World War II Pacific: Battles and Campaigns from Guadalcanal to Okinawa 1942-1945 (WW2 Pacific Military History Series) Read online

  World War II Pacific

  Battles and Campaigns from Guadalcanal to Okinawa 1942-1945

  Daniel Wrinn

  Contents

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  Preface

  Introduction

  August 1, 1942

  Guadalcanal and Florida Islands

  Battle of the Eastern Solomons

  Col. Edson’s Bloody Ridge

  7th Marines Reinforce the Battalion

  Japanese Offensive on Maruyama Trail

  Fighting Withdrawal Along the Beach

  Defeat of Japanese Forces on Guadalcanal

  1. General Alexander A. Vandegrift

  The Coastwatchers

  Sergeant Major Sir Jacob Charles Vouza

  The Amtrac LVT 1 (Landing Vehicle, Tracked, Mark 1)

  Reising Gun

  The Japanese 50mm Heavy Grenade Discharger

  1st Marine Utility Uniform Issued in World War II

  The 1st Marine Division Patch

  The George Medal

  Operation Galvanic

  Introduction

  The Yogaki Plan

  Task Force 53

  D-Day at Betio

  Maelstrom on Betio

  Red Beach Two

  Fog of War

  D +1 at Betio

  Scout Sniper Platoon

  Tide of Battle

  D +2 at Betio

  Strong Resistance

  Completing the Task

  Significance of Tarawa

  Tarawa Today

  Major General Julian C. Smith

  Colonel David M. Shoup

  Incident on D +3

  Japanese Special Naval Landing Forces

  The Singapore Guns

  LVT-2 Amphibian Tractors

  Sherman Medium Tanks

  Operation Backhander

  Introduction

  Establishing the Beachhead

  Defense of Hell’s Point

  Crossing Suicide Creek

  Mopping up in the West

  Landings at Volupai

  Final Combat and Relief

  MacArthur’s Marines

  General William Rupertus

  Lieutenant Colonel Lewis Walt

  Garand M-1 Rifle

  Piper L-4 Grasshopper

  Fortress of Rabaul

  The Jungle Battlefield

  Rain and Biting Insects

  1944 Battle for Saipan

  Breaching the Marianas

  Assault on Saipan

  Great Mariana’s Turkey Shoot

  Marines Storm Garapan

  Tenno Haika! Banzai

  Unbelievable Self Destruction

  Legacy of Saipan

  General Holland M. Smith

  General Harry Schmidt

  General Thomas Watson

  Navy Lieutenant John Craven

  2nd Marine Division

  4th Marine Division

  Army 27th Infantry Division

  Heroes of Saipan

  Invasion of Tinian

  Scouting Tinian’s Beaches

  Planning the Assault

  Jig Day Landing

  Japanese Counterattack

  People Shooting Grouse

  End of Resistance

  Aftermath of Tinian

  Japanese Defense Force

  White Beach Selection

  General Clifton B. Cates

  Napalm: A New Weapon

  Preparatory Strikes

  Aerial Reconnaissance

  Heroes of Tinian

  Recapture of Guam

  Back to Guam

  Operation Forager Planning

  W-Day in the North

  W-Day in the South

  The Japanese Counterattack

  Battle of Fonte Ridge

  Capture of Orote Peninsula

  Turning Point on Guam

  The Northern Assault

  Liberation of Guam

  Marine Presence on Guam

  Guam War Dogs

  3rd Marine Division Insignia

  Colt M1911A1 Pistol

  Joe Blow Stories

  General Roy Geiger

  General Allen Turnage

  General Andrew Bruce

  General Lemuel Shepherd

  General Robert Cushman

  Heroes on Guam

  Operation Stalemate

  Seizing “The Point”

  The Japanese Defenders

  D-Day Center Assault

  The Umurbrogol Pocket

  Peleliu’s Eastern Peninsula

  7th Marines in the South

  Northern Peleliu Seizure

  5th Marines Northern Attack

  Seizure of Ngesebus

  Fight for the Pocket

  Subduing the Pocket

  Securing the Eastern Ridges

  Mopping up Peleliu

  Conditions on Peleliu

  III Amphibious Corps

  General William Rupertus

  General Paul Mueller

  Army’s 81st Infantry Division

  Japanese Fighting Tactics

  Naval Gunfire Support

  Reef-crossing Tactics

  Conquest of Peleliu

  Price of Peleliu

  Operation Detachment

  The Pacific Offensive

  Operation Detachment

  Kuribayashi's Big Mistake

  D-Day on Iwo Jima

  Getting the Guns Ashore

  Prowling Wolves

  Suribachi-yama

  The Meatgrinder

  Northern Allied Drive

  Defiant to the End

  Legacy of Iwo Jima

  Iconic Flag Raising

  General Harry Schmidt

  General Graves B. Erskine

  General Clifton B. Cates

  General Keller E. Rockey

  General Kuribayashi

  Japanese Spigot Mortar

  Iwo’s Air Support

  Sherman Zippo Tanks

  Buck Rogers Men

  Logistical Support

  Operation Iceberg

  Seizing Shuri Castle

  Operation Iceberg

  Japanese Defenses

  Land the Landing Force

  Battle of Yae Take

  Typhoon of Steel

  Situation at Sea

  Blowtorch and Corkscrew

  Sugar Loaf Hill

  Day and Bertoli

  Screaming Mimi

  Wrapping up the Fight

  General Roy Geiger

  General Pedro del Valle

  General Lemuel Shepherd Jr.

  General Francis Mulcahy

  Blood and Iron

  US Army Troops

  Marines Aviation Units

  Artillery on Okinawa

  Sherman M-4 Tanks

  Amphibious Reconnaissance

  Legacy of Okinawa

  Operation Watchtower

  Also By Daniel Wrinn

  References

  About the Author

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  In the first six months of a war with the United States, I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues af
ter that, I make no such guarantees.

  Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto

  Preface

  The first months of World War II were a disaster for the United States. The Japanese caught the Pacific Fleet flat-footed in Pearl Harbor at anchor. Their attack dealt a massive blow to American naval power.

  The Imperial Japanese forces took full advantage of the initiative. They made a lightning assault to take the Philippines, Thailand, Guam, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, New Britain, Rabaul, and Hong Kong. They moved deeper into China and took Burma and New Guinea. It was an unstoppable victory after victory, and the Japanese Empire seemed invincible.

  Introduction

  In early summer 1942, intelligence reported that a Japanese airfield was being constructed in the Solomon Islands near Lunga Point on Guadalcanal. This triggered a demand for immediate offensive action in the South Pacific.

  Admiral Ernest King was the Chief of Naval Operations in the Pacific. He was the leading advocate in Washington for starting an offensive. His views were shared by Admiral Chester Nimitz, the commander-in-chief of the Pacific Fleet. Admiral Nimitz had already proposed sending the 1st Marine Raider Battalion to destroy a Japanese seaplane base on Tulagi. An island twenty miles north of Guadalcanal, across the Sealark Channel.

  The Battle of the Coral Sea had interrupted a Japanese amphibious assault on Port Moresby, at the time the Allied base of supply in eastern New Guinea. The completion of the Guadalcanal airfield would signal the beginning of the renewed enemy advance to the south. This increased the threat to the lifeline of American aid to Australia and New Zealand. On July 23,1942, the Joint Chiefs in Washington agreed to seize the line of communications in the South Pacific. The Japanese advance had to be stopped at any cost. The Joint Chiefs created Operation Watchtower and the plan to invade and seize the islands of Guadalcanal and Tulagi.

  The Solomon Islands are nestled in the backwaters of the South Pacific. Spanish fortune hunters discovered these islands in the sixteenth century. No European powers saw any value in these islands until Germany expanded its colonial empire two hundred years later. In 1884, Germany decreed a protectorate over the Bismarck Archipelago, in northern New Guinea, and the northern Solomons. Great Britain jumped into action and established a protectorate over the southern Solomon Islands and annexed the remainder of New Guinea. By 1905, the British crown passed administrative control over its territories in the region to Australia and the domain of Papua. Its capital was at Port Moresby.

  After World War I, Germany’s holdings in the region fell under the administrative control of the League of Nations. The seat of the colonial government was at Rabaul on New Britain. The Solomons are 10° below the equator. Hot, humid, and plagued by torrential rains.

  By late January 1942, Japanese forces had seized Rabaul and fortified it. The site was an excellent harbor and had several airfield positions. The Japanese carrier and aircraft losses at the Battle of Midway had caused the Imperial Japanese Headquarters to cancel their plan of invading Midway, Fiji, New Caledonia, and Samoa. But the plans to construct a significant seaplane base at Tulagi went forward. The new location offered one of the best anchorages in the South Pacific. Strategically located over five hundred miles from the New Hebrides and just short of eight hundred miles from New Caledonia, and only one thousand miles from Fiji. It was the perfect location.

  The Tulagi outpost on Guadalcanal was evidence of a sizable Japanese force in the region. Starting with the 17th Army, headquartered at Rabaul, and enemy 8th Fleet, the 11th Air Fleet and the 1st, 7th, 8th, and 14th Naval Base Forces, were also on New Britain. In early August 1942, Japanese intelligence units picked up transmissions between Noumea and Melbourne. Enemy analysts decided that Admiral Ghormley had ordered an offensive force to assault the Solomon Islands or at New Guinea. The warnings were passed to the Imperial Japanese Headquarters in Truk but were ignored.

  August 1, 1942

  The invasion force was on its way to targets in Guadalcanal, Tulagi, and the tiny islands of Tanambogo and Gavutu close to Tulagi’s shore. The landing force would be composed of Marines. The covering and transport forces were supplied by the US Navy with the reinforcement of Australian warships. The 1st Marine Division was slated to make the landings. Five US Army divisions were located in the Southwest Pacific. Three in Australia, the 37th and 5th Infantry were in Fiji and an Americal Division on New Caledonia.

  None of these divisions were trained for amphibious warfare, and all were vital parts of defensive garrisons in the Pacific. The 1st Marine Division began arriving in New Zealand in mid-June after the 5th Marines had reached Wellington. The rest of the unit’s reinforced divisions were still preparing to embark. The 1st Raider Battalion was on New Caledonia, 1st Marines were at San Francisco, and the 3rd Defense Battalion was at Pearl Harbor. The 2nd Marine Division, who would eventually replace the 1st Division, 7th Marines, was stationed in British Samoa, while the rest loaded out from San Diego. The landing force infantry regiments all had battalions of artillery attached from the 11th Marines.

  The news that this division would be the landing force for Operation Watchtower came as a shock to Major General Alexander Vandegrift. He had expected that the 1st Division would have at least six months of training in the South Pacific before seeing any kind of action. Combat loading took precedence over any administrative loading of supplies. Equipment, weapons, ammunition, and rations were positioned to come off the ship with the assault troops. The combat troops replaced the civilian longshoremen. They unloaded and reloaded the cargo and passenger vessels often during rainstorms, which hampered the task, but the job got done.

  All division forces got their share of labor on the docks as the various shipping groups arrived. Time was running out. General Vandegrift convinced Admiral Ghormley and the Joint Chiefs that he would not meet the proposed D-Day of August 1, and only possibly meet the extended landing date of August 7.

  An amphibious operation is a complicated affair when the forces involved are assembled on brief notice from all over the Pacific. The pressure placed on Vandegrift was intense. The US Navy ships were the key to success, and they were scarce. The previous battles of the Coral Sea and Midway had damaged the Imperial Japanese fleet’s offensive capabilities and crippled its carrier forces. But their enemy naval aircraft could fight as well ashore as afloat, and enemy warships were still numerous and lethal.

  American losses at Pearl Harbor, Coral Sea, and Midway were considerable. The Navy knew their ships were in short supply. The day was coming when America’s shipyards and factories would fill the seas with warships of all types, but they had not arrived in 1942. The name of the game for the US Navy was calculated risk. And now the risk seemed too great. The Operation Watchtower landing force might need to be a casualty. The US Navy never ceased to risk its ships in the waters of the Solomon Islands. This meant the naval lifeline to the troops ashore was stretched thin.

  The tactical command of the invasion forces approaching Guadalcanal in early August was vested in Vice Admiral Frank Fletcher as the expeditionary force commander (Task Force 61). His forces consisted of the amphibious shipping carrying the 1st Marine Division, under Admiral Richmond Turner. Admiral Leigh Noyes contributed the land-based air forces that were commanded by Admiral John McCain. Fletcher’s support forces comprised three fleet carriers, the Wasp, the Saratoga, the Enterprise, and the battleship North Carolina, six cruisers, sixteen destroyers, and three oilers. Admiral Turner’s covering force included five cruisers and nine destroyers.