in 1978–85.
Li
234
an alliance between the PRC and USSR. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin eventually agreed
to loan warships and euipment, totaling $150 million (USD, 1950 value), aer Mao’s
two-month stay in the Soviet Union.19 Later, Mao augmented the new air force when
he ordered 340 Russian warplanes for 1.2 billion rubles ($380 million USD).20 On 11
February 1950, Mao wrote to Stalin and purchased an additional 628 airplanes from
Moscow.21 However, neither the newly created PLAN nor PLAAF were able to sup-
port the 1950 landing campaigns as purchased Soviet warships and planes arrived too
late to see combat.
e rst statement on PLA amphibious operations was a landing campaign
checklist composed by Mao Zedong in mid-December 1949.22 Mao warned the Chi-
nese generals that they “must study the lesson [of uemoy].”23 e checklist stated
that cross-strait attacks should, rst, establish a centralized chain of command; sec-
ond, the invading force must be superior in number over the defense garrison; third,
the invading force should receive proper training, transportation, and supplies; and
fourth, the operation must have air and naval support. From 1949 to 1962, the PLA
continued amphibious campaign preparation and improved its island intelligence,
near-sea communication, and oshore combat eectiveness. By the early 1960s, the
balance of power favored the PLA in the Taiwan Strait and the Chinese generals met
Mao’s cross-strait attack guidelines, launching amphibious landing campaigns and
seizing Taiwanese-held islands one by one.
LANDING CAMPAIGNS
AND U.S. INVOLVEMENT
With the disaster of uemoy still fresh, the PLA’s 4th Field Army prepared for an
amphibious landing at Hainan in late 1949. e PLA commanders had implemented
most of Mao’s new doctrines, except air and naval support. First, Commander Lin
Biao deployed his 15th Army Group to conduct a three-month landing preparation
from December 1949 to March 1950 for the Hainan campaign. Deng Hua, commander
of the 15th Army Group, organized beachhead assault training, antiship attacks, and
landing coordination and communication. Deng also employed 6,000 boat crews and
2,100 shing boats for cross-strait transportation. With better training and transpor-
19 Yang, Dangdai Zhonuo haijun [Contemporary Chinese Navy], 48, 52.
20 LtGen Han Huaizhi, Dangdai zhonuo jundui de junshi gongzuo [Military Aairs of Contemporary Chi-
na’s Armed Forces], vol. 2 (Beijing: China’s Social Science Press, 1989), 161.
21 Mao’s telegrams to Stalin on 11, 15, and 25 February 1950, were uoted in Chu Feng, “20 Shiji 50 niandai
zhongsu junshi guanxi yanjiu” [e Sino-Soviet Military Relations in the 1950s] (PhD diss., Party Univer-
sity of the CCP Central Committee, Beijing, 2006), 45, 59.
22 Military History Research Division, PLA Academy of Military Sciences (AMS), Zhonuo renmin
jieangjun zhanshi [War History of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army], vol. 3 (Beijing: Military Sci-
ence Press, 1987), 359.
23 Mao Zedong telegram to Lin Biao, 18 December 1949, responding Lin’s telegram on 10 December about
the 4th Field Army’s campaign proposal, including landing campaign on Hainan Island. As uoted in
Mao’s Miliary Manuscripts since 1949, 104–6.
PLA Amphibious Campaigns
235
tation options, the 4th Field Army’s Hainan operation was approved by Mao aer his
return from Moscow.24
To ensure an overwhelming landing force, the 15th Army Group commander
Deng Hua assigned his 40th and 43d Armies, three artillery regiments, and combat
engineering troops, totaling 100,000 ghters, for the Hainan landing campaign. To
support the 15th Army Group’s landing eorts, the PLA could also count on the
strength of about 20,000 guerrilla soldiers already operating on Hainan.25
In addition to the training and development of the force, the PLA established
a centralized chain of command to ensure that the CCP’s Central Military Com-
mission (CMC), 4th Field Army, and the 15th Army Group worked closely together.
Mao instructed the party and CMC on 10 January 1950 “to make an eort to solve
the problem of the Hainan Island in the spring and summer seasons.”26 e CCP
Central China Bureau held a party/army Hainan campaign conference on 1 February,
where the party and the military leaders decided to combine large- and small-scale
amphibious crossings to counter the KMT’s air and naval superiority in the Ch’iong-
chou Strait (about 32 kilometers wide). Mao reiterated to Lin Biao on 12 February,
“[You] must conrm the guaranty of landing transportation and preparation before
you launch the attack. Avoid push and rush, avoid mistake and loss.”27
Aer training for three months, the 15th Army Group was ready for its amphib-
ious campaign against Hainan Island. Deng Hua opened the campaign with guerrilla
tactics, which had been successful tactics during the Civil War, and small battalion-
size landings from 5–10 March. ese troops successfully overtook the KMT garri-
son and joined up with local guerrilla forces. en on 26–31 March, the 43d Army
launched regiment-size landings with artillery pieces to establish large landing zones,
secure two small harbors, and prepare for the 15th Army Group’s arrival.28
On 16 April, the rst major landing wave of 50,000 troops from the 15th Army
Group on 350 boats embarked at 1930 that evening. Aer the eet le the shore, the
KMT air patrol soon observed the landing forces resulting in six warships attacking
the PLA landing forces in transit but failed to stop the oensive. During the battles,
the PLA boats sank one KMT ship and damaged two. e 40th Army’s 118th Division
landed at Hainan by 0600 the next morning, followed by the 119th Division, which
24 Mao, “Approval of the Plan to Attack Dinghai First, Jinmen Second, 8 March 1950,” in Mao’s Manu-
scripts since 1949, vol. 1, 282.
25 Gen Zhang Aiping, Zhonuo renmin jieangjun [e Chinese People’s Liberation Army], vol. 1 (Beijing:
Contemporary China Press, 1994), 75–76.
26 “Mao’s Telegram to Lin Biao on the Issues of the Battle of Hainan Island, 10 January 1950,” in Mao’s
Manuscripts since 1949, vol. 1, 77–78.
27 “Mao’s Telegram to Lin Biao, Agree on the 43rd Army’s Landing Plan on Hainan, 12 January 1950,” in
Mao’s Miliary Manuscripts since 1949, vol. 1, 123.
28 RAdm Zhang Hancheng, “e Logistics during the Naval Operations in the Early Years,” in Hanjun
huiyi shiliao [e Navy: Memoirs and History Records] (Classied), ed., Navy Compilation Committee,
PLA Historical Documents and Collections Series, vol. 2 (Beijing: Ocean Wave Publishing House, 1994),
890–92.
Li
236
penetrated the KMT defense that aernoon. On 18 April, the 43d Army’s 128th Divi-
sion advanced deeper and attacked the KMT 252d Division, the main defensive force
of Hainan. KMT defenses collapsed by 22 April aer the 252d Division’s destruction.
e PLA’s second landing wave of 50,000 troops le the mainland on 23 April and
arrived at Hainan the next morning. By 1 May, the Battle of Hainan Island ended in
a PLA victory.29 e PLA’s successful execution of amphibious landings on Hainan
inspired further preparation for the invasion of Taiwan, scheduled for the summer
of 1950.
e PLA’s high command convened with Mao aer his return from Moscow on
4 March 1950. Mao ordered the acting chief of the General Sta, Nie Rongzhen, and
Su Yu to plan an attack on Taiwan, and Mao recommended mobilizing additional
divisions and training airborne forces for the attack.30 Su visited PLAN Commander
Xiao Jinguang on 11 March and assigned naval units for the Taiwan invasion. e
CMC approved the Su-Xiao plan in April, and later that spring, the PLA’s 3d Field
Army commenced amphibious training exercises. Half a million troops from the 3d
Field Army, comprising the 7th, 8th, and 9th Army Groups, and the navy, mobilized
for the invasion.31 e 4th Field Army also participated in the Taiwan operations by
deploying its 13th Army Group as a landing reserve force and 19th Army Group as a
mobile force along the coast. All told, the Taiwan invasion force consisted of nearly
800,000 PLA troops.32 e Taiwan invasion plan codied Mao’s guidelines for a PLA
amphibious landing campaign as a continuation of the Chinese Civil War military
doctrine.
In preparation for the invasion, the 3d Field Army’s 9th Army Group routed
120,000 KMT troops on the Zhoushan island group and occupied it by May 1950. e
9th Army Group landed on 18 islands of the Dongshan and Wanshan island groups in
the East China Sea and overcame KMT defensive forces in early June. e 3d Field Ar-
my’s success in the East China Sea bolstered morale in the PLA and encouraged nal
preparation for Taiwan’s invasion.33 Meanwhile, Mao announced that the party’s pri-
ority was the “liberation” of Taiwan at the CCP’s Seventh National Congress during
its ird Plenary Session on 6–9 June in Beijing. Aer Su briefed the party leaders
29 Han, Dangdai zhonuo jundui de junshi gongzuo [Military Aairs of Contemporary China’s Armed Forc-
es], vol. 1, 150.
30 “Mao’s telegram to Liu Shaoqi, Approval of Disposing Four Divisions for Landing Campaign, 10 Febru-
ary 1950”; “Mao’s Comments on the Proposal of Attacking Dinghai First, Jinmen Second, 28 March 1950”;
and “Mao to Su Yu, Instructions on Paratroops Training,” Mao’s Manuscripts since 1949, vol. 1, 256–57, 282.
31 Gen Xiao Jinguang, Xiao Jinguang huiyilu [Memoirs of Xiao Jinguang], vol. 2 (Beijing: PLA Press, 1988),
8, 26.
32 He, “e Last Campaign to Unify China,” 82–83.
33 Jiang Weiguo, interview with the author, Rongzong (Glory General) Hospital, Taibei, Taiwan, 23 May
1994. Gen Jiang recalled that his father, Chiang Kai-shek, and ROC intelligence had the information on
the PLA landing preparation in the spring of 1950.
PLA Amphibious Campaigns
237
on PLA preparations for Taiwan’s invasion, the CCP approved the plan.34 However,
Mao’s priority was involuntarily altered and the CCP was forced to shi its objectives
aer the outbreak of the Korean War on 25 June 1950.35
Mao was blindsided by the invasion of South Korea, as neither the Soviets nor
the North Koreans informed Chinese leadership of the planned 25 June attack on
South Korea.36 U.S. policy toward Taiwan also shied as Washington abruptly and
unexpectedly switched from “hands o” to “hands-on” regarding all things Asian.37
As a deterrent against potential Chinese Communist attacks on ROC-held Taiwan,
President Harry S. Truman deployed the U.S. Seventh Fleet to the Taiwan Strait two
days aer North Korea’s invasion. By the end of 1950, Truman’s stance prevented the
PLA’s planned invasion and secured the ROC with continued Seventh Fleet patrols
in the Taiwan Strait, which marked a major obstacle in the cross-strait war plan. Di-
rect American involvement in the Taiwan Strait presented the PLA with a challenge
that they were not euipped politically or militarily to counter.38 Before June, the
PLA’s primary task was liberating Taiwan from nationalist forces. But, as reected
in one of Mao’s speeches, aer June 1950, “e American armed forces have occupied
Taiwan, invaded Korea, and reached the boundary of Northeast China. Now we must
ght against the American forces in both Korea and Taiwan.”39 What had been a civil
war on the Korean Peninsula uickly transformed into an international conict and
Communist leaders faced a new challenge. Any decision on a PLA amphibious inva-
sion of Taiwan would reuire consideration of American military options aer the
outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. e window for the attack was closing.
34 CCP Party History Research Division, Zhonuo gongchandang lishi dashiji, 1919–1987 [Major Historical
Events of the CCP, 1919–1987] (Beijing: People’s Press, 1989), 191–92.
35 Ye Fei, interview with the author, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, July 1996. Gen Ye was the commander of the
10th Army Group, 3d Field Army, of the PLA in 1949–51.
36 Mao was very dissatised with this and later conded, “ey [North Koreans] are our next door neigh-
bor, but they did not consult with us about the outbreak of the war.” As uoted in Li Haiwen, “When Did
the CCP Central Committee Decide to Send the Volunteers to Fight Abroad?,” Dang de Wenxian [Party
Literature and Archives] vol. 5 (1993), 85, from Shen Zhihua, “China Sends Troops to Korea: Beijing’s
Policy-making Process,” in China and the United Sates; A New Cold War History, eds., Xiaobing Li and
Hongshan Li (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1998), 20.
37 Xiaobing Li, “Truman and Taiwan: A U.S. Policy Change from Face to Faith,” in Northeast Asia and the
Legacy of Harry S. Truman: Japan, China, and the Two Koreas, ed., James I. Matray (Kirksville, MO: Truman
State University Press, 2012), 127–28.
38 Hau Pei-stun, interviews with the author, Taipei, Taiwan, 23–24 May 1994. Hau, as the commander
of the front artillery force on uemoy Island, felt relieved when he was informed of the U.S. Seventh
Fleet’s patrol in the Taiwan Strait in June 1950. See also Xiao, Xiao Jinguang huiyilu [Memoirs of Xiao
Jinguang], vol. 2, 26.
39 Mao, “e Great Achievements of the ree Glorious Movements” (speech, ird Plenary Session of
the First National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, 23 October
1951), as uoted in Mao’s Manuscripts since 1949, vol. 2, 481–86.
Li
238
OINT OPERATIONS
AND CHINAS LOCAL WARS
e advantage of avoiding a full-scale war against the United States was a primary
lesson that Chinese leaders learned from the Korean War. Much like the West, to mit-
igate economic expenses and human losses, the PLA would adopt a policy of focusing
on limited or “local wars,” rather than a major conict. To the Chinese, avoiding total
war with Washington and making limited, calculated attacks in the Taiwan Strait
promoted Beijing’s interests with the least amount of risk. From the mid-1950s, the
nature of the strait crisis transformed from a civil war between China and Taiwan
to a Cold War-style international conict among Beijing, Taipei, and the United
States. e PLA high command had to include America’s response in their planning,
preparation, and execution of their joint amphibious island landing campaigns aer
the Korean War ended in 1953. e PLA’s new joint island landing doctrine empha-
sized the limited scale, remote location, and uick operation to prevent possible U.S.
intervention. During PLA amphibious island landing campaigns from 1954 to 1965,
their assaults remained small scale on distant small islands for uick landing victories
to avoid countering the advantages of because of the signicant technological gaps
between Chinese and U.S. air and naval forces.
e PLA resumed its focus on conuering the ROC oshore islands and
planned amphibious campaigns in 1954. Beginning with the smaller, northernmost
Tachen Islands, which lay more than 322 kilometers away from Taiwan and 160 kilo-
meters away from the U.S. Seventh Fleet headuarters in Yokosuka, Japan. e East
China Military Region’s (ECMR) Zhejiang commander Zhang Aiping proposed a
“piecemeal” oense for taking the islands one by one (map 3). Since the PLA then
possessed no antiaccess/area-denial (A2/AD) weapons, Zhang’s “piecemeal” propos-
al leveraged the geographical positioning of PLA forces to avoid U.S. forces. Aer
the initial operation, the PLA would then move south to take the larger islands,
one at a time.40 Zhang’s amphibious campaign included a three-step joint air, naval,
and land campaign. e rst step was to engage the Taiwanese Air Force in the
East China Sea and conduct air raids on the islands to establish PLA air domina-
tion over the Tachens. e second step would isolate the ROC garrisoned on the
Tachens by gaining sea control through naval engagements. e third step would be
the landing assaults by the 24th Army on the individual islands.41 Zhang’s plan was
uniue in that it marked the rst implementation of joint operations between the
PLA’s various branches, even though this type of combined operation was normal
40 LtGen Xu Chanou, interview with the author, Shanghai, April 2000. Xu served as Gen Zhang Aip-
ing’s aide and then the deputy secretary general of the CMC. He was vice commissar of the PLAN East
Sea Fleet at the time of the interview.
41 Dong Fanghe, Zhang Aiping zhuan [Biography of Zhang Aiping], vol. 2 (Beijing: People’s Press, 2000),
663–64; and Xiaobing Li, “PLA Attacks and Amphibious Operations during the Taiwan Straits Crises of
1954–55 and 1958,” in Chinese Warfighting, 146.
PLA Amphibious Campaigns
239
in most other nations. e high command approved Zhang’s three-phased plan for
capturing the islands.
Per the plan, the PLAAF 2d Division engaged the Taiwanese Air Force over the
Tachen area in the spring of 1954. While Taiwan had American-made Republic F-84
underjets, the Taiwanese failed to deploy them in time. e PLAAF lost only
two ghters during six air engagements, whereas six ROC ghters were shot down.
PLAAF pilots, in Soviet-made MiG-15 jet ghters and experienced from the Korean
War, uickly outmatched ROC pilots, and the PLA controlled the skies north of the
Tachens by May.42 Taiwan’s President Chiang Kai-shek personally visited the garri-
sons on the Tachens on 6–7 May, where he pressed his troops, as the situation seemed
unfavorable, to remain calm and avoid panic. Rumors about evacuation were uelled
42 e air force bases in east coast cities like Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Ningbo were also used by Zhang’s
jets in the air campaigns.
MAP
Oshore islands in the East China Sea.
Source: Xiaobing Li, A History of the Modern Chinese Army
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007), 132
Li
240
and the Tachens received more supplies and reinforcement aer this tour, and ROC
troop morale was raised.43
In contrast to the PLAAF, however, PLAN exhibited poor performance during
the second stage of the Tanchen campaign. e East Sea Fleet (ESF) of the ECMR
had 12 engagements against the ROC Navy from 18 March to 20 May, resulting in the
damaging of several ROC ships but losing the PLAN warship Ruijin during the battle.
e only ESF success was an attack on the Sanmen Wan bay north of the Tachens,
sinking one ROC warship and damaging another.44 Zhongtian Han contends the PLA
was successful at the strategic adaptation of joint operation but failed at the opera-
tional level with an uneven performance between the air force and navy.45 To prepare
for the Tachen landing campaign, the ECMR established the 1st Marine Regiment
and an amphibious tank regiment in Shanghai in April 1953. e next year, the PLA
established ECMR’s 1st Marine Division in December 1954 with greater landing com-
bat and coastal defense capabilities.
e Dongji, a group of small islands north of Tachens, became the PLA’s next
landing target in early May 1954. Zhang Aiping deployed PLAN ships to the water
around the Dongji and isolated the ROC garrison on the islands. On 15 May, Zhang
landed PLA troops on the islands and defeated the ROC forces, capturing 60 pris-
oners.46 Because PLA commanders adjusted to joint operations of “local war” condi-
tions, PLA amphibious operations evolved rapidly. On the heels of Zhang’s success,
the CMC ordered the ECMR in July to launch similar amphibious oenses on the
much larger island groups along the Zhejiang coast.47 e ECMR instructed Zhang
Aiping and his command to prepare a landing campaign on the Tachens in Septem-
ber.48
For the Tachen campaign, Zhang Aiping established the joint Zhejiang Front
Command (ZFC) at Ningbo. e ZPF housed commanders from the army, navy, and
air force comprised of the tripartite command headuarters. On 31 August, PLA
commanders met to examine Zhang’s meticulous new plan for the invasion of the
Tachens. Zhang sent infantry liaison ocers to the air force and navy units to en-
43 Chiang Wei-kuo, interview with the author, Rongzong Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan, 25–27 May 1994. Gen
Chiang, when asked during the interview about his father’s secret visit to the Tachens, pointed out that
his father recognized the strategic importance of these islands aer the Korean War. Chiang Kai-shek
made his trip to these oshore islands without informing any ROC ocials or American representatives
in Taiwan other than his naval commanders.
44 Adm Hu Yanlin, Weizheng haijing: renmin haijun zhengzhan jishi [Shocking the Sea: Records of the Peo-
ple’s Navy’s Battles] (Beijing: PLA National Defense University Press, 1996), 59. Hu was PLAN political
commissar in 2003–8 and served as an admiral in 2004.
45 Zhongtian Han, “e PRC’s Naval-Air Campaign in the East China Sea, 1954–1955” (conference paper
presented at the annual meeting of Chinese Military History Society, via Zoom, 16 April 2020).
46 Zhang, Zhonuo renmin jieangjun [e Chinese People’s Liberation Army], vol. 1, 189–90.
47 Dong, Zhang Aiping zhuan [Biography of Zhang Aiping], vol. 2, 664–65; and Li, “PLA Attacks and Am-
phibious Operations during the Taiwan Straits Crises of 1954–55 and 1958,” 148.
48 Hu, Weizheng haijing [Shocking the Sea], 209–10.
PLA Amphibious Campaigns
241
hance cooperation between the PLA’s various branches. At a ZFC meeting in Septem-
ber, Zhang and Nie Fengzhi, ZFC air force commander, decided to launch the attack
at Yijiangshan Island as the rst target of the Tachen campaign.49
Yijiangshan, a half-suare mile islet, 11 kilometers north of Tachen Islands, was
defended by a garrison of more than 1,200 ROC troops. In October, although the
ZFC was ready to launch the attack on Yijiangshan, the PLA high command instruct-
ed Zhang Aiping to conduct more preparation, landing training, and naval and air
attacks to isolate the Yijiangshan garrison. To carry out the high command’s order,
Zhang and Nie Fengzhi launched three air raids against the island. On 1 November,
the PLAAF commenced its rst heavy bombing when bombers and ghters ew more
than 100 sorties, dropping more than 1,000 bombs on Yijiangshan and the Tachens
in four days, thereby ensuring ZFC air dominance.50 en, Nie conducted the second
bombing between 21 December 1954 and 10 January 1955. e ZFC air force launched
28 bomber and 116 ghter sorties in ve raids against the islands. A third raid on
14–15 January targeted the Tachen harbor, sinking one ROC tank landing ship and
damaging four others.51
Weather permitting, a joint attack was scheduled to destroy ROC forces on 18
January. e attack began at 0800 as 54 bombers and 18 ghters attacked Yijiangshan
and Tachen, destroying key ROC defense works, artillery sites, and headuarters.
e PLA bombers dropped 127 tons of ordinance within four hours. en, at 1220, a
two-hour artillery shelling of Yijiangshan, from coastal guns at Toumenshan began.
During these two hours, the island was barraged by 40,000 shells from 4 artillery bat-
talions and 12 artillery companies. Finally, between 1318 and 1415, the island’s defense
positions were also red on by two gunboats and four escort ships. By the end of
the day, nearly all Yijiangshan’s beach positions, bunkers, and communications were
eliminated during the prelanding bombardment (map 4). e PLA’s heavy bombing
and shelling also neutralized supporting re that could reach Yijiangshan from the
Tachen.52 e PLA had successfully prepared the battleeld through massive aerial,
naval, and artillery bombardment, which they had not done in previous amphibious
invasion attempts.
On the same day, 18 January, Zhang’s 10,000-strong invasion force, plus 3,700
sailors, embarked for Yijiangshan at 1215 on 140 landing cra, escorted by 4 warships,
2 gunboats, 12 torpedo boats, and 6 rocket gunboats. Even though the ROC posi-
49 Dong Fanghe, Zhang Aiping zhuan [Biography of Zhang Aiping], vol. 2, 674–75; Han, Dangdai Zhonuo
jundui de junshi gongzuo [Military Aairs of Contemporary China’s Armed Forces], vol. 1, 216–17; and Li,
“PLA Attacks and Amphibious Operations during the Taiwan Straits Crises of 1954–55 and 1958,” 152.
50 Ma Guansan, “Remember the Combat Years in the East China Sea,” in Sunjun huige zhan donghai [Com-
bined Forces Wield Spears and Fight in the East China Sea], ed., Nie Fengzhi (Beijing: PLA Press, 1985),
29. Ma was deputy commander of the ZFC naval force.
51 Han, Dangdai Zhonuo jundui de junshi gongzuo [Military Aair of Contemporary China’s Armed Forc-
es], vol. 1, 215–16.
52 Maj Lu Hui, Sanjun zhan yijiang [Combined Forces Battle Yijiang] (Beijing: China United Literature
Publishing House, 2014), 126.
Li
242
MAP
e Battle of Yijiangshan.
Source: Xiaobing Li, A History of the Modern Chinese Army
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007), 143
PLA Amphibious Campaigns
243
tions had been bombed, ROC 60mm rockets hit two of the PLA transports, resulting
in more than 30 casualties. Army commanders reuested air support, and at 1420,
PLAAF MiG-15s conducted low-altitude strikes on the ROC rocket positions in co-
ordination with the landing troops. At 1430, the PLA’s rst group landed on the west
side of the island and overtook defensive positions along the beaches. With support
from the second wave of troops, the PLA uickly occupied Hills 180 and 190. At 1730,
the entire island fell to the PLA.53
All remaining pockets of resistance were eliminated by the morning of 19 Janu-
ary. e entire ROC garrison of 1,086 troops was lost with 567 dead and 519 prison-
ers. Nevertheless, the PLA suered 2,092 total casualties. e landing troops had 893
killed and 1,037 wounded, and they had lost nearly 50 percent of their rst landing
group. Moreover, the navy had 23 dead and 139 wounded.54 e PLAN only lost 1
landing cra, though 21 ships were damaged. Finally, although the air force suered
no losses, eight bombers and ghters were damaged.55
e 1955 landings oered many lessons to the PLA about amphibious landings.
First, the Battle of Yijiangshan exemplied for the PLA leadership the eectiveness
of joint operations. e PLA landing campaigns illustrated the swi transformation
from an army-based attack to a joint operation with an emphasis on air raids, naval
support, cross-strait transportation, and landing troops’ communication. Lu Xiaop-
ing of the PLA Air Force Command College emphasizes the success of the air support
at the Yijiangshan landing: “During the combat implementation, the Air Force units
and Army landing force operated in close coordination, attacking the defending en-
emy forces with exibility, protecting the frontal charge of the landing unit.”56 Co-
ordination of the dierent services was not as necessary during the civil war but was
critical during later operations.
Second, the PLA succeed because they actively avoided engagement with U.S.
forces during the invasion of Taiwan-held islands. PLAAF commander Nie Fengzhi
personally ordered his pilots to avoid engagements with American aircra to ensure
that the United States did not enter the Dachens area. Nie recounted, “roughout
the whole campaign we had an excellent result with no involvement with foreign air
forces.”57 Major General Xu Yan, PLA’s National Defense University, contended that
Beijing was convinced by its eld generals that the United States would not intervene
53 Commo Yang Zhoni, Sulian zhuanjia yu zhonuo haijun hangkongbing [Soviet Advisors and PLAN Air
Force] (Beijing: PLA Press, 2013), 220.
54 Di Jiu and Ke Feng, Chaozhang chaoluo; guogong jiaozhu Taiwan haixia jishi [Records of the CCPGMD
Confrontation in the Taiwan Straits] (Beijing: China Industrial and Commercial Publishing, 1996),
210–12.
55 Han, Dangdai Zhonuo jundui de junshi gongzuo [Military Aairs of Contemporary China’s Armed
Forces], vol. 1, 220–21.
56 Lu Xiaoping et al., e PLA Air Force (Beijing: China Intercontinental Press, 2012), 52.
57 LtGen Nie Fengzhi, “Soaring Eagles Strike from the Clouds and Shake the Sea and Sky,” in Sunjun huige
zhan donghai [Combined Forces Wield Spears and Fight in the East China Sea], 16.
Li
244
in the Yijiangshan landing if they were not directly provoked.58 It was critical for the
PLA to not provide the United States with any excuse to enter the conict.
Finally, PLA leadership consistently reassessed their performance and adjusted
their amphibious warfare doctrine based on the changing conditions on the battle-
eld. is rapid evolution characterized the PLA as a modern combat force. e
changes in doctrine illustrated an ability to apply lessons on political morale, combat
eectiveness, and adaption to amphibious warfare despite an ever-present learning
curve. e PLA’s rapid adoption of joint operations that involved complex issues
related to communication, naval support, and air raids illustrate the PLA’s swi
transformation from an army-centered force to an eective joint force with modern
amphibious warfare capabilities. e PLA uickly recognized the disparity between
their weapons and American military technolo. By seizing Hainan and all the o-
shore islands in the East China Sea, the Chinese landing campaigns of the early 1950s,
in retrospect, achieved their initial campaign goals. However, the PLA’s operational
objectives to invade Taiwan were rendered nearly unattainable because of the naval
and aviation technological gaps between the PLA and the ROC and United States.
e failure to accomplish this strategic goal warranted frustration from Chinese
leaders. Beginning in 1954, the PLA engaged in a limited war in the Taiwan Strait
by avoiding full-scale war against the technologically superior forces of the United
States. e Chinese relied on Russian weapons systems throughout the 1950s; and
later in the 1960s, the Chinese attempted improvement and development of their
indigenous weapon systems and strategic implements. Systems that would hopefully
grant them the advantages they would need to one day take Taiwan.
CONCLUSION
By the late 1960s and early 1970s, Beijing and U.S. relations had changed. U.S. re-
straint in Vietnam and the continued stalemate on the Korean Peninsula illustrated
that America did not want to have the war spread in Asia. e PLA believed that they
could keep the United States away from the Taiwan Strait with nuclear deterrence,
diplomatic eorts, and aressive air and naval actions. Aer his second return to
power, Deng Xiaoping and Defense Minister Ye Jianying instructed the PLA to attack
South Vietnam-held Paracel Islands in the South China Sea in January 1974. Beijing
believed that the South Vietnamese, who were embroiled in their war with the north,
and the United States, who were doing everything in their power to leave South-
east Asia, would not counter the advance. On 19 January 1974, the Chinese troops
landed on four Paracel islands and defeated the 160-man Army of the Republic of
Vietnam garrison, killing or wounding 110 and capturing 49, including 1 American
58 MajGen Xu Yan, “Did the War to Resist the U.S. and Aid Korea Alter the Solution of the Taiwan
Issue?,” in Xu yan jianao Zixunji [Self-selected Lecture Notes of Xu Yan], ed., Xu (Beijing: Guofang
daxue chubanshe [National Defense University Press], 2014), 118, 120–21. Xu is a faculty member at PLA
National Defense University and deputy secretary general of the Chinese Military History Society.
PLA Amphibious Campaigns
245
advisor. Furthermore, the PLA Navy also sank a Republic of Vietnam Navy frigate
and damaged three destroyers. In March 1988, Deng again ordered an attack on the
Vietnamese troops at the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. In 1988, the PLA
seized the islands while Vietnam suered 400 casualties, including 41 prisons of war
and 2 two warships.
ese two successful landing campaigns illustrated that the PLA could project
its new naval power far from the coast. It also showed that China was capable of
deep-water deployment beyond the Taiwan Strait. ROC President Ma Ying-jeou told
the author during a meeting that by now a landing would be the end of Taiwan’s de-
fense.59 It seemed that any eective defense or a decisive victory should happen in the
Taiwan Strait and be determined by naval battles.
Aer Deng’s retirement in 1989, Jiang Zemin rose to be the next leader and he
uickly tested the PLA’s combat readiness and U.S. responses through the Taiwan
Strait missile crisis in 1995–96. Moreover, the show of military force also was designed
to inuence the 1996 elections in Taiwan. e crisis began when PLA conducted its
rst round of missile tests from 21 to 28 July 1995, in an area 58 kilometers north
of Taiwan.60 Simultaneously, the PLA concentrated large naval and landing forces
and launched military exercises, including a joint amphibious landing exercise in the
Taiwan Strait.61 From 15 to 25 August, the East Sea Fleet deployed 59 warships and
naval vessels for a large-scale naval attack and amphibious landing exercise that was
viewed by many as a possible invasion. e PLAN launched 192 aviation sorties and
scrambled its ghters and bombers during the naval attack exercise. From 31 October
to 23 November, the PLA launched another joint amphibious landing campaign, in-
cluding 63 warships, landing cras, and support vessels, on Dongshan island o the
Fujian coast. e Army’s 91st Infantry Division conducted landing and beachhead
defense exercises while the PLAAF sent 50 ghters, bombers, and other planes to
the joint amphibious landing campaign.62 Between January and February 1996, the
PLA concentrated 100,000 troops along the coast across the strait from Taiwan and
launched another large-scale landing exercise to send a stronger signal to both Taipei
and Washington. Tensions remained heightened in the strait through the winter of
1995–96.63 On 8 March 1996, the PLA conducted even more missile tests by ring
three DF-15 surface-to-surface missiles just 19 kilometer o Kaohsiung and about 29
59 President Ma Ying-jeou, interview with the author and several other Chinese historians, Taipei, Tai-
wan, 8 June 2017. Ma was the ROC president from 2008 to 2016.
60 Zhang Yutao, Xin zhonuo junshi dashi jiyao [Chronicle of Major Military Events of China] (Beijing:
Military Science Press, 1998), 608.
61 For a detailed overview of the 1995–96 Taiwan Strait crisis, see Qimao Chen, “e Taiwan Strait Crisis:
Causes, Scenarios, and Solutions,” in Across the Taiwan Strait: Mainland China, Taiwan, and the 1995–1996
Crisis, ed., Suisheng Zhao (London: Routledge, 1999), 127–62.
62 Zhang, Xin zhonuo junshi dashi jiyao [Chronicle of Major Military Events of China], 610.
63 Ashton B. Carter and William J. Perry, Preventive Defense: A New Security for America (Washington, DC:
Brookings Institution Press, 2000), 92–93.
Li
246
nautical miles o Keelung.64 is crisis, referred to as the ird Taiwan Strait Crisis,
was similar to the Maoist crisis of the 1950s. In this one, China again tested the level
of the Western response to its encroaching on Taiwan. e PLA realized they did
not have the necessary power to invade Taiwan, but the crisis allowed them to judge
potential responses from the United States and its allies.
From Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping, the Taiwan issue has dominated the military’s
attention. Xi has followed Mao’s ideal and redoubled his grand strate of reuni-
cation at the CCP’s 20th National Congress with a consistent denition of national
goals. Historians should not miss its historical roots and scope. For Xi Jinping, the
Cold War was never over. As Xi moves into his third term, the PLA has continued to
strengthen Chinese capabilities for rapid assault, air-ground integrated attacks, and
long-distance maneuvers, all of which are critical for any future invasion of Taiwan.
e PLA has increased its types of ghter jets, its naval strike force, army aviation
troops, mechanized marine units, special operations forces, and cyber warfare units,
all designed for oensive operations. Yet, a major U.S. intervention would still threat-
en the PLA’s potential victory over Taiwan, an important lesson learned from previ-
ous amphibious campaigns that remain at the forefront of Chinese military thought.
Xi Jinping’s concept of limited deterrence has replaced Mao’s nuclear doctrine of
minimum deterrence, something of which Mao le no historical lesson for and of
which Xi will be forced to learn on his own. Moreover, as Xi also shis China’s nation-
al security strate from a defensive to a defensive oensive, he removes one of Mao’s
defensive principles of “never open re rst” in the Taiwan Strait. Xi now justies
any of China’s future island attacks as preventive or retaliatory. e years 2024 to 2049
will be the most important and dangerous period for “the great rejuvenation of the
Chinese nation” as well as when the PLA will reach the milestone for its moderniza-
tion and becoming a “world-class force.”
64 Patrick Tyler, A Great Wall: Six Presidents and China—An Investigative History (New York: Public Aairs,
1999), 33, 195.
247
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
U.S. Geostrategic Deterrence and A2/AD
at Work in the American Civil War, 1861–1865
Howard J. Fuller
INTRODUCTION
This chapter will examine how hastily mobilized U.S. coastal and naval de-
fenses nevertheless accomplished a primary strategic objective of President
Abraham Lincoln’s administration during the crisis of the American Civil
War: deterring potential (naval) intervention by the maritime powers, especially
Great Britain.
e Trent aair of late 1861 underscored the Union’s vulnerability to British naval
power in the form of overseas force projection—the deployment of imperial troops
to Canada—as well as sweeping the seas of American commerce, challenging the U.S.
Navy’s blockade of Confederate ports, and threatening Northern coastal cities with
naval bombardment. America’s impressive ird System of coastal forts, initiated
because of British oensives during the War of 1812, were the largest geostrategic
defenses of their kind throughout the nineteenth century. But they were not com-
plete by the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 (triered by the immediate issue of
Fort Sumter commanding the approaches to Charleston, South Carolina). Yet, in the
heated crisis of the Civil War, Congress facilitated hasty upgrades to the existing and
newer forts, and all were armed with monster 15-inch guns. e Union Navy mean-
while rapidly mobilized an unparalleled otilla of brown water (riverine) ironclads—
especially the monitors—similarly armed with ironclad-killing weapons.
Fuller
248
As this chapter will document, these developments indeed preyed on European
political and military decision-makers at the time. As a result, the United States
during the Civil War could boast the largest force of coastal defense vessels and forts
in the world, when America needed the assurance of geostrategic isolation (and the
pretensions of the Monroe Doctrine) the most.
* * *
e theory that the British Royal Navy largely sustained the Monroe Doctrine (and
that Americans should be grateful for even the indirect protection they received from
the British Empire while they were still oundering in the nineteenth century) was
enshrined by Winston S. Churchill. His four-volume A History of the English-Speak-
ing Peoples won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953, and here the history said that
the “acceptance by the rest of the world” of Monroe’s “resounding claims” in 1823
“depended on the friendly vigilance of the ‘British man-of-war,’ but this was a fact
seldom openly acknowledged.” Further, Churchill believed that for “the best part of a
century the Royal Navy remained the stoutest guarantee of freedom in the Americas.
us shielded by the British bulwark, the American continent was able to work out
its own unhindered destiny.”1 e beauty of this passage is that it assumes British
naval supremacy (even in American waters), calls that power benign, and then infers
American crassness. Given the Cold-War context of Churchill’s later years, and his
complicated friendship with Franklin D. Roosevelt before and during the Second
World War, perhaps he felt the $30 billion the British Empire received from the Unit-
ed States as part of the 1941 Lend-Lease Act was tting justice. America morally owed
at least that much to the “British bulwark,” the old “wooden walls,” which even in
1940 were desperately upholding civilization against brutal European despotism bent
on conuering the whole world. is was of course a line that t perfectly well with
the likes of earlier prime ministers: William Pitt, George Canning, or Henry John
Temple, 3d Viscount Palmerston. By the 1950s, it was now America’s turn to uietly
1 Winston S. Churchill, A History of English-Speaking Peoples, vol. 4 (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1958) 29–30.
Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize just as he was completing his nal volumes. He was 79. Churchill
had already asserted the notion in the House of Commons on 8 March 1948: “From Trafalgar onwards,
for more than 100 years Britannia ruled the waves. ere was a great measure of peace, the freedom of the
seas was maintained, the slave trade was extirpated, the Monroe Doctrine of the United States found its
sanction in British naval power—and that has been pretty well recognised on the other side of the Atlan-
tic—and in those happy days the cost was about £10 million a year.” “House of Commons Debate, 8 March
1948, vol. 448,” Hansard, UK Parliament, cols. 803–981. Ten years later, Sir Joseph Percival William
Mallalieu echoed: “It is absolute folly for us to have it [the hydrogen bomb] and I am not impressed with
the argument that by giving it up we should increase our dependence on the United States. e United
States has been dependent on us for the best part of a century—dependent on the Royal Navy. It was
an American President who propounded the Monroe Doctrine, but it was the Royal Navy which main-
tained it and the fact that America was dependent upon us did not notably stunt her growth in the 19th
century.” “House of Commons Debate, 4 March 1958, vol. 583,” Hansard, UK Parliament, cols. 978–1127.
U.S. Geostrategic Deterrence and A2/AD
249
deploy men-of-war around the globe,
policing the seas and promoting—one
might say “projecting”—freedom.2
It is all very Whiish, but the
historical truth is much more prob-
lematical. e fact was America’s
greatest enemy in the nineteenth (and
eighteenth) century was the British
Empire. e Royal Navy may have
been friendly, but oen it was not.
Anglo-American relations until the
era of so-called rapprochement (iron-
ically, a French expression) were very
2 A conference held at the Joint Services Com-
mand and Sta College (Shrivenham) on 7–8
December 2006 titled “First Force for Good:
The British System of Imperial Defence,
1856–1956” was later published in Greg Ken-
nedy, ed., Imperial Defence: e Old World Order,
1856–1956 (London: Routledge, 2008).
FIGURE
Iron-clad monitors aoat during the Civil War era.
Source: Harpers Weekly
FIGURE
Lord Palmerston.
Source: W. & D. Downey
Fuller
250
much like a cold war, and rarely did the strategic interests of both powers see eye to
eye. For all the mutually enriching trade, shared customs, and language, a viable ten-
sion existed, almost Oedipal (ironically Churchill’s mother, Jennie, was American).
e Monroe Doctrine never found its sea-legs until the United States was nally able
to thwart—to counterdeter—the Royal Navy. During the Civil War, Palmerston was
worried that his high-handedness during the Trent aair in 1861 was about to come
back and slap him in 1865.3
e circumstances of the Monroe Doctrine are well known enough. e Holy
Alliance powers of Russia, Austria, and Prussia (that is, the Romanovs, Habsburgs,
and Hohenzollerns) had declared in 1815, aer the nal defeat of Napoléon Bona-
parte, that it was thanks to the French Revolution that so much blood and re had
spread across Europe. With a Bourbon king back on the throne of France, these pow-
ers (along with the Hanoverian King George IV of the UK) pledged to prevent by
force any future revolutions and republics. Democracy was explicitly rejected as mob
rule and antithetical to the divine right of kings—all that was decent in god-fearing
societies that respected the natural order of cler, nobility, and compassionate pater-
nalism. When popular revolution broke out in Spain against the tyrannical King Fer-
dinand VII, France invaded the country in 1823 to restore the ancien régime. Protestant
Britain had already come to suspect the absolutist streak in the Holy Alliance, being a
constitutional monarchy eectively controlled by Parliament, which had fought and
won its own civil war against King Charles I nearly 200 years before, with a “Glori-
ous Revolution” against Catholic King James II in 1688. As such, the acting British
representative in the Alliance congress, the Duke of Wellington, abstained from of-
fering support to France or Spain. Additionally, the British foreign secretary, George
Canning, was determined to prevent an extension of French power, via Ferdinand,
into the New World colonies that had been a largely successful revolt against Spanish
imperial rule during the Napoleonic Wars. Rumors abounded that French support in
Spain might be paid for with Cuba, for example. What if the Spanish monarchy also
desired the reconuest of Latin America? Because of Britain’s close relationship with
Spain and especially Portugal, British trade with South America had become very
3 On 8 November 1861, two Confederate emissaries traveling to Europe were intercepted by the USS San
Jacinto (1850) aboard the Royal mail packet steamer RMS Trent and forcibly removed. Britain was out-
raged and demanded their release with an apolo. British troops were dispatched to Canada and naval
units routed to Bermuda in preparation for war if the United States refused. President Abraham Lin-
coln, noting “one war at time,” agreed with Secretary of State William Seward to return the Confederates
to British custody; see, for example, Norman B. Ferris, e Trent Aair: A Diplomatic Crisis (Knoxville:
University of Tennessee Press, 1977); and Gordon H. Warren, Founain of Discontent: e Trent Aair and
Freedom of the Seas (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1981). As described by Kenneth Bourne,
the Trent aair was “the most dangerous single incident of the Civil War and perhaps in the whole course
of Anglo-American relations since 1815,” in Briain and the Balance of Power in North America, 1815–1908
(London: Longmans, Green, 1967), 251.
U.S. Geostrategic Deterrence and A2/AD
251
lucrative indeed.4 And neither Canning, Wellington, nor King George wanted to see
a revival of French colonialism across the Atlantic.
e role here of the United States, as Canning saw it, was pivotal. President
James Monroe and his cabinet had meanwhile watched events in Europe and Latin
America very closely and nervously. Summoning Richard Rush, the U.S. ambassador
to Britain, on 16 August 1823, Canning mentioned that both powers should declare
their rm opposition to any expedition by France or Spain against Central or South
America. is was an historic opportunity, the rst Anglo-American collaboration
since the American Revolution and then the eually bitter War of 1812, which Rush
had urged on Madison’s government. Canning’s belief, Rush later relayed to Secretary
of State John uincy Adams, “was founded upon the large share of the maritime
power of the world which Great Britain and the United States shared between them,
and the conseuent inuence which the knowledge that they held a common opinion
upon a ‘uestion’ on which such large maritime interests, present and future, could
not fail to produce upon the rest of the world.” Four days later, the British foreign
secretary followed up this cunning strategic attery with a letter asserting, “For our-
selves, we have no disguise. We conceive the recovery of the Colonies by Spain to
be hopeless.” e United States had already recognized their independence, though
Canning could only admit that British recognition as well would “be one of time and
circumstances.” ere were too many European complications for Great Britain, as
opposed to the United States, to consider rst. But here he also armed “We aim
not at the possession of any portion of them ourselves.”5 Well before the accession of
ueen Victoria, the British Empire was feeling colonially bloated worldwide.
Both Rush and Adams, however, were suspicious of Canning’s hesitance to ac-
knowledge the new republics. Sure enough, as even Canning’s most famous biogra-
pher and champion Harold Temperley noted, the hope that “a monarchy might arise
in Mexico and perhaps elsewhere” helps explain Canning’s deliberations here—and the
political and social wedge that eventually undermined Anglo-American cooperation
in the early nineteenth century and led to the formulation of the Monroe Doctrine.6
Rush was prepared to sign o on a formal declaration with Britain, he responded to
Canning, but only aer Britain joined the United States in recognizing the colonies
(currently as republics). Canning again met with Rush on 16 September, this time
pressing that “the United States . . . were the rst power established on the Conti-
nent, and now confessedly the leading Power.” What sort of message would American
4 See Leonard Axel Lawson, “e Relation of British Policy to the Declaration of the Monroe Doctrine”
(PhD diss., Columbia University, 1922), 76–86, 101–3.
5 See Harold Temperley, e Foreign Policy of Canning, 1822–1827: England, the Neo-Holy Alliance, and the
New World (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1925; Routledge, 2006 reprint), 110–13, 122; and Harold Temperley,
“Documents illustrating the Reception and Interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine in Europe, 1823–2,”
English Historical Review 39, no. 156 (October 1924): 590–93.
6 Temperley, e Foreign Policy of Canning, 1822–1827, 113.
Fuller
252
“indierence” therefore send to Europe?7 But by then, Adams had already come to his
decision. e strategic picture for the United States was also complicated. Imperial
Russia had announced two years earlier that shing and trading rights from Russian
Alaska all the way to the 51st parallel north were subject to Tsar Alexander I alone,
the most rabid of the absolutist monarchs. And what about U.S. ambitions? If Texas
7 Temperley, e Foreign Policy of Canning, 1822–1827, 122.
FIGURE
Portrait of John uincy Adams, ca. 1844.
Source: William Hudson Jr., oil on canvas, National Portrait Gallery
U.S. Geostrategic Deterrence and A2/AD
253
or Cuba eventually applied to join the Union, would a standing Anglo-American
pledge prevent further expansion of republican democracy?8 While both omas Jef-
ferson and Madison urged Monroe to accept Canning’s oer, inasmuch as British
seapower could actually be exploited by the American need to ward o European
intervention in Latin America, Adams (rightly) calculated that Britain’s cooperation
ultimately “rested not upon her principles, but her interest.”9 In that respect, Britain
would risk war with France alone to uphold the status uo of its trading interests in
South America and a fateful reextension of French inuence globally. And indeed,
Canning had warned the new French minister to Britain, Jules de Polignac, earlier
that March and now again in early October with a memorandum threatening to in-
stantly recognize the Latin American republics if France interfered “by force or by
menace . . . in the dispute between Spain and the Colonies.”10 So Adams argued to
Monroe’s cabinet on 7 November that Russia’s peremptory attitude about the North
Pacic “aorded a very suitable and convenient opportunity for us to take our stand
against the ‘Holy Alliance,’ and at the same time to decline the overture of Great Brit-
ain. It would be more candid as well as dignied,” he assured his listeners, “to avow
our principles explicitly to Russia and to France than to come in as a cock-boat in the
wake of the British man-of-war.”11
at message was then underscored in the president’s annual address to Congress
on 2 December 1823 that, while the United States did not seek to interfere in the in-
ternal aairs of European governments and societies, the “political system of the Al-
lied Powers [was] essentially dierent in this respect from that of America.” erefore
the United States would consider “any attempt on their part to extend their system
to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.” Existing col-
onies and dependencies of monarchical powers were exempt from this view; the U.S.
government had not interfered “and shall not interfere.” But any attempt to oppress
or control those former colonies, now republics, which the American government in
Washington had already seen t to recognize, could not be seen “in any other light
than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.”12
Interestingly, Monroe’s speech (largely written by John uincy Adams), high-
lighted that he could never believe “that our southern brethren, if le to themselves,
8 John uincy Adams, Memoirs of John uincy Adams: Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848, vol.
6 (Philadelphia, PA: J. B. Lippincott, 1875), 177–78.
9 Temperley, e Foreign Policy of Canning, 1822–1827, 123.
10 Temperley, e Foreign Policy of Canning, 1822–1827, 115–16. In March, Canning had specied that block-
ing Spanish or French reinforcements to Latin America would be Britain’s uniue leverage: “ere our
naval superiority would tell. ere a maritime war would be to a purpose.” Lawson, “e Relation of
British Policy to the Declaration of the Monroe Doctrine,” 69.
11 Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John uincy Adams, vol. 6, Comprising Portions of His Diary from
1795 to 1848 (Philadelphia, PA: J. B. Lippincott, 1875), 177–79.
12 President James Monroe, “Annual Message, 2 December 1823, Annals of Congress,” 18th Cong., 1st Sess.,
Senate Journal, National Archives, 12–19, hereaer Monroe message.
Fuller
254
would adopt [monarchism] of their own accord.”13 Temperley took some satisfaction
in noting two points to this doctrine: rst, that inuential leaders in Latin America,
namely General Simón Bolívar, were ready to install a monarchy in the greater Co-
lombian state that stretched from modern day Panama across the northern portion
of South America; Bolívar going so far as to assure Canning that “we must look to
England for relie” and that he would wholly accept a British-mandated sovereign,
backed by a constitution. is was because, in his own frustrating experience with
“the people” in power, South America was “perhaps the least tted for Republican
Governments,” with all its “Indians and Negros who are more ignorant than the vile
race of Spaniards we are just emancipated from.” In derogatory language typical
of the age, he predicted that a “country represented and governed by such people
must go to ruin.”14 A few months later, in 1825, another Spanish aristocrat-turned-
revolutionary general, José de la Riva-Agüero of Peru, had also presented to Prime
Minister Robert Banks Jenkinson, Earl of Liverpool, some “Political reections on the
future destiny of Spanish America as regards Great Britain” calling for the British es-
tablishment of “two great monarchies in Mexico and Peru, which countries are formed
for that Government by their education and the character of their inhabitants.” At
least two generations would have to pass away in those lands, he was certain, until
republicanism could take root or the indigenous populations to become noble enough
for American-born princes to take up American thrones. Hoping to play on British
pride as well as paranoia, Agüero then warned that the archenemy of British interests
and society in the meantime were in fact the new republics of Latin America, led
by the democratic United States, whose navy would increase “so that she will ul-
timately dispute the dominion of the sea with Great Britain.” Europe would then
join America in destroying the British Empire, starting with Ireland, until nally
“the Continental powers will make Great Britain change her constitution, so hostile
to their anti-liberal views.”15 It is impossible to know how seriously Liverpool and
Canning regarded these entreaties, but the fact they were carefully preserved is sig-
nicant.
Second, Temperley stressed that Monroe and subseuent American presidents—
including Adams—immediately prevaricated; the United States did not necessarily
pledge to go to war against any enemy of any American republic any time. For one,
war was technically in the hands of Congress according to the U.S. Constitution.
Noninterference abroad was also a stated core element of U.S. national policy. And
Britain’s interests were likewise opposed to European arandisement in the New
World (at the expense of its own). “So it is really true,” observed Temperley in 1925,
“that [Adams] was proclaiming the Monroe Doctrine beneath the shelter of the Brit-
13 Monroe message.
14 Temperley, e Foreign Policy of Canning, 1822–1827, 555–58.
15 “Political Reections on the Future Destiny of Spanish America as Regards Great Britain,” presenta-
tion to Liverpool, “Enclosure in Senor Riva Aguero’s of 27 May 1825,” Add MS 38300, Liverpool Papers,
vol. 111, Ocial Correspondence, March–13 November 1825, fols. 98–103, British Library.
U.S. Geostrategic Deterrence and A2/AD
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ish eet.”16 How far back in the literature does this belief go? One pamphlet from 1921
denied it, citing numerous incidents where Great Britain “consented to the eort of
some other nation to test the doctrine, e.g., Great Britain’s attempts on Cuba 1825, on
Venezuela from 1840 to 1895, her joint attempts with Spain and France resulting in
the French invasion of Mexico in 1862, and her joint eort with Italy and Germany
against Venezuela in 1902.”17 Another work the following year, however, maintained
that “upon the rmness of British opposition to intervention depended the success
of the policy of the United States,” though Britain was operating from ultimately
“commercial interests” while Adams had cited “political liberalism.”18 During the First
World War, with American intervention on the side of the Triple Entente a pressing
issue, British naval historian Julian S. Corbett stressed that “there was little force to
support the new doctrine except the naval power of England. But that power was
behind it heart and soul till it was strong enough to stand alone.” Perhaps taking
this cue, a study of American Diplomacy from 1916 likewise concluded that the con-
dence of the Monroe Doctrine “rested more on the eciency of the British navy
than on our own strength.” is was the gambit Adams had calculated: “us to use
one’s own resources of a rival power, while yielding nothing to her rivalry, is daring;
but, if justied, it is the highest manifestation of the diplomatic art.”19 Yet, the over-
all assertion in uestion was awkwardly ipped on its head in 1907 when a British
member of Parliament suested that “Canada was defended not only by the British
Navy but also by the American Navy, owing to the Monroe doctrine. erefore, Can-
ada relied upon two navies and paid for neither.”20 When Robert Gascoyne-Cecil,
Lord Salisbury, in 1895 defended his government’s actions over the British Guiana/
Venezuela border dispute, he assured the British public there was no conict between
the Monroe Doctrine and British policy, and he had gladly submitted to the idea of
international arbitration since U.S. interests in that hemisphere were understood.21
A British study from 1898 did not advance the notion that the Royal Navy protected
the Monroe Doctrine; uite the opposite: “Despite the outcry of the Argentine,” for
example, Great Britain “had occupied and retained the Falkland Islands.”22 President
16 Temperley, e Foreign Policy of Canning, 1822–1827, 124; and Adams, Memoirs of John uincy Adams, vol.
6, 203–4.
17 omas H. Mahony, e Monroe Doctrine: e Vial Necessity of Its Continued Maintenance (New Haven,
CT: Knights of Columbus Historical Association, 1921), 73.
18 Lawson, “e Relation of British Policy to the Declaration of the Monroe Doctrine,” 5, 111.
19 Julian Corbett, e Spectre of Navalism (London: Darling & Son, 1915), 6; and Carl Russell Fish, American
Diplomacy (New York: Henry Holt, 1916), 212–13. Corbett added, without need for any evidence it seems,
“In that hour, so fateful for the world, America trusted implicitly British ‘Navalism’ at its height,” 6–7.
20 “House of Commons Debate, 15 December 1907, vol. 169,” Hansard, UK Parliament, cols. 424–92.
21 “House of Commons Debate, 11 February 1896, vol. 37,” Hansard, UK Parliament, cols. 73–164, as para-
phrased by William Vernon Harcourt.
22 W. F. Reddaway, e Monroe Doctrine (New York: G. E. Stechert, 1924), 141. is was amended by an
article from 1905 that argued when the doctrine was rst iterated American natural and human resourc-
es were already developed enough to enforce it, including an “ample” navy with capable sailors; Alfred
Spring, “e Monroe Doctrine,” American Law Review 39 (1905): 495–516.
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256
Andrew Jackson, ignoring the various pleas of Latin America at the time, stood by
and did nothing.
Before the 1890s, all seems uiet on this argument. Indeed, it seems to have
cropped up only in relation to the First and especially the Second World Wars, when
the United States had nally intervened in European aairs and was a formal mili-
tary and naval ally with the UK. Only then did the story of the Monroe Doctrine’s
“debt” to the Royal Navy emerge, as Britain slipped further into debt to America,
though, as one particularly angry and suitably obscure work from 1938 was titled, the
Anglo-American relationship was now about how England Expects Every American to
Do His Duty.23
History by this point simultaneously buried the story about how the greatest
threat to the Monroe Doctrine was never Russia, Spain, or France but Britain. As
Jeerson wrote to Monroe on 24 October 1823, the uestion of Canning’s oer of a
jointly declared policy was “the most momentous which has ever been oered to my
contemplation since that of Independence.” Yet, it was “Great Britain . . . which can
do us the most harm of any one, or all on earth; and with her on our side we need not
fear the whole world.” Even the prospect of someday obtaining Cuba, which he con-
fessed he always regarded as “the most interesting addition which could ever be made
to our system of States,” was not worth the enmity it would create with the British.24
Later that same week, another former president, James Madison, also wrote to Mon-
roe that it was “not improbable that G. Britain would like best to have the merit of
being the sole Champion of her new friends [in Latin America], notwithstanding
the greater diculty to be encountered but for the dilemma in which she would
be placed [another European war]. She must in that case, either leave us as neutrals
to extend our commerce & navigation at the expence [sic] of hers, or make us ene-
mies, by renewing her paper blockades & other arbitrary proceedings on the Ocean.”
Such a dilemma he hoped would “not be without a permanent tendency to check her
proneness to unnecessary wars.” Likewise, the issue of eventual American growth into
former Spanish imperial territories had to be considered—Cuba but also Puerto Rico.
As Madison understood Canning’s proposal, an Anglo-American pact of nonexpan-
sion would still leave Great Britain free “in relation to other uarters of the Globe.”25
is was the only balance of power that mattered outside of Europe. Even if Russia
thought to complain of Britain’s policy on the Spanish colonies, Canning wanted the
23 uincy Howe, England Expects Every American to Do His Duty (London: Robert Hale, 1938), which
argues among other things that the Monroe Doctrine was the product of British manipulation whereby
“the United States underwrote Britain’s stake in Latin America,” 9, 25–26.
24 Jeerson to Monroe, 24 October 1823, in Paul Leicester Ford, ed., e Works of omas Jeerson, vol. 10,
1816–1826 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1899), 277–79.
25 Madison to Monroe, 30 October 1823, in Gaillard Hunt, ed., e Writings of James Madison, vol. 9,
1819–1836 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1910), 157–60. Madison repeated these considerations to Rich-
ard Rush on 13 November 1823.
U.S. Geostrategic Deterrence and A2/AD
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British ambassador in St. Petersburg to politely uestion Karl Vasilyevich, Count
Nesselrode, the Russian state secretary, in turn about rumours the tsar was bargaining
for the Île a Vache (Cow Island) o the coast of Haiti, “and it may be amusing at least
that you should let [him] see that you know of his intrigue with the Negurs.”26
At the eighth annual meeting of the American Society of International Law, in
1914, Charles Francis Adams Jr.—the grandson of John uincy Adams—voiced his
concern that the Monroe Doctrine had been warped by what he called “Mommsen’s
Law” going into the twentieth century. eodor Mommsen was a famous German
classical historian of his generation and was exceedingly prolic (with more than
1,500 publications to his name as well as 16 children). To Charles Adams, it was per-
fectly natural “that a people which has grown into a state absorbs its neighbors who
are in political nonnage, and a civilized people absorbs its neighbors who are in intel-
lectual nonnage.” is was a “natural law” of human nature at work in ancient Rome
against barbarians, “just as England with eual right has in Asia reduced to subjection
a civilization of rival standing but politically impotent, and in America and Australia
has marked and ennobled . . . extensive barbarian countries with the impress of its
nationality.” John uincy Adams, conversely, was opposed to the annexation of Texas
and the Mexican-American War, for example, just as he was vehemently opposed to
slavery (i.e., the enforced subjugation of “inferior” races—something the Romans were
also very good at). Charles Adams was likewise concerned that the spirit of the “Os-
tend Manifesto” was also alive and well.27 In 1854, this circular sought to rationalize
the forcible seizure of Cuba in the name of the Monroe Doctrine if Spain did not sell
it to the United States. If the Spanish colony succumbed to slave revolts, the whole
island would be uickly “Africanized and become a second [Haiti], with all its atten-
dant horrors to the white race.” It would then surely spread to the Southern states
of the Union.28 Since then-president eodore Roosevelt in his State of the Union
address of 1904 had declared that the Monroe Doctrine gave the United States the
right act as “an international police force” when faced with “chronic wrongdoing or an
impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society” in any
26 Canning to Charles Bagot, 20 August 1823, in Josceline Fitzroy Bagot, ed., George Canning and His
Friends: Conaining Hitherto Unpublished Letters, Jeux D’Espri, Etc. (London: John Murray, 1909), 195–96.
27 Charles Francis Adams, e Monroe Doctrine and Mommsen’s Law (Boston, MA: Houghton Miin, 1914),
28–31, 34–35.
28 See, for example, Robert E. May, Slavery, Race and Conquest in the Tropics: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Future
of Latin America (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 116–18, describes the document
penned by several prominent American Democrats such as James Buchanan, Pierre Soulé, and John
Y. Mason as “disgracefully expansionist”; and Robert E. May, e Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire,
1854–1861 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973; Gainesville: University Press of Florida,
2002 reprint). Well into the American Civil War, an article by British professor Goldwin Smith on
“England and America,” Atlantic Monthly, December 1864, warned Northerners how both the Monroe
Doctrine and the Ostend Manifesto “are still ringing in our ears” as expressions of territorial ambition
and possible “violence,” 765.
Fuller
258
state in the Western Hemisphere. is closely coincided with U.S. strategic interests
in the building of the Panama Canal. e younger Adams therefore challenged his
audience to recall that the dream of America in 1823 was to be entirely distinct from
European aairs and practices, from imperialism and balance-of-power politics to
the suppression of liberty and self-determination, however “messy” it may seem to
autocratic rulers.29 Somewhere along the line, the ideolo had been attened by the
realpolitik of strategic interests. America in the twentieth century had not come in
the wake of the British man-of-war, it had become one.
Hence, William Dunning maintained in his 1914 study of the British Empire and
the United States that the Monroe Doctrine had pitted Adams against Canning,
America against Britain, inasmuch as these two powers—and these two alone—had
become “serious rivals for the controlling interest in American aairs.”30 Indeed, af-
ter learning of the U.S. president’s message to Congress in December 1823, Canning
wrote to Sir Charles Bagot in St. Petersburg that while he agreed with America about
the need to protest against “the forcible or authoritative interference of any Foreign
power in the dispute between Spain and Spanish America,” he did not agree with
Monroe (or Adams) in “objecting to an attempt to recover her dominions on the part
of Spain herself.”31 Two years later, his views had hardened. For while the “general
maxim” of Anglo-American interests was that they were both the same, he informed
the British ambassador at Washington that “we must not be the dupes of this conven-
tional language of courtesy.” In other words, there was diplomacy and statesmanship,
and there was the pursuit of power. “e avowed pretension of the United States to
put themselves at the head of the confederacy of all the Americas,” he continued,
“and to sway that confederacy against Europe (Great Britain included), is not a pre-
tension identied with our interests, or one that we can countenance as tolerable.”32
While the United States might be admittedly the “leading power” in its own hemi-
sphere, that portion of the globe was connected to others by the sea, whose rule was
the pretension of the Royal Navy. Certainly, tensions already existed over numerous
territorial disputes. “Why, do you not know that we have a claim to the mouth of the
Columbia River?” exclaimed Lord Stratford Canning (the foreign secretary’s cousin)
to Adams in 1821. “I do not know,” replied the American secretary of state, “what you
claim nor what you do not claim. You claim India; you claim Africa; you claim—”
“Perhaps,” cut in the British ambassador sardonically, “a piece of the moon.” “No,” said
Adams coolly, “I have not heard that you claim exclusively any part of the moon; but
there is not a spot on this habitable globe that I could arm you do not claim; and
29 Adams, e Monroe Doctrine and Mommsen’s Law, 38–41.
30 William Archibald Dunning, e British Empire and the United Sates: A Review of eir Relations during
the Century of Peace Following the Treaty of Ghent (New York: Charles Scriber’s Sons, 1914), 54–55.
31 Entry for 9 January 1824, in Bagot, George Canning and His Friends, 208.
32 Canning to Charles Richard Vaughan, 8 February 1826, in Dunning, e British Empire and the United
Sates, 54–56.
U.S. Geostrategic Deterrence and A2/AD
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there is none which you may not claim with as much color of right as you can have to
Columbia River or its mouth.”33
Despite their erce mutual (and personal) suspicions, neither Adams nor Canning
continued to dominate Anglo-American relations for very long. e former lost his
presidential reelection bid against Andrew Jackson in 1828; and while Canning had
risen to prime minister the year before, he died aer only four months in oce. Ac-
cording to the Columbia University doctoral dissertation of Leonard Axel Lawson in
1922, “e Relation of British Policy to the Declaration of the Monroe Doctrine” was
instrumental and really came down to seapower. “Not the United States, but England,
was the real barrier to allied intervention in Spanish America,” he concluded, because
“her possession of the largest navy in the world gave practical eectiveness to her own
opposition.” Conversely, had the British Empire fully supported European interven-
tion in Latin America, those new states “would have been destroyed, and probably
the southern continent would have been parcelled out amongst its conuerors, against
which an independent protest by the United States would have been conspicuously
ineective.”34 e specter of British seapower certainly weighed on the minds of Amer-
ican statesmen like Jeerson. Unfortunately, Lawson did not back up his theory with
reference to actual evidence. erefore, the practical limits of seapower in changing the
map of the world remains counterfactual and hypothetical not historical. For there is
still the deance of Adams, while Canning never dictated policy to Rush the American
ambassador, he supplicated, even with so much apparently unstoppable power at his
disposal.35 Even against France, the prospect of yet another war was never something
to be taken lightly or brushed away with the magic wand of British naval supremacy.
At the height of the Maine boundary dispute with Britain, culminating in the contro-
versial Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842, King Louis-Philippe of France warned the
American government “though you could do each other much harm, the results of War
in the present improved State of the art of destruction, are more uncertain than ever.”
is included steam-powered warships armed with shell-ring guns. “Great Britain was
omnipotent on the Ocean & could destroy [U.S.] towns,” he added, though he admitted
the nancial repercussions alone of an Anglo-American war in the Victorian Age would
be devastating in return. When the U.S. ambassador to France, Lewis Cass, discussed
33 Adams, Memoirs of John uincy Adams, vol. 5, 251–52; and Harlow Giles Unger, John uincy Adams (Boston,
MA: De Capo, 2012), 202–3.
34 Lawson, “e Relation of British Policy to the Declaration of the Monroe Doctrine,” 142–43.
35 British naval historian William James thought this respect was misplaced, presenting to Canning on
9 January 1827 a copy of his controversial e Naval History of Great Briain: From the Declaration of War
by France in February 1793, to the Accession of George IV, a New Edition, with Additions and Notes Bringing the
Work down to 1827 (London: William Clowes, 1902), and noting British superiority at sea during the War
of 1812. In his estimation, “the Americans will never be a naval power of any magnitude” because west-
ward expansion would eventually fragment the country “long before the republic becomes formidable
from density of population.” Edward J. Stapleton, ed., Some Ocial Correspondence of George Canning, vol.
2 (London: Longmans, Green, 1887), 144.
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the possibility of war with Great Britain to the French ambassador, François Guizot, he
was told that French interests apprehended “the maritime pretensions which England
has asserted during war, and which she will no doubt repeat when she nds herself
engaged in hostilities”; namely, “her ctitious blockades, and her contraband of war.” In
such event, Cass was told, “France would be driven to war to defend those principles
which she has always maintained and never will abandon.”36 Two months later, the Brit-
ish ambassador to the United States, Alexander Baring, Lord Ashburton, cautioned
the foreign secretary (George Hamilton-Gordon, Earl of Aberdeen) “not to mistake or
undervalue the power of this country”:
You will be told that it is a mass of ungovernable & unmanageable anarchy, and
so it is in many respects. To a common observer it might be a matter of doubt how
this confederative can hold together another year. Bankrupt finances. Bad admin-
istration & jobbing in every departmen. A loose, ill-connected mass of conflicting
interests, in short apparently nothing for the eye of confidence to rest upon. Yet
with all these disadvanage . . . the energies & power of the country would be found
to be immense in the case of war and that the jarring elements would unite for
that purpose. is is [Sir Henry] Fox’s opinion, who as you know, is no admirer of
any thing here.37
Aberdeen in turn desired a peaceful settlement with America as soon as possible
as it would “greatly improve our relations with France, which are now rather uncom-
fortable, from the weakness of the Govt. and the general hostility of the Chamber &
the country.”38 ough Palmerston later attacked the treaty pronounced by Sir Robert
Peel’s government as “placing the United States in a better military position in regard
to us than they occupied before, and by inducing them to think that we shall yield
whenever they hold out,” Aberdeen saw t to congratulate Ashburton. “e good
temper in which you have le them all, and the prospect of a continued peace, with I
trust improved relations,” he noted, “far outweigh in my mind the value of any addi-
tional extent of Pine Swamp.”39
36 Entry on 15 February 1842, “copy of private letter from Mr. Wheaton to Mr. Webster, reporting con-
versation on Sunday evening (the 13th) with the King of France,” Add MS 43123, Aberdeen Papers, vol.
85, Correspondence of Lord Ashburton, 1841–43, British Library; and Cass to Webster, 12 March 1842.
See also TNA/ADM 7-712, 12 January 1841, enclosed clipping from a New York newspaper forwarded by
the British consul there, boasting of the capabilities of the newly launched paddlewheel steam-frigate
USS Missouri (1841) as the forerunner of “a steam navy that would be superior to any in the world” and
a strategic check to “the rapid strides which Great Britain is making for empire, not only in China, but
all over the world.”
37 Ashburton to Aberdeen, 29 May 1842, Add MS 43123, Aberdeen Papers, vol. 85.
38 Aberdeen to Ashburton, 18 June 1842.
39 See “Treaty of Washington, 21 March 1843, vol. 67,” Hansard, UK Parliament, cols. 1162–285; and Aber-
deen to Ashburton, 26 September 1842. John uincy Adams noted in his diary the “long and searching”
House of Commons debate that evening culminated in “pitched battle” between Palmerston and Peel;
entry dated 22 April 1843, in Adams, Memoirs of John uincy Adams, vol. 11, 368–69.
U.S. Geostrategic Deterrence and A2/AD
261
us, scarcely one month aer Monroe declared the rmly worded doctrine of
the United States in relation to foreign powers, he also addressed Congress on a “plan
of the peace establishment of the Navy.” Here, the “great object in the event of war is
stop the enemy at the coast.” And for this, he stressed that
our fortifications must be principally relied on. By placing strong works near the
mouths of our great inlets in such positions as to command the entrances into them
. . . it will be dicul, if not impossible, for ships to pass them, especially if other
precautions, and particularly that of steam batteries, are resorted to in their aid.
. . . nor can it be doubted that the knowledge that such works existed would
form a strong motive with any power not to invade our [neutral] rights, and there-
by constitute essentially to prevent war.40
Monroe’s eighth annual message to Congress on 7 December 1824 likewise noted
that the last war with Great Britain “admonished us to make our maritime frontier
impregnable by a well-digested chain of fortications, and to give protection to our
commerce by augmenting our Navy to a certain extent.” is included new roads
interconnecting the various defensive zones north and south and with the coast to
the interior. Seven years later, Monroe wrote to John uincy Adams that aairs in
Europe seemed shaky as always. Reform and the Corn Laws, Ireland, and a large, poor
industrial class all tended to distract the British from American interests as well,
provided we susain the attitude, on land and sea, which we have done since the
late war. If we complete our fortifications, & have a force to occupy & keep them in
order, and susain our navy at the point contemplated, exhibiting squadrons in the
several seas which they have hitherto visited, I have no doubt we shall command
their respec, especially if our gov. pursues a pacific policy.41
Monroe passed away later that summer. But America’s expansive ird Tier sys-
tem of coastal fortications, stretching from Maine to Louisiana, were indeed un-
derway. Massive harbor structures like Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina,
concentrated rows of heavy seacoast artillery behind brick and granite walls ve-feet
thick and oen several stories high. By the early 1840s, new guns like the 10-inch cali-
bre Columbiad could re exploding shells up to 4.8 kilometers, or ricochet 125-pound
40 Monroe to Congress—Naval Establishment, 30 January 1824, in Stanislaus Murray Hamilton, ed., e
Writings of James Monroe, vol. 7, 1824–1831 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1903), 7.
41 Message to Congress, 7 December 1824, 48–49; and Monroe to Adams, 14 February 1831, 222–24 both in
Hamilton, ed., e Writings of James Monroe, vol. 7.
Fuller
262
solid shot along the surface of the water.42 It was the most ambitious coastal forti-
cations scheme in the world, and work proceeded slowly and intermittingly during
succeeding presidential administrations up to the end of the American Civil War
in 1865.43 Very few of these stone sentinels were ever fully armed with the guns or
garrisons they were planned for. Professional military advisors meanwhile warned
the country was never uite safe enough. But the message Monroe and Adams had
in mind did get through: America was determined to defend itself and not be reliant
on the forbearance of successive British prime ministers and the Royal Navy in the
nineteenth century.
Occasionally, British naval ocers would carefully scrutinize American defenses
and declare they might be bypassed or overwhelmed. On 2 October 1855, with Sevas-
topol fallen and the British mobilized for war greater than they had been in 40 years,
the First Lord of the Admiralty, Rear Admiral Sir Maurice Berkeley, wrote that screw
blockships (old converted wooden ships of the line, cut down for more guns and less
speed) would “have New York in ames almost as soon as I get sight of the Land.”44
However, these were isolated sentiments. e proof was that, fearing a steam-pow-
ered French invasion of the British Isles in 1859–60, Palmerston wholeheartedly ad-
vocated a series of fortications along the south coast of England, starting with the
dockyards. Noteworthy too is Foreign Secretary Lord Clarendon’s letter to First Lord
of the Admiralty Sir Charles Wood a month aer Berkeley’s boast. While public
meetings in Britain against upsetting Anglo-American relations regarding the John
Crampton aair and various Central American issues would likely “lead to war with
42 See, for example, Emanuel Raymond Lewis, Seacoast Fortifications of the United Sates: An Introductory
History (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1979), 58–59. Jeerson Davis’s 1 December 1856 Report of
the Secretary of War, 34th Cong., 4th Sess., estimated some “23,000 pieces of ordnance and 3,000 gun-
carriages in addition to those at the forts and arsenals” would be reuired to fully arm every fort under
construction and newly ordered in the United States—an impossible order. By 1851, however, an 11-inch
shell-ring gun had been developed by Lt John A. Dahlgren of the U.S. Navy and gured prominently in
American men-of-war throughout the Civil War era. See, for example, “Records of the Bureau of Ord-
nance,” 20 October 1851, Record Group 74, Entry 39, Box 1, vol. 1, National Archives, Washington, DC.
43 To reinvigorate eorts at coastal fortication (predominantly against possible British intervention
during the Civil War), Congress in March 1862 ordered that 1,550 copies be made of Executive Docu-
ments No. 243 (April 1836), no. 206 (May 1840) and no. 5 (December 1851) as part of its comprehensive
study of American military and naval defenses. ese massive reports compiled by successive U.S. secre-
taries of war and U.S. Army fortications experts like BGen Joseph G. Totten, and signed o by presi-
dents Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, and Millard Fillmore, all argued for xed coastal defences of
important places as “preferable to vessels-of-war,” 206; 37th Cong., 2d Sess., House of Representatives,
Ex. Doc. no. 92. See also Robert S. Browning III, Two If by Sea: e Development of American Cosal Defense
Policy (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983); and Samuel J. Watson, “Knowledge, Interest and the Lim-
its of Military Professionalism: e Discourse on American Coastal Defence, 1815–1860,” War in History
5, no. 3 (1998), 280–307, https://doi.org/10.1177/0968344598005003.
44 Berkeley to Sir Charles Wood (First Lord of the Admiralty), 2 October 1855, Halifax Papers (Hick-
leton), Borthwick Institute of Archives, York University, A4-74. See also “A Tour of 2,000 Miles of the
United States of America, commencing October 16, and ending November 23, 1826,” which downplayed
American ordnance, for example, but warned of the strategic danger posed by the Erie Canal in TNA/
ADM7-712.
U.S. Geostrategic Deterrence and A2/AD
263
the U.S.,” Clarendon felt there was “nothing so likely to prevent war as shewing the
Yankees that we are not afraid of them.”45
Afraid of them? Two days before he had assured the U.S. ambassador, James Bu-
chanan, that “nothing could be further from their intention than any, even the most
remote idea of a menace” in the recent sending of naval reinforcements to the West
Indies and North American stations. Clearly this was a bald-faced lie, but it was also
statesmanship. e foreign secretary agreed that if Anglo-American relations were al-
lowed to spiral out of control that a war would not only be catastrophic to both sides,
ruining decades of painstaking diplomacy for decades to come, but “the Despotisms
on the continent would be highly gratied with such an unnatural war.”46 is echoed
Buchanan’s missive to Clarendon early the year before regarding Britain’s claims of a
protectorate of the Mosuito Coast in Central America and that the Monroe Doc-
trine had not been enforced to avoid a “collision” with the British Empire. “We can
do each other the most good, and the most harm,” he added, “of any 2 nations in the
world.”47
* * *
Yet, how to preserve peace and avoid war? e role of mere seapower—brute strength—
in modern international relations was not just strategically but politically problemat-
ic in the extreme. Buchanan for his part wrote to the U.S. secretary of state, William
L. Marcy, that a British eet sent out to bully America would actually play into their
hands by alarming the British public against the provocations of Palmerston’s govern-
ment while a war against Russia was still in progress.48 is was a prescient analysis, as
conrmed by Kenneth Bourne in his classic study of Briain and the Balance of Power in
North America (1967).49 For the year before, Palmerston had urged the British cabinet
under Aberdeen that in “dealing with Vulgar minded Bullies, and such unfortunately
the people of the United States are” only superior force mattered. Once Sevastopol
45 Clarendon to Wood, 10 November 1855, Halifax Papers, A4-57. Sir John Crampton was Britain’s min-
ister to the United States from 1852 but was replaced in 1856 by the demand of the U.S. Government
which charged him with recruiting American citizens to ght against Russia during the Crimean War
(despite America’s neutrality in the conict).
46 Buchanan to Marcy, 9 November 1855, in William R. Manning, ed., Diplomatic Correspondence of the
United Sates: Inter-American Aairs, 1831–1860, vol. 7 (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for In-
ternational Peace, 1936), 621–22. Buchanan went on to state that “were the decision to depend upon
[Clarendon], I am persuaded the eet would be withdrawn; but this would not be in character with Lord
Palmerston.” Obviously, Clarendon held a more convincing smile.
47 Buchanan to Clarendon, 6 January 1854, “Correspondence between Great Britain and the United
States, Respecting Central America—1854–1856,” in British and Foreign Sate Papers, 1855–1856, vol. 46 (Lon-
don: William Ridgway, 1865), 244–55.
48 Buchanan to Marcy, 2 November 1855, in British and Foreign Sate Papers, 1855–1856, vol. 46, 620. Despite
the fall of Sevastopol in August, the Siege of Kars (in Asia Minor) ended in a major Russian victory on
28 November 1855.
49 Bourne, Briain and the Balance of Power in North America, 1815–1908, 179–83.
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had fallen much of Britain’s newly mobilized naval power would be “let free,” especial-
ly with the French currently as wartime allies and unlikely to interfere. “e U.S. have
no navy which we need be afraid,” he continued, “and they might be told that if they
were to resort to privateering we should, however reluctantly, be obliged to retaliate
by burning all their Sea Coast Towns.”50 Others in the cabinet, however, had their
doubts if victory would be so easy or indeed accomplish much of anything. Even with
the Crimean War safely concluded in 1856, Anglo-American tensions remained along
with the need for a rm policy decision. Charles Wood agreed with Palmerston in
June that “we have no real interest in Nicaragua, Greytown or Mosuito.” Nor did he
believe the British government in London could prevent the ultimate fall of various
Central American states to American libuster adventurers any more than the U.S.
government in Washington could. “e main uestion” to him was how to get out
of their predicament gracefully. e longer American and British warships hovered
around these conned waters the greater the risk of an incident. us, “We ought to
prevent collision, not have to resent and avenge it.” Half-measures would not do the
trick; either British naval units must uietly withdrawal altogether or be openly re-
inforced by a suadron “larger than any force the U.S. can muster.”51 America might
be fortied at home, piling up rocks as such and pointing all its guns seaward, but
only Britain had a navy prepared at that moment to impose its will in Latin America.
At any rate, such deployments would not escape the scrutiny of Parliament,
Wood reminded the prime minister. When asked, he could “put the answer so as to
make the sending little more than reliefs.” But this sort of cover-up was a dangerous
and short-term ploy at best. e First Lord of the Admiralty therefore thought “it
may be well to tone down as painters say the high colouring which our gobe-mouches
are disposed to give to everything.” It did not help matters later that September when
Clarendon told him there was little chance of bringing some of these far-ung units
home for, in addition to naval forces needed to put order “in that chaos of Yankee
villainy,” there was a “good deal of South American work on hand, both Atlantic and
Pacic, for those rascally Govts. must be taught not to believe in the Times asser-
tions of our decrepitude & that we are not to be robbed & insulted with impunity.”52
An increasingly chauvinist, gunboat diplomacy, seeking to humiliate lesser peoples—
even great ones—back into line on a point of justice was nally too much for other
mid-Victorian elites. e war with Russia was considered not so much a triumph for
Britain as it was for France; it had also cost Aberdeen his ministry and Palmerston
was careful not to share his predecessor’s fate when a coalition of antiwar wolves
began to circle in the House of Commons. “In fumbling for a tougher line,” notes
50 “Memorandum on a Dra from Ld Clarendon to Mr. Crampton about American Destruction of Grey
Town,” 10 September 1854, MS 62 Palmerston Papers (Broadlands), University of Southampton, Hartley
Library, MM/US/7-11.
51 Wood to Palmerston, 4 June 1856, Palmerston Papers, Southampton, GC/WO/66-83, Sir Charles
Wood, March–July 1856.
52 Clarendon to Wood, 29 September 1856, Halifax Papers, A4-57.
U.S. Geostrategic Deterrence and A2/AD
265
Kenneth Bourne, Palmerston and Clarendon “had conjured up the most decisive in-
tervention yet of merchant and radical opinion on American aairs . . . in the press
and parliament alike, not just a passing phase of Anglo-American relations but the
whole concept of an anti-American balance of power policy had been challenged and
publicly defeated.”53
Well, this was only the beginning of the end. Palmerston certainly had his “re-
venge” as such with the outbreak of civil war in America, ve years later in 1861 and
especially during the Trent crisis by the end of that year. His attitude to the Monroe
Doctrine had been one of complete contempt his entire professional career. In 1837,
he dismissed as “nonsense” the so-called “rights” of Maine to land, which was still in
uestion on the boundary with Canada. Such “Land Jobbers,” he wrote to the British
ambassador to the United States, “must learn to be more reasonable, and they will
become so when they nd that we do not care for their swaer; that we are resolved
to keep the whole, till an amicable arrangement is made; and that we are uite strong
enough to do so.”54 Even so, as he explained to Lord John Russell in 1839, there were
only two ways of settling the matter (including the Caroline aair) before the next
election might see a less amenable president in the White House than Martin Van Bu-
ren: “going to war and forcing the Americans to give us what we ask; the other by ne-
gotiating.”55 e rst mode he considered “out of the uestion, and the latter reuires
time.” However, when the Webster-Ashburton Treaty was nally concluded in 1842,
Palmerston (now out of oce as foreign secretary) assured the Earl of Minto, the for-
mer First Lord of the Admiralty, that Peel’s government had made “unnecessary Sacri-
ces of ings which are not only losses to us, but in the Hands of the Americans will
prove Instruments of future aression against us.” However much peace-lovers may
celebrate, peace to him was rendered insecure “by even multiplying possible Points of
Dierence and by giving the Americans additional Means of annoying us, and there-
fore fresh Temptation to do so.”56 ere could never be a true euilibrium between the
two powers, only shiing advantages in a neverending contest of rival state interests.
is seemed to be the case for Aberdeen about the Oregon boundary dispute with
the comparatively aressive administration of President James K. Polk. But here too,
the British government was determined “to cede nothing to force or menace, and are
fully prepared to maintain our Rights.” e Royal Navy maintained presence in Brit-
ish Columbia throughout 1845, while Parliament voted to recruit 40,000 sailors and
marines without opposition.57 e Americans, on the other hand, were more worried
about accepting the Republic of Texas into the Union, and a likely war with Mex-
53 Bourne, Briain and the Balance of Power in North America, 1815–1908, 200.
54 Palmerston to Henry Stephen Fox, 19 November 1837, Palmerston Papers, Southampton, GC/FO/162-
170, From/to Henry Stephen Fox.
55 Palmerston to Russell, 25 October 1839, Russell Papers, British National Archives (Kew), hereaer
TNA, PRO 30-22, 3D.
56 Palmerston to Minto, 10 October 1842, Palmerston Papers, GC/MI/575-592.
57 Aberdeen to Pakenham, 2 April 1845, British Library, Add MS 43123, Aberdeen Papers, vol. 85.
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ico, reported the British ambassador, Sir Richard Pakenham. Aberdeen then noted
another political factor that obviated the need for naval power-posturing to secure a
favorable agreement on Oregon; the imminent repeal of the Corn Laws, “the access of
Indian corn to our Markets,” he was certain “would go far to pacify the warriors of the
Western States” and help Polk obtain the sanction of two-thirds of the U.S. Senate to
ratify the treaty.58 Mutual market interests and growing socioeconomic pressures had
to be weighed in the balance of long-term strategic considerations. ey might also
tip the scales of war toward peace, while the Royal Navy swung the other way.
us, it was only when Pakenham conrmed to Buchanan, as U.S. secretary of
state, that “a eet of thirty sail of the line and a large force of Steam Vessels were
about to be tted out as a preparation for any thing that might happen” that Buchan-
an became angry as well as fearful. “e appearance of such a force on our Coast,”
he proceeded to say, “or any other menacing demonstration would play the very
Devil.” e British ambassador had to agree; it would only feed American paranoia,
wreck the treaty negotiations, and galvanize Congress into rampant war spending.
en again, “an attitude of dignied & imposing preparation which shall prove to
the American people that England is determined to ‘stand no nonsense’,” he wrote
to Aberdeen, “will be attended with the best results, and be sucient, with a little
patience and forbearance, to bring matters to a favourable conclusion.”59 British naval
power had to be present, that was all. It could not be pushed. It had to be allowed
to insinuate itself into American decision-making, already complicated by domestic
factors. Was a potential war with Great Britain a politically good choice or not? What
were the clear issues at stake?
Within months, the Oregon uestion was also resolved to everyone’s satisfaction
and the British eet once again disappeared beyond the horizon. “e positive impa-
tience shown by Mr. Buchanan to sign and conclude,” reported Pakenham, “convinces
me that the fear, lest any complication should arise out of the Mexican War, has done
a great deal in inducing the American Govt. to accept Your Lordship’s proposal with-
out alteration. e bare suestion of a reference to England was sucient to over-
come every diculty that was talked of.” e foreign secretary replied that it was “not
the apprehension of any embarrassment in conseuence of the Mexican War, which
led to this decision; but that it was entirely owing to the impending change of the
administration in this country, & a desire to settle the whole aair with us before our
departure.” e repeal of the Corn Laws had split the Tory party and wrecked Peel’s
government; everyone on both sides of the Atlantic knew that Palmerston would
58 Aberdeen to Pakenham, 3 December 1845. See also J. L. Worley, “e Diplomatic Relations of England
and the Republic of Texas,” uarterly of the Texas Sate Historical Association 9, no. 1 (July 1905): 1–40;
Robert S. Hicks, “Diplomatic Relations with Mexico during the Administration of James K. Polk,” An-
nual Publication of the Historical Society of Southern California 12, no. 2 (1922): 5–17; and Ephraim Douglass
Adams, ed., British Diplomatic Correspondence Concerning the Republic of Texas, 1838–1846 (Austin: Texas
State Historical Association, 1918).
59 Pakenham to Aberdeen, 20 February 1846.
U.S. Geostrategic Deterrence and A2/AD
267
soon be back in the Foreign Oce and what that would mean.60 e Americans had
to be contained as much as the Russians did in world aairs. e Royal Navy was
there to hold the line on existing British possessions in North America, from Ore-
gon to Maine to Central America. e twentieth-century notion that the “friendly
vigilance of the British man-of-war” was about “shielding” American growth was a
preposterous humbug from Palmerston’s own perspective. Who would ever believe it?
Sure enough, three years later Palmerston assured the Nicaraguan minister that U.S.
intervention in the matter of San Juan (or Greytown, as it was forcibly renamed by
the British the year before) “was of no importance.” Nicaragua should distinctly not
look to its “Big Brother” to the north for help. “ ‘We have been disposed,’ [Palmerston]
added with a contemptuous laugh, ‘to treat the United States with some degree of
consideration, but in reference to this uestion, it is a matter of total indierence to
Her Majesty’s Government, what she may say or do’.”61
Again, this was not entirely true. Palmerston was also very good at blu and
bluster. He knew exactly how big the U.S. Navy was at any given moment, and kept
himself informed about the latest American advances in steam power and ordnance.
Nevertheless, he could be reasonably sure that not everyone had access to the same
information he did. An experienced statesmen, he also knew how far the Americans
might be pushed—and not pushed—on what they considered vital interests closer to
home. Cuba stood as a prime example. John uincy Adams suspected Britain of wish-
ing to buy the island from Spain in 1822, and indeed Canning considered occupying
Havana in the event of an Anglo-Spanish war in 1826.62 When rumors circulated in
1840 that Britain might annex or seize Cuba, the secretary of the state, John Forsyth,
wrote that Spain “may securely depend upon the military and naval resources of the
United States to aid her in preserving or recovering it.” His successor in oce, Daniel
Webster, again warned in 1843 that the United States “never would permit the occu-
pation of that Island” by British forces. Buchanan was more explicit in declaring in
1848 that the United States “should be compelled to resist the acuisition of Cuba
by any powerful maritime state, with all means which Providence has placed at our
command.”63 Aer successful combined operations in the Mexican-American War,
foreign powers had to take these kinds of warnings more seriously. e U.S. Navy
might be reduced to harrying British commerce again, but defending Canada against
60 Pakenham to Aberdeen, 13 June 1846; and Aberdeen to Pakenham, 30 June 1846.
61 As relayed by Ephraim George Suier, U.S. chargé d’aaires in Guatemala, to John M. Clayton, Secre-
tary of State, 10 September 1849, in Manning, Diplomatic Correspondence of the United Sates, vol. 3, 360–70.
62 See, for example, Mahony, e Monroe Doctrine, 47fn2; Canning to Liverpool, 6 October 1826, British
Library, Add MS 38568, Liverpool Papers; and Stapleton, Some Ocial Correspondence of George
Canning, vol. 2, 144.
63 Mahony, e Monroe Doctrine, 54; and Elihu Root, “e Real Monroe Doctrine,” American Journal of
International Law 8, no. 3 (1914): 427–42.
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268
a Yankee invasion was more problematic than ever for British imperial forces.64 Even
before the American invasion of Mexico by sea and land, a local British naval ocer
at uebec warned the Admiralty in March 1845 that the United States now had “a
powerful Steam Marine, which is increasing and might do great mischief in a very
short.” London could no longer rely on ice on the St. Lawrence River from the sea to
Montreal “to prevent a Hostile Force from Boston appearing before that place in 10
days.”65 American canal and rail networks in the Great Lakes region were giving them
an immense advantage for both defense and attack. e Erie Canal feeding into the
Hudson, pouring out into New York Harbor, for example, made the defenses of the
city that much more important—and the Americans were building strong forts com-
manding both entrances, one defensive line aer another oering multiple cross-res
64 See, for example, J. M. Gregor, Siege and Bombardment of Vera Cruz and Surrender of that City and the Cas-
tle of San Juan De Ulloa to the American Forces, 29th March, 1847 (Norfolk, VA: W. C. Shields, 1847), which
noted “this was the rst enterprize [sic] of the United States for the invasion by sea of an enemy’s territo-
ry. In point of numbers, it was on an imposing scale; and its reuisite appurtenances in every department
were commensurate with its magnitude,” 6; and Cdr S. F. Du Pont, USN, Report on the National Defenses
(Washington, DC: Gideon, 1852) in Manuscript Collections, U.S. Naval Historical Center, Washington
Navy Yard, Washington, DC. Du Pont attacked the notion of a coastal defense role for American naval
forces as against “the spirit of this nation”; “Steam, this new element in the aairs of the world, has very
materially changed our position with reference to other nations,” 28.
65 Capt Edward Boxer to Admiralty, 20 March 1845, TNA/WO (War Oce) 1-553; and the enclosed
report by Hamilton, 25 July 1845.
MAP
Strategic map of the United States, 1855.
Source: J. H. Colton, Geographicus Antique Maps
U.S. Geostrategic Deterrence and A2/AD
269
against attacking warships that might attempt to run the gauntlets. No one would
safely get through the treacherous shallows of Hell Gate (the East River and Long
Island Sound) in the rst place without a good local pilot.66
* * *
e outbreak of the Civil War was the greatest test of the Monroe Doctrine through-
out American history. And here, the British Royal Navy perched at Halifax and Ber-
muda and watched. Great Britain declared its neutrality in the conict, as is well
known, and by then mid-Victorian annoyance with America was at its peak; not just
with the uarrelsome, ambitious and impertinent Yankees of the North but with
the eually aressive and expansionist South, even more vile because of the way it
clung to slavery. Suce it to say that Palmerston’s reaction to French intervention
against Mexico—installing an Austrian Hapsburg over a “Mexican Empire” and there-
fore constituting a fundamental and direct challenge to the Monroe Doctrine—was
very positive indeed. As he wrote to Earl Russell the foreign secretary in June 1862,
the establishment of a European monarchy would be “a great blessing for Mexico and
a godsend for all Countries having anything to do with Mexico.” More to the point, it
would also “stop the North Americans whether the Federal or Confederate States in
their projected absorption of Mexico. If the North and South are denitely disunited
and if at the same Time Mexico could be turned into a prosperous Monarchy I do not
know any arrangement that would be more advantageous for us.”67 e events of the
Civil War, including the Emancipation Proclamation, hardly changed the old prime
minister’s views. “e establishment of good and orderly Government in that Coun-
try under the rule of the New Emperor will not only be a real blessing to Mexico, but
a great advantage to Europe,” he wrote to King Leopold II of Belgium, Britain’s closest
ally on the continent (and ueen Victoria’s uncle), in August 1864. anks to the
war, with its rising costs in blood and treasure—and apparent stalemate on both the
Virginia and Georgia fronts—“e United States seem to have come to the conviction
that they are unable to prevent it and had better therefore say as little as possible on
the subject.”68
Interestingly enough, and perhaps not so well known, is that this French-appoint-
ed emperor of Mexico, the Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, was prior to this the
royal commander of the Imperial Austrian Navy. In early August 1861, he traveled in-
66 Lt Dalrymple Fanshawe’s report, 30 November 1841, TNA/ADM (Admiralty) 7-626. e 1860 Report of
the Secreary of War specied that the magnicent pentagonal-sided, multitiered Fort Schuyler, guarding
the outer approaches to the East River on ros Neck, was completed and “essentially ready for its en-
tire armament”; LtCol R. E. DeRussy to John B. Floyd, 14 November 1860, in Senate Executive Documents,
36th Cong., 2d Sess. (Washington: George W. Bowman, 1861), xvii, 258.
67 Palmerston Russell, 19 June 1862, Russell Papers, TNA/PRO 30-22, 22.
68 Palmerston to the King of the Belgians, 28 August 1864, Palmerston Papers, Southampton, Private
Letterbox, 1862 (from 30 April 1862).
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cognito to Great Britain, reuesting permission to visit the new (and already famous)
ocean-going ironclad HMS Warrior (1860), just as it was preparing for sea trials, “and
to the private Yards where iron ships are building.”69 He had already been approached
by Mexican nobles to establish a European crown in their country, and within a few
months, Spain, France, and Britain jointly despatched naval and military forces to
collect debts against the faltering republican government there (the French did not
leave). One wonders how his impression of European naval strength and technologi-
cal advances nally helped convince him to take up Napoleon III’s oer to become a
client-emperor so close to the United States and in the face of the Monroe Doctrine.
But by the 1860s, there was remarkable upheaval both at Britain’s doorstep (on
the continent) and abroad; a time when the mid-Victorians were concerned not only
about another great war not only with France but other powers—namely Russia, Prus-
sia, and the United States. ese were very dierent kinds of powers, reuiring vary-
ing applications of naval and maritime force to cope with. What was good against a
strong maritime state and colonial, imperial power like France might prove useless
against a continental power, especially remote ones like Russia and America. us,
Britain’s iron-hulled yet stately HMS Warrior (1860) was a ship borne of necessary
design compromises, with maximum speed and strategic range the declared aims,
but at the expense of being partially armored—the stern and rudder were especially
exposed to enemy gunre—as well as being very expensive, and too large in that only
Portsmouth naval base at high tide could really accommodate such a super-sized men-
of-war. As Palmerston wrote to the Duke of Somerset—First Lord of the Admiralty—
the gigantic, 9,000-ton ironclad frigate was “a ne yacht, but not an ecient Ship of
War.” Toe to toe against French ironclads like the barue-ried yet fully armored FS
Gloire (1859), he could only imagine “the Warrior and [HMS] Black Prince [1861], with
their two Pasteboard ends knocked to shivers: the underwater compartments lled
with water, everything above waterline smashed to Fragments. . . . Naval Men may
see this Matter in a dierent Light, but to a Simple Landsman this seems to be the
inevitable Course of ings.”70
In this respect, the British Royal Navy could not boast the most powerful war-
ships aoat, especially because they were able to go anywhere. Rival powers like
France then the United States claimed a new form of privileged seapower status; a
more localized naval supremacy based on superior repower and armor protection.
Monitors especially but also mines and other forms of torpedoes similarly threatened
to turn a large seagoing ironclad’s strengths into acute weaknesses, attacking exposed
points both above and below the waterline. e Crimean War (1853–56) already saw
Russia turn to what might be called a modern antiaccess, area-denial (A2/AD) strate-
69 Special Minutes from the Board, 27 July 1861, TNA/ADM 3/269.
70 Palmerston to Somerset, 11 June 1862 and 27 March 1861, Somerset Papers Collection, Aylesbury, Buck-
inghamshire Record Oce, D/RA/A/2A/38 and D/RA/A/2A/37.
U.S. Geostrategic Deterrence and A2/AD
271
, for nullifying the ability of British or French eets to simply steam up to and burn
rich strategic targets like Sevastopol or St. Petersburg.71
In any case, the Civil War saw the United States mobilize its natural and human
resources far beyond anything in its history; the Army, the Navy, and improved coast-
al fortications, all heavily armed.72 Even before the outbreak of hostilities, Scientific
American reported the casting of an experimental new “Mammoth Cannon,” weighing
35-tons—the rst of the famous 15-inch Rodman smoothbores.73 e British reaction
was predominantly defensive, yet with attempts to constrain the conduct of the bel-
ligerent powers if possible. Without a trace of hypocrisy, Palmerston wrote to Russell
in January 1862 that some moral argument might be applied in an eort to prevent
the Union from going through with its stated intention of blocking Charleston Har-
bor and other Southern ports in rebellion with ships lled with stones, thereby per-
manently destroying their value as commercial centers and so be “an Injury to all the
commercial Nations of the World having Intercourse with the North American con-
tinent.” Palmerston insisted that neither England nor France would ever contemplate
such barbarity against one another. Although during the Crimean War, the Russian
capital of St. Petersburg was threatened with naval bombardment—and Washington,
DC, was indeed burned by British amphibious forces in 1814—these were more polit-
ical targets just as military arsenals and naval bases were fair game. But “the French
would never think of blocking up Liverpool or Bristol,” Palmerston was sure, “and we
should never dream of blocking up Bordeaux or Marseilles.” Attacking civilian ware-
houses and private property would be a “proceeding which would revolt the Feelings
of all Mankind in this Age.”74
Unopposed, the Union blockade had meanwhile become the largest, most eec-
tive of its kind in modern history, as ocially reported in early December 1864 by
Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles to President Lincoln.75 Europe now watched
with slowly dawning horror as the grand, slaveholding “Old South” in America—a
71 See, for example, D. Bonner-Smith and A. C. Dewar, eds., Publications of the Navy Records Society, vol.
83, Russian War, 1854—Baltic and Black Sea, Ocial Correspondence (London: Navy Records Society, 1943);
“Operations in the Baltic, 13 March 1856, vol. 141,” Hansard, UK Parliament, 48–119; “ Sir Charles Napier
at Acre, 4 April 1856, vol. 141,” Hansard, UK Parliament, 480–522; and “e Return from the Baltic!,”
Punch 27 (1854): 117.
72 See, for example, Records of the Oce of the Chief of Ordnance, “Summary of Statement of Ord-
nance & Ordnance Stores on Hand in the Forts of the United States, September 30th, 1862,” Record
Group 156, Entry 102, National Archives.
73 Scientific American, 7 January 1860, 26; and Scientific American 2, no. 25, 16 June 1860. Within a week,
this same journal noted the unparalleled danger posed by the new ironclad frigates built and building in
France and Britain, respectively.
74 Palmerston to Russell, 10 January 1862, Russell Papers, TNA/PRO 30-22, 22.
75 Report of the Secreary of the Navy, 38th Cong., 2d Sess. (5 December 1864); Welles declared the Union
blockade of the Confederacy, stretching more than 5,700 kilometers from Virginia to Texas, was “greater
in extent than the whole coast of Europe” from Cape Trafalgar (the southern tip of Spain) to the North
Cape of Norway.
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proud, aristocratic civilization of landed gentry and sharp class divides—rapidly
crumbled into utter ruin on a scale no one had witnessed before. “e end has come,”
one member of South Carolina’s ruling elite wrote gloomily in her diary that Sep-
tember, “We are going to be wiped o the earth.” Before the end of February 1865,
both Charleston, South Carolina, and Wilmington, North Carolina, had fallen, and
she never wanted to see a newspaper again: “Shame, disgrace, beary, all have come
at once, and are hard to bear—the grand smash!” e only ray of hope she still en-
tertained was for sheer self-interest on the part of the Old World powers, “England
must know if the United States of America are triumphant they will tackle her next,
and France must wonder if she will not have to give up Mexico.”76 e recent report
by Welles to Congress seemed to agree, casting Great Britain in particular as Amer-
ica’s archenemy. “Almost every vessel employed in violating the blockade has been
constructed in England with great skill, regardless of cost, and with sole reference to
engaging in this illicit trade,” he stressed, “the prots of which are almost as remuner-
ative as those attending the slave trade.”77
us, in the 1860s, it was the threat of war with the Northern states in particular
that seemed to conrm a sea change in the balance of power dynamic. “If it can be
done, no Time should be lost in preparing for a Storm which as far as political Fore-
casting goes has been foretold as likely to follow the Conclusion of Peace between the
Federals and Confederates,” Palmerston conded to Somerset on 6 September 1864.
And while he had “no doubt that we shall nd Means to send across the Atlantic and
into the St. Lawrence Guns strong enough to send their oating batteries to the Bot-
tom,” he grumbled to the secretary of state for war less than a week later that the Ad-
miralty could only point to “what is to be” in terms of heavy guns “which would smash
and sink the Monitors.”78 By 9 March 1865, opposition members of parliament in the
House of Commons declared the United States was now “the most formidable naval
power in existence.” If Anglo-American relations unfortunately burst into war, then
none of the ships found on Britain’s North America and West Indies stations were
either iron-plated or mounted a gun that could penetrate iron armor. Hence, if its
commander, Admiral Sir James Hope, “were [to be] called on to blockade one of the
North American ports,” admonished Royal Navy Captain Sir John Dalrymple-Hay,
“he could not do so for one single day with such [wooden] ships—a single Monitor
would come out and set re to those under his command.”79
76 Entries for 21 September 1864, 22 and 26 February 1865, Mary Boykin Chestnut, A Diary from Dixie,
eds., Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary (New York: D. Appelton, 1906), 284–85, 305–6, 308.
77 Report of the Secreary of the Navy.
78 Palmerston to Somerset, 6 September 1864, Somerset Papers, Aylesbury, D/RA/A/2A/40; and Palmer-
ston to Ripon, 11 September 1864, Palmerston Papers, Broadlands (University of Southampton), MS 62,
Private Letterbook, April 1862 to March 1865.
79 “Supply—Navy Estimates, 9 March 1865, vol. 177,” Hansard, UK Parliament, 1373–1456; and Capt Sir
John Dalrymple-Hay, RN (3d Baronet), conservative member for Wakeeld (1862–65), and the chairman
of the Iron Plate Committee.
U.S. Geostrategic Deterrence and A2/AD
273
MAP
Map of monitors staged along the East Coast, ca. 1863.
Source: L. Prang and Company, Boston, MA
Fuller
274
Increasingly, America’s newfound power led to direct accusations and threats
against Great Britain for violations of neutrality and at least “moral support” of the
Confederate cause, enough for Lord Richard B. Lyons, the British ambassador in
Washington, to warn Russell that the North was ghting against the South with one
hand and uietly building up for a major maritime war against European powers on
the other. A new imperial commission on Canadian defenses acknowledged the peril
but nevertheless recommended an eually vast and expensive series of armaments by
land and sea that, if they did not deter the Yankees, would at least buy the empire
time while it mustered reinforcements. is led to another round of serious debate
in the House of Commons; William Ewart Gladstone as chancellor of the Excheuer,
and an unruly member in Palmerston’s cabinet, uestioned the need for futile colonial
investments that might provoke an arms race and then war. Was this not an opportu-
nity, he wrote in a cabinet memorandum, “to show whether all that has recently been
said about our calling on the Colonies to bear their full share of military burdens has
a meaning or not, and whether we do or do not mean to alter our system of Colonial
defence with reference to altered circumstances of capability, power, and privilege.”
Nor was it simply about “money,” about selsh Liberal penny-pinching versus “duty.”
e real peril here, Gladstone suested, was in “committing the honour of this coun-
try to the assumption of an attitude, which it may be unable or unwilling permanent-
ly to maintain.”80
is perhaps comes closer to the root of the various problems at work in the
Anglo-American balance of power from at least the announcement of the Monroe
Doctrine in 1823 to the end of the Civil War in 1865. And not without irony, Glad-
stone’s analysis was in many respects preempted by Benjamin Disraeli many years
before when discussing the vexatious uandary over Greytown and the strategic
“neck” of Central America. Here, “the Monroe Doctrine,” he told Parliament, was not
especially “suited to the age in which we live.” e process of what we now call “glo-
balisation” made, in his view, “one great family of the countries of the world.”81 When
John uincy Adams pinned American foreign policy to American political and social
ideals, he only carried on a tradition of American isolationism and exceptionalism
that tended to exacerbate the dierences—not the fundamental similarities—between
peoples. is was something Canning had also hinted at; that as the two great mari-
time (trading) nations on Earth, might they not be the closest of partners rather than
the greatest of rivals in the new epoch of human history?82
Since then there could always be found British and American statesmen who
worried more about power, worried over peace, and in their way helped push the two
transatlantic countries closer to war instead—seapower and the British Royal Navy
80 Defence of Canada, printed memo, condential, 12 July 1864, Palmerston Papers, Southampton,
CAB/183-193.
81 “House of Commons Debate, 16 June 1865, vol. 142,” Hansard, UK Parliament, cols. 1499–513.
82 See H. W. V. Temperley, Life of Canning (London: James Finch, 1905), 179, 181–82.
U.S. Geostrategic Deterrence and A2/AD
275
acting as fulcrum, the “hinge of fate,” to paraphrase Churchill here, tilting either way.
Disraeli therefore also objected to any British policy that was “founded on the idea
that we should regard with extreme jealousy the so-called ‘aressive spirit’ of the
United States” or that was innately “hostile to the legitimate development of their
power.” e annexation of California to him stood as a prime example, asking the
House of Commons “whether the balance of power [had] been injured” by its absorp-
tion into the Union, or “whether there is any event since the discovery of America
which has contributed more to the wealth, and through the wealth, to the power of
this country, than the development of the rich resources of California by means of the
United States?” Good statesmanship in his view was, on the one hand, recognizing
“the necessity of an increase in their power,” while on the other, America needed to
learn that international law, such as it was—and such as it was becoming—would do
more to ensure an inherent need to grow (Manifest Destiny) than winding itself up
in the Monroe Doctrine—mighty yet alone, democratically “free” but imprisoned by
the sea.83
83 “House of Commons Debate, 16 June 1865, vol. 142,” Hansard, UK Parliament, cols. 1499–513.
276
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A Groundswell of Support in the Pacific
Deploying Small Wars Doctrine
amid the Rise of Amphibious Warfare
Evan Zachary Oa
At the outset of the United States’ entry into World War II, the U.S. Navy
faced a vexing problem in the Pacic. With the Pacic Fleet crippled at
Pearl Harbor and facing an immediate material disadvantage compared to
the Imperial Japanese Navy, the United States desperately fought to maintain air and
sea connections with Allies in the Pacic and regain the initiative from Japan. While
the United States mobilized for war, local and indigenous security forces provided an
immediate and critical Allied advantage on key terrain in the Pacic.
is chapter explores how indigenous populations in American Samoa and the
Solomon Islands supported Allied naval forces to regain the initiative from Imperial
Japan during 1941–42. is chapter argues that Allied prewar investments in security
structures, the U.S. Marine Corps’ institutional adeptness at incorporating local se-
curity forces, and, most importantly, the cooperation of local security forces on key
terrain yielded a decisive advantage for the Allies in the early and uncertain days of
the war. By exploring these civil-military interactions during amphibious operations,
this research seeks to illuminate how naval forces can develop advantageous civil en-
vironments on contested shores.
Modest but farsighted Allied investments in local security apparatuses enabled
this local support in the early and uncertain days following America’s entrance in the
Pacic War. In American Samoa, the Department of the Navy rapidly expanded a
prewar initiative to co-opt local support and incorporate indigenous forces into the
A Groundswell of Support in the Pacic
277
defense of the archipelago. rough a Royal Australian Navy initiative begun in the
1920s, indigenous security forces in the Southwest Pacic provided critical intelli-
gence and support to Allied amphibious forces during their rst counteroensive in
Solomon Islands.
Furthermore, the Marine Corps’ adeptness in working alongside foreign secu-
rity forces facilitated cooperation between Allied forces and foreign populations.
rough years of service in Haiti, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, American
Samoa, and the Philippines in the early twentieth century, a generation of Marines
gained insights and experiences on cooperating with foreign populations in contested
environments. ese experiences formed the basis for academic rigor and discourse,
which resulted in a formalized manual and a professional military education program
that guided the Service’s approach to cooperating with foreign security forces.
e rst part of this chapter examines the role of the Samoan people in securing
their islands and contributing to sea control along the vital routes between Austra-
lia and the United States. First, the author will discuss how the U.S. Navy’s prewar
administration of American Samoa aected wartime cooperation with the popula-
tion. is section will then detail the U.S. Navy’s creation of Samoan naval forces,
including the establishment of the Fita-Fita Guard from the naval militia and later
the 1st Samoan Battalion of the Marine Corps Reserve, and how the Marine Corps’
experience in small wars inuenced the development of these local forces. Finally, this
section will explore the Samoan population’s wider support for the Allied war eort
as Naval Station Tutuila in Pago Pago Harbor expanded into an advanced naval base
in 1942.
e second section of this chapter will explore how and why Solomon islanders
supported the Allies during amphibious operations on Guadalcanal. Research will
examine preinvasion structures and organizations in the Solomon Islands, to include
the British Solomon Islands Protectorate Defence Force and the Royal Australian
Navy’s coastwatcher program. is section will then detail how and why Solomon
islanders informed Allied operations, resupplied Allied forces, rescued Allied avia-
tors, protected local populations, and disrupted Japanese forces, even on neighboring
islands, aer the Allies concluded operations on Guadalcanal.
AMERICAN SAMOA
AND THE FITAFITA GUARD
As the United States acuired overseas territories aer the Spanish-American War,
the U.S. Navy assumed greater responsibility to govern these outposts. Correspond-
ingly, the Marine Corps assumed a greater role in securing these overseas naval bases.
As personnel and funding uctuated during the following years, the Department of
the Navy applied novel approaches to secure these bases and, in locations such as
Guam and American Samoa, govern the local population.
On 6 July 1900, the U.S. Navy authorized Commander Benjamin F. Tilley, gover-
Ota
278
nor and commandant of Naval Station Tutuila, to enlist 58 Samoans and establish the
Samoan Naval Militia.1 Two years later, the U.S. Navy authorized the formation of a
local band, comprised of a U.S. Navy bandmaster, a U.S. Navy musician, and 14 Sa-
moans.2 is collective formation would soon become known as the Fita-Fita Guard
and Band, named aer the Samoan word for a soldier.
Marines assigned to Naval Station Tutuila soon took on an additional role in
securing the island, including training and leading Samoans to defend their island.
Although the Fita-Fitas enlisted as landsmen in the U.S. Navy, a Marine rst ser-
geant led and drilled the organization.3 Together, Marines and the Fita-Fita Guard
1 Capt T. F. Darden, USN (Ret), Historical Sketch of the Naval Administration of the Government of American
Samoa, April 17, 1900–July 1, 1951 (Washington, DC: Department of the Navy, 1952), 1.
2 Darden, Historical Sketch of the Naval Administration of the Government of American Samoa, April 17, 1900–
July 1, 1951, 2.
3 1stSgt Cecil R. Bates, “e Fita-Fita Guard,” Leatherneck, October 1940, 6–9. e term landsman refers
the lowest rank of the U.S. Navy in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It also referred to new
recruits with little or no experience at sea.
FIGURE
1stSgt Nelson Huron of the U.S. Marine Corps and Fita-Fita Guards, Tutuila, Samoa, ca. 1925.
Beginning in 1918, Marine rst sergeants commanded the Fita-Fita Guard, and Samoans
referred to this lone Marine as “Chief of the Fita-Fitas."
Source: Bain News Service, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
A Groundswell of Support in the Pacic
279
and Band carried out a wide range of duties on behalf of the Navy administration.
In addition to their primary duty as guards of the naval station, Fita-Fitas served as
radio operators, corpsmen, reghters, drivers, cooks, yeomen, and augmented the
crews of naval vessels anchored o Tutuila.4
e Fita-Fita Guard and Band became a means for social mobility in the U.S.
Naval administration, and Fita-Fitas accordingly gained prominence in Samoan so-
ciety. Fita-Fitas featured prominently in evening parades and traveled throughout
the Pacic for organized sports. Four Fita-Fitas were local chiefs, and one went on to
be a district governor.5 Material benets also accompanied social benets. Fita-Fitas
shopped in the Navy exchange, lived in well-made barracks, dined with their Amer-
ican counterparts in the mess, and generated remittances for families dispersed
throughout the islands.6
e Fita-Fitas gained prestige in the community and established a reputation for
loyalty and devotion among the U.S. Navy on which future generations of Samoans
would build. Samoans deemed the Fita-Fitas mamalu o le malo o le malo, the “prestige
of the government,” due to the members of Samoan royalty in their ranks and the
position Fita-Fitas held within the Navy administration.7 U.S. Marine First Sergeant
Cecil R. Bates, commander of the Fita-Fita Guard, noted that the Samoans in his
charge were “an excellent supplement to the U.S. Navy in Samoa.” More importantly,
the Fita-Fitas were important interlocuters between the Navy and the community. As
First Sergeant Bates noted, Fita-Fitas were “acutely attuned to every happening and
event on the entire island,” and that “news travels faster between them than can be
despatched [sic] over our up-to-date communication systems.”8 Samoans, Fita-Fitas,
and Marines would increasingly cooperate during the course of the U.S. Navy’s ad-
ministration of the islands.
SMALL WARS
As the U.S. Navy governed American Samoa, the Marine Corps undertook numer-
ous campaigns in Central and South America to stabilize friendly governments and
counter insurgent forces. Collectively known as small wars, these campaigns indoctri-
nated a generation of Marines with the lessons of operating with and amongst foreign
populations.9 In this capacity, Marines developed prociency in recruiting, training,
4 Darden, Historical Sketch of the Naval Administration of the Government of American Samoa, April 17, 1900–
July 1, 1951, 2–3.
5 Darden, Historical Sketch of the Naval Administration of the Government of American Samoa, April 17, 1900–
July 1, 1951, 1.
6 Darden, Historical Sketch of the Naval Administration of the Government of American Samoa, April 17, 1900–
July 1, 1951, 3.
7 Toeutu Faaleava, “Fitata: Samoan Landsmen in the United States Navy, 1900–1951” (PhD diss., Univer-
sity of California, Berkeley, 2003), 163.
8 Bates, “e Fita-Fita Guard,” 6–9.
9 For more on small wars concepts at the time, see U.S. Marine Corps, Small Wars Manual (Washington,
DC: Government Printing Oce, 1940).
Ota
280
and integrating local security forces in combined operations. e Marine Corps’ expe-
rience in Samoa, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and numerous locations
around the world generated invaluable lessons for the greatest power competition of
the modern era.
Marines recruited, trained and fought alongside constabularies during succes-
sive campaigns in Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic between 1915 and
1933. In an organizational maneuver employed in all three countries, Marine ocers
and noncommissioned ocers accepted commissions in these foreign constabularies
while maintaining their duties—and pay—in the U.S. Marine Corps.
e Marine Corps’ rst major foray into small wars occurred in Nicaragua. Aer
decades of smaller interventions, the Navy and Marines landed in force in August
1912. Major Smedley D. Butler landed his Marine battalion of 13 ocers and 341 enlist-
ed on 14 August 1912.10 Lieutenant Alexander A. Vandegri was one of the company
grade ocers in Major Butler’s battalion.11 Aer defeating the revolutionary forces,
the Marine battalion departed Nicaragua and a detachment of Marines remained in
the embassy at Managua.
Marines also landed in Haiti soon aer their rst major intervention in Nica-
ragua. On 28 July 1915, 340 Marines and sailors from the USS Washington (ACR 11)
landed at Port-au-Prince to secure the city.12 Soon aer, in 1916, the Marine Corps
organized 250 ocers and 2,500 enlistees into the Gendarmerie d’Haiti.13 Lieutenant
Colonel Smedley Butler again led a Marine battalion and simultaneously served as the
major general commandant of the gendarmerie.14 Lieutenant Vandegri again served
in Butler’s battalion and also served in the gendarmerie. In his latter role, Vandegri
recruited and trained two companies of constabulary with the aid of a U.S. Marine
uent in French.15
On the eastern half of Hispaniola, the island containing the modern-day coun-
tries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, Marines undertook a mission similar to
that in Haiti. On 7 April 1917, the U.S. military governor of Santo Domingo, Rear
Admiral Harry S. Knapp, authorized the formation of a constabulary to consist of no
more than 88 ocers and 1,200 enlistees.16 e constabulary, renamed the Policía Na-
10 Bernard C. Nalty, e United Sates Marines in Nicaragua (Washington, DC: Historical Branch, G-3
Division, Headuarters Marine Corps, 1958), 7.
11 Nalty, e United Sates Marines in Nicaragua, 7.
12 “US Occupation of Haiti, 1915–1934,” Naval History and Heritage Command, 29 July 2020. e USS
Washington would be renamed Seattle in November 1916 so that Washington could be used on a new
Colorado-class battleship.
13 “US Occupation of Haiti, 1915–1934,” Naval History and Heritage Command.
14 Travis Prendergast, “Assessment of the American-led Constabulary during the American Occupation
of Haiti from 1915–1934 in Comparison to Later Occupations,” Small Wars Journal, 16 September 2019.
15 Robert B. Asprey, Once a Marine: e Memoirs of General A. A. Vandegri, U.S.M.C. (New York: W. W.
Norton, 1964), 49.
16 Capt Stephen M. Fuller, USMCR, and Graham A. Cosmas, Marines in the Dominican Republic, 1916–1924
(Washington, DC: History and Museums Division, Headuarters Marine Corps, 1974), 46.
A Groundswell of Support in the Pacic
281
cional Dominicana (PND) in 1921, grew to a maximum strength of 800 enlistees under
the leadership of Marine lieutenant colonel Presley M. Rixey Jr.17 Lieutenant Colonel
Rixey raised the stature and strength of the policía by establishing two district train-
ing centers and a school for PND ocers. Lieutenant Colonel Rixey charged First
Lieutenant Edward A. Fellowes to lead ocers’ school, but Fellowes knew no Spanish
and was unfamiliar with the culture. To accomplish his mission, First Lieutenant Fel-
lowes solicited cultural and language expertise. An American-born PND major raised
in Santo Domingo aided Fellowes by communicating with the junior ocers in their
native Spanish language.18 e combined team of Marines and Dominicans proved
eective. Between 1917 and 1921, the Guardia Nacional Dominicana conducted 5,500
patrols and killed 320 enemy ghters at the cost of 27 guardia.19
Marines shared their expertise in ghting small wars, and soon the Marine Corps
captured these lessons in manuals, textbooks, and professional military education.
Major Earl H. Ellis was one of the rst to write about these small wars in his article,
17 Fuller and Cosmas, Marines in the Dominican Republic, 1916–1924, 46.
18 Fuller and Cosmas, Marines in the Dominican Republic, 1916–1924, 49.
19 Fuller and Cosmas, Marines in the Dominican Republic, 1916–1924, 48.
FIGURE
A platoon of the Guardia Nacional Dominicana conducts an euipment inspection.
Source: Dominican Republic Papers, Reference Branch, Marine Corps History Division
Ota
282
“Bush Brigades,” published in the Marine Corps Gazette in 1921.20 Even in these early
writings, Ellis recognized the importance of the local population to generate intel-
ligence for military operations. “A ying column should never be sent into the bush
unless amply provided with CASH,” Ellis stated, because “with it can be purchased
knowledge of the terrain and movements of the enemy, and food.”21 Furthermore, Ellis
recognized the importance of good relations with the population in order to achieve
military objectives. “When Uncle Sam occupies the territory of a small nation,” Ellis
observed, “he wants to interfere as little as possible with the lives of the people–in
fact, he wants to be considered the good angel.”22 Marine ocers soon grappled with
the issue of encountering foreign populations in the conduct of military operations.
e academic discourse in Marine Corps professional publications soon reached
the operating forces. As the campaign against César Augusto Sandino and his army
in Nicaragua persisted, the Marines returned to develop a more enduring presence.
On 8 May 1927, President Diaz of Nicaragua reuested Marines to assist in the de-
velopment of a local constabulary, the Guardia Nacional de Nicaragua.23 e Marines
readied the rst company of the guardia for duty by 1 July, and this company served
in combat by the end of the month.24 e guardia dispersed throughout the country
to maintain security, with a company assigned to each of the country’s political de-
partments and platoons and suads assigned to signicant towns and villages.25 By the
end of September 1929, the Guardia Nacional consisted of 1,846 members organized
into three battalions.26
Harnessing the increasing civil-military cooperation between U.S. forces and
the local population, Marine captain Merritt A. Edson led one of the Corps’ most
famous engagements of the Nicaragua campaign. e “Coco Patrol,” as it would be-
come known, enacted many of Lieutenant Colonel Ellis’ recommendations for “ying
columns” of inland patrols by “Bush Brigades.” While the Coco Patrol would gain
Edson fame, his actions following the initial patrol demonstrated his savviness oper-
ating with local forces and cooperating with the local population. Aer establishing
a defense at the critical river junction of Poteca, Edson integrated local scouts into
the head of his patrols, leveraged the little existing Spanish language capability in his
Marines, hired local laborers and informants, and even enlisted the aid of mission-
20 Richard C. McMonagle, “e Small Wars Manual and Military Operations Other an War” (master’s
thesis, U.S. Army and General Sta College, 1996), 47.
21 E. H. Ellis, “Bush Brigade,” Marine Corps Gazette 6, no. 1 (March 1921): 1–15; and uoted in Brett Fried-
man, “e Bush Wars: Ellis on Population-Centric Counterinsurgency,” War on the Rocks, 30 March 2015.
Emphasis in original.
22 Friedman, “e Bush Wars.”
23 Nalty, e United Sates Marines in Nicaragua, 15.
24 Nalty, e United Sates Marines in Nicaragua, 15.
25 Nalty, e United Sates Marines in Nicaragua, 15.
26 Nalty, e United Sates Marines in Nicaragua, 28.
A Groundswell of Support in the Pacic
283
aries in his ght against the Sandinistas.27 Edson’s approach was so successful that 20
local families reuested to move to the secure areas around the Marine encampment
at Poteca.28 Aer years of overseas duty, Captain Edson returned to the United States
to interject the lessons gained from the Coco Patrol into the growing discourse about
small wars.
e Marine Corps’ professional military education also reected the growing im-
portance of small wars to the Service’s core identity. e 1934–35 Company Ocers’
School curriculum dedicated 172 hours of instruction to landing operations, 94 hours
to small wars, and 71 hours to Spanish language out of a total of 1,056 hours.29 e
incorporation of Spanish language training for all students undoubtedly reected the
importance of cooperating with populations in Nicaragua and Santo Domingo and
the lack of organic language expertise within the Marine Corps. Although landing
operations increasingly dominated the curriculum of Marine Corps schools as the in-
ternational security situation deteriorated in the late 1930s, this instruction on small
wars impacted the cadre of ocers who would later serve as the basis for an enlarged
27 Jon T. Homan, Once a Legend: “Red Mike” Edson of the Marine Raiders (Novato, CA: Presidio Press,
1994), 88.
28 Homan, Once a Legend, 88–89.
29 McMonagle, “e Small Wars Manual and Military Operations Other an War,” 56.
FIGURE
LtCol Earl H. Ellis and compatriots in the Dominican Republic, ca. 1919,
during his eorts to form the Guardia Nacional.
Source: Earl H. “Pete” Ellis Collection (COLL/3249) at the Archives Branch, Marine Corps History Division
Ota
284
Marine Corps. Only 1,400 ocers and 18,000 enlisted Marines comprised the Corps
of 1939; but by July 1942, the Service nearly doubled in size.30
Although the study of amphibious landings increasingly dominated the curric-
ulum of Marine Corps schools as the war in Europe approached, the Service did not
discard the lessons gained through small wars. Instead, Commandant omas Hol-
comb assigned a team to select team to revise Small Wars Manual. Colonel William
H. Rupertus led this doctrine review team that comprised of Major Merritt Edson,
Major Vernon M. Guymon, and Major Ernest E. Linsert.31 Two Marines of the com-
mittee, in particular, distinguished themselves in small wars and would later feature
prominently in Marine Corps history. Colonel Rupertus served in Haiti during 1919
with the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade, as an inspector of constabulary for the Gen-
darmerie d’Haiti, and later as the chief of police in Port-au-Prince.32 Major Edson dis-
30 Aaron B. O’Connell, Underdogs: e Making of the Modern Marine Corps (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2012), 29.
31 McMonagle, “e Small Wars Manual and Military Operations Other an War,” 59.
32 “Major General William H. Rupertus, USMC (Deceased),” History Division, Marine Corps University,
accessed 29 September 2023.
FIGURE
1stLt Lewis “Chesty” Puller, uartermaster of the 1st Mobile Battalion of the Guardia Nacional
de Nicaragua, with William A. Lee and two Nicaraguan Guardia soldiers. Puller would command
the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, during the Guadalcanal campaign.
Source: ocial U.S. Marine Corps photo
A Groundswell of Support in the Pacic
285
tinguished himself in the 1928–29 campaign against the Sandino rebels in Nicaragua,
where he received the Navy Cross for an action against the rebels in which “superior
forces of bandits were driven from their prepared positions and severe losses inicted
upon them.”33
e Marines consolidated the best practices in the Small Wars Manual, released
in 1940. e Small Wars Manual provided Marines a broad framework and approach
for interacting with civil populations, raising local security forces, and incorporating
local security forces into military operations. e manual included considerations
such as how to employ “mobile columns and ying columns,” the “establishment of
advanced bases inland,” the development of “native troops,” and cooperation with
“prominent native civilians.”34 e Small Wars Manual encapsulated the academic the-
ories of Ellis and best practices of Edson.
ese expeditions in small wars generated lessons that the Marines carried with
them into World War II. e lessons of co-opting local leaders, cooperating with local
33 “Major General Merritt Austin Edson, USMC (Deceased),” History Division, Marine Corps Universi-
ty, accessed 29 September 2023.
34 Small Wars Manual, 3–5.
FIGURE
BGen William H. Rupertus (le) and Col Robert C. Kilmartin (right) pose at Tulagi, Solomon Islands,
aer Marines captured the islands from the Japanese.
Source: ayer Soule Collection (COLL/2266) at the Archives Branch, Marine Corps History Division
Ota
286
populations, and building collaborative frameworks carried over into high-intensity
conict. When Marines needed to ght alongside allies and gain support on contest-
ed terrain, they leveraged their doctrine and years of experience within their ranks.
ESTABLISHMENT
OF THE ST SAMOAN BATTALION
e cadre of ocers that retained small wars expertise would be critical as the Ma-
rine Corps rapidly expanded to ght a major war. Alexander Vandegri, then as-
sistant to the Commandant, observed that “expansion ruled our days beginning in
the autumn of 1939.”35 In 1940, the Marine Corps mobilized its reserve to meet the
growing threat.36
e Marine Corps’ mobilization eorts focused on rapidly generating combat
power in the Pacic. e Marine Corps formed the 7th Defense Battalion on 16 De-
cember 1940 specically for the defense of Tutuila.37 Unlike the previously formed
defense battalions already employed in the Pacic, the 7th Defense Battalion specif-
ically included a detachment to train locally recruited Samoans who may be needed
in the island’s defense.38
Subseuently, the Commandant established the 1st Samoan Battalion, Marine
Corps Reserve, on 1 July 1941 in Pago Pago.39 On 16 August 1941, the rst Samoan,
Sianava Robert Sena’Aetasi, enlisted in the battalion.40 e 1st Samoan Battalion’s or-
ganization reected years of accumulated practice to rapidly establish security forces
in Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.41 Active duty Marine ocers com-
manded the 1st Samoan Battalion and each of its three rie companies, while active
duty Marine sergeants served as platoon commanders. Each platoon contained three
rie suads led by a Samoan Marine corporal. e battalion also contained a .50-
caliber machine gun group of 59 Samoan Marines and an artillery battery of 6-inch
guns manned by 45 Samoan Marines. e 7th Defense Battalion developed the Samo-
an artillery battery, and 45 Samoan Marines were reciprocally assigned to the 7th De-
fense Battalion.42 While the 7th Defense Battalion was the rst and most inuential
unit to serve alongside the 1st Samoan Battalion, it would be the rst of many Marine
units assigned to Samoa as war approached.
e attack on Pearl Harbor laid bare Samoa’s vulnerability to Japanese attack.
35 Asprey, Once a Marine, 92.
36 Asprey, Once a Marine, 92.
37 LtCol Frank O. Hough, Maj Verle E. Ludwig, Henry I. Shaw Jr., Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, vol. 1,
History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II (Washington, DC: Historical Branch, G-3 Division,
Headuarters Marine Corps, 1970), 67.
38 Hough, Ludwig, and Shaw, Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, 67.
39 Gordon L. Rottman, U.S. Marine Corps World War II Order of Battle; Ground and Air Units in the Pacific
War, 1939–1945 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002), 73.
40 Hough, Ludwig, and Shaw, Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, 68.
41 Jack A. Lewis, “e Forgotten Battalion,” Leatherneck, March 2005, 28–32.
42 Hough, Ludwig, and Shaw, Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, 68.
A Groundswell of Support in the Pacic
287
Aer the post-attack change of leadership in the Pacic Fleet, Admiral Ernest J. King
tasked Admiral Chester W. Nimitz with two primary missions: “covering and hold-
ing the Hawaii-Midway line” in the Central Pacic and “maintaining communica-
tions between the west coast and Australia, chiey by covering, securing and holding
the Hawaii-Samoa line.”43 Admiral King’s concerns were valid; the Imperial Japanese
43 Hough, Ludwig, and Shaw, Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, 84.
FIGURE
A private rst class of the 1st Samoan Battalion in dress uniform, ca. January 1944. e Marine Corps
emblem and his chevron are visible at the lower edge of his lava lava.
Source: ocial U.S. Navy photo now in the collections of the National Archives
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Army planned amphibious assaults of “strategic points around the New Caledonia,
Fiji, and Samoa Islands” to isolate Australia.44
e Imperial Japanese Navy tested the Hawaii-Samoa line soon aer the attack
on Pearl Harbor. On the night of 11 January 1942, a Japanese submarine red on Sa-
moa with its deck gun, which wounded one Samoan supporting Tutuila’s defenses,
Tauiatu Fo’isia.45 e U.S. military accordingly rushed reinforcements to this key ter-
rain. By the end of January 1942, the 2d Marine Brigade, created specically to defend
Samoa, arrived in Tutuila. e brigade was the rst American expeditionary force to
depart the United States since the declaration of war.
Due to the severity of the threat to Samoa, Commandant Holcomb established
the 3d Marine Brigade for the defense of Samoa and directed the 1st Marine Division
to send the “best men, weapons, and euipment” to the new formation. e Com-
mandant intended the 3d Marine Brigade to be “as combat ready as possible” for
the mission ahead.46 is prioritization of Samoa’s defenses came at no small cost to
the 1st Marine Division. Major General Vandegri, recently appointed commanding
general, recalled that “this brigade, built around the Seventh Marines (reinforced),
withdrew from the division a disproportionate number of ocers, noncommissioned
ocers and men trained in amphibious warfare.”47
e growing number of Samoan enlistees, however, helped oset the personnel ax
required to defend Samoa. Both the Fia-Fia Guard and the 1st Samoan Batalion
rapidly expanded, and by January 1943, 515 Samoans enlisted in the batalion.48
With growing organic capacity for Samoa’s defense, the 7th Marine Regiment
transferred to Guadalcanal to rejoin the 1st Marine Division at the epicenter of
the Pacific War and the 3d Marine Brigade was subsequently disbanded on 8 No-
vember 1943.49
e Department of the Navy’s investment in Samoa, and especially the Marine
Corps, yielded and outsized the return during the uncertain early months aer Amer-
ica’s entry into World War II. For the persistent but relatively modest investment of
one Marine rst sergeant who cultivated indigenous Samoan forces in the Fita-Fita
Guard, the U.S. Marine Corps was able to grow a force of more than 500 Marines
when critically needed. More importantly, this investment resulted in the Marines
being able to favorably shape environments conducive to advanced naval bases in
44 John Miller Jr., Guadalcanal: e First Oensive, U.S. Army in World War II: e War in the Pacic
(Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1995), 5.
45 Faaleava, “Fitata,” 200.
46 Asprey, Once a Marine, 100.
47 Final Report on Guadalcanal Operation, Phase I (San Francisco, CA: Headuarters, 1st Marine Division,
1943), 1.
48 Lewis, “e Forgotten Battalion,” 28–32.
49 “3D MEB Lineage,” 3rdmeb.marines.mil, accessed 15 December 2023.
A Groundswell of Support in the Pacic
289
the Pacic. is modest investment during the course of decades yielded signicant
results when the Marine Corps needed every servicemember it could muster to a
counteroensive against the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy.
COASTWATCHERS
As the United States reinforced its position in the southwest Pacic, so did Australia.
While U.S. Marines captured best practices from their small wars and developed new
methods for amphibious assaults, the Royal Australian Navy launched a new initia-
tive to secure the northern approaches to their country.
rough an initiative begun in 1921, the Royal Australian Navy established a
network of observers across northern Australia to report on maritime activities.
is network of observers expanded into the Southwest Pacic aer the outbreak
of war in Europe. Ocially codenamed Operation Ferdinand aer the mythical bull
who watched rather than fought, the members of this program came to be known
as the coastwatchers. More than 1,000 coastwatchers screened a 4,023-kilometer arc
FIGURE
e Fita-Fita Guard of American Samoa, 27 April 1943. e guard had been part
of the U.S. Navy since 1900 and rapidly expanded to meet wartime demands.
Source: ocial U.S. Navy photo, now in the collections of the National Archives
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290
across Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu by December 1941.50
Contrary to their fairy-tale namesake, many Coastwatchers would ght in addition
to observing.
District ocer Martin Clemens landed at Guadalcanal on 12 February 1942, and
soon became the senior—and only—British government representative on the island.51
Clemens and nine police ocers formed the cadre of the British Solomon Islands
Protectorate Defence Force (BSIPDF) resisting the Japanese invasion on Guadalca-
nal.52 Sergeant Major Jacob C. Vouza, a retired chief of the armed constabulary on
the neighboring island of Malaita, joined the cadre in May 1942.53 Vouza, originally
from the village of Tadhimboko on Guadalcanal, would be a key leader in the team
of coastwatchers and scouts. By August 1942, 23 coastwatcher stations observed and
reported enemy actions from the Solomon Islands.54
GUADALCANAL
e Marines who landed on Guadalcanal were uniuely prepared to incorporate the
coastwatchers and members of the BSIPDF into their operations. When the 1st Ma-
rine Division landed in the Solomon Islands on 7 August 1942, it carried a wealth ex-
perience operating within foreign civilian populations and ghting alongside foreign
security forces. e division commanding general, division assistant commanding
general, division chief of sta, division operations ocer, division logistics ocer,
one of two infantry regiment commanding ocers, and ve of eight infantry bat-
talion commanders had served in either Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua,
or multiple other small wars. ese leaders likely did not arrive on Guadalcanal by
chance. Vandegri noted that senior Marines “not only knew every ocer in the
Marine Corps but knew a great deal about them. From time to time we erred in their
placement; generally we did not.”55
Major General Vandegri, commanding general of the 1st Marine Division, had
years of experience cooperating with indigenous forces. In fact, as a Marine lieutenant
in Haiti, Vandegri accepted a commission as a major in the Haitian Gendarmerie.56
Vandegri raised and trained two companies of gendarmerie by using his French
language skills, along with those of a uent Marine sergeant and the interpretation
of a savvy recruit.57 Vandegri observed that his companies “behaved splendidly,” and
50 Anna Annie Kwai, Solomon Islanders in World War II: An Indigenous Perspective (Acton: Australian Na-
tional University Press, 2017), 28, http://doi.org/10.22459/SIWWII.12.2017.
51 Donald Richter, Where the Sun Stood Still: e Untold Story of Sir Jacob Vouza and the Guadalcanal Cam-
paign (Calabasas, CA: Toucan Publishing, 1992), 75.
52 Martin Clemens, Alone on Guadalcanal: A Coastwatcher’s Story (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press,
1998), 46; and Richter, Where the Sun Stood Still, 75.
53 Richter, Where the Sun Stood Still, 50, 76.
54 Kwai, Solomon Islanders in World War II, 29.
55 Asprey, Once a Marine, 93.
56 Asprey, Once a Marine, 49.
57 Asprey, Once a Marine, 49.
A Groundswell of Support in the Pacic
291
even recalled one gendarme who saved his company commander’s life at the expense
of a severed arm.58 Vandegri later observed “most of us proted from our long years
in Haiti. Whether in the Gendarmerie or the brigade, Marines learned valuable les-
sons in jungle and guerilla [sic] warfare. We learned many cunning and wily tricks the
hard way, but we also invented many ourselves.”59 e Marine leaders’ accumulated
knowledge in small wars would soon pay dividends in one of the most crucial am-
phibious landings of the Pacic War.
Although the 1st Marine Division contained veterans skilled in leveraging human
networks, these leaders critically lacked an understanding of the operating environ-
ment and their enemy. Prior to the landings, division intelligence ocer Lieutenant
Colonel Frank B. Goettge solicited information of the landing beaches and coastal
58 Asprey, Once a Marine, 50.
59 Asprey, Once a Marine, 58.
FIGURE
Solomon Islanders guide a Marine Raider patrol across Guadalcanal, ca. 1942, which was critical to the
2d Raider Battalion’s patrol, led by LtCol Evans F. Carlson, that decisively defeated Japanese resistance.
Source: ayer Soule Collection (COLL/2266) at the Archives Branch, Marine Corps History Division
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terrain from prewar inhabitants of Guadalcanal. Although this human intelligence
lled a critical knowledge shortfall by providing rough bathymetric data for the ini-
tial landings, it was not perfect. e Marines’ sources mistook the Ilu River for the Te-
naru River, for example, and the mistake remained in the Marines’ terminolo and
maps for the remainder of the operation. Aerial surveillance produced photographic
images of Guadalcanal, but weather inhibited the images so greatly that, when con-
verted to topographic maps, many areas were listed simply as “cloud.”60 Prisoners of
war captured early in the landings proved few and unhelpful, and a raid to capture
more Japanese soldiers resulted in the loss of the division intelligence ocer, one of
the critical Marine Japanese linguists, the 5th Marine Division’s intelligence ocer,
and most of the division intelligence section.61
e diculty of patrolling compounded the Marines’ lack of intelligence of the
environment and enemy activity. Patrolling, always a dicult proposition, was even
more dicult on Guadalcanal due to the dense vegetation that masked terrain fea-
tures and even sunlight. As one Marine ocer later stated, “If I were training my unit
again, I would really have some high-class patrol training. I would do everything with
these patrols I could possibly think of to include losing them and making them go
across country without maps or compasses.”62
On 10 August, however, Allied fortunes changed when the coastwatchers linked
up with the newly arrived Marines. While returning a downed airman to the Allies,
Sergeant Major Vouza rst contacted Company G, 2d Battalion, 1st Marine Regi-
ment, who were defending along the Ilu River to the east.63 Captain Martin Clemens
soon linked up with the Marines, and Major General Vandegri assigned Clemens
with the responsibility for “all matters of native administration and of intelligence
outside the perimeter.”64 Clemens uickly integrated into the division intelligence
section (D-2) to manage collections from the coastwatchers and local population.
Lieutenant Colonel Edmond J. Buckley, division intelligence chief, and Captain
Clemens devised a plan to maximize the contributions of the local scouts. e D-2
plan divided Guadalcanal into four sectors and assigned armed constabulary mem-
bers to each section. Captain Clemens charged Sergeant Major Vouza and 18 armed
constabulary members with scouting the Volanavua area east of the Marine defenses.
Sergeant Langabea and 17 armed constabulary took charge of Aola, farther east.65 Both
Vouza and Langabea would regularly meet with village leaders to gather information
and stay abreast of recent developments. e D-2 plan adhered to the key tenets of
the Small Wars Manual, which advised that “native troops are especially valuable for
60 Merrill B. Twining, No Bended Knee: e Battle for Guadalcanal, ed. Neil Carey (New York: Presidio
Press, 1996).
61 Clemens, Alone on Guadalcanal, 17–18.
62 Fighting on Guadalcanal, FMFRP 12-110 (Washington, DC: Department of the Navy, 1991), 38.
63 Clemens, Alone on Guadalcanal, 19.
64 Clemens, Alone on Guadalcanal, 199–200.
65 Richter, Where the Sun Stood Still, 214.
A Groundswell of Support in the Pacic
293
reconnaissance and security missions,” and “prominent and well-informed civilians
will furnish valuable information.”66
By 12 August, Sergeant Major Vouza guided his rst Marine patrol, led by Second
Lieutenant John J. Jachym of Company A, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines.67 e scouts
guided the Marines through unfamiliar and unforgiving territory. e scouts, with
their intimate knowledge of the local terrain and population, played a key role in
Marine patrols. Major General Vandegri described the reports derived from these
patrols as “rst rate intelligence.”68
e Marines on Guadalcanal increasingly turned to the coastwatchers and armed
constabulary to develop the enemy situation. On 20 August, Captain Charles H.
Brush led a patrol of 50 Marines from Company A, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, east
of the battalion defense to gain intelligence on potential threats.69 Danial Pule, the
senior indigenous coastwatcher and Captain Clemens’ second in command, guided
the Brush patrol with three other scouts.70 e patrol killed 16 Japanese ocers and
soldiers in a sharp skirmish.71 More importantly, the Brush patrol gained valuable
intelligence that indicated an imminent Japanese attack on the Marine defenses near
the Ilu River.
at same day, Sergeant Major Vouza was scouting near Koli Point, also east of
the Marine defenses. Japanese forces, however, discovered Vouza and captured him.
Although tied to a tree, laid on a red ant nest, beaten with rie butts, interrogated,
and bayonetted in the abdomen, chest, and throat, Sergeant Major Vouza did not
divulge any information about the Marines. Le for dead, Vouza draed himself
toward friendly lines.72
Private William Bewley of Company G recognized the wounded Vouza and im-
mediately moved him to the battalion command post.73 ere, Sergeant Major Vouza
relayed his information about the Japanese force to Lieutenant Colonel Edwin A.
Pollock, commanding ocer, 2d Battalion, 1st Marine Division. Lieutenant Colonel
Pollock, another veteran of the Coco River patrol led by then-Captain Edson in Nic-
aragua, immediately recognized the importance of Sergeant Major Vouza’s message
and warned his defenses of an imminent Japanese attack.74 e subseuent engage-
ment, the Battle of the Tenaru (21 August 1942), would be one of the key battles in the
Guadalcanal campaign.
e Marines’ nascent friendship with local scouts likely saved Sergeant Major
66 Small Wars Manual, 12.
67 Richter, Where the Sun Stood Still, 165.
68 Asprey, Once a Marine, 114.
69 Richter, Where the Sun Stood Still, 174.
70 Clemens, Alone on Guadalcanal, 206.
71 Richter, Where the Sun Stood Still, 175.
72 Richter, Where the Sun Stood Still, 180.
73 Richter, Where the Sun Stood Still, 180.
74 “In Memoriam,” Fortitudine 12, no, 2, Fall 1982, 15.
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Vouza’s life on the night of 20 August. Soon, the local population would save many
Marines through their timely and accurate reporting. As Vandegri later comment-
ed, “anks to Sergeant Major Vouza we now held a pretty good idea of the enemy
force.”75 With an information advantage gained through the cooperation and support
of the local population, the Marines outmaneuvered the Imperial Japanese Army.
e scouts’ reporting in August and September 1942 drove one of the most deci-
sive actions of the Guadalcanal campaign. Aer the scouts reported enemy activity
near Tadhimboko, east of the Marine perimeter, Major General Vandegri decided
to conduct a reconnaissance in force.76 Vandegri chose a fellow small wars veteran
to lead the mission.
Lieutenant Colonel Merritt Edson, who assisted in writing the Small Wars Manual
in 1939, led the 1st Raider Battalion at the time. Having recently rejoined the division
aer the successful amphibious assault on Tulagi, Edson undertook the task of recon-
noitering the reported enemy activity. On 8 September, with Sergeant Major Vouza
75 Asprey, Once a Marine, 141.
76 Asprey, Once a Marine, 150.
FIGURE
Cpl Wembling sports a captured Japanese sword and canteen as he poses with two local police.
Source: ayer Soule Collection (COLL/2266) at the Archives Branch, Marine Corps History Division
A Groundswell of Support in the Pacic
295
guiding the U.S. Navy ships, the 1st Raider Battalion conducted an amphibious land-
ing at Taivu Point.77 Edson reported the force “landed in the rear echelon of a sizeable
[Japanese] force.”78 With two Solomon Islands scouts, Selea and Olorere, in the lead
echelon, 1st Raider Battalion drove o the rear guard of the Japanese Army’s force
led by General Kiyotake Kawaguchi.79 Coastwatcher Dick C. Horton, who formerly
served in the Taivu Point area, accompanied Edson’s ocers to the location of the
Japanese headuarters.80 e documents captured by the raid force conrmed earlier
Solomon Islander scout reports of a 3,000-strong Japanese force intent on dislodging
the Marines and approaching from a southwesterly route.81
Armed with this new intelligence, Edson and the division operations ocer con-
ferred the next day and determined the most likely axis of advance for the Japanese
force. Edson retained 1st Raider Battalion, assumed command of the remnants from
1st Parachute Battalion, and established a defense along a prominent ridge in the
center of the expected enemy axis of advance. Solomon Islands scouts picketed the
forward areas along the likely axis of advance with orders to “report any enemy in-
ltrators, their number, and location right away.”82 In the ensuing ght from 12 to 14
September, known as the Battle of Edson’s Ridge, this ad hoc force defeated the main
eort attack of the Kawaguchi force, estimated at 1,500 in strength, and preserved
the Marines’ tenuous hold on Guadalcanal. Edson recalled that the Tadhimboko raid
had “much to do” with the victory at Edson’s Ridge.83 Just as at the rst Battle of the
Tenaru, Solomon Islands scouts and cooperative local populations generated the in-
telligence that drove successful operations.
In the following months, reinforcements enabled the 1st Marine Division to take
the oensive. On 17 September the 7th Marine Regiment, recently relieved of their
duties in American Samoa by a growing force of Samoan Marines and sailors, landed
on Guadalcanal. e 7th Marine Regiment also brought two legendary small wars vet-
erans, Lieutenant Colonel Lewis B. Puller and Lieutenant Colonel Herman H. Han-
neken, who commanded 1st Battalion and 2d Battalion, respectively. As an enlisted
Marine, Hanneken simultaneously served as an ocer in the Haitian gendarmerie
and famously captured a rebel leader, for which he was awarded the Medal of Honor.84
Puller also served in the Gendarmerie d’Haiti and was later awarded two Medals of
Honor during two successive tours in Nicaragua.85
77 Richter, Where the Sun Stood Still, 226.
78 Homan, Once a Legend, 189.
79 Homan, Once a Legend, 189; and Richter, Where the Sun Stood Still, 224.
80 Clemens, Alone on Guadalcanal, 225.
81 Homan, Once a Legend, 191.
82 Richter, Where the Sun Stood Still, 244.
83 Homan, Once a Legend, 191.
84 Asprey, Once a Marine, 56.
85 “Lieutenant General Lewis B. Puller,” History Division, Marine Corps University, accessed 29 Septem-
ber 2023.
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U.S. Marines were not the only reinforcements on Guadalcanal, however. With
the Imperial Japanese Navy limiting U.S. amphibious shipping to Guadalcanal, the
Marines turned to the local population to generate combat power. Just as Marines
had done in Nicaragua, Haiti, Santo Domingo, and Samoa, the 1st Marine Division
raised and incorporated local forces into their operations.
e rst of these nascent organizations to be raised was the Whaling group,
named aer the prominent outdoorsman, Marine Lieutenant Colonel William J.
Whaling. e Whaling group combined Solomon Islands scouts, recently trained Ma-
rine scout snipers, and the 3d Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, into a “Bush Brigade”
force tailored to take oensive action against the Imperial Japanese Army.86
A growing logistics force of Solomon islanders was eually as important to the
campaign as were these new combat formations. In November 1942, Australian Royal
Air Force commander Charles V. Widdy, former inhabitant of Guadalcanal, began
recruiting a local labor force to formalize the assistance the population provided to
U.S. forces since the initial landing.87 e Solomon Islands Labour Corps assisted in
the construction of roads, airelds, and the unloading of cargo from ships, which was
oen done manually.88 In addition to their work in the Marine perimeter, Solomon
Islanders also supported Marine patrols and enabled the type of extended activity
envisioned by Lieutenant Colonel Ellis.
On 4 November, the 2d Raider Battalion joined the division on Guadalcanal.
Two days aer their arrival, Lieutenant Colonel Evans F. Carlson led the battalion on
a series of extended-duration raids to clear the remaining Japanese forces to the east
and south of the Marine defenses on Guadalcanal.89 Australian Army major John V.
Mather, uent in the local pijin language, served as chief liaison ocer to the Solo-
mon scouts and coordinated local support.90 Solomon scout Tabasui guided the Carl-
son patrol through his hometown of Tadhimboko, and Sergeant Major Vouza guided
the patrol the remainder of the way.91 By 24 November, Sergeant Major Vouza led 150
Solomon islanders who supported the 2d Raider Battalion as scouts, guides, and cou-
riers.92 In addition to scouting, Vouza’s local force transported supplies inland from
the coast and evacuated casualties.93 With two attached Korean-American linguists
86 Homan, Once a Legend, 227.
87 Maj John L. Zimmerman, e Guadalcanal Campaign (Washington, DC: Historical Division, Headuar-
ters Marine Corps, 1949), 174.
88 David Welchman Gegeo, “World War II in the Solomon Islands: Its Impact on Society, Politics, and
World View,” in Remembering the Pacific War, ed. Georey M. White, Occasional Paper no. 36 (Honolulu:
University of Hawai’i at Manoa, 1991), 28.
89 Richter, Where the Sun Stood Still, 327.
90 Richter, Where the Sun Stood Still, 327. Pijin refers to Solomon Islands Pijin, which is a fusion of the
indigenous language with English and French.
91 Richter, Where the Sun Stood Still, 327.
92 Richter, Where the Sun Stood Still, 342.
93 Twining, No Bended Knee, 179.
A Groundswell of Support in the Pacic
297
uent in Japanese, Lieutenants Park and Lee, Carlson wielded a combined-arms team
of regional, cultural, and language experts to great eect.94
Lieutenant Colonel Merrill Twining, the 1st Marine Division operations ocer,
noted that “Carlson won victory aer victory over the stubbornly resisting Japanese.”95
e 2d Raider Battalion inicted more than 400 casualties on the Japanese force, esti-
mated to be 500 in strength, at the cost of 17 Marines lost.96 Carlson later observed of
the Solomon scouts that “their service was invaluable. e information they provided
almost invariably proved correct.”97 As Major General Vandegri recalled, “Carlson’s
patrol . . . accomplished everything I hoped for by the time it returned to the perim-
94 Richter, Where the Sun Stood Still, 337.
95 Twining, No Bended Knee, 180.
96 Twining, No Bended Knee, 180.
97 Richter, Where the Sun Stood Still, 327.
FIGURE
In January 1944, Sir Jacob Vouza, honorary sergeant major in the U.S. Marine Corps,
presents a plaue to the commander of U.S. forces on Guadalcanal.
Source: University of Hawaii Manoa Library Digial Image Collections
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298
eter in early December.”98 “Of the entire coast watcher organization,” Vandegri con-
tinued, “I can say nothing too lavish in praise.”99 Of one Solomon scout, in particular,
Vandegri remarked, “e redoubtable Vouza. ere was no one like him.”100
98 Asprey, Once a Marine, 202.
99 Asprey, Once a Marine, 137.
100 Richter, Where the Sun Stood Still, 279.
FIGURE
Following the campaign on Guadalcanal, Solomon Islanders continue to support the Allied oensive
in Melanesia. In September 1944, these Melanesian guides directed a raid behind Japanese lines that
was launched and recovered from the submarine on which they were aboard.
Source: University of Hawaii Manoa Library Digial Image Collections
A Groundswell of Support in the Pacic
299
CONCLUSION
e Marines’ ability to cooperate with local populations grew as the campaign in the
Pacic progressed. By December 1942, approximately 400 Solomon scouts supported
Allied operations on Guadalcanal.101 e Solomon Islands Labour Corps, initiated in
1942, grew to a peak strength of 3,700 Solomon islanders by 1944.102 Alongside highly
educated naval ocers who specialized in military government, the Marines formal-
ized the process of securing terrain and passing responsibility for local populations
from the assault troops to military government units. e Marines applied the lessons
learned from Samoa and Guadalcanal to their later roles as island commanders of
Guam, Tinian, and Saipan.
e defense of Samoa and the Battle of Guadalcanal demonstrated the impor-
tance of specialists trained in operating amongst foreign populations, of local security
forces incorporated into U.S. forces, and of frontline troops imbued with an appreci-
ation for the contributions of their allies and partners. Furthermore, relatively mod-
est investments in local and Allied security networks paid outsized dividends in the
critical, early stages of conict in the Pacic. A Marine rst sergeant in American
Samoa and a British district ocer in Solomon Islands enabled the generation of
combat power that was comparable to a defense battalion and an infantry battalion,
respectively. In manpower alone, the Solomon Islands Labour Corps alone exceeded
that of a Marine logistics regiment. While these formations rapidly grew at the outset
of war, these products reuired sustained, persistent cultivation of human networks
prior to conict.
e security arrangements described in this chapter were far from perfect, how-
ever. Imperialism and ethnic discrimination colored the relationships between U.S.,
British, Australian, and indigenous forces in Samoa and Solomon Islands. As Fita-
Fita Guard Jonathan Fi’i recalled, “We did the same kind of work as the Americans
and the British, but we weren’t allowed to wear the same uniforms.” Furthermore,
Fi’i remembered only receiving hand-made rank insignia instead of the professional-
ly manufactured chevrons of Caucasian servicemembers. “e white ocers all wore
their stripes sewn onto their shirts, but all we got were those pieces of khaki,” Fi’i
recalled. “I was ashamed to wear it like that, so I would just carry it around in my
hand.”103 A member of the Solomon Island Labour Corps more directly describes his
relationship to the British Solomon Islands Protectorate: “We were an oppressed peo-
ple in the Solomon Islands. We had been oppressed for some time up to that point.”104
Contemporary security frameworks must facilitate more eual cooperation between
U.S. and foreign forces and in ways that mutually benet each nations’ sovereign
interests.
101 Clemens, Alone on Guadalcanal, 46.
102 Gegeo, “World War II in the Solomon Islands,” 29.
103 Jonathan Fi’i, “Remembering the War in the Solomon Islands,” in Remembering the Pacific War, 41.
104 Fi’i, “Remembering the War in the Solomon Islands,” 43.
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Recent experience gives Marines reasons for optimism, however. Like their fore-
bearers who landed on Guadalcanal in 1942, Marines today also carry lessons from
two decades of combat in and among local populations. e U.S. Marine Corps of
the 2020s, much like the Corps of 1920s, is also grappling with how to capture the ex-
periences of recent combat while simultaneously preparing for a potential new, more
horrifying conict with emerging concepts and capabilities. Similarly, contemporary
Marines are wrestling with the core identity of the Marine Corps. e debates about
Force Design 2030 echo the discourse between small wars and landing operations at
Marine Corps schools in the 1930s. As then-Major Leo P. Spaeder asked Commandant
David H. Berger, “Sir, who am I?”105
While concepts and capabilities may change, however, the human nature of war
remains the same. As the tides of naval combat change from amphibious operations
to expeditionary advanced base operations, a steady stream of support springs forth
from security cooperation with allies and partners on key terrain. is groundswell
of support was the United States’ greatest advantage in the early months of the Pa-
cic War and may be so again in the early days of another potential conict in the
Indo-Pacic.
Allies and partners embody the deep, personal aection gained through cooper-
ation, and they are the best measure of success. Twenty-six years aer ghting along-
side Marines to defend Guadalcanal, Sergeant Major Sir Jacob Vouza and Sir Martin
Clemens traveled to the United States as guests of honor of the 1st Marine Division
Association. When he passed, Vouza was buried in the uniform provided by U.S.
Marines so many years ago. His family also inherited his commitment to his friends,
when 80 years aer Marines rst landed on Guadalcanal, Vouza’s granddaughter,
Gina, joined allies and former enemies to commemorate the battle. Her daughter, Sir
Vouza’s great granddaughter, sat by her mother’s side throughout the sweltering day’s
ceremonies and events.
If war remains a “human enterprise” and “a clash of opposing human wills,” U.S.
forces must actively engender the loyalty and support of future generations.106 e
geopolitical landscape of Solomon Islands in 2024 is not what it was in 1924, and
forces from the United States, Australia, and New Zealand can no longer assume
access and support from Pacic Island countries. A battle for inuence and access is
ongoing across the Pacic, and allied eorts to shape advantageous operating envi-
ronments in the future must include more than simply memorializing the past.
105 Leo Spaeder, “Sir, Who Am I?: An Open Letter to the Incoming Commandant of the Marine Corps,”
War on the Rocks, 28 March 2019.
106 Warfighting, Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1 (Washington, DC: Department of the Navy, 1997),
13, 67.
301
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Prelude to Stalin’s Third Crushing Blow
The Kerch-Eltigen Landing, 1943
Timothy Heck
Soviet photographer Yevgeny Khaldei, who captured the famous image of the
Soviet banner over Reichstag, participated in the Kerch-Eltigen landing opera-
tion. He wrote of Red Army attempts to take Kerch on the Crimean peninsula:
ere was a landing at Kerch in November 1943, but the fighting went on through
December, January, February and March. Only in April 1944 did we ake the city.
For six months we were in a “meat grinder.” An oensive was prepared to ake a
particular hill, and I spent the night before it in the trenches with the soldiers. In
the morning the cook arrived with a large bowl of porridge but nobody wanted to
ea. Everyone was thinking: “What’s going to happen in half an hour, during the
oensive? Am I going to live, will I see my wife, my children, my parents?” I didn’t
ake any pictures, I just couldn’. en the oensive took place. ey didn’t ake
the hill, and the dead were le on the ground. In the trench where I was saying,
less than half the men returned.1
e Nazi-Soviet front of the Second World War is dominated by narratives of
sweeping land battles, frozen steppes, and armored thrusts culminating in the bloody
battle for Berlin in 1945. Naval engagements, even the German Kriegsmarine and So-
viet Red Navy, are largely overlooked with the exception of the sinking of the MV
1 Michael Jones, Toal War: From Salingrad to Berlin (London: John Murray, 2011), 298.
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302
Wilhelm Gustlo (1937) and Goya (1939) in the Baltic in 1945. is interpretation of
what most Americans refer to as the eastern front overlooks the amphibious opera-
tions that occurred during the war. Overall, the Soviet Union conducted more than
100 amphibious landings during the war. Of these, two operational-level landings
occurred in Crimea. While the failed Soviet Kerch-Feodosia landing operation and
the subseuent Battle of the Kerch Peninsula (26 December 1941–19 May 1942) are
moderately well-known thanks to the participation of General Erich von Manstein’s
11th Army and his subseuent widely read if problematic memoir, this chapter focuses
on the lesser-known Kerch-Eltigen landings in late 1943 and the subseuent successful
campaign to liberate Crimea.2
SOVIET THOUGHT AND PREPARATION
Despite the important role Russian Navy sailors played in the Bolshevik Revolution
and its antecedents, the Soviet Navy was decidedly an aerthought in Soviet mili-
tary prioritization and doctrine. Only in the last days of 1937 was the navy separated
into its own commissariat, separating from the People’s Commissariat for the De-
fense of the Soviet Union. Prewar procurement largely focused on creating an ocean-
going navy, with cruisers and destroyers being identied in December 1940 as the
best general-purpose ships for naval operations.3 Limited, if any, eorts were put into
developing an amphibious capability despite the stated role of the navy in supporting
the maritime ank of army operations. As a result, Admiral Sergey G. Gorshkov later
remarked, “Fleets entered the war without a single ship of special construction and
only one brigade of naval infantry. e eets had no special gunre support ships for
amphibious landings.”4
e 1940 Soviet Field Regulations stated that “a landing can have as its aim the
encirclement and defeat of elements on the hostile littoral ank, and also the fulll-
ment of independent operational missions for the creation of a new front.”5 Soviet
naval objectives for amphibious landings during the second period of the Great Pa-
triotic War was largely to “help the Soviet ground forces breach the heavily fortied
coastal areas on the enemy’s maritime anks, to seize beachheads for oensive op-
2 For more on Kerch-Feodosia, see David M. Glantz, “Forgotten Battles of the German-Soviet War (1941–45),
Part 6: e Winter Campaign (5 December 1941–April 1942): e Crimean Counteroensive and Reec-
tions,” Journal of Slavic Miliary Studies 14, no. 1 (2001): 121–70, https://doi.org/10.1080/13518040108430472.
See also Erich von Manstein, Lost Victories: e War Memoirs of Hitler’s Most Brilliant General (Minneapolis,
MN: Zenith, 2004).
3 V. I. Achkasov and N. B. Pavlovich, Soviet Naval Operations in the Great Patriotic War, 1941–1945, trans.
U.S. Naval Intelligence Command Translation Project (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1981), 15.
4 John G. Hibbits, “Admiral Gorshkov’s Writings: Twenty Years of Naval ought,” in Paul J. Murphy,
ed., Naval Power in Soviet Policy, Studies in Communist Aairs vol. 2 (Washington, DC: Government
Printing Oce, 1978), 20. Originally cited in Sergey Gorshkov, “e Soviet Navy in the Great Patriotic
War,” Voyennaya Mysl’, May 1965.
5 uoted in Raymond L. Gartho, Soviet Miliary Doctrine (Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 1953), 369.
Prelude to Stalin’s ird Crushing Blow
303
erations, and to capture ports, enemy bases, and strongpoints.”6 Landings, overall,
were divided into four categories: strategic, operational, tactical, and sabotage, as
determined by the size of participating forces and their objectives. e landing at
Kerch-Eltigen was operational in nature as it was intended “to strike behind enemy
lines and envelop enemy positions in depth . . . [or for] seizing a certain coastal sector
of enemy territory.”7
THE STRATEGIC AND
OPERATIONAL PICTURE IN LATE
Following defeat at Kursk in July–August 1943, Axis forces in Ukraine and the Cau-
casus were on a consistent retreat as ever-strengthening Soviet forces pushed against
them. e strategic conseuences weighed heavily in Berlin and Bucharest, where
Adolf Hitler and Romanian Conducător Marshal Ion Antonescu had diering views
of the importance of Crimea. Crimea, in Hitler’s eyes, had long been viewed as part of
Reichsland, an integral part of Germany and not a subjugated colonial area like much
of the rest of eastern Europe.8
Coloring Hitler’s interpretation of Crimea was the recent capitulation of Italy on
8 September 1943. e loss of Crimea, he feared, “could have determined Romania’s
exit from the alliance, which would have meant an unimaginable blow to the ird
Reich.”9 He was also looking east to Turkey, where the German-Turkish Treaty of
Friendship (1941) and the Clodius agreement, which saw Turkish chromite, vital to
German weapons production, were at risk if the German foothold in the Black Sea
was lost.10 As such, Hitler saw a vested interest in maintaining German control of the
peninsula even as, by 26 October 1943, Field Marshal Paul Ludwig Ewald von Kleist,
commander of Army Group A under which the 17th Army in Crimea served, was advo-
6 Achkasov and Pavlovich, Soviet Naval Operations in the Great Patriotic War, 1941–1945, 97. Soviet histori-
ans divide the Great Patriotic War into three phases. e rst phase (22 June 1941–18 November 1942)
covers the German invasion and subseuent near-destruction of the Red Army prior to the launching
of Operation Uranus to defeat Axis forces around Stalingrad. e second phase (19 November 1942–
31 December 1943) starts with Operation Uranus, includes the Battle of Kursk, and ends with strategic
initiative rmly in Soviet hands. e third phase ends with Germany’s defeat in 1945 and is characterized
by operationally mature and well-euipped Soviet forces.
7 Achkasov and Pavlovich, Soviet Naval Operations in the Great Patriotic War, 1941–1945, 97.
8 Alexander Dallin, German Rule in Russia, 1941–1945: A Study in Occupation Policies (London, UK: Mac-
Millan, 1957), 280.
9 Benone Andronic, “Warfare Actions of the Large Romanian Military Units for Defense and Evacuation
of Crimea in World War II,” Annals-Series on Miliary Sciences 13, no. 1 (2021): 131.
10 For more on the German-Turkish Friendship Pact and the Clodius agreement, see Edward Weisband,
“A Brief Analysis of the Economic Picture,” in Turkish Foreign Policy, 1943–1945: Small Sate Diploma-
cy and Great Power Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), 88–116; and Gül İnanç,
“e Politics of ‘Active Neutrality’ on the Eve of a New World Order: e Case of Turkish Chrome
Sales during the Second World War,” Middle Eastern Studies 42, no. 6 (2006): 907–15, https://doi.org
/10.1080/00263200600923005.
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304
cating for its evacuation, citing the circumstances the 6th Army found itself in.11 e
17th Army’s commander, Generaloberst Erwin Jaenecke, also pushed for evacuation,
possibly because he “did not want to preside over another Stalingrad.”12 ree days
later, despite the operational concerns of his commanders, Hitler telegraphed Anto-
nescu stating that Crimea “will be defended ‘at all costs’.”13 As late as December 1943,
with Soviet forces trapped, Hitler was still calculating the strategic value of Crimea,
stating that if Germany was unable to hold Crimea, “the conseuences will be cata-
strophic. ey’ll be catastrophic in Rumania.”14
ROMANIAN STRATEGIC POSITION
In November 1942, Romanian military strength was all but gutted in the Soviet
Union when Operation Uranus cut through the 3d and 4th Romanian Armies on Stal-
ingrad’s northern and southern anks. On 10 January 1943, aer “a three-hour tirade”
from Hitler about the poor performance of Romanian troops, Antonescu countered
that 200,000 Romanians were dead, 18 divisions had been destroyed on the Don and
Volga rivers, and that 4 Romanian generals had been killed in action, 3 of whom “met
their death in hand to hand combat.”15 e meeting was not portentous of Romanian-
German cooperation. Near simultaneously, other German allies began to falter in
support too.
Aer the subseuent Soviet victory at Stalingrad in February 1943, the Romanian
Army only had eight divisions in the Soviet Union, all of whom were to be withdrawn
west of the Bug River and, perhaps more damningly, were not to be supplemented
with additional formations.16 Six of these divisions were part of the 17th Army, located
at the Kuban bridgehead on the Taman Peninsula. e remaining two were defending
the Crimean Peninsula. Ongoing Soviet operations pressured the Axis defenders with
the major push starting on 10 September 1943. By 2 October, all six Romanian divi-
sions (approximately 50,139 troops) withdrew to Crimea, followed shortly thereaer
by the evacuation of the remaining German units.17 By 9 October, more than 177,000
German troops, 25,000 Russian auxiliaries, and 27,000 Soviet civilians, along with
11 Andronic, “Warfare Actions of the Large Romanian Military Units for Defense and Evacuation of
Crimea in World War II,” 129.
12 Samuel W. Mitcham Jr. and Gene Mueller, Hitler’s Commanders (Lanham, MD: Scarborough House,
1992), 101.
13 uoted in Andronic, “Warfare Actions of the Large Romanian Military Units for Defense and Evacu-
ation of Crimea in World War II,” 131.
14 Gen Walter Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters, 1939–1945 (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1991), 390.
15 Albert Seaton, e Russo-German War, 1941–45 (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1971), 392.
16 Seaton, e Russo-German War, 1941–45, 392.
17 Dennis Deletant, Hitler’s Forgotten Ally: Ion Antonescu and His Regime, Romania, 1940–1944 (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 99. Note: Seaton, e Russo-German War, 1941—45, reports seven divisions, 393.
Prelude to Stalin’s ird Crushing Blow
305
vitally needed heavy euipment, were evacuated.18 Included in this evacuation were
72,899 horses.19 Simultaneously, following the evacuation of the Kuban bridgehead,
the mixed Fliegerkorps (Air Corps) I was transferred into mainland Ukraine, “leaving
the Crimea’s defense to FlFü Krim . . . and SeeFlFü Schwarzesmeer . . . supported by
9. Flak Division (55 batteries).”20
Despite strong showings in recapturing Novorossiysk, which included landing
nearly 9,000 troops using 129 landing cra, Soviet eorts to interfere with the with-
drawal were lackluster at best.21 While the Soviet Air Force was “very active,” the
“Black Sea Fleet was inert.”22 General Wolfgang Pickert, commander of the 9th Flak
Division, remarked that “if the Soviet Navy had shown any determination to interrupt
the passage over the Kerch Straits the situation might have been otherwise. Not one
surface attack was made against the ferrying operations.”23 As a result, the Germans
and Romanians escaped largely intact but not without their limitations.
Overall, the Axis forces in Crimea were in a state of disrepair. Crimea had been
a rear area until Soviet advances in the early fall, and its occupiers were mostly rear-
area and support troops. By late October, more than 200,000 Axis military personnel
were in Crimea, but only approximately 40,000 were combat troops. Summarizing
the support troops, one author remarked that “over 27,000 personnel were assigned
to uartermaster and logistics units, Fliegerkorps I had over 5,000 Luwae personnel
and the Kriegsmarine had over 4,000 in Crimea. In addition, the [Schutzsael] SS,
[Sicherheitsdienst] SD, and Abwehr [military intelligence] still had a very strong pres-
ence in Crimea, with over 6,000 assigned personnel, but their military eectiveness
was negligible.”24 Similarly, the combat value of the Romanian formations was mixed
at best. e German 17th Army only thought that “the 1st Mountain, 2nd Mountain,
and 9th Cavalry Divisions [were] suitable for rear security duties only.”25 Compound-
ing the diculties were a variety of chains of command that hampered Axis response,
something seen in other theaters of the war.
18 Grant T. Harward, Romania’s Holy War: Soldiers, Motivation, and the Holocaust (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2021), 186.
19 R. L. DiNardo, Mechanized Juernaut or Miliary Anachronism?: Horses and the German Army of WWII
(Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1991), 66.
20 E. R. Hooton, Eagle in Flames: e Fall of the Luwae (London: Brockhampton Press, 1999), 198.
21 Lawrence Paterson, Schnellboote: A Complete Operational History (Barnsley, UK: Seaforth Publishing,
2015), 256.
22 Seaton, e Russo-German War, 1941–45, 379–80.
23 Seaton, e Russo-German War, 1941–45, 380, citing Wolfgang Pickert, Vom Kuban-Brückenkopf bis Sewas-
topol Flakartillerie im Verband der 17. Armee (Heidelberg: Scharnhorst-Buchkameradscha, 1955), 57.
24 Robert Forczyk, Where the Iron Crosses Grow: e Crimea, 1941–44 (Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing,
2014), 242–43.
25 Harward, Romania’s Holy War, 186–87. Other sources said the seven Romanian divisions “were consid-
ered to be of the highest uality, given both their experience on the battleeld and their euipment.”
See Andronic, “Warfare Actions of the Large Romanian Military Units for Defense and Evacuation of
Crimea in World War II,” 134.
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306
In the eastern Kerch peninsula, General der Infanterie Karl Allmendinger com-
manded V Armeekorps, which was signicantly smaller than its name would indicate.
His formation was anemic, consisting solely of Generleutnant Martin Gareis’ weak-
ened 98th Inanterie Division, a battalion of tank destroyers, the Romanian 6th Cavalry
Division, and parts of the Romanian 3d Cavalry Division, whom 17th Army thought
were capable of frontline combat when reinforced by German assets.26 Air and naval
support could also be expected, though Allmendinger would have to navigate the
Byzantine command relationships to employ it eectively.
SOVIET PLANS AND LIMITATIONS
Across the Kerch Strait, however, the Soviets were growing ever stronger. Soviet forc-
es of the North Caucasus Front (which, along with the 56th Army, was renamed
the Independent Coastal Army on 15 November 1943), supported by the Red Navy’s
Black Sea Fleet and Azov Flotilla, in addition to the Soviet Air Force’s 4th Air Army,
planned to seize beachheads in Crimea. e planning for landings at Kerch-Eltigen
echoed other Soviet amphibious operations. In a postwar analysis, Admiral of the
Fleet Ivan Isakov identied several conditions common to Soviet amphibious op-
erations during the war. Of note for Kerch-Eltigen, the landings were expected to
“mostly be carried out in the autumn . . . in stormy weather.” Further, there was a
lack of specialized landing cra in the Black Sea, “only shing boats, launches, and
seiners, a fact which rendered the landing operations dicult, and especially so when
encumbered by the army’s heavy euipment.”27
From a naval perspective, the Black Sea Fleet was limited in its eectiveness. In
September 1943, its submarine eet stopped attacking Axis shipping o Crimea’s
southern coast due to the types of ships the Axis was using and, instead, prowled
the sealanes connecting Odessa with Sevastopol. ey did this with minimal results,
with seven submarines sinking three transports and four landing barges for the loss
of three of their own submarines to surface action.28 Furthermore, aer the sinking of
three destroyers by German dive bombers on 6 October 1943, Soviet naval operations
in the Black Sea changed dramatically. Of the 900 crew, only 170 were rescued in
the “most serious surface ship loss since 1941.”29 Less than a week later, Joseph Stalin
“issued a directive condemning the ‘unnecessary’ loss of three major warships. e
Black Sea Fleet was to carry out no operations without the authority of the local army
group commander, and ‘long-range operations of the eet’s major surface ships are to
take place only with permission of the Stavka VGK [Headuarters, Supreme High
26 Harward, Romania’s Holy War, 186.
27 uoted in Gartho, Soviet Miliary Doctrine, 373.
28 Rolf Erickson, “Soviet Submarine Operations in World War II,” in James J. Sadkovich, ed., Reevaluating
Major Naval Combaants of World War II (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990), 170.
29 Evan Mawdsley, e War for the Seas: A Maritime History of World War II (New Haven, CT: Yale Univer-
sity Press, 2020), 150.
Prelude to Stalin’s ird Crushing Blow
307
Command]’.”30 As a result, any ability to either inuence the deep ght or interfere
with Axis operations o the coast of western Crimea were hamstrung.
On 12 October, the Stavka issued the order to the North Caucasus Front to
plan and prepare for landing on the Kerch Peninsula.31 e Soviets believed that
the Germans would evacuate from Crimea shortly aer the 4th Ukrainian Front
sealed the Perekop Isthmus. Much to their surprise, this was not the case and, in-
stead, against the advice of his commanders and the Romanians, Hitler reinforced
German forces in Crimea. Unaware of this, the Soviets began planning to pursue
the 17th Army across Crimea and destroy it once and for all. At least four courses of
action were debated.
e rst, second, and third were grandly ambitious and wildly impractical given
the restrictions on the Soviet Navy and its lack of assets. One course of action had
Soviet troops landing at Sevastopol to block any German evacuation and restore the
port city to Soviet control. Sevastopol, site of a famed siege during the Crimean War
(1854–55), had taken on a renewed place in Soviet mythos aer the German invasion
of 1941 and subseuent siege of the city in 1941–42.32 As such, this plan would likely
have had signicant historical and emotional appeal to the Soviet Navy. e second
proposed a similar landing at Yalta, on the southern tip of the peninsula, which was
almost eually ambitious and unrealistic. e third, which was initially proposed by
General Colonel Ivan E. Petrov, landed a large number of troops at Feodosia.33 e
fourth was a landing around Kerch-Eltigen followed by a push to the west toward
Feodosia, site of the 1941–42 Soviet landings, which would set conditions for the 4th
Ukrainian Front to push south across the Perekop.
Shortly aer the Kuban bridgehead was overwhelmed, General Colonel Petrov,
commander of the North Caucasus Front, tasked his sta with planning a cross-strait
operation. His initial vision was an operation nearly identical to the 1941 amphibious
landings, with parts of two armies being transported to beaches north and south
of Kerch. An attack on such a broad front, he believed, would “make the Germans
disperse their forces to ght Soviet sea-borne troops without a chance to concen-
trate for a strong counterattack.”34 In a rather sympathetic biography published well
aer events, Petrov is uoted as saying, “We’ll pounce on them in a few places at
30 Mawdsley, e War for the Seas, 150.
31 S. Ivanov, “Crimean Landing,” Soviet Miliary Review (November 1973): 57.
32 See, among others, Serhii Plokhy, “e City of Glory: Sevastopol in Russian Historical Mytholo,”
Journal of Contemporary History 35, no. 3 (2000): 378, https://doi.org/10.1177/002200940003500303. Adm
Pavel Nakhimov, who died during the 1854–55 siege, was about to take a renewed place in the Soviet
naval pantheon as the Kerch-Eltigen operation occurred. In 1944, the Soviet Union created a naval medal
for valor named in his honor. See “Presidium of the Supreme Council of the USSR Decree: About the
Establishment of Military Medals: Ushakov Medals and Nakhimov Medals,” 3 March 1944, LibUSSR.ru,
accessed 15 December 2023.
33 S. A. Zonin, Loyalty to the Ocean (Moscow: Politizdat, 1986), 86.
34 V. Vladimir Karpov, e Commander, trans., Yuri S. Shirokov and Nicholas Louis (London: Brassey’s
Defence Publishers, 1987), 149.
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308
the same time. Each of our attacks should be strong enough to make them think it
is our main strike. In the meantime we will rip their belly where they expect it least
of all.”35
His vision, however, exceeded his capabilities. e Black Sea Fleet and Azov Flo-
tilla were far from capable of supporting that kind of landing. ere existed no spe-
cialized landing cra in the Soviet navy and the DUKW amphibious trucks provided
as part of the 1941 Lend-Lease Act went elsewhere.36 Instead, Petrov’s sta planned for
a more reasonable landing operation given their materiel shortfalls.
Regardless of capabilities, the Soviets had superiority in key areas over the Ger-
man and Romanian forces. e 56th and 18th Armies had nearly 130,000 troops, more
than 600 howitzers and 90 Guards rocket mortars. Comparative ratios put them at
approximately 1.5 times stronger in terms of personnel, twice as strong in armor, and
four-fold in heavy artillery.37
e plan, according to S. A. Zonin’s biography of Black Sea Fleet commander
Lev Vladimirsky, was presented to the Stavka on 13 October 1943.38 e plan had two
operational objectives that were to be accomplished simultaneously, with operations
commencing on 31 October 1943. e main eort consisted of the 56th Army landing
in the vicinity of Yenikale, northeast of Kerch. ey were supported by almost 400 of
their own howitzers and guns providing re support from the Chushka Spit, across
the narrowest part of the strait, supplemented by spotlights.39 In the south, the 318th
Mountain Rie Division with support from the 386th Naval Infantry Battalion was
to seize a beachhead near Eltigen aer crossing from the Taman Peninsula under the
cover of its artillery. Allegedly, Marshal Semyon K. Timoshenko, chairman of the
Stavka, remarked “that a successful landing by the 318th Division guaranteed the lib-
35 Karpov, e Commander, 150. While Karpov’s biography might have been almost hagiographic, Petrov
was a skilled commander. John Erickson described Petrov as “able and energetic.” Erickson, e Road to
Berlin: Continuing the History of Salin’s War with Germany (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1983), 197.
36 Forcyzk, Where the Iron Crosses Grow, 252. Relevant Lend-Lease Act materiel, even if it had been avail-
able, might not have been of use to the Soviets. George C. Herring writes in Aid to Russia, 1941–1946:
Strate, Diplomacy, and the Origins of the Cold War (New York: Columbia University, 1973), that in January
1944 an American naval ocer providing technical assistance to the Soviets found that of 90 valuable
diesel engines for patrol cra, only 3 had been installed, the Soviets lacked hulls to mount 45 others,
and the remaining 42 were “deteriorating from rust.” Nevertheless, the Soviets reuested an additional
50 engines in 1944. Herring, Aid to Russia, 1941–1946, 128. e Americans were not the only Westerners
frustrated by Soviet naval operations. British naval liaison ocer Capt Robert Garwood was, during
the landings at Kerch-Eltigen, “seuestered at Sukhumi, a long way from the eet’s command sta or
its major warships at Poti and Tuapse,” let alone its amphibious forces. Martin H. Folly, “From Sevasta-
pol to Sukhumi–and Back Again: British Naval Liaison in Action with the Red Navy in the Black Sea,
1941–1945,” War in History 28, no. 4 (2021): 882, https://doi.org/10.1177/0968344519871971.
37 Ivanov, “Crimean Landing,” 57.
38 Zonin, Loyalty to the Ocean, 87.
39 Fredrich Ruge, e Soviets as Naval Opponents, 1941–1945 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1979),
115.
Prelude to Stalin’s ird Crushing Blow
309
eration of the Crimea.”40 Of note, Timoshenko was not the only high-ranking Soviet
ocer present. Nikolai Kuzentsov, head of the Soviet Navy during the war, ew to
the Black Sea Fleet to supervise preparations, allegedly on Stalin’s orders.41
Overhead, the Soviet Air Force was expected to provide support and interdict
Axis counterattacks, aircra, and shipping. Furthermore, while the need for coor-
dination with aviation had been identied as early as 1929 and incorporated into
Soviet doctrine, little combined eort seems to have occurred.42 It is possible that
no prelanding reconnaissance was performed, which played a tragic role in the fate
of many men of the 318th Mountain Rie Division. General Konstantin Vershinin,
commander of 4th Air Army, gave his forces a variety of prelanding roles, including
reconnaissance, preparatory attacks on Axis airelds, and the construction of bases
on the Taman Peninsula from which to operate.43 Once the landings commenced, 4th
Air Army was expected to suppress German and Romanian positions, cover ships in
transit across the Kerch Strait, and y close-air support missions.44
Simultaneously, attention in Berlin was also on Crimea. On 26 October 1943,
during the evening situation report, Hitler and General Kurt Zeitzler, chief of sta of
the Oberkommando des Heeres (German Army High Command), analyzed likely Soviet
operations in Crimea. Hitler remarked, “e biest danger on the Crimea, as I see
it, is not sea landings but airborne landings–he could drop an airborne brigade on the
isthmus of Feodosiia [sic].”45 is belief was not unreasonable as the Soviets dropped
a commando unit of 500 troops near Cape Illy on 21 October, which was a failure.46
Zeitzler concurred with Hitler, stating the Soviets were unlikely to attack western
Crimea due to a lack of shipping. Later in the conversation, Hitler provided guidance
down to the divisional level and encouraged Zeitzler to “keep the (coastal) batteries
suciently manned,” even if they were manned by some of the Russian auxiliaries
evacuated from Kuban.47
As the plans were being drawn up, the Red Army prepared for the landing. Some
of the training was political, other was military. First, the political, where we meet a
soon-to-be famous comrade: Leonid Brezhnev. Brezhnev had previously been assigned
as a political commissar in the 18th Army where he had performed admirably at Nov-
orossiysk. In preparation for the Kerch-Eltigen landings, he tasked his men with con-
ducting “strenuous Party-political work,” which encouraged the troops to “act boldly
40 Leonid Il’ich Brezhnev, How It Was: e War and Post-war Reconstruction in the Soviet Union (Oxford,
UK: Pergamon Press, 1979), 42.
41 Zonin, Loyalty to the Ocean, 87.
42 John Erickson, e Soviet High-Command: A Miliary-Political History, 1918–1941, 3d ed. (Oxford, UK:
Frank Cass, 2001), 317.
43 Konstantin Vershinin, Fourth Air Force (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1975), 283–84.
44 Vershinin, Fourth Air Force, 284.
45 Helmut Heiber and David M. Glantz, eds. Hitler and His Generals: Miliary Conferences, 1942–1945 (Lon-
don: Greenhill Books, 2002), 277.
46 Heiber and Glantz, Hitler and His Generals, 902n772.
47 Heiber and Glantz, Hitler and His Generals, 281.
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310
and decisively . . . [reminding the troops] of the feats of arms of the Red Army men
who stormed the Perekop in 1920, of the heroes of the legendary Sevastopol defence
in 1941–42.”48 Furthermore, his troops may have had some role in organizing or leading
the 318th Mountain Rie Division as his memoirs remark on the need “to coordinate
all the commandos” and that he sent his instructors to the division, where “they car-
ried out their extremely dicult battle duty assignment.”49
For military training prior to the landings, Karpov gives Petrov signicant credit,
stating that
he resolved to ake advanage of this respite to increase the fitness of his troops
for the impending sea-borne atack. He ordered all commanding ocers to train
troops in every deail of embarkation, disembarkation and fighting for a foothold
on a beach. Training went on round the clock and nobody complained despite the
atigue of the battles that had just ended. All realized that eciency would have
to oset the disadvanages of an atack against an entrenched enemy relying on a
formidable system of fortifications and immense firepower.50
THE LANDINGS
Ultimately, even with updated Soviet doctrine, including the 1943 Instructions for Joint
Actions by the Ground Forces, the Navy, and Miliary River Flotillas, Soviet planners had
less than three weeks from the date of the Stavka order to the rst wave’s embarka-
tion.51 Whether that rushed process impacted the ability of the Soviets to successfully
embark, land, and push inland cannot be known. Regardless, the landings were mod-
erately successful if costly aairs for the troops of the 56th and 18th Armies.
First, the weather on the night of 31 October hampered the embarkation. Of
the seven detachments slated to depart from the Novorossiysk naval base, only ve
appear to have departed. Gorshkov noted that the surf at 56th Army’s embarkation
points were strong enough to toss boats and ships ashore.52 Weather in the straits
further hampered operations. e initial plan of landing troops simultaneously at
several points was uickly thrown o schedule. Vladimirsky told Petrov that with
such problems, “we risk the failure of the operation, since the simultaneous landing
of all groups of assault forces may not work out. e Germans will beat the landing in
parts. en, in such weather, signicant losses are inevitable in small vessels.”53
By 0300, it was apparent the weather had already signicantly impacted the
plans. For forces to be landed by the Black Sea Fleet, three elements were at least an
48 N. Larichev, “Liberation of the Crimea,” Soviet Miliary Review (April 1979): 40.
49 Leonid Il’ich Brezhnev, Leonid I. Brezhnev: His Life and Work (New York: Sphinx Press, 1982), 38–39.
50 Karpov, e Commander, 149.
51 Ya. B. Yeshchchenko, “Analyzing the Practice of Conducting Amphibious Assault Operations during
the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945),” Miliary ought, no. 4 (2018): 54–55.
52 Zonin, Loyalty to the Ocean, 89. Forcyzk states the boarding process was bungled by the Azov Flotilla.
Forcyzk, Where the Iron Crosses Grow, 252.
53 Zonin, Loyalty to the Ocean, 89.
Prelude to Stalin’s ird Crushing Blow
311
hour behind schedule and only four detachments were ready to deploy. A storm in
the Sea of Azov prevented embarkation at the pier of Kordon Ilyich. By 0400, Gors-
hkov reported “a little more than half of the boats and ships of the [Azov] otilla will
go to the deployment line in the strait. e rest were damaged or thrown ashore by
the [waves].”54 Petrov agreed to delay 56th Army’s landings, but elements of the 318th
Mountain Rie Division were already landing. Not until 3 November did 56th Army
successfully start landing near Kerch.
roughout the night of 31 October–1 November, Colonel A. D. Shiryaev’s 137th
Rie Regiment of the 318th Mountain Rie Division embarked at Krotovka and
crossed the wider strait in six small otillas. e embarkaration, however, was almost
the only successful event that night for the 137th Rie Regiment and its commander.
First, the otillas encountered a German mineeld o Cape Panagia, which sank
two vessels, killing almost 200 troops, none of whom had life jackets.55 Included in
the dead were Shiryaev and most of his regimental sta. Second, due to the ad hoc
nature of the Soviet Navy’s support, the vessels were separated due to disorientation
and diering speeds stretched the otillas. Indeed, “some troops were even rowing
across in longboats.”56 ird, another mineeld was encountered at approximately
the midway point, resulting in the loss of several more Soviet ships and all onboard.
Finally, when approaching the Kamysh Burun beach, the lack of reconnaissance cost
more lives. Unknown to or unaccounted for by Soviet planners, a sandbar lay 50 yards
oshore but water depths uickly increased thereaer. As they disembarked in the
darkness, “troops fell into three yards of deep water, and many heavily laden soldiers
drowned.”57
e Soviets, perhaps not unexpectedly, picked the same landing site used in 1941,
so the lack of knowledge of the sandbar is curious. e Soviets had an active recon-
naissance and intelligence capability in the form of partisans and naval commandos.
Soviet naval scouts (morskiye razvedchiki) conducted reconnaissance and coastwatcher-
type operations in the southwestern tip of Crimea, observing German shipping and
unit movements on the peninsula.58 Naval commandos were particularly well placed
for Soviet purposes and had been for months: “In June 1943 several members of the
[Black Sea Fleet ground reconnaissance] detachment parachuted into the southern
coast of the Crimea to conduct operations with the partisans. e naval scouts con-
ducted reconnaissance against German airelds, garrisons, and supply centers and
radioed the information they obtained back to eet headuarters. Other patrols from
the detachment, which included female radio operators, parachuted into the hills
overlooking the south coast near Yalta. Over a period of several months these groups
54 Zonin, Loyalty to the Ocean, 89.
55 Forcyzk, Where the Iron Crosses Grow, 252.
56 Forcyzk, Where the Iron Crosses Grow, 252.
57 Forcyzk, Where the Iron Crosses Grow, 253.
58 See Yuriy Fedorovich Strekhnin, Commandos from the Sea: Soviet Naval Spetsnaz in World War II, trans.,
James F. Gebhardt (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1996), chaps. 3 and 4.
Heck
312
directed air strikes against German coastal shipping.”59 While these claims sound im-
pressive, Axis losses, coordination with the Soviet Air Force, and the ineectiveness
of the Black Sea Fleet make such claims somewhat suspicious and contain an element
of bluster.
Gorshkov’s Azov Flotilla also had commandos who directly supported operations
around Kerch. Again, naval scouts arrived ahead of the landing forces, attempting to
inuence the outcome: “By October 1943, the front was once again on the east shore
of the Crimea at Kerch Peninsula, and Azov Flotilla reconnaissance detachment ele-
ments, among them a female intelligence agent [Soa Osetrova], were on the penin-
sula itself, sending reports back by radio. In November 1943, in support of the Kerch
El’tigen operation, the naval scouts went ashore ahead of amphibious landing units
to determine the precise location and strength of German defenses.”60 Unfortunately,
the language in these sources do not make it clear if the scouts were supporting both
beachheads or only the northern one.
Fieen minutes aer the Soviet landing, the German defenders nally noticed
the activity on the beach. e Germans called for re from a battery of four heavy
cannons located approximately a kilometer southwest of the beachhead. e Soviet
otilla, improperly armored, suered heavy losses. Among the losses were the ar-
tillery battalion’s 12 76mm guns, depriving the Soviets of crucial repower on the
beachhead.61 Another Soviet battalion landed in the wrong location and had to hike
to rejoin their comrades. As the sun rose and the Red Army was forced to suspend
landings until nightfall, total Soviet casualties in the crossing alone are estimated at
approximately 2,600 of the 5,700 embarked, most of the heavy artillery, and more
than one-third of the already scarce naval vessels.62 Nevertheless, the Soviets were able
to gain a foothold and even overran a Romanian battery situated at the north edge
of the beachhead.
General Allmendinger believed, incorrectly, that the landing at Eltigen was a
battalion-size diversionary force. He ordered Grenadier Regiment 282 to wipe it out.
German counterattacks that morning and aernoon were erce but ultimately
proved ineective. In the beachhead, Major Dmitri S. Koveshnikov was the senior
surviving ocer but lacked communications with his higher headuarters on the Ta-
man Peninsula. Furthermore, the surviving Soviet troops were from a variety of units
and likely lacked adeuate command and control. Nevertheless, by 1130, Koveshnikov
established communications across the strait and was able to use artillery re from
the guns on the Taman Peninsula to save the Soviet beachhead. Ranging overhead
were ghters and ghter bombers of the Red Air Force’s 4th Air Army, who attacked
Axis units attempting to mass to attack the landing party. A midday attack led by the
59 Viktor Leonov, Blood on the Shores: Soviet Naval Commandos in World War II, trans. James F. Gebhardt
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1993), 154.
60 Leonov, Blood on the Shores, 198n10, 154–55.
61 Forcyzk, Where the Iron Crosses Grow, 253.
62 Forczyk, Where the Iron Crosses Grow, 253.
Prelude to Stalin’s ird Crushing Blow
313
assault guns of Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 191 from the north overran a Soviet penal unit.
Major Koveshnikov’s front line started to disintegrate. His position was, once again,
saved by artillery re from Taman.63
On the night of 1–2 November, an additional 3,200 Soviet troops and nine mortars
were successfully landed, including Colonel Vasily F. Gladkov, the 318th Mountain
Rie Division’s commander, who took charge of the beachhead. German counterat-
tacks were again erce and half the Soviet position was lost before cross-strait artillery
inicted signicant losses on the German infantry, halting their advance. Fighting on
2 and 3 November resulted in similar outcomes, with Soviet forces being evermore
compressed but the Germans unable to nally break them despite support received
from Luflotte 4’s (Air Fleet) Junkers Ju 87 Stukas and the presence of the assault guns
and 88mm ak guns of the 9th Flak Division. A stalemate of sorts emerged, with the
Germans outnumbered by the surrounded Soviets who lacked the armored vehicles
or heavy weapons needed to break out.
THE SECOND LANDING TH ARMY
In the north, the 56th Army conducted its landing operation on 3 November. Here,
the precrossing bombardment by artillery located on the Chushka Spit consisted
of more than 600 guns and rocket launchers.64 Elements of the 2d Guards and 55th
Guards Rie Division, as well as the 369th Naval Infantry Battalion, started their
crossing, only to be discovered by Axis lookouts and red on by the guns of Marine-
Artillerie-Abteilung 613, which inicted casualties but were unable to stop the landings.
Once ashore, the Soviet forces pushed the two companies of Grenadier Regiment 290
guarding this part of the peninsula back. e 55th Guards attacked and 9th Kompanie
retreated while 11th Kompanie was routed by the 2d Guards.65 By the conclusion of the
rst day, approximately 4,000 Soviet troops were ashore and held a beachhead of sev-
en suare kilometers. By 5 November, “troops of the whole corps were concentrated”
in that small space.66
Petrov kept reinforcing his northern landing site and pushing the 56th Army to
expand its foothold. German forces retreated on the ground but the Luwae was able
to maintain pressure above, limiting the eectiveness of Soviet numerical aviation
strength. In terms of ghters, 40 Messerschmitt Bf 109Gs of II./Jagdgeschwader 52
were outnumbered more than 10 to 1 by 4th and 8th Air Armies and the Black Sea
Fleet’s aviation units. Nevertheless, during the course of November and December,
the Germans shot down more than 200 Soviet aircra against 17 of their own losses.67
German General Allmendinger now likely realized the landing at Eltigen was
63 Forcyzk, Where the Iron Crosses Grow, 254.
64 Ivanov gives the numbers as 420 guns and two regiments of rocket mortars. See Ivanov, “Crimean
Landing,” 59.
65 Forcyzk, Where the Iron Crosses Grow, 255.
66 Ivanov, “Crimean Landing,” 59.
67 Forcyzk, Where the Iron Crosses Grow, 257.
Heck
314
not a mere diversion but a signicant, if contained, threat. He ordered a reinforced
Grenadier Regiment 282 to eliminate the Eltigen beachhead to free up troops to block
the larger and more successful landing near Kerch.68
Entitled Operation Komet, Grenadier Regiment 282 went into action on 7 No-
vember. It was a complete failure. Luwae support failed to materialize and, under
Gladkov, the Soviet troops were able to hold against the numerically inferior German
and Romanian forces. Perhaps the saving grace from the German perspective was
that the Kriegsmarine’s S- (fast boat) and R-boats (minesweepers) were nally brought
into action in the narrow straits with decisive results. Vladimirsky later remarked
his wooden ships were akin to “ght with carts against tanks” when compared to the
swi German cra.69
e Germans, despite taking losses, had enough small boats for blockade opera-
tions and started to choke o logistics to the forces trapped in the south.70 eir suc-
cess, coupled with a Soviet inability to successfully counterattack, marked the decline
of the Soviet lodgment. ough Komet failed, the Kriegsmarine ramped up operations
and “began to erect a fairly impenetrable blockade . . . using light warships, armed
MFPs [naval ferry barges], and mines, which gradually starved the Soviet forces in the
beachhead.”71 On 8 November, “ve S-boats found Russian Task Force F sinking pa-
trol boat 0122, with the Russian otilla command aboard,” further hampering Soviet
naval eorts.72 Withdrawing Grenadier Regiment 282, Allmendinger held the cordon
around Eltigen with the Romanian 14th Machinegun Batalion and 6th Cavalry Division.
e slow death of the 318th Rie Division began.
On 10 November, Petrov’s 56th Army conducted a major attack west of Baksy,
driving the Germans back three kilometers. By 12 November, 56th Army was on the
outskirts of Kerch as Gareis’s 98th Inantry Division kept giving up ground. e resul-
tant losses prompted the German High Command to dispatch Major Erich Bären-
fänger’s Grenadier Regiment 123 to help shore up the 98th Inantry Division. Bärenfänger
was an impressive battleeld commander, having already received the Honor Roll
Clasp, the Bulgarian Order for Bravery, and swords to his Knight’s Cross of the Iron
Cross.73 He would add diamonds to that award in January 1944, in part as a result of
his success near Kerch.74
On 10 November, the rst Soviet T-34 medium tanks arrived in Crimea, with
more arriving the next day, giving Soviet forces much needed repower and mobili-
68 Forcyzk, Where the Iron Crosses Grow, 257.
69 Zonin, Loyalty to the Ocean, 91.
70 Zonin, Loyalty to the Ocean, 91.
71 Forczyk, Where the Iron Crosses Grow, 256.
72 Paterson, Schnellboote, 258.
73 Franz omas and Günter Wegmann, Die Ritterkreuzträger der Deutschen Wehrmacht 1939–1945 Teil III:
Inanterie Band 1: A–Be (Osnabrück, Germany: Biblio-Verlag, 1987), 177.
74 Veit Scherzer, Die Ritterkreuzträger 1939–1945 Die Inhaber des Ritterkreuzes des Eisernen Kreuzes 1939 von
Heer, Luwae, Kriegsmarine, Waen-SS, Volkssturm sowie mit Deutschland verbündeter Streitkräe nach den
Unterlagen des Bundesarchives (Jena, Germany: Scherzers Militaer-Verlag, 2007), 199.
Prelude to Stalin’s ird Crushing Blow
315
ty. Ten were landed in the rst two days. Petrov deployed them on 13–14 November.
Grenadier Regiment 123 stopped the tanks cold, destroying nine, with Bärenfänger de-
stroying one personally. On 19 November, the presence of Soviet armor, presumed to
be a tank brigade, was discussed by Hitler as part of his midday situation update.75 By
20 November, Grenadier Regiment 123 had destroyed 24 Soviet tanks and the possibility
of a Soviet armored oensive ended.76
November draed on, with neither side able to gain the upperhand, but the
Soviets almost inexorably grinding away at the Axis positions. On 15 November, the
Soviets renamed 56th Army as the Separate (or Independent) Coastal Army, reviving
the name aer the previous Coastal Army had been disbanded in July 1942. e name
change, however, did little to improve the Soviet tactical position.
In central and western Crimea, partisan operations also took their toll on Ger-
man and Romanian troops.77 Partisan operations in Crimea were, as they were across
the rest of the Soviet Union, increasingly eective by late 1943. By that December, for
example, every known partisan detachment had contact with the Soviet central sta
via radio, as opposed to only 10–15 percent nationwide in August 1942. Furthermore,
partisans had increasing access to Soviet aviation, which transported radio euip-
ment, sabotage devices, and almost 75 percent of explosives nationwide. Logistics
extended beyond arms and ammunition and included vital food. Attempts to reui-
sition food in Crimea appears to have been dicult for pro-Soviet partisans due to
pro-German populations and successful German military operations.78 Soviet avia-
tion, in spite of being unable to establish superiority over the landing beaches, played
a crucial role, as “in some cases, [aircra] brought the only source of food, as occurred
in Crimea when starvation had reduced some partisans to cannibalism” previously.79
rough the remaining months of occupation, partisans remained “largely dependent
upon these [airlied] supplies.”80 Aer the peninsula’s isolation in late 1943, partisan
attacks in Crimea surged. Attacks around Simferopol spiked, for example, with more
than 100 attacks occurring.81 e Axis response was swi, brutal, and largely eective
but continued to tie down needed troops.
Allmendinger started withdrawing rear echelon troops and supplies, largely un-
75 Heiber and Glantz, Hitler and His Generals, 285.
76 Forczyk, Where the Iron Crosses Grow, 257.
77 Of note, local antipathy against the Romanians may have been higher than against the Germans due
“not necessarily because they were given to wholesale extermination actions but, rather, because they
aroused widespread hostility by their wanton looting, the, and abuse.” uote from eo J. Schulte, e
German Army and Nazi Policies in Occupied Russia (Oxford, UK: Berg Publishers, 1989), 72. Schulte does
not provide specic examples from Crimea but references others from mainland Ukraine.
78 Earl Ziemke, “Composition and Morale of the Partisan Movement,” in John A. Armstrong, ed., Soviet
Partisans in World War II (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), 369.
79 Kenneth Slepyan, Salin’s Guerrillas: Soviet Partisans in World War II (Lawrence: University of Kansas
Press, 2006), 123; and Ziemke, “Composition and Morale of the Partisan Movement,” 369.
80 Ziemke, “Composition and Morale of the Partisan Movement,” 370.
81 Harward, Romania’s Holy War, 190.
Heck
316
hampered by the Soviet Navy or Air Force that deep in the rear. Nevertheless, Soviet
reinforcements kept pouring into the beaches near Kerch, running the gauntlet of the
Kriegsmarine’s 1st Schnellbootsflottille, which inicted heavy losses on Gorshkov’s Azov
Flotilla. e Germans suered heavy losses, too, losing more than one-third of their
attack boats.
By December, Allmendinger was again ready to eliminate the beachhead at El-
tigen. Here, the Romanian 6th Cavalry Division under General Corneliu Teodorini,
reinforced with two full battalions from the 3d Mounain Division, the 52d Tank Compa-
ny, and two batteries of German Sturmgeschütz assault guns, plus 12 artillery batteries,
received the assignment to wipe the beachhead.82 e beachhead was viewed as a
“plum ripe for the picking.”83
On 4 December, Teodorini launched his assault. e cavalry suadrons conduct-
ed holding or xing attacks in the south while the mountain troops and assault guns
attacked from the west. e trapped Soviets fought hard, inicting signicant casu-
alties on the Romanians and their German allies. On 6 December, the North Cauca-
sus Front issued the order to evacuate the Eltigen bridgehead.84 By 7 December, the
bridgehead was in Romanian hands. e Soviets “le stranded three large harbor
boats (with deck), one large launch, three gunboats, and 24 landing boats, seven large
and seventeen small shing cutters, all armed, but without engines.”85 ese were
heavy losses for an already weak Soviet naval force in the Black and Azov seas. During
their assault, the Romanians suered some 886 casualties but killed more than 1,200
Soviets and captured another 1,570, of whom one-half were wounded. Disconcert-
ingly, approximately 800 Soviet troops succeeded in breaking out to the north in
an attempt to reach the Kerch beachhead and another 1,000 were evacuated by the
Azov Flotilla.86 In the process, they overran German artillery positions atop Mount
Mithridat and had to be driven out by Romanian troops of the 3d Mounain Division.
Only by 11 December was the mountain retaken, with another 1,500 Soviets captured
by the Romanians.87
From here, a stalemate settled over the peninsula as both sides gured out how
to resume the ght in the spring. Almost 190,000 German and Romanian troops dug
in across Crimea. In eastern Crimea, one German infantry division, along with the
Romanian 3d and 6th Cavalry Divisions held the line while 1st and 2d Mounain Divisions
watched the southern mountains and coast line.88
82 Mark Axworthy, Cornel Scafes, and Cristian Craciunoiu, ird Axis Fourth Ally: Romanian Armed Forces
in the European War, 1941–1945 (London: Arms and Armour, 1995), 131.
83 uoted in Axworthy, Scafes, and Craciunoiu, ird Axis Fourth Ally, 131. Original source unknown.
84 Ivanov, “Crimean Landing,” 59.
85 Ruge, e Soviets as Naval Opponents, 117–18.
86 Zonin, Loyalty to the Ocean, 92.
87 Axworthy, Scafes, and Craciunoiu, ird Axis Fourth Ally, 131; and Harward, Romania’s Holy War, 189.
88 Harward, Romania’s Holy War, 189.
Prelude to Stalin’s ird Crushing Blow
317
By the end of December, some 29,000 Soviet troops had become casualties. Nu-
merous others had received awards, including four Crimean Tatars whose fate would
be less than glorious several months later at the hands of Levrenty Beria’s People’s
Commissariat for Internal Aairs (NKVD). In contrast, the Germans and Romanians
suered approximately one-half that number of casualties. In the words of Alexander
Hill, “at least the gap between enemy and Soviet casualties was far smaller than was
typically the case earlier in the war, where total German and Rumanian losses were
perhaps in the region of 14,000 for a similar period and where both gures cover the
period of the most intensive ghting.”89
As ghting and the stalemate draed on, German and Romanian troops in-
creasingly found themselves trapped. As early as mid-October, Romanian desertions
reached a point where a regiment was established to “ ‘reeducate’ rst-time deserters
for two months before sending them back to their units.”90 Soviet propaganda target-
ed the Romanians in particular, telling them “Your fate in Crimea is sealed, do not
believe the Germans.”91 Aer the Soviet landings, some Romanians around Simfero-
pol deserted and became bandits.92
SOVIET SHORTCOMINGS
Doctrinally, the Soviets suered from a lack of dedicated and coordinated planning
model for amphibious operations. Prewar Soviet doctrine, specically the Instructions
on Marine Operations (1940), was still in place in 1943 and did not divide an amphibious
operation into stages.93 While landings like Kerch-Eltigen were by nature phased op-
erations, the planning documents may not have reected that, which would have had
an adverse impact on the operation.94 New doctrine was forthcoming but it is unclear
if Soviet planners had access to it in October 1943.
Naval doctrine, in the form of the 1943 Instructions for Joint Action by the Ground
Forces, the Navy, and Miliary River Flotillas, divided landing operations into six
stages:
• Preparation for the operation,
• Embarkation of the landing force,
• Transit at sea,
• Fighting for landing and landing,
89 Alexander Hill, e Red Army and the Second World War (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
2019), 471, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139107785.
90 Harward, Romania’s Holy War, 187.
91 Harward, Romania’s Holy War, 187.
92 Harward, Romania’s Holy War, 188.
93 Yeshchenko, “Analyzing the Practice of Conducting Amphibious Assault Operations during the Great
Patriotic War (1941–1945),” 56.
94 Yeshchenko, “Analyzing the Practice of Conducting Amphibious Assault Operations during the Great
Patriotic War (1941–1945),” 56.
Heck
318
• Fulllment of the mission of the landing ashore, and
• Curtailment of the operation or regrouping for the next operation.95
e assault was identied as the most important stage and was further broken
down into a series of tactical stages:
• Deploying the landing forces,
• Landing the lead echelon,
• Landing subseuent assault elements comprising the main landing forc-
es dropped in the specied area during the battle,
• Waging the battle ashore to seize the beachhead, and
• Landing logistical support units.96
In Instructions on Marine Operations (1940), command and control relationships were
identied roughly (gure 1).97
For Black Sea operations, likely including Kerch-Eltigen, the inclusion of air force
units complicated the chain of command and made achieving unity of command
more dicult. e lack of unity “caused inadeuate interaction organization, made
95 Yeshchenko, “Analyzing the Practice of Conducting Amphibious Assault Operations during the Great
Patriotic War (1941–1945),” 56. ese are similar to prewar doctrine as described by Achkasov and Pav-
lovich, Soviet Naval Operations in the Great Patriotic War, 1941–1945, 97.
96 Achkasov and Pavlovich, Soviet Naval Operations in the Great Patriotic War, 1941–1945, 98.
97 Based on Yeshchenko, “Analyzing the Practice of Conducting Amphibious Assault Operations during
the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945),” 57.
FIGURE
Comand and control relationships.
Source: courtesy of the author, adapted by MCUP
Prelude to Stalin’s ird Crushing Blow
319
impossible a rapid response to situation changes, and reduced the degree of responsi-
bility in the operation.”98
Additional tasks, including hydrolo and meteorolo, antitorpedo defenses,
and operational deception and security operations, were also reuired to support
landing operations. During Kerch-Eltigen, they were accomplished to varying levels
of success.
POSTWAR REFLECTIONS
As German and Romanian soldiers held the line in eastern Crimea, trapping the
Soviet amphibious force, Axis leaders identied their overall position as dire. Hitler
called Crimea a “second Stalingrad” and believed holding it was a strategic necessi-
ty.99 is belief, however, was likely of little consolation to the troops isolated on the
peninsula.
On 8 April 1944, the Stavka launched the third of 10 blows in 1944 when Sovi-
et troops attacked the German divisions at the Perekop Isthmus.100 e landing at
Kerch-Eltigen was a lengthy and costly stalemate that was ultimately broken when
the 4th Ukrainian Front pushed into Crimea across the Perekop Isthmus and through
the Syvash Sea from the north. e massive and unexpected assault threw the Axis
o balance and allowed Petrov’s Independent Coastal Army to drive out of their
beachheads. In the preceding months, Gorshkov’s Azov Flotilla landed approximately
240,000 troops with artillery, armored vehicles, and euipment.101 With the launch of
the third blow, Axis troops across Crimea “began a pell-mell, every-man-for himself
race to Sevastopol.”102 On 11 April, Kerch was liberated. By 12 May, all of Crimea was
in Soviet hands.
Performance by the Black Sea Fleet was lackluster at best and prewar doctrine,
a lack of euipment, and limited specialized troops all hampered the ability of the
Soviets to exploit their strength in eastern Crimea. In e Seapower of the Sate, Gor-
shkov wrote:
In the course of the defensive and oensive operations in maritime areas
the Soviet flee, using battleships and ships ill-suited for the landing of
troops, put ashore in sea landings over 250,000 men with technical sup-
plies and arms, or some 30 troop divisions. On average the fleet every
fortnight of the war disembarked one landing force. At the same time
active operations did not allow the Germans to sage a single landing
98 Yeshchenko, “Analyzing the Practice of Conducting Amphibious Assault Operations during the Great
Patriotic War (1941–1945),” 58.
99 Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters, 1939–1945, 394.
100 e term was rst used in Stalin’s speech on the “27th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist
Revolution.” For more, see Hill, e Red Army and the Second World War, chap. 21.
101 Norman Polmar, omas A. Brooks, and George Federo, Admiral Gorshkov: e Man Who Challenged
the U.S. Navy (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2019), 71.
102 Harward, Romania’s Holy War, 195.
Heck
320
on our coast although they possessed specially constructed landing cra
and had the experience of the successful conduct of such operations in the
Western European theatre.103
Gorshkov’s experience was unparalleled within the Soviet Navy, with approximately
one-third of all Soviets troops landed during the war doing so in landings he com-
manded.104
Soviet naval experience in the Great Patriotic War was “almost exclusively” lim-
ited as the Soviet Navy was “ ‘the faithful handmaiden’ of the Army ground forces.”105
Perhaps nowhere was this more evident than around Kerch-Eltigen in 1943–44. In a
postwar analysis, Admiral of the Fleet Ivan Isakov remarked:
roughout the war, the enemy was consantly menaced by our landing forces at
various sectors of the Black Sea coast . . . the Soviet Black Sea Fleet carried out ex-
tensive amphibious operations, and frequently and successfully landed diversion-
is, actical and operational forces from the sea. is presented a consant threat to
the enemy’s flanks and rear. . . . us operations by our fleet riveted the enemy to
the coast and paralyzed large bodies of his men which otherwise could have been
hurled into action at the fron.106
e landings at Kerch-Eltigen in late 1943 certainly pinned down large bodies of Axis
troops but also a sizeable portion of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet and the Independent
Coastal Army.
103 S. G. Gorshkov, e Sea Power of the Sate (Oxford, UK: Pergamon Press, 1979), 147.
104 Polmar, Brooks, and Federo, Admiral Gorshkov, 73.
105 Robert Waring Herrick, Soviet Naval eory and Policy: Gorshkov’s Inheriance (Newport, RI: Naval War
College Press, 1988), 156.
106 uoted in Gartho, Soviet Miliary Doctrine, 372.
321
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Not a Carbon Copy of the U.S. Marine Corps
The Development of the People’s Liberation Army Navy
Marine Corps since 1979 and What that Means
for the Chinese Power Project in the Pacic and Beyond
Edward Salo, PhD
In 2018, the movie Operation Red Sea arrived at the theaters in China. Coproduced
by the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), the lm oered a ctionalized
account of the 2015 Chinese military forces’ rescue of Chinese and foreign nation-
als from pirates in Yemen. e director of the lm, Dante Lam, commented that the
PLAN happily collaborated with the movie’s lming and provided all the assistance
he reuired. e Chinese government-run Global Times called Operation Red Sea, “A
patriotic movie about Chinese marines carrying out a daring rescue mission.”1 Global
Times uoted a “military insider” who commented that the movie was a success be-
cause it “showcased the Chinese Navy’s capabilities.”2 Li Jie, a Chinese naval expert,
suested that the movie oered an opportunity for the Chinese Navy to show o its
overall maritime force that “is even better than the U.S. in some areas.”3 Much like Top
Gun in the 1980s, Operation Red Sea was a commercial lm with a strong pro-military
propagandistic slant. e movie was designed to highlight the skills and abilities of
the dierent areas of the PLAN. One of those areas were the Chinese Navy’s Marines,
who were the central heroes of the movie.4
1 “China’s Military Finances Blockbuster Movie about Heroic Chinese Marines in Yemen,” Chinamil.
com, 17 February 2018.
2 “China’s Military Finances Blockbuster Movie about Heroic Chinese Marines in Yemen.”
3 “China’s Military Finances Blockbuster Movie about Heroic Chinese Marines in Yemen.”
4 Operation Red Sea, directed by Dante Lam, starring Zhang Yi, Huang Jinu, Hai Qing, Du Jiang and
Jiang Luxia (Beijing: Bona Film Group, 2018).
Salo
322
e People’s Liberation Army Navy Marine Corps (PLANMC) serves as the ma-
rine corps of the PLA, and one of the sub-branches of the PLAN.5 Much like U.S.
Marine Corps across the globe, the PLANMC is China’s primary force to conduct
amphibious warfare and expeditionary operations, but that was not always the mili-
tary mission of the force. e original PLAN Marine Corps was a single regiment es-
tablished in 1953 for the specic mission of providing a force to support Communist
amphibious operations against islands controlled by the Chinese Nationalist forces.
It uickly grew to a force of eight divisions with more than 110,000 members, but
the PLAN disbanded the units in 1957 when the Communist leadership walked back
their plans to invade Taiwan. For most of the 1960s and the 1970s, the PLA main-
tained several army units trained in amphibious warfare and small naval infantry
units to fulll those missions for the PLAN.6
However, aer the Chinese military experienced less than stellar success in the
Paracel Islands conict with South Vietnam, the Chinese military began to reexam-
ine its organizational structure, as well as doctrine.7 In 1979, the Central Military
Commission of China reestablished the PLANMC, placing the 1st Marine Brigade in
Hainan, to ensure the new force’s ability to bolster the PLA’s force projection in the
South China Sea. Since its reconstitution in the 1980s, the force has grown as China
focused on naval power projection in the Pacic and other areas.8
e major uestion is how does the PLA plan to use their marine corps in future
military operations? Is the PLANMC going to be a rapid expeditionary force like the
U.S. Marine Corps? Will the PLANMC be responsible for an amphibious invasion
of islands as part of a larger military operation? Or do they have another use for the
force?
is chapter examines the history of the PLANMC and places its growth and
combat role into the model of the Chinese Navy established by Dr. Toshi Yoshiha-
ra and James R. Holmes in Red Sar Over the Pacific: China’s Rise and the Challenge to
U.S. Maritime Strate.9 is chapter explores the development of the Chinese Ma-
rine Corps (i.e., euipment, size of the force, and doctrine) and what capabilities the
PLANMC will provide the PLA in the future. e author focuses on the development
of the force since 1979 as a way to forecast how the PLA will use them in future oper-
ations in both war and peace.
5 Within the Chinese military organization, all branches of the military align under the PLA. e PLA
consists of ve service branches: the ground force, navy, air force, rocket force, and strategic support
force.
6 Dennis J. Blasko, “China’s Marines: Less Is More,” China Brief 10, no. 24 (December 2010).
7 Toshi Yoshihara, “e 1974 Paracels Sea Battle: A Campaign Appraisal,” Naval War College Review 69,
no. 2 (2016): 41–65.
8 Blasko, “China’s Marines.”
9 Toshi Yoshihara and James R. Holmes, Red Sar Over the Pacific: China’s Rise and the Challenge to U.S.
Maritime Strate (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2018).
Not a Carbon Copy of the U.S. Marine Corps
323
THE ORIGINAL PLAN
MARINE CORPS,
In 1949, the People’s Liberation Army defeated the Nationalist forces and forced them
o the mainland, but the Nationalists maintained control of several large islands o
the coast, including Formosa (Taiwan) and Hainan, as well as smaller islands. Real-
izing that the islands would be targets of attack, the Nationalist forces fortied the
areas and prepared for invasion from the sea. In 1950, the PLA began amphibious op-
erations against the Nationalist-controlled islands, and the PLA did capture Hainan
island in the South China Sea. However, Nationalist forces repulsed the PLA landing
in Kinmen and stopped the initial attacks on Taiwan.10
Recognizing the errors in their earlier amphibious operations, the People’s Liber-
ation Army created its rst PLANMC regiment as part of plans to invade Taiwan in
April 1953. e initial unit expanded with the addition of other army units, and on
9 December 1954, formed the 1st Marine Division. Soon, the new PLANMC division
was deployed successfully during the battle for Yijiangshan Islands during the First
Taiwan Strait Crisis (1954–55).11 Aer the Korean conict ended, the PLA expanded
the marine corps into eight divisions of approximately 110,000 troops and opened
an amphibious warfare school in Fujian in 1955 where the PLANMC and other army
units trained for the future amphibious landings and operations.12
In October 1957, the Chinese Central Military Commission deactivated the
PLANMC aer the government decided that invasion of Taiwan was not an immedi-
ate goal of the Communist nation. However, the PLAN did maintain several infantry
and amphibious tank regiments necessary for basic naval operations. Furthermore,
in the 1960s and 1970s, the PLA earmarked an army division for each of the PLAN’s
eets to be trained and euipped to conduct amphibious operations if necessary. is
strate soon proved to be inadeuate for their needs.13
In 1974, a poor performance by the PLA Army against a numerically inferior
South Vietnamese force during the Paracel Islands campaign caused the Central Mili-
tary Commission to reassess the need for a marine corps force in the PLA Navy. On 5
May 1980, the PLAN reconstituted the 1st Marine Brigade, subordinate to the South
Sea Fleet (SSF) of the PLA Navy, on Hainan. e force later relocated to the Zhanji-
ang area in Guangdong Province on the mainland and would serve as the only marine
corps unit in the PLAN for almost two decades.14
10 Sebastien Roblin, “When America reatened to Nuke China: e Battle of Yijiangshan Island,” Buzz
(blog), National Interest, 19 February 2017.
11 Christopher P. Isajiw, “China’s PLA Marines: An Emerging Force,” Diplomat, 17 October 2013; and
Blasko, “China’s Marines.”
12 John Pike, “People’s Liberation Navy-Marine Corps-Organizational Structure,” Global Security, 1 July
2022.
13 Pike, “People’s Liberation Navy-Marine Corps-Organizational Structure.”
14 Blasko, “China’s Marines.”
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324
In 1997, as part of a larger reduction in forces and reorganization of the military,
the PLA Army’s 164th Division, which was also stationed in the vicinity of Zhanjiang,
was converted into the 164th Marine Brigade and also placed under the control of the
SSF for a force of 10,000-12,000 troops. Retired Army lieutenant colonel Dennis J.
Blasko, an expert on the Chinese military and former defense department attaché to
Beijing, commented that the location of the two brigades and their training illustrat-
ed the PLANMC’s primary area of responsibility was the South China Sea.15
e primary mission of the PLANMC during this period was to defend the PLAN
mainland bases as well as Chinese bases in the Paracel and Spratly island chains.
While the Chinese media referred to the PLANMC as the national rapid-reaction
force, it appears that this new mission meant the support of natural disaster response,
probably because of the small size and ease of deployment of the PLANMC.16 Steve
Ostrosky argued that the PLANMC’s focus on natural disaster response was good for
the image of the PLANMC, but did little to prepare them for combat. Additionally,
the PLANMC remained about the same size from 1980 until 2016.17
THE EXPANSION AND
REORGANIZATION OF PLANMC, PRESENT
In 2016, as part of a larger reorganization of the PLA, Chinese leaders announced the
PLANMC was to undergo a signicant expansion, growing from two to eight bri-
gades. e U.S. Department of Defense’s Annual Report to Congress: Miliary and Secu-
rity Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2018 described the importance
of the expansion of the PLANMC as “one of the most signicant PLAN structural
changes in 2017 was the expansion of the PLAN Marine Corps (PLANMC). . . . By
2020, the PLANMC will consist of 7 brigades, may have more than 30,000 personnel,
and will expand its mission to include expeditionary operations on foreign soil.”18
It appears that the newly expanded PLANMC could serve as “the core of the PLA’s
future expeditionary force”; however, it will take many years before the PLANMC is
capable of large-scale amphibious operations.19
For the expansion, the PLANMC grew from the two existing brigades to eight
brigades by creating four new maneuver brigades (two each in the Northern eater
Command and Eastern eater Command); expanding the former PLAN “Jiaolong”
commando regiment to a brigade and moving it from the PLAN to the PLANMC;
15 Blasko, “China’s Marines.”
16 Steve Ostrosky, “e PLANMC: Will the PLA Marine Corps Become Its Own Service,” Marine Corps
Gazette (September 2019): 56.
17 Ostrosky, “e PLANMC,” 56.
18 Annual Report to Congress: Miliary and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2018
(Washington, DC: Oce of the Secretary of Defense, 2018), 28.
19 Cristina L. Garafola, e PLA Airborne Corps in a Joint Island Landing Campaign, China Maritime Report
No. 19 (Newport, RI: China Maritime Studies Institute, U.S Naval War College, 2022), 1.
Not a Carbon Copy of the U.S. Marine Corps
325
and nally, creating a PLANMC aviation brigade in Shandong that can support all of
the PLANMC brigades (table 1).20
To further suest that the PLANMC is not a current threat to Taiwan, the
PLAN based the majority of the expanded PLANMC in the Norther and Southern
eater Commands, and not with the Eastern eater Command, which is directly
across from Taiwan.21 Alan Burns, a China expert with CNA believes the expansion of
the PLANMC also includes changes to the PLANMC’s command structure, including
the establishment of a single headuarters with a single commander:
Previously, the two Chinese marine brigades were subordinate to the PLA Navy
South Sea Flee. Now, the PLANMC commander will likely be subordinate to the
PLA Navy headquarters directly, which indicates a significant increase in satus
and the evolution of the PLANMC into something greater than just one of five
equal branches of the PLA Navy. is could indicate that the types of missions
that Chinese marines are suited to perform are becoming a higher priority for
Beijing.22
In addition to the PLANMC being expanded, the Chinese also reorganized the
PLANMC brigades to better suit them for expeditionary operations. Previously, the
brigades each contained several infantry battalions and an amphibious armor regi-
ment as the primary assault forces. Aer 2017, the PLANMC used the combined arms
20 Kennedy, e New Chinese Marine Corps, 1.
21 Kris Osborn, “DIA Report on China reat: Stealth Fighters, Carrier-Killer Missiles and ICBMs,”
Warrior Maven: Center for Military Modernization, 24 January 2019.
22 Kris Osborn, “China Is Tripling the Size of Its Marine Corps,” Warrior Maven: Center for Military
Modernization, 29 August 2018.
Table 1. e PLANMC brigades
eater command Name Location
Southern 1st Marine Brigade Zhanjiang, Guangdong
Southern 2d Marine Brigade Zhanjiang, Guangdong
Southern Special Operations Brigade Sanya, Hainan
Eastern 3d Marine Brigade Jinjiang, Fujian
Eastern 4th Marine Brigade Jieyang, Guangdong
Northern 5th Marine Brigade Qingdao, Shandong
Northern 6th Marine Brigade Qingdao, Yantai, Shandong
Northern Naval Shipborne Aviation Brigade Zhucheng, Shandong
Source: Conor Kennedy, e New Chinese Marine Corps: A “Strategic Daer” in a Cross-Strait Invasion, China
Maritime Report no. 15 (Newport, RI: China Maritime Studies Institute, U.S Naval War College, 2021), 4.
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battalion organizational chart, similar to the PLA’s table of command, for the new
battalions. e typical PLANMC brigade contains nine battalions:23
• Amphibious mechanized infantry, 1st Battalion ( )
• Amphibious mechanized infantry, 2d Battalion ( )
• Light mechanized infantry, 3d Battalion ( )
• Air assault infantry battalion ( )
• Reconnaissance battalion ( )
• Artillery battalion ( )
• Air defense battalion ( )
• Operational support battalion ( )
• Service support battalion ( )
Each of the amphibious mechanized infantry battalions contained:
• Four mechanized infantry companies ( )
• Firepower company ( )
• Reconnaissance platoon ( )
• Air defense element ( )
• Artillery element ( )
• Engineer element ( )
• Repair team ( )
SPECIAL OPERATIONS
FORCES IN THE PLANMC
As part of the expansion, the PLANMC also gained a special operations force, the
“Jiaolong” Commando Unit (a.k.a. Water Dragons), which is located in Hainan. Ad-
ditionally, the individual PLANMC brigades have reconnaissance battalions that can
carry out special operations like missions but are not considered a special opera-
tions force.24 Founded in 2002, the PLAN created the Jiaolong Commando Unit to
serve as a counter to the U.S. Navy’s SEALs or the British Royal Navy’s Special Boat
Suadron. e PLANMC describes the Jiaolong Commando Unit as an “elite special
operations force of the People’s Liberation Army Navy,” and train in “backwater inl-
tration, jungle search, and urban counter-terrorism among other things.” e Jiaolong
Commandos might be the best-known Chinese special operation forces because of
their success in recapturing a ship from pirates in the Gulf of Aden and the evacua-
tion of civilians from war-torn Yemen in 2018.25 Gong Kaifeng, a suadron ocer of
the Jiaolong Commandos commented on the importance of the Water Dragons: “Our
23 Blasko, “China’s Marines.”
24 John Chen and Joel Wuthnow, Chinese Special Operations in a Large-Scale Island Landing, China Maritime
Report no. 18 (Newport, RI: China Maritime Studies Institute, U.S Naval War College, 2022), 6–7.
25 Stavros Atlamazoglou, “How China’s Special Forces Stack Up against the US’s Special Operators,”
Business Insider, 1 December 2020.
Not a Carbon Copy of the U.S. Marine Corps
327
special operations force is the vanguard in joint operations. We should be the point
of the sword in joint operations, to strike terror into the enemy.”26
Like many maritime special operations forces, the PLANMC Jiaolong Comman-
dos train for more than a year in such skills as parachuting, rappelling, land and sea
navigation, special vehicle driving, search and seizure, demolition, and hand-to-hand
combat skills, as well as reconnaissance skills like map identication, photography
and video recording, and encryption protocols for transmitting intelligence.27 e
addition of the Jiaolong Commandos changes the way the PLANMC can operate on
the battleeld.
In December 2020, PLANMC forces conducted a combined arms island landing
and seizure exercise involving suad-size mechanized infantry units. Jiaolong Com-
mandos used mine-clearing line charges to destroy landing obstacles, while Jiaolong
sniper teams wreaked havoc on the enemy. Also, Jiaolong commandos worked with
the conventional forces to destroy vital enemy targets and control the battleeld.28
is exercise showed how the Jiaolong would support conventional operations, as
well as their unconventional warfare mission.
THE MISSION OF THE PLANMC
With the expansion and reorganization of the PLANMC, it is necessary to examine
their new mission. However, the PLA’s amphibious forces are split between the am-
phibious combined arms brigades in the army and the PLANMC.29 erefore, any
amphibious operations would likely employ forces from both services. e U.S. De-
partment of Defense’s assessment of the Chinese military in 2020 and 2021 states that
both PLAA and PLANMC units equipped for amphibious operations conduct reg-
ular company- to batalion-level amphibious training exercises, and the PLA con-
tinues to integrate aerial insertion training into larger exercises. . . . e PLA rarely
conducts amphibious exercises involving echelons above a batalion, although both
PLAA and PLANMC units have emphasized the development of combined-arms
batalion formations since 2012.30
In fact, during a discussion of Chinese military tactics, the U.S. Army describes
the PLANMC in terms of its similarity to the U.S. Marine Corps:
e People’s Liberation Army Navy Marine Corps (PLANMC) is the PLA’s expedi-
tionary amphibious warare capability. Like the U.S. Marine Corps, it alls under
administrative control of the navy, but it is equipped and organized in a manner
26 Han Bin and Huang Xiaodong, “e Jiaolong Commandos,” CGTN News, 15 April 2019.
27 Chen and Wuthnow, Chinese Special Operations in a Large-Scale Island Landing, 11.
28 Chen and Wuthnow, Chinese Special Operations in a Large-Scale Island Landing, 13.
29 Kennedy, e New Chinese Marine Corps, 1.
30 Dennis J. Blasko, e PLA Army Amphibious Force, China Maritime Report no. 20 (Newport, RI: China
Maritime Studies Institute, U.S Naval War College, 2022), 2.
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328
similar to that of the army. Unlike the U.S. Marine Corps, however, the PLANMC
does not have the PLA’s heavy amphibious warare mission—this belongs to the
People’s Liberation Army Army (PLAA). Instead, the PLANMC should be viewed
as a light and strategically mobile force built to conduct expeditionary warare
missions away from Chinese shores.31
Alan Burns agrees with this argument that “the PLANMC has been developing
into a rapid response force that could be tasked with conducting a variety of expe-
ditionary missions to defend China’s overseas interests. . . . While it looks like the
PLANMC has increased in status . . . it is still not likely to reach uite the position
that the USMC has in the U.S. military.”32 However, it appears that the PLA Army
would conduct major amphibious operations such as assaulting Taiwan, while the
PLANMC would be tasked with smaller operations such as seizing small islands.33
TRAINING THE PLANMC
In addition to expanding the force, PLANMC has also expanded its training regime
to become more of an expeditionary force. Chinese media have highlighted that the
PLANMC has been active in becoming “an all-weather, multirole special amphibious
ghting force able to ght in highlands, jungles, water, and other extreme environ-
ments.”34
In addition to the training for amphibious landings, the PLANMC has been ac-
tive in developing its vertical envelopment capabilities as well as training in winter,
desert, mountain, and jungle environments. For example, PLANMC Jiaolong Com-
mandos have been experimenting with long-range parachuting inltration methods,
very similar to U.S. Navy SEALs. e PLANMC is also developing its own air assault
units.35 Likewise, PLANMC is also working on developing better doctrine for air as-
sault operations including “overcoming diculties such as obstacles in low-altitude
ight and few reference objects in night ight . . . [avoiding] enemy radar recon-
naissance and . . . anti-aircra re power with their all-weather combat capability.”36
In addition to training its force, since 2005, PLANMC has been active in overseas
military exercises with Russia and other nations. In addition, PLANMC has been an
active part of China’s antipiracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden.37
31 Chinese Tactics, ATP 7-100.3 (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 2021), 3-4.
32 Osborn, “China Is Tripling the Size of Its Marine Corps.”
33 Osborn, “China Is Tripling the Size of Its Marine Corps.”
34 Minnie Chan, “Beijing Marks 73rd Navy Anniversary with Video of Island-Control Drills,” South China
Morning Post, 21 April 2022.
35 Garafola, e PLA Airborne Corps in a Joint Island Landing Campaign, 14.
36 “Marine Commandos Conduct Armed Parachuting Training,” China Military, 5 March 2022; and “PLA
Navy Marine Corps Organizes Air Assault Training,” China Military, 27 May 2022.
37 Osborn, “China Is Tripling the Size of Its Marine Corps.”
Not a Carbon Copy of the U.S. Marine Corps
329
EUIPMENT AND VEHICLES
OF THE PLANMC
Since the PLANMC has shied to a combined arms battalion, they also reuire ve-
hicles and euipment to support those forces.38 e PLANMC uses standard Chinese
military euipment (i.e., small arms, eld gear, etc.) and weapons that are similar
to the PLA Army elds. e marines have had their own ocean pattern camouage
uniform since 2013.39 Because PLANMC now has combined arms, it also has been im-
proving its armored vehicle components with tanks and infantry ghting vehicles.40
e PLANMC elds the Norinco Type 63 amphibious light tank, which was an army
design but was capable of some small-scale amphibious operations. e PLANMC
later elded an upgraded Type 63A, which could operate in the open ocean. Both de-
signs lacked heavy armor and were vulnerable to antitank guided missiles and heavy
armor. e Type 63 is being replaced by the ZLT-05 amphibious tank, a combination
of infantry ghting vehicle (IFV), tank, and assault gun. Still lacking in armor, it has
superior maneuverability and weaponry. Alongside, the ZLT-05, is the ZBD-05 IFV,
PLANMC’s amphibious ghting vehicle that carries eight passengers and employs a
30-mm autocannon, rather than the 105-mm main gun. e PLANMC also currently
elds standard PLA transport and attack helicopters. Most experts assume that as the
PLANMC continues to expand, it will begin to get specialized helicopters and other
vehicles that are designed for its specic missions.41
AMPHIBIOUS TRANSPORT
FOR THE PLANMC
Of course, any marine corps reuires amphibious transport ships to transport the
force to the beaches. In 2000, the PLAN only had approximately 20 small landing
cra (LST type), which indicated it had no real way of conducting large-scale am-
phibious operations. To support the expansion of the PLANMC, the PLAN has fo-
cused an active ship-building eort on the Type 071 Landing Platform, Dock (LPD)
and the Type 075 Landing Helicopter, Dock (LHD).
First built in 2002, the PLAN constructed eight of the Type 071 LPDs between
2002 and 2019. e ships have a length of 210 meters, a beam of 28 meters, and a dra
of 7 meters. e amphibious warfare ships support the necessary command and con-
trol facilities to direct amphibious operations and can eld a force that includes:
• amphibious assault vehicles, including the ZBD-05 amphibious IFV and
the ZTD-05 amphibious assault tracked armored vehicle
38 Gabriel Dominguez, Samuel Cranny-Evans, and J. Michael Cole, “PLANMC May Be Re-Euipping for
Combined Arms, Multidomain Operations,” Janes, 3 June 2021.
39 “People’s Liberation Army Euipment and Gear,” Far East Tactical, accessed 6 October 2023.
40 Gordon Arthur, “PLA Marines Bulk Up with Tanks,” Shephard Media, 9 June 2021.
41 Arthur, “PLA Marines Bulk Up with Tanks.”
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330
• four Landing Cra, Air Cushion (LCAC);
• two Changhe Z-8 (SA 321 Super Frelon) transport helicopters; and
• a marine battalion of up to 800 personnel and their associated euip-
ment and supplies.42
While the Type 071 LPD provided the PLANMC the ability to conduct small-scale
expeditionary missions, it did not oer the necessary capabilities for a large-scale
beach assault.
In 2011, the Chinese began development on the Type 075 LHD similar to the U.S.
Navy’s Wasp-class landing helicopter dock, displacing more than 30,000 tons. Analysts
suested that the Type 075 was “likely to increase the ‘vertical’ amphibious assault
capability with the very mountainous East Coast of Taiwan in mind.”43 e new ship
would be able to handle up to 30 helicopters, along with ship-to-shore amphibious
cra and a complement of marines.44 By 2021, the PLAN had launched three Type 075
ships, due to the fact that the rst Type 075 was constructed in record time and the
PLAN averaged one ship every six months. It appears that the PLAN intends to con-
struct eight Type 075 LHDs, as well as introduce the new Type 076 helicopter carriers
that would have a full ight deck and operate UAVs.45
In addition to the large amphibious ships, PLANMC elds two types of LCAC:
the Type 726 (Yuyi-class) and the Zubr-class.
• A Zubr-class LCAC can carry up to 3 main battle tanks, 10 armored ve-
hicles, or 500 marines.
• A Type 726 LCAC can carry one main battle tank or 80 Marines.
Coupled with the large amphibious warfare ships, the PLANMC should be able to
move troops and armored vehicles to shore with ease.46
e Chinese military contends that the “new generation of large amphibious as-
sault vessels . . . will strengthen the navy as it plays a more dominant role in project-
ing the nation’s power overseas.”47 e Department of Defense also suests that “the
42 “Type 071 Landing Platform Dock (LPD),” Naval Technolo, 9 February 2016.
43 Xavier Vavasseur, “China: End of the Type 071 LPD Program, Start of the Type 075 LHD One?” Naval
News, 5 August 2019.
44 “Photos: China’s First Type 075 Amphib Heads out on Sea Trials,” Maritime Executive, 5 August 2020.
45 Andrew Tate, “China Launches ird Type 075 LHD for PLAN,” Janes.com, 29 January 2021; Xavi-
er Vavasseur, “China’s 2nd Type 075 LHD Guangxi 广西 Commissioned with PLAN,” Naval News, 30
December 2021; and H. I. Sutton, “Stealth UAVs Could Give China’s Type-076 Assault Carrier More
Firepower,” Forbes, 23 July 2020.
46 Capt Michael A. Hanson, USMC, “China’s Marine Corps Is on the Rise,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceed-
ings 146, no. 4 (April 2020).
47 Minnie Chen, “China Building Navy’s Biest Amphibious Assault Vessel,” South China Morning Post,
29 March 2017.
Not a Carbon Copy of the U.S. Marine Corps
331
PLAN’s investment in LHAs signals its intent to continue to develop its expedition-
ary warfare capabilities.”48
A PLACE IN THE WORLD FOR THE PLANMC
So, what is the role of the new PLANMC? Are they a copy of the U.S. Marine Corps
or something dierent? As China expands its role in the world with bases in the
Middle East and Africa, we nd PLANMC forces at those bases. e PLANMC is
conducting training in dierent climates and environments than the South China
Sea, including desert, jungle, and Arctic environments. In terms of partners, the
PLANMC is working with the armed forces of other nations from peer-to-peer op-
erations with Russia to smaller nations. e U.S. Department of Defense states that
the PLANMC’s presence in Djibouti provides the PRC with the ability to support
a miliary response to contingencies aecting the PRC’s investments and infra-
structure in the region and the approximately 1 million PRC citizens in Africa and
500,000 in the Middle Eas. e PLANMC also embarks a contingent of marines
with the PLAN’s Gulf of Aden counterpiracy-focused naval escort ask force that
supports the PRC’s trade interests. Additionally, the PLANMC supports the PRC’s
miliary diplomacy. For example, it has trained with Russian and ai forces and
participated in exchanges with the United Sates and Australia.49
Maybe the PLANMC is becoming like the U.S. Marine Corps. It is not going to
be the Marine Corps of World War II, capable of large-scale amphibious operations,
but it can be used for various missions in lands far from China to serve as the “tip of
the spear.” Alan Burns contends that “having a marine force that can conduct expedi-
tionary operations is one part of Beijing’s eorts to build a strong military appropri-
ate for what Chinese leaders see as China’s ambitions to be a maritime great power.”50
48 Xavier Vavasseur, “US DOD’s 2021 China Military Power Report: PLAN Is the Largest Navy in the
World,” Naval News, 5 November 2021.
49 Annual Report to Congress: Miliary and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China, 2021
(Washington, DC: Oce of the Secretary of Defense, 2021), 85.
50 Osborn, “China Is Tripling the Size of Its Marine Corps.”
333
CONCLUSION
Timothy Heck, B. A. Friedman, and Walker D. Mills
The rst volume of On Contested Shores was inspired by a combination of re-
lated developments. A changing global security environment reuired a hard
look at capabilities across the U.S. military and a reevaluation of operational
concepts. In part due to this reevaluation, former Commandant of the Marine Corps
general David H. Berger issued his Commandant’s Planning Guidance (2019), which
kicked o a major transformation of the Marine Corps.1 ese editors felt strongly
then, as we still do, that rigorous scholarship on amphibious operations, which had
been dormant or secondary within the Marine Corps due to ongoing commitments
to the Global War on Terrorism, is important for informing current and future de-
velopments.
At the time On Contested Shores released in 2020, it had been nearly 30 years since
the publication of Lieutenant Colonel Merrill L. Bartlett’s edited volume Assault from
the Sea: Essays on the History of Amphibious Operations. As such, it was past time for a
similar, follow-on work of scholarship with modern relevancy.2 We took an approach
similar to Bartlett, wanting to pull in a wide range of amphibious case studies and au-
thors who would cover relevant topics beyond the classic Second World War amphib-
1 Gen David H. Berger, Commandant’s Planning Guidance: 38th Commandant of the Marine Corps (Washing-
ton, DC: Headuarters Marine Corps, 2019).
2 LtCol Merrill L. Bartlett, USMC (Ret), Assault from the Sea: Essays on the History of Amphibious Warare
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1993).
Heck, Friedman, and Mills
334
ious assaults in Europe and the Pacic that most readers are already familiar with,
while simultaneously giving those examples their due recognition as the epitome of
one type of amphibious warfare. e 23 chapters in the rst volume of On Contested
Shores covered topics that were both thematic and operational. We believe it achieved
our intent of broadening the scope of English-language scholarship on amphibious
operations and providing an academically rigorous foundation to inform decisions
about the future of the Marine Corps, while still being accessible enough to attract
a general audience and educate any interested reader. But as any author or editor re-
alizes when undertaking a project of this scope and breadth, there was so much that
we could not include or had to leave out due to space constraints and the limitation
of time. Almost immediately, we became interested in publishing a second volume
that continued the original intent of broadening the scholarship and lling what we
still believe is a gap of non-Western examples in the English-language literature on
amphibious operations.
Now, it seems somehow tting, that four years aer the release of General Berg-
er’s Commandant’s Planning Guidance with its subseuent sea-change in how the Ma-
rine Corps views its future role, we are nishing the second volume of On Contested
Shores. e Marine Corps is still in the thrall of the transformation kicked o in 2019
and then a year later with the publication of Force Design 2030. Force Design 2030 has
been the subject of major debate but the impacts and changes are immediately appar-
ent force-wide.3
Outside of the Marine Corps, the global security outlook is even darker than
it was in 2019. We have witnessed war in Nagorno-Karabakh, war in Ukraine, war
in Ethiopia, war in Sudan, and war in Israel and Gaza, all while anxiously watching
tensions ratchet up in the Strait of Taiwan and the South China Sea. Since 2019, the
possibility of an invasion of Taiwan by the People’s Republic of China has increasing-
ly preoccupied much of the defense establishment for the United States and its allies.
Such an invasion would be, at its core, a massive amphibious assault. Indeed, should
it occur, it will likely be the largest amphibious invasion in recorded history, dwarng
even the landings in Normandy or on Iwo Jima and Okinawa in scale and overall op-
erating area. Various stas and headuarters should be mining the lessons of history
for insight into how the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will approach executing any
potential amphibious operation, and how they may be defeated.
If the United States became directly involved in any of these conicts, even far
inland, it is relatively certain that at least some of the forces deployed would be am-
phibious, that is deployed from naval vessels at sea. But it is also relatively certain
that the Marine Corps forces within those deployments will not look like lines of
amphibious assault vehicles storming a beach. ose deployments will reuire new
and innovative approaches to amphibious warfare developed by a new generation
3 Gen David H. Berger, Force Design 2030 (Washington, DC: Headuarters Marine Corps, 2020); and Tim
Barrick, “Future Wars and the Marine Corps: Asking the Right uestions,” War on the Rocks, 1 April 2022.
Conclusion
335
of amphibious warfare practitioners. Like all forms of warfare, amphibious warfare
has been forced to change over time. Little more than a decade aer the famous am-
phibious assaults during the Second World War and only a few years aer the assault
at Inchon, British and French forces using similar tactics and doctrine faced major
diculties in their combined amphibious assault on Port Said, Ept, in 1956 during
the Suez Crisis. According to historian Ian Speller, “the amphibious landing at Port
Said was more reminiscent of the slow, methodical approach reuired during World
War II than the type of rapid and exible operation that might have brought success
within an acceptable timescale.”4 One participant later wrote that it was “a lash-up of
half-forgotten ideas of the Second World War, more apt to an old comrades parade
than to modern war.”5 While the chapters in this book might be analyses of old oper-
ations, the idea remains to prevent the next amphibious operations from looking like
an “old comrades parade.”
Just as the Marine Corps transforms today, practitioners of amphibious warfare
around the world need to develop new approaches and operational concepts if they
want to execute eective amphibious operations, which are as important as ever, and
the intent of this volume is to help inform that development by providing examples
and case studies from which to draw lessons and principles. We believe that both of
these volumes contribute to the eorts of tacticians, planners, strategists, and poli-
cymakers alike, and also serve as a bridge to literature on amphibious operations if
readers want to dig deeper or explore the literature further.
We wanted the second volume to oer the continuity of the rst but also take a
slightly new approach. So, we decided to organize the second volume thematically,
as opposed to the largely chronological organization of the rst volume. We made
this change so that the reader could more easily draw conclusions from and parallels
between the by-design diversity within the chapters. Readers will notice that this
organization is similar to the commonly used military acronym DOTMLPFP, which
stands for doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership, personnel, facilities,
and policy; and it is an analytical tool to examine military capability from a wholistic
perspective. Here, it helped the editors organize a volume that looked at amphibious
operations from a range of dierent angles and perspectives and is also presented in
a seuence that will feel familiar to practitioners.
is organization is particularly useful for informing the ongoing transformation
of the Marine Corps, which is making changes across the spectrum of DOTMLPFP,
and also for other amphibious forces around the world that are grappling with the
same challenges and dilemmas surrounding amphibious warfare in the twenty-rst
century and doing the same thing.
4 Ian Speller, “e Seaborne/Airborne Concept: Littoral Manoeuvre in the 1960s,” Journal of Strategic
Studies 29, no. 1 (February 2006): 59, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390600566357.
5 MajGen J. L. Moulton, “Bases or Fighting Forces?,” in Brassey’s Annual: e Armed Forces Year-Book, 1964
(London: William Clowes, 1964), 149.
Heck, Friedman, and Mills
336
While the main purpose of this volume and its predecessor is to provide a more
diverse resource for practitioners of amphibious warfare to inform force develop-
ment, it also provides an accessible resource for armies, navies, and air forces. Armies
like the U.S. Army, the Australian Army, and the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force
(JGSDF) are appropriately seeking to enhance their amphibious or maritime capabil-
ities. Airborne forces have been used in concert with amphibious forces in a variety
of conicts since the advent of aviation, and air forces have likewise been used in
support of amphibious warfare. Amphibious warfare is the oldest mission for navies,
transporting land forces since at least the mysterious Sea People and the Trojan War
of the Bronze Age, before ships were able to directly ght each other. Amphibious op-
erations have always been inherently joint and multidomain operations and are oen
combined operations between militaries from multiple countries. e 2019 edition
of Amphibious Operations, Joint Publication 3-02, reminds us that “amphibious oper-
ations, no matter their makeup or application, are complex and inherently joint or
multi-Service.”6 e study of amphibious warfare should not be limited to just those
who practice amphibious warfare, but should be undertaken by any military practi-
tioner who might be involved in one, civilian leadership who might be involved in
planning or ordering an operation, or even a general audience and interested public.
e rst section, Doctrine and Logistics, has two chapters: one that discusses the
intersection of geography, strate, and logistics at Veracruz in the Mexican American
War by Christopher Menking; and another that covers the development of landing
cra and the resultant doctrinal evolution by Stephen Strahan. Both of these topics
have continued relevance today. e second section, Technolo and Innovation, is
perhaps the most directly relevant to ongoing eorts. It features chapters by Douglas
E. Nash Sr. and Walker D. Mills that discuss the relationship between technolo and
amphibious warfare in the past and future, respectively. e third section, Organiza-
tion and Training, is both the largest and most diverse.
Not one of the chapters are focused on American amphibious history. Xiaobing
Li, Benjamin Claremont, Isabella Ginor, and Gideon Remez focus their chapters on
either the People’s Liberation Army or the Soviet Red Army. Eric Sibul and David
Katz focus theirs on German amphibious operations from the First World War, and
Lance R. Blyth focuses his geographically, on amphibious warfare in Arctic regions.
e fourth section, Policy and Interoperability, is more focused on challenges.
Darren Johnson and Shaun Mawdsley both cover historical amphibious operations
from the Second World War, albeit on very dierent scales and in dierent theaters.
But they help demonstrate the challenges in conducting amphibious operations be-
tween the Services or even dierent militaries; challenges to which there is no easy
x and that still exist today. e h section, Military Materiel and Personnel, oers
another batch of diverse chapters by Howard Fuller, Zachary Ota, Timothy G. Heck,
and Edward Salo. e chapters cover more than 100 years of amphibious history and
6 Amphibious Operations, Joint Publication 3-02 (Washington, DC: Joint Chiefs of Sta, 2019), I-1.
Conclusion
337
present American examples along with Soviet and Chinese ones. Ota’s chapter on
indigenous contributions to amphibious warfare in the Pacic and Salo’s chapter on
the development of the PLA Navy Marine Corps are particularly relevant for military
practitioners today, as the United States and its allies focus on Pacic security, but
they also cover topics that are oen overlooked in the literature on amphibious oper-
ations if they are covered at all.
As we wrote in the introduction, this volume is a testament to our belief that
amphibious warfare in all of its forms is as relevant today as it was when it the Al-
lies landed in Fortress Europe and campaigned across the Pacic during the Second
World War. We do not need to recount all the times that amphibious warfare was
declared irrelevant, outdated, or impossible only for it to return to the forefront of a
conict. However, we believe that in a world becoming increasingly dangerous and
uncertain, careful study of amphibious warfare by military practitioners, academ-
ics, and informed citizens is as important as ever. Ongoing conicts in Ukraine and
Israel have maritime and amphibious dimensions, and potential conicts in the Pa-
cic would be inherently amphibious.7 Further, the ongoing force design and trans-
formation—seen most dramatically in the U.S. Marine Corps but also in the British
Royal Marines, the PLA Navy Marine Corps, and other marine corps and amphibious
forces around the world—gives further reason why new and updated study and analy-
sis of amphibious operations is important, and we hope to have contributed in a small
way toward that end.
7 Walker D. Mills and Timothy Heck, “What Can We Learn about Amphibious Operations from a Con-
ict that Has Had Very Little of It? A Lot,” Modern War Institute, 22 April 2022; and Walker D. Mills,
“e Maritime Dimension to the Conict in Israel,” Irregular Warfare Initiative, 30 November 2023.
339
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Zhang, Xiaoming. Red Wings over the Yalu: China, the Soviet Union, and the Air War in Korea.
College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2002.
353
INDEX
1st Estonian Infantry Regiment, 148
15-inch Rodman Gun, 271
Aberdeen, George Hamilton-Gordon (4th Earl),
260, 263–66
Adams, Charles Francis, Jr., 257–59
Adams, John Quincy, 251–55, 257–62, 267, 274
additive manufacturing, 77
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, 248. See
also Churchill, Winston S.
Aiping, Zhang, 238, 240–41
aircra,
bombers, 190, 241, 243, 245, 306, 312
F-84 under, 239
ghters, 60, 241, 243, 245
MiG-15, 239
Sukhoi Su-17, 60
Sukhoi Su-27, 60
Tupolev Tu-22M Backre, 60
air operations, 142–62
airships, 154–55
Alexander I, 252
Aleutians, 163, 197–75
Alexander, Gen Harold, 200
Alexandria, Ept, 188, 192, 195
Algiers, 198–99
Allied/Allies, 41, 48 51, 89, 165–66, 198–99, 202–7,
211–12, 215, 276–77, 292, 337
Alligator, 90–92, 184. See also Landing Vehicle,
Tracked 1; and Roebling, Donald
American Civil War, 20, 247–75, 235
amphibious operations,
command and control, 58, 312, 318, 329
deception, 154, 173, 319
doctrine, 7–88, 94–95, 101, 115, 118–19, 143, 182,
202, 206, 217, 244, 276–300, 310, 317, 319,
322
intelligence, 12, 42, 129, 137, 141, 155, 191, 194,
199–200, 207, 213, 217–19, 230, 234, 277,
282, 292–95, 305, 311
planning, 8, 19, 46, 58, 66, 68, 70, 98, 100–1,
107–9, 112, 127, 133–34, 139–40, 152–54,
162, 174, 199–200, 203–6, 209–16, 220, 226,
306–7, 317
reconnaissance, 4, 56, 58–59, 73, 86, 89, 138,
144, 154, 157, 167, 180, 204, 208, 213–14,
217–20, 222, 225, 294, 309, 311–12, 326–28
Amphibious Training Center (ATC), 202, 204
Amtank (LVT[A]-1), 107
Amtrack, 91, 110
Antarctic, 163, 176–77, 181
antiaccess/area-denial (A2/AD), 162, 238, 247–75
Index
354
Antikythera anchorage, Greece, 184, 187
Arcadia Conference, 198
Arctic, 55n81, 163–64, 167, 169, 171–72, 175, 179–81,
331, 336
Attu, 169–75, 181
Australian units
Army, 296, 336
Royal Air Force, 296
Royal Navy, 277
Axis, 197–200, 203, 205–10, 303–9, 312–15, 319–20
amphibious raid, 58, 187–88, 198n7, 213, 218–27,
295–98
austere environment, operating in, 81
auxiliary personnel destroyer (APD), 223, 225–26
Bagot, Charles, 258
Baring, Alexander (1st Baron Ashburton), 260
Barrowclough, Harold E., 215–220, 226
bases, military
Camp Lejeune, NC, 102
Camp Pendleton, CA, 102, 113
Norfolk, VA, 98, 103
Pearl Harbor, HI, 65–66
Quantico, VA, 102
baaille conduite (methodical battle), 161–62
battleships (German)
SMS Bayern (1915), 156
SMS König (1913), 154, 158
SMS Kronprinz (1914), 158
battleships (Russian)
SMS Grazhdanin (1903), 151, 159
SMS Grom (1916), 159
SMS Slava (1905), 151, 159
Beijing, 230, 236–38, 243–44, 324–25
Berger, Gen David H., 4, 65, 70–72, 74, 300, 333–34
Berkeley, Maurice Frederick (1st Baron Fitz
Hardinge), 262–63
Biao, Cdr Lin, 231–35
Black Sea, 62n129, 183–84, 187–90, 194, 303, 305–13,
318–20
Bolívar, Simon, 254
Bonaparte, Napoléon, 270
Bonin Islands, 101
boots, cold weather, mountain, 167, 172, 174, 179,
181
Bougainville Island, 107, 213–16, 226
Bourne, Kenneth, 250n3, 263, 265
Bradley, LtGen Omar N., 206
Brazos Santiago, TX, 11–14
Brezhnev, Leonid, 183, 192, 309
Buchanan, James, 257n28, 263, 266–67
Bualo, 119. See also Landing Vehicle, Tracked 4
Bureau of Construction and Repair (BuC&R), 23,
27–32, 35–41
campaigns,
Baltic Islands, 142–62
Civil War (U.S.), 247–75
Kerch-Eltiger, 301–20
Mediterranean, 197–212
Mexico, 7–20
Pacic, 64–120, 213–27, 276–300, 321–31
People’s Liberation Army (PLA), 228–48
Polar, 163–81
South West Africa, 121–41
Soviet, 42–63
Taiwan, 228–46
Canning, George, 248, 250–59, 267, 274
Canning, Stratford (1st Viscount Stratford de
Redclie), 258
Caroline aair, 265
Cass, Lewis, 256–60
Central Pacic, 100–1, 107, 116, 119, 287
Camp Edwards, MA, 202
Casablanca, Morocco, 197, 199
Casablanca Conference, 197, 199
Charleston, SC, 247, 261, 271–72
China, People’s Republic of (PRC), 48, 228, 234,
334, 331
nuclear doctrine of, 246
China, Republic of (ROC), 228, 233, 236n33, 237–45
Army, 230n8–9
Navy, 240
Chinese Civil War, 230, 235–36
Chinese Communist Party (CCP), 228, 230n10,
235–37, 246
Central Military Commission (CMC), 229n5,
230n10, 232n11, 235–36, 238n40, 240, 322–23
National Congress, 228, 236, 246
Chris Cra Corporation, 28, 35–36
Churchill, Winston S., 107, 197–98, 204n37, 248,
275
City Park Plant, 30–33
Clarendon, George William Frederick Villiers
(4th Earl), 262–65
clothing, cold weather, mountain, 167, 171–72, 175,
179, 181
coalition warfare, 44, 206, 264
cold injuries, 169n37, 180
Columbia River, 258–59
Combined Chiefs of Sta (CCS), 199–200, 204
commando raid, 213–27
Corbett, Julian S., 255
Corn Laws, 261, 266–67
Index
355
Cornwall, LtCol Frederick C., 219–25
Crampton aair, 262–63
Crampton, John (2d Baronet), 262, 263n45
Crimean War, 263n45, 264, 270–71, 307
Cunningham, Andrew B., 200, 208
Daett, Cdr Ross B., 31
Dahlgren, Lt John A., 262n42
Dalrymple-Hay, John (3d Baronet), 272
Dayan, Moshe, 195
Disney, Paul A., 211
Disraeli, Benjamin (1st Earl of Beaconseld), 274–
75
distributed maritime operations (DMO), 65
Dmitriev, V. I., 192–93
DUKW (6-wheeled duplex drive amphibious
truck), 99, 103–5, 106n41, 112–13, 208n59, 308
Dunning, William, 258
Du Pont, Samuel Francis, 268n64
Earle, Capt Ralph, 219–20, 223
Eisenhower, Dwight D., 198, 200–1, 204
Ept, 126, 182–94, 335
electric vehicles, 78–82
Emancipation Proclamation, 269
Erie Canal, 262n44, 268
Eureka boat, 22–33
expeditionary advanced base operations (EABO),
65, 73–78, 81, 83, 300
Falkland Islands, 69, 141, 163, 176–81, 255
Fei, Gen Yue, 230
Fengzhi, Nie, 241, 243
Ferdinand VII, 250
First World War (Word War I), 21, 53, 121, 142,
161–62, 166–67, 202, 255, 336
Fitch, VAdm Aubrey W., 215
Fleet Development Board (FDB), 25–29
Fleet Landing Exercise (FLEX)
FLEX 4, 25
FLEX 5, 27
FLEX 6, 27
Forsyth, John, 267
Fort, RAdm George H., 216–17
Fort Schuyler, 269n66
Fort Sumter, 247, 261
French invasion of Mexico (1862), 255, 269–70
Friedrichshafen FF41A (seaplane), 154, 159
Geiger, MajGen Roy S., 215
Gela, Sicily, 200n18, 211
George IV (George Augustus Frederick), 250
German military units
6th Army, 304
7th Army, 303–4
8th Army, 146
11th Army, 302
17th Army, 304–7
9th Flak Division, 305
42d Inantry Division, 154
98th Inantry Division, 314
3d Mounain Division, 163–64, 168
139th Mounain Inantry Regiment, 164, 166
18th Shock Company, 157
Army Group A, 303–4
Battle Group Dietl, 164, 166
Division Group van der Hoop, 50, 52
Fliegerkorps, 305
Grenadier Regiment, 123, 282, 314–15
Kriegsmarine, 301, 305, 314, 316
Luwae, 169, 313–14
Panzer Division, 211
Schutztruppe, 125,127–28, 132, 136
V Armeekorps, 306
Ghormley, RAdm Robert, 198
Gladstone, William Ewart, 274
Gloire (1860), 270
Glorious Revolution, 250
Golan Heights, Syria, 188, 191
Golovko, Adm Arseni, 50
Gorokhov, Col V. I., 194
Gorshkov, Adm Sergey G., 52–53, 182–83, 195, 302,
310–11, 319
Grechko, Andrei, 183
Green Islands, 213–27
Guadalcanal, 66–67, 76, 92–101, 116–17, 215–17, 277,
284, 288, 290–300
Guam, 104, 118, 277, 299
Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, 93, 96, 100
Guizot, Francois Pierre Guillaume, 260
Guzzoni, Cdr Alfredo, 206–7
Haddock, Graham, 38
Haifa, Israel, 187–91
Hainan Island, 229, 234–36, 244, 322–25
Halsey, William F., 215–16, 226–27
Harmon, LtGen Millard F., 216–17
Helms, Richard, 191
Hiins, Andrew J., 21–41, 51, 95, 110
Holy Alliance, 250, 253
Hope, Adm James, 272
horse boats, 150, 152–53
Hua, Deng, 234–35
Huet, George, 38
Index
356
hydrogen, 79–81, 248n1
Inchon, South Korea, 120, 335
Industrial Canal, 36–37
Israel, 182–96, 334, 337
Ivliev, RAdm Nikolay, 194
Iwo Jima, 112, 118–19, 334
Jackson, Andrew, 13, 255–56, 259, 262n43
James II, 250
Jeerson, omas, 253, 256, 259
Jenkinson, Robert (2d Earl of Liverpool), 254
Jesup, Gen omas S., 8, 11–13, 19
Jianying, Ye, 244
Jinguang, Adm Xiao, 233, 236
Jinping, Xi, 228–29, 246
Johnson, Lyndon B., 191
Joint Chiefs of Sta, Joint Planning Sta, 100, 108,
111
Joint War Planning Committee, 107–8
Jones, RAdm Claude A., 30
Kai-shek, Chiang, 229, 233, 236n33, 239, 240n43
Kaliningrad, USSR, 186–87
Kaohsiung, Taiwan, 245–46
Kapitanets, Ivan, 187
Keelung, Taiwan, 245–46
Kerensky, Aleksandr, 145
Kesselring, Albert, 206–7
Khripunkov, Capt Yuri, 185, 187, 189
Khrushchev, Nikita, 182
Kiska, Aleutian Islands, 174–75
Kislov, Aleksandr, 185, 187
Knox, Frank, 28, 40–41
Knüpfer, Capt M. G., 150
Korea, North (DPRK), 237
Korea, South (ROK), 237
Korean War, 237–39, 240n43
Krulak, LtGen Victor H., 21, 31, 102, 108, 111–12
Kuomintang (KMT, Nationalist Party), 229–30,
233, 235–36
Kwajalein Atoll, 116, 118
Laaman, Eduard, 159–60
Landing Boat Board (LBB), 25–29, 32
Landing Cra, Infantry (LCI), 206, 223
Landing Cra, Medium (LCM), 33–41, 83, 118, 120
Landing Cra Personnel, Large (LCPL), 23, 28–29,
41
Landing Cra, Personnel (Ramp) (LCP[R]), 23,
36, 41
Landing Cra, Tank (LCT), 51, 104, 118, 120, 206
Landing Cra, Vehicle and Personnel (LCVP, or
Hiins Boat), 23, 30, 32–33, 35–36, 95–96, 101,
109, 111, 114–17, 206
Landing Ship, Dock (LSD), 107, 110, 120
Landing Ship, Medium (LSM), 51, 83, 118n78
Landing Ship, Tank (LST), 4, 51, 89, 97–99, 102–20,
184, 329
Landing Vehicle, Tracked (LVT-1, -2, -3 and -4), 51,
89–120
Latakia, Syria, 195–96
Latvian Rie Regiments, 160, 311
Lawson, Leonard Axel, 259
Lend-Lease Act, 98, 197n1, 248, 308
Lenin, Vladimir I., 44, 160
Leopold II, 269
Licata, Sicily, 201, 205, 210
Lincoln, Abraham, 250n3, 271
Lind, William S., 161–62
Linsert, Maj Ernest E., 31, 284
Little Creek Naval Base, VA, 103–4
Louis-Philippe I, 259
Lucas, MajGen John P., 204
Lyons, Richard B. (1st Viscount), 274
Madison, James, 251, 253, 256
Makin Island, 110, 115–6, 218
Mallin, Valery, 190–92, 195
Manifest Destiny, 275
Marcy, William L., 8–12, 263
Mariana Islands
Marine Corps Amphibious Warfare School (later
Expeditionary Warfare School), 162
Marshall, Gen George C., 64, 174, 199, 204
Marshall Islands, 101, 107–9, 115–18
Martin, VAdm William I., 184
Maximilian, Ferdinand, 269–70
McDowell, LtCdr Ralph S., 25–26
McNair, LtGen Lesley, 93, 204
McNamara, Robert, 191
Mediterranean, 107, 184–87, 191–99, 202, 204, 208–9
Mediterranean Air Command, 202–3
Meretskov, Gen Kirill A., 50
Mexican-American War, 7–20, 257, 267
military mountain guides (heeresbergfuhrer) (Ger-
man), 168
Minto, Gilbert Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound (2d
Earl), 265
Mommsen, eodor, 257
Monroe Doctrine, 248, 250–59, 263, 265, 269–70,
274–75
Monroe, James, 248, 251, 253–58, 261–62
Montgomery, Gen Bernard, 200–1, 205
Index
357
Mosquito Coast, 263–64
Moulton, Cdr H. Douglas, 215
Mountain Training Center, 171
mountain warfare, 163–81
mountaineering, 168, 180
Muhu (Moon) Causeway, 142n1, 146, 148, 150–53,
157–59
Muhu Sound Fortied Position (Moonzundskaya
ukreplennaya positziya), 146, 148, 151, 159
multidomain operations (MDO), 65, 87, 336
Narvik, Norway, 163–69, 177, 181
Nesselrode, Karl Vasilyevich (Count), 257
New Caledonia, 102, 108, 216, 288
New Georgia Island, 98, 107, 109
New Guinea, 67, 101, 215, 290
New Zealand, 111, 213–27, 300
New Zealand military units
14th New Zealand Brigade, 218, 220, 222
3d New Zealand Division, 215, 223, 226
Nissan Island, 218, 221
Norfolk Naval Base, VA, 26, 28–29, 33, 35, 39, 90,
98–99, 103
North Africa, 37n71, 197–200, 204, 206, 212
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 48,
178, 184
North Cape, Norwegian theater, 63, 271n75
oshore islands, 229, 230n8, 238, 240n43, 244
Okinawa, 66, 117–19, 334
operational maneuver from the sea (OMFTS), 5,
66
operations
Albion, 142–62
Barclay, 207–8
Coronet, 68
Desert Storm, 56
Ferdinand, 289
Galvanic, 97, 105, 109–11, 114
Goldrush, 102, 105
Husky, 103, 197–212
Mincemeat, 207–8
Olympic, 68
Squarepeg, 213
Torch, 197–99
Uranus, 303–4
Ostend Manifesto, 257
Pago Pago, American Samoa, 113, 277, 286
Pakenham, Richard, 266
Palmerston, Henry John Temple (3d Viscount),
248–50, 260, 262–67, 270–72
Panama Canal, 258
Paracel Islands, 229, 244, 322–24
patrol-torpedo boat (PT), 186, 191, 220, 223–26,
314
Patton, Gen George S., 205, 210
Peel, Robert (2d Baronet), 260, 265–67
People’s Liberation Army (PLA), 321–31
amphibious campaigns, 228–46, 334
East China Military Region (ECMR), 238,
240
Petsamo-Kirkennes Oensive, 49–0
Pitt, William (the Younger), 248
PLA Air Force (PLAAF), 233–34, 239–45
2d Division, 239
PLA Army (PLAA), 327–28
7th Army Group, 232, 236
8th Army Group, 236
9th Army Group, 232, 236
10th Army Group, 230, 232, 233n14, 237n35
13th Army Group, 236
15th Army Group, 234–35
19th Army Group, 236
3d Field Army, 230–31, 233, 236
4th Field Army, 231, 233–36
PLAN Marine Corps (PLANMC), 322–31, 337
PLA Navy (PLAN), 4, 122, 125, 128, 233–36, 240, 243,
245, 321–46,
East Sea Fleet (ESF), 240, 245
Polignac, Jules de, 253
Polk, James K., 8, 265–66
Port Fuad, Ept, 193, 195
Port Said, Ept, 183, 186, 190, 192–95, 335
Potter, Leslie, 218, 225
Provisional Training Instruction for Mounain Troops
of 1935 (German), 166
Quemoy, Taiwan (Kinmen or Jinmen), 229–34,
237n38
Ramsey, Adm Bertram, 208
Rawlings, Capt Norborne L., 30
Reek, Nikolai, 148, 157, 161
Ris, Capt W. F. Jr., 215
Riley, Col William E., 215
Riva-Aguero, Jose de la, 254
Rongzhen, Nie, 236
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 107, 197, 204n37, 248
Roosevelt, eodore, 257
Rush, Richard, 251, 256n25, 259
Russell, John (1st Earl), 265, 269, 271, 274
Saipan, 94, 106, 116, 118, 299
Index
358
Salisbury, Robert Gascoyne-Cecil (3d Marquess),
255
San Juan (Greytown), Puerto Rico, 267
Scott, Gen Wineld, 8–19
seaplanes, 85–86, 154, 157
Second World War (World War II), 42–43, 48, 51,
54, 56, 62, 65–70, 77–78, 80, 86, 88, 213, 227,
248, 301, 333, 335–37
Semenov, Evgeny, 195
Sevastopol, USSR, 48, 62, 194, 262, 263n48, 264,
271, 306–7, 310, 319
Seward, William H., 40–41, 250n3
Shevchenko, Viktor, 186, 189–90
ships
British
C-class, 144, 151
E-class, 144
HMHS Dover Castle, 133
HMS Astrea, 133–34
HMS E8, 144
HMS E19, 144
HMS Black Prince, 270
HMS Warrior, 270
RMS Trent, 250n3
German
SMS Bayern, 156
SMS Gneisenau, 141
SMS Konig, 158
SMS Kronprinz, 158
SMS Leipzig, 141
SMS Nurnberg, 141
SMS Prinz Adalbert, 144
SMS Scharnhorst, 141
monitors, 247, 249, 273
Russian
Admiral Makarov, 159
Bayan, 159
Grazhdanin, 151, 159
Grom, 159
Slava, 151, 159, 187
United States
USS Bonia, 16
USS Harris, 111
USS Falcon, 16
USS Liberty, 191
USS Liscome Bay, 111
USS LST-34, 114
USS LST-242, 114
USS LST-243, 113–14
USS LST-486, 113
USS LST-831, 112
USS Massachusetts, 14
USS Petrel, 16
USS Petria, 15
USS President Hayes, 92
USS Rarian, 16
USS Reefer, 16
USS San Jacinto, 250n3
USS Spitfire, 16
USS Tampico, 16
USS Vixen, 16
USS Washington, 280
Sicily, 98, 103, 107, 198–209, 212
siege of Kars, Turkey, 263n48
Six-Day War, 1967, 182, 184, 185n8, 186
ski, training, 167–68, 179–80
Small Boat Desk, 27, 29, 32, 35–36, 41
Smith, Gen Eric M., 70, 76
Smith, Gen Holland M. 27, 29, 31–32, 36, 41, 93–96,
99–101, 106, 108, 110–11, 114, 119–20
Smith, J. McDonald, 219. 225
Solomon Islands, 104, 109, 213–14, 276–77, 285,
290–91, 295–300
Somerset, Edward Adolphus Seymour (12th
Duke), 270, 272
South China Sea, 76, 229, 231, 244–45, 322–24, 331,
334
Soviet Army Studies Oce, 42
Soviet concepts
advanced force, 47, 58, 60
armed conict, 44, 58, 86n11
military aairs, 45
military art, 46
deep battle/operations, 57
war, 45–6
Soviet military doctrine, 42–63
Soviet military units
12th Army, 145–46, 233
2d Army Corps, 144
4th Coastal Defense Artillery Battalion, 149,
150n16
107th Infantry Division, 158
425th Infantry Regiment, 158
12th Naval Infantry Brigade, 50
61st Naval Infantry Brigade, 55–56
63d Naval Infantry Brigade, 50
Baltic Fleet, 194
Fih Eskadra (squadron), Navy, 48, 53, 59, 62,
184–91, 195
Forward Detachment (Peredvoy Otriad), 47
Marine Guards, 183, 192–193, 148n15, 149–50
Naval Aviation (Morskaya Aviatsya), 42, 60, 151
Naval Infantry (Morskaya Pekhoa, Black
Death), 5, 42–63, 182–83, 186–95, 302,
308, 313, 322
Northern Fleet, 49–50, 55
Index
359
Operational Mobile Group (OMG), 47
special autonomous sector (Muhu Sound Fortied
Position), 148–50
Spratly Islands, 4, 229, 245, 324
Suez Canal, 183, 186, 189, 192, 335
stand-in forces, 65, 73–75
St. Charles Avenue plant, 33
St. Lawrence River, 268
suroat, 10, 13–18
Sveshnikov, RAdm Dimitry Aleksandrovich, 148,
157
Swedish iron ore, 142, 144, 164
synthetic fuel, 80–81
Syracuse, Sicily, 201, 205, 209n66, 210
Sysoev, VAdm Viktor, 187
Tachen (Dachen) Islands, 238–41
Taga Bay (Tagalaht), Tinian, 152–57
Taipei, 238, 245
Taiwan, 228–29, 233, 236–39, 243, 322, 325, 328, 330
Taiwan Strait, crises, 228–29, 231, 234, 237–38, 244–
46, 323, 334
Tampico, 11–12, 14
Tarawa Atoll, 97, 105, 109–12, 114–17
Tartus, Syria, 195
Task Force Papa Bear, 55–56
Taylor, Gen Zachary, 8, 11–13
Tedder, Arthur W., 200, 202, 212
Temperley, Harold, 251, 254
ird System (U.S. fortications), 247
Tinian Atoll, 106, 118, 299
Totten, Lt George M., 10, 262n43
Trent aair (1861), 247, 250, 265
Trident Conference, 99, 107–9
Triple Entente, 142, 144–45, 161, 255
Trotsky, Leon, 160–61
Truman, Harry S., 38–41, 237
Truscott, MajGen Lucian, 206
Tunisia, 199–201
twenty-rst century foraging, 76–77, 87
United Kingdom military units
3 Commando Brigade, 175–80
42 Commando, 176, 178
45 Commando, 176, 178–79
5th Infantry Brigade, 176, 178–79
2 Parachute Battalion, 176
3 Parachute Battalion, 176
Commando Logistics Regiment, 180
Eighth Army, 200, 205
Gurkhas, 176, 178
Mountain and Arctic Warfare Cadre, 180
Mountain Leaders, 180
Scots Guards, 176
Welsh Guards, 176
unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), 80, 83–85, 87
U.S. Air Force, 68, 71, 79–81, 84, 86, 101, 174
U.S. Army military units
7th Infantry Division, 169, 171–72, 175
9th Infantry Division, 93
27th Infantry Division, 110, 115
43d Infantry Division, 109
45th Infantry Division, 103, 206, 208n59, 209,
211
87th Mountain Infantry Regiment, 174–75
1st Special Service Force (FSSF), 174
Seventh Army, 200n18, 205, 210–12
U.S. Marine Corps military units
1st Amphibious Tractor Battalion, 91
2d Amphibious Tractor Battalion, 111, 113
1st Battalion, 7th Marines, 284
7th Defense Battalion, 286
9th Defense Battalion, 100
1st Marine Amphibious Brigade, 93, 99
2d Marine Brigade, 288
3d Marine Brigade, 288
1st Marine Division, 56, 91, 93, 95–96, 100,
102, 120, 240, 288, 290–91, 293, 295–97
2d Marine Division, 93, 109–12, 114
4th Marine Division, 102, 106, 119
5th Marine Division, 292
1st Marine Regiment, 240
2d Parachute Battalion, 102
1st Provisional Marine Brigade, 284
1st Samoan Battalion, 286–87
I Marine Amphibious Corps, 101, 102n33, 106,
215
III Marine Amphibious Corps, 102n33
V Marine Amphibious Corps, 109
I Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF), 70
Fleet Marine Force, Atlantic, 90
Fleet Marine Force, Pacic, 106
Task Force 58, 58, 87
U.S. Navy Bureau of Ships, 21, 29, 37n71, 39–41, 91,
98, 112
U.S. Navy military units
Atlantic Fleet, Amphibious Command, 35–
36, 93, 98–99, 102–3, 106
Pacic Fleet, Amphibious Training Com-
mand, 106, 109, 111, 113, 215, 276, 287
Seventh Fleet, 237–38
Sixth Fleet, 184, 189, 191, 194
Task Force 31, 215, 217, 223
Van Buren, Martin, 262n43, 265
Vella Lavella, Solomon Islands, 215–16, 222, 226
Index
360
Veracruz, Mexico, 7–20, 336
Vietnam, Republic of, 4, 69, 244–45
von Hutier, LtGen Oskar, 146
von Pohl, Gen Maximillian, 207
von Tschischwitz, Col Erich, 161
War of 1812, 247, 251, 259n35
Webster-Ashburton Treaty (1842), 259, 265
Webster, Daniel, 267
Wei-kuo, Chiang, 233
Wilhelm II, German emperor, 146
Wilkinson, RAdm T. S., 215–16, 220
Welles, Gideon, 271–72
Wellesley, Arthur (1st Duke of Wellington), 250–51
Wood, Charles (1st Viscount Halifax), 262–64
Wyly, Col Michael D., 162
Xiamen (Amoy), China, 230, 233
Xiaoping, Deng, 243–44
Yijiangshan Island, 229, 241–44, 323
Yom Kippur War (1973), 182
Zakharov, Gennady, 188
Zakharov, Matvei, 192
Zedong, Mao, 230, 234, 246
Zemin, Jiang, 229, 245
Zhejiang, China, 238, 240
Zhoushan, China, 229, 236
361
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Dr. Lance R. Blyth is the command historian at North American Aerospace Defense Com-
mand (NORAD) and U.S. Northern Command and adjunct professor of history at the U.S.
Air Force Academy in Colorado. A backcountry skier with a history problem, Blyth is cur-
rently completing a manuscript, “10th Mountain and Mountain Warfare,” looking at U.S.
mountain warfare eorts from World War II (WWII) to the present day. All views are his own
and do not necessarily represent the views of the Department of Defense or its components.
https://orcid.org/0009-0004-1621-115X
Benjamin Claremont is an American historian and current PhD candidate in international
relations at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Claremont’s passion for military his-
tory was sparked by his grandfather’s stories of serving aboard USS Robely D. Evans (DD 552)
during the Pacic campaign and his grandmother’s experiences as an Royal Air Force radar op-
erator during WWII. His research interests include twentieth- and twenty-rst-century large-
scale high-intensity war, the Soviet military in theory and practice (especially post–WWII),
Cold War U.S. and UK threat doctrine development, naval combat in the missile age, and the
Russo-Ukrainian War. Claremont has previously published articles with the Center for Inter-
national Maritime Security, and his forthcoming doctoral thesis explores the history of U.S.
Army eorts to develop threat doctrine concerning the Soviet Army and what lessons these
historical eorts can teach current threat doctrine practitioners. https://orcid.org/0009-0002-
7614-1611
B. A. Friedman is a retired U.S. Marine Corps artillery ocer currently employed as a strate-
About the Authors
362
gic assessment analyst and as a PhD student at the University of Reading in the United King-
dom. He is the author of numerous works, including On Tactics: A eory of Victory in Battle
(2017) and On Operations: Operational Art and Miliary Disciplines (2021).
A reader in war studies at the University of Wolverhampton, Dr. Howard J. Fuller completed
his BA in history at the Ohio State University, and his MA and PhD in war studies at King’s
College London. In 2002–3, he was the Rear Admiral John D. Hayes Fellow in U.S. Naval His-
tory through the U.S. Naval Historical Center (now Naval History and Heritage Command)
in Washington, DC; he was also a West Point Fellow in Military History, Caird Research
Fellow, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Dr. Fuller is a freuent contributor to
conferences and journals on both sides of the Atlantic, associate editor for the International
Journal of Naval History, and a managing editor for the British Journal of Miliary History. His
rst book, Clad in Iron: e American Civil War and the Challenge of British Naval Power (2007),
was runner-up for the 2008 John Lyman Book Award in U.S. Naval History; followed by the
critically acclaimed Empire, Technolo and Seapower: Royal Navy Crisis in the Age of Palmerston
(2013); and most recently, Turret vs. Broadside: An Anatomy of British Naval Prestige, Revolution
and Disaster, 1860–1870 (2020) as part of the Wolverhampton Military Studies Series. https://
orcid.org/0000-0001-8993-6531
Isabella Ginor, former Soviet/Russian aairs specialist at Israel’s newspaper of record Haaretz,
and Gideon Remez, former head of foreign news at Voice of Israel Radio, are associate fellows
of the Harry S. Truman Research Institute, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specializing in
Soviet/Russian involvement in the Middle East. eir coauthored publications include Foxbats
over Dimona: e Soviets’ Nuclear Gamble in the Six-Day War (2007) and e Soviet-Israeli War,
1967–1973: e USSR’s Miliary Intervention in the Eptian-Israeli Conflict (2017). https://orcid.
org/0000-0003-2593-9965
Timothy G. Heck is an artillery ocer by training. Currently employed as a historian with
the U.S. Navy, he previously coedited On Contested Shores: e Evolving Role of Amphibious Op-
erations in the History of Warare (2020) and Armies in Retreat: Chaos, Cohesion, and Consequences
(2023). https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5270-2341
Darren Johnson is a U.S. Army infantry ocer who is currently serving as an instructor of
history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He has served in the U.S. Army for 13
years and has two combat deployments to Afghanistan as an infantry platoon leader and
company commander. He earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting and nance from Corban
University and a master’s degree in history from Florida State University, where he focused
his research on the Holocaust and the Allied liberation experience. He has published numer-
ous book reviews, presented his research at national and international conferences, and is
currently researching how the U.S. Army adapted at the tactical and operational levels of war
during World War II. https://orcid.org/0009-0000-9912-9274.
David Brock Katz obtained a bachelor’s in commerce and accounting at the University of
the Witwatersrand, South Africa, in the early 1980s and practiced as a chartered accountant
thereaer. Aer obtaining his master of military science (cum laude) in 2014, he ualied for
About the Authors
363
a doctor of philosophy in military science in 2021 at Stellenbosch University. Katz currently
serves as an active member of the South Africa National Defence Force with the Andrew
Mlageni Regiment and is a research fellow at Stellenbosch University with the faculty of
military science. He is also the editor-in-chief of the South African Army Journal. He lectures at
the Army, War, and Defence Force Colleges and has published numerous papers in several ac-
ademic journals. His book publications include South Africans versus Rommel: e Untold Story
of the Desert War in World War II (2019) and General Jan Smuts and His First World War in Africa,
1914–1917 (2022). He coauthored 20 Battles: Searching for a South African Way of War, 1913–2013
(2023). https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0689-0668
Dr. Xiaobing Li is a professor at the Department of History and Geography and Don Betz
Endowed Chair in International Studies at the University of Central Oklahoma. He is the
executive editor of the Chinese Historical Review and editorial board member of e Journal of
Miliary History and Journal of Chinese Miliary History. He was born in China and served in the
People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Among his recent books are China’s New Navy: e Evolution
of PLAN from the People’s Revolution to a 21st Century Cold War (2023), coedited Sino-American
Relations: A New Cold War (2022), e Dragon in the Jungle: e Chinese Army in the Vietnam War
(2020), Atack at Chosin: e Chinese Second Oensive in Korea (2020), coauthored East Asia and
the West: An Enangled History (2020), coedited A Century of Student Movements: e Mounain
Movers, 1919–2019 (2020), China’s War in Korea: Strategic Culture and Geopolitics (2019), Building
Ho’s Army: Chinese Miliary Assisance to North Vietnam (2019), e History of Taiwan (2019), co-
edited Corruption and Anticorruption in Modern China (2019), e Cold War in East Asia (2018),
coedited Urbanization and Party Survival in China: People vs. Power (2017), coauthored Power
versus Law in Modern China: Cities, Courts, and the Communist Party (2017), coedited Ethnic Chi-
na: Identity, Assimilation, and Resisance (2015), China’s Battle for Korea: e 1951 Spring Oensive
(2014), coedited Evolution of Power: China’s Strule, Survival, and Success (2014), coedited Oil: A
Cultural and Geographic Encyclopedia (2014), coedited Modern Chinese Legal Reforms: New Perspec-
tives (2013), edited China at War: An Encyclopedia (2012), and Voices from the Vietnam War: Stories
from American, Asian, and Russian Veterans (2011).
Dr. Shaun Mawdsley is a military historian and defence and security researcher currently
employed as an analyst with the New Zealand Police. From 2016 to 2022, Dr. Mawdsley taught
at the Centre for Defence and Security Studies and the College of Humanities and Social Sci-
ences at Massey University, New Zealand. In 2023, he received a PhD in history from Massey
University, where his dissertation focused on Australian and New Zealand divisional com-
bat eectiveness in the Western Desert campaign of 1941–42. He has previously published on
matters of intelligence oversight, defense transparency, and Australasian special operations
in WWII. His other research areas include transnational organized crime and New Zealand’s
adaptation to amphibious operations and jungle warfare in WWII. He is currently adapting
his dissertation for publication. https://orcid.org/0009-0004-3060-5454
Christopher Menking is a professor of history at Tarrant County College in Fort Worth, Tex-
as. His research focuses on the U.S. military experience during the Mexican-American War
and in the South Texas borderlands. He has published chapters and articles related to food
during the war with Mexico, South Texas, and the Mexican-American War. He received his
About the Authors
364
undergraduate degree at Texas A&M University in College Station and completed his grad-
uate work at the University of North Texas in Denton. His current research looks at music
during the Mexican-American War and the experience of average soldiers during the war.
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3961-2445
Walker D. Mills is a U.S. Marine Corps infantry ocer training to be a General Atomics MQ-
9A unmanned aerial vehicle pilot. He previously coedited Armies in Retreat: Chaos, Cohesion,
and Consequences (2023) and contributed a chapter to the rst volume of On Contested Shores:
e Evolving Role of Amphibious Operations in the History of Warare (2020). He has written exten-
sively on the Marine Corps and future warfare. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7047-555X
Douglas E. Nash Sr. is a West Point graduate and a retired U.S. Army colonel with 32 years of
service, including assignments in Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Germany, Cuba, and Uzbekistan.
He served in a variety of armored cavalry, armor, and special operations units, including civil
aairs and psychological operations. He recently retired aer serving 10 years as the senior
supervisory historian at History Division, Marine Corps University in uantico, Virginia.
His works include Hell’s Gate: e Battle of the Cherkassy Pocket (2002), Victory Was Beyond eir
Grasp: With the 272nd Volks-Grenadier Division from the Huertgen Forest to the Heart of the Reich
(2008), and the From the Realm of a Dying Sun trilo, as well as numerous articles in Marine
Corps History, Army History, Armchair General, Iron Cross, Special Warare, and World War II mag-
azines. https://orcid.org/0009-0001-0142-437X
Evan Zachary Ota is from Kealakekua, Hawai’i, and earned bachelor’s degrees in history and
political science from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa and a master’s degree in regional
security studies from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He is an infantry
ocer and an international aairs ocer in the U.S. Marine Corps and served in Iraq, Af-
ghanistan, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, ailand, Singapore, Australia, Sol-
omon Islands, and at sea. He is a recipient of the Lieutenant Colonel Earl “Pete” Ellis award for
innovative operational approaches and is a nonresident fellow at the Marine Corps Universi-
ty’s Krulak Center for Innovation and Future Warfare. https://orcid.org/0009-0003-9538-2354
Dr. Edward Salo, FRHistS, is an associate professor of history and the associate director of the
Heritage Studies PhD Program at Arkansas State University. He was in the initial Normandy
Scholars class at the University of Tennessee. His work has been published in the Journal of
America’s Miliary Past, 1945, Inkstick, National Interest, Eunomia Journal: e Journal of the U.S.
Army Civil Aairs Association, Modern War Institute, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,
and he has presented at numerous conferences including the USMA Social Studies Depart-
ment Security Seminar (2023). He is currently studying the weaponization of heritage as part
of irregular warfare. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2365-793X
Dr. Eric A. Sibul has a BA in international relations from Penn State University, an MA in
history from San Jose State University, and a PhD in history from the University of York in
the United Kingdom. He served as an assistant professor of military theory and history at the
Baltic Defence College in Tartu, Estonia, from 2006 to 2015. He also served as principal lec-
turer on seapower theory, naval history, and strate at the Baltic Naval Command and Sta
About the Authors
365
Course in Riga, Latvia. Prior to his academic appointment in Estonia, Sibul served as a mili-
tary English instructor at the Army Intelligence School in Songnam, Republic of Korea. As a
member of the U.S. Navy Reserve, he served in an Oce of Naval Intelligence unit and Am-
phibious Construction Battalion Two. Currently, Dr. Sibul is an instructor of history, busi-
ness, and economics at the City Colleges of Chicago. https://orcid.org/0009-0003-3223-2332
Jerry E. Strahan holds a BA in education and an MA in history from the University of New
Orleans and is the author of Andrew Jackson Hiins and the Boats that Won World War II (1994).
He has spent 50 years researching Andrew Hiins and more than 17 years helping restore
Hiins boats for the National World War II Museum.