Delivering Destruction: American Firepower and Amphibious Assault from Tarawa to Iwo Jima (Studies in Marine Corps History and Amphibious Warfare)
“Chris Hemler, a historian who spent ten years on active duty in the U.S. Marine Corps, approaches his study of the use of ‘triphibious’ warfare in the Central Pacific campaign of World War II . . .”
The great Prussian theorist of war Carl von Clausewitz wrote: “Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult. These difficulties accumulate and produce a friction [that] . . . distinguishes real war from war on paper.” Chris Hemler, a historian who spent ten years on active duty in the U.S. Marine Corps, approaches his study of the use of “triphibious” warfare in the Central Pacific campaign of World War II, Delivering Destruction, with a Clausewitzian mindset that enriches our understanding of how U.S. naval and Marine forces achieved victories from Tarawa to Iwo Jima.
Hemler defines triphibious warfare as the coordination of land, sea, and air forces to enable troops to assault beaches and to steadily move inland to seize ground and defeat defending forces. That was the Marine and Navy task at Tarawa, Kwajalein, Saipan, and Iwo Jima against a highly motivated and ferocious Japanese enemy.
Hemler notes that during the 1930s very few American war planners “anticipated the inherent complexity and difficulty of triphibious coordination, integration, and flexibility.” That intellectual shortcoming combined with an aversion to spending money on defense “left the Americans . . . unprepared, at the outbreak of war, to effectively coordinate and integrate firepower during a contested amphibious assault.”
This became evident during the Battle of Tarawa in November 1943, when in their first contested amphibious assault of World War II the Navy and Marines failed to control and coordinate supporting firepower for the troops landing on Betio island. Hemler describes the American plan of attack splintering into “chaos and confusion” as the friction of war raised its ugly head. Air strikes were delayed, communications were interrupted, landing craft struggled against headwinds. “[T]he disparate units of the American task force,” Hemler explains, “failed to harmonize their actions and failed to achieve their collective potential.”
The Americans ultimately prevailed at Tarawa but at a frightful cost. The post-battle study revealed that the most important failure was the lack of coordination of fire support for the Marines on Tarawa. The Marines’ V Corps “had failed to synchronize its land, sea, and air forces.” But the lessons were learned. The experience at Tarawa and the U.S. military’s response, Hemler writes, “proved crucial in the succeeding campaigns of the Pacific War.”
Hemler shows that in each successive Central Pacific battle, the Navy and Marines improved the coordination of firepower in support of the landing forces as they hit the beaches and moved inland. He credits Navy Lt. R.D. Hunt, Jr., Marine Maj. Gen. Alexander Vandegrift, and Marine Lt. Col. Donald Weller with providing the intellectual foundation for building a “spirit of cooperation” among Navy and Marine units and commanders.
One creative solution was the formation of the joint assault signal company (JASCO) that consolidated and integrated fire support efforts to provide the “essential links between the land, sea, and air elements in operations against the enemy.” This type of administrative change, Hemler writes, was “crucial” to the future success of triphibious operations. It involved reorganization and the training of JASCO units. It also involved overcoming inter-service rivalries.
The invasion of the Marshall Islands (Roi-Namur, Kwajalein, Enewetak and Majuro) in early 1944 demonstrated what could be accomplished by coordinating naval and air firepower in support of the assaulting forces. There were “rapid advances on shore with but moderate losses,” according to a post-battle report, due to “the intensity and thoroughness of the preliminary bombings and bombardments and the effective support of artillery and naval vessels in providing barrage and call fires as needed.” The lessons of Tarawa were being learned.
Saipan in the Marianas island chain was the next test of triphibious warfare, and once again “close and committed cooperation between American ground, air, and naval forces . . . delivered success.” Hemler notes that the few Japanese survivors on Saipan said that it was American air and naval firepower that ensured the U.S. victory.
On Iwo Jima, firepower was essential to the American victory, which still came at great cost. American firepower, coordinated attacks on Japanese positions, destructive fire over the landing zones, and a new, innovative technique known as the “rolling barrage” enabled the assaulting forces to land and propelled them to move inland. The fighting was savage and brutal. Iwo Jima was, Hemler writes, “a monotonous daily routine of violence and destruction.” And at Iwo Jima, Marine commander Vernon Megee led the Landing Force Air Support Control Unit (LFASCU) that coordinated air support for Marine infantry units. Hemler concludes that the victory at Iwo Jima would not have been possible without the triphibious coordination teams.
Hemler notes that triphibious warfare succeeded again in Korea at the famous Inchon landing, and in the attack south of Chu Lai during Operation Starlite in the Vietnam War. Triphibious warfare, of course, does not eliminate the Clausewitzian friction of war. Nor does it ensure victory. But Hemler persuasively argues that it shows that with all the advances in technology and science, the “human element” in war still counts. War, he writes, is “a human art, not a formulaic science.” Success at triphibious warfare resulted from trial and error, flexibility, a willingness to adapt to circumstances, and empiricism over theory. The lessons of the World War II Central Pacific campaign may take on a contemporary relevance as war clouds gather in the Western Pacific.