Campaign in the Marianas

535 Pages·1960·22.925 MB·English

by  Philip A Crowl

UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II
The War in the Pacific
CAMPAIGN
IN THE MARIAN AS
by
Philip .A. Crowl
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WAS/-J1NGTON, D. C., 1993

Foreword
In the capture of the southern Marianas, including the recapture of Guam,
during the summer of 1944, Army ground and air forces played an important,
though subordinate, role to that of the Navy and its Marine Corps. Marine
personnel constituted the bulk of the combat troops employed. The objective of
this campaign was "to secure control of sea communications through the
Central Pacific by isolating and neutralizing the Carolines and by the establish-
ment of sea and air bases for operations against Japanese sea routes and
long-range air attacks against the Japanese home land." Its success would pro-
vide steppingstones from which the Americans could threaten further attack
westward toward the Philippines, Formosa, and Japan itself, and would gain
bases from which the Army Air Forces' new very long range bombers, the
B-29's, could strike at Japan's heartland. Recognizing and accepting the chal-
lenge, the Japanese Navy suffered heavy and irreplaceable losses in the
accompanying Battle of the Philippine Sea; and the islands after capture became
the base for all the massive air attacks on Japan, beginning in November 1944.
In the operations described in the present volume, landings against strong
opposition demonstrated the soundness of the amphibious doctrine and tech-
niques evolved out of hard experience in preceding Pacific operations. Bitter
inland fighting followed the landings, with Army and Marine Corps divisions
engaged side by side. The author's account and corresponding Marine Corps
histories of these operations provide ample opportunity to study the differences
in the fighting techniques of the two services. Dr. Crowl also deals frankly with
one of the best-known controversies of World War II, that of Smith versus
Smith, but concludes that it was the exception to generally excellent interservice
co-operation.
With team effort among the military services the order of the day, this record
of the Army's experience in working with the Navy and the Marine Corps
should be particularly valuable both now and in the future.
WARREN H. HOOVER
Washington, D.C. Colonel, U.S.A.
16 March 1959 Acting Chief of Military History
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The Author
Philip A. Crowl, who has an M.A. from the State University of Iowa and a
Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University, taught History at the Johns Hopkins
University and at Princeton. Commissioned in the Navy in World War II, he
became a lieutenant (senior grade) and commanding officer of an LCI gunboat
that was in action at Leyte Gulf, Lingayen Gulf, and Okinawa. From 1949
through 1956, Dr. Crowl was a historian with the Office, Chief of Military
History. He was awarded the James V. Forrestal Fellowship for 1953-54 to
study command relationships in amphibious warfare in World War II. Since
1957 he has been in Department of State Intelligence. Dr. Crowl is author of
Maryland During and After the Revolution (1943) and coauthor of The U.S.
Marines and Amphibious War (1951) and Seizure of the Gilberts and Marshalls
(1955).
viii
Preface
This volume is a companion piece to Seizure of the Gilberts and Marshalls
by Philip A. Crowl and Edmund G. Love, also published in the Pacific subseries
of the UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II. Together, the two
volumes cover the beginning and climax (although not the conclusion) of the
Central Pacific phase of the war against Japan, with special emphasis, of
course, on the U.S. Army's contribution to the victories won in that area.1
Specifically, Campaign in the Marianas treats of the capture of Saipan, Tinian,
and Guam in the southern Marianas; the strategic and tactical plans leading
thereto; supporting operations by naval and air units; and the final development
and exploitation of these islands as bases for furtherance of American joint
operations against the Japanese homeland.
The word joint cannot be overemphasized in connection with any considera-
tion of U.S. operations in the Central Pacific. It was predominantly a U.S.
Navy theater under the command of Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. The main
burden of the amphibious and ground fighting in the Marianas, as in the
Gilberts and Marshalls, fell on the shoulders of the U.S. Marine Corps, whose
troops far outnumbered those of the U.S. Army. The author recognizes this and
recognizes also that, by concentrating on the activities of the Army, this volume
in a sense presents a distorted picture. The distortion is deliberate. The book
represents, by definition, one segment of the history of the U.S. Army in World
War II. Excellent official and semiofficial histories of U.S. Navy and U.S.
Marine Corps operations in the Marianas have already been published. The
present narrative of Army activities should add in some measure to what has
already been written about the campaign. The reader may also gain additional
insight into the nature of joint operations and interservice co-ordination.
Because the number of Army troops participating in the Marianas Campaign
was comparatively small, it has been possible to devote more attention here to
small unit actions than in the volumes of the series that deal with the move-
ments of great armies and corps over large continental land masses. In much
of this narrative the spotlight centers on the infantry company. Ideally, as
much attention should have been devoted to equivalent artillery units, especially
since Army artillery played a major role in the Marianas Campaign. Un-
fortunately, the records kept by artillery units during the campaign were—to
understate the matter—terse. Unfortunately also, Army field historians who
1 The conclusion of this phase of the war is covered in Roy E. Appleman, James M.
Burns, Russell A. Gugeler, and John T. Stevens, Okinawa: The Last Battle, UNITED
STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II (Washington, 1948).
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