(4) Mark Yost in the column "Shortcuts: Military History," at page C9, The column is penned by various authors. At the end of the column is the introduction: "Mr. Yost writes about military history for the Journal.
(a) Turning the Tides of the War
https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture ... he-pacific-95495c2f
(book review on Mark E Stille, Midway; The Pacific war’s most famous battle. Osprey, 2024)
```````````````Midway
The Battle of Midway unfolded over four days in June 1942, some 1,100 miles west of Hawaii, six months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The war would drag on for another three years, with Allied victory far from certain. But the American triumph at Midway—in which the U.S. sank four Japanese carriers and lost only one—revealed the Japanese navy to be a fallible force, not the invincible one it had seemed to be during the opening months of the war. Midway was the beginning of the U.S. march across the Pacific, which ended with Japan’s surrender on Sept. 2, 1945.
Midway is perhaps best remembered thanks to two major motion pictures [both titled 'Midway']: the first, released in 1976, starred Charlton Heston and Henry Fonda; a remake followed in 2019. At the end of the earlier film, Fonda, playing Adm. Chester Nimitz, the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet commander, asks, “were we better than the Japanese, or just luckier?”
That’s the question Mark Stille sets out to answer in “Midway: The Pacific War’s Most Famous Battle.” Mr. Stille, who spent nearly 40 years in Navy intelligence and has taught at the Naval War College, tells us that the reason the Americans had an initial advantage was because the Office of Naval Intelligence had broken Japan’s encryption codes and knew the enemy was coming. Ultimately, however, American victory was “the product of superior American doctrine and tactics, luck, and the ineptitude” of Japan’s Vice Adm. Chuichi Nagumo, “who proved unsuited for the job.”
The biggest stroke of American luck came when U.S. dive-bombers spotted Japanese planes on the decks of their carriers, rearming for another mission. “With no Japanese fighters to interfere,” Mr. Stille writes, “the dive-bombers attacked. In the next few minutes, the outcome of the battle and the entire Pacific War was decided.”
````````````````
(b) A Force Forged by Enemy Fire
https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture ... uadalcanal-85690dda
(book review on John R Bruning, Fifty-Three Days on Starvation Island; The World War II battle that saved Marine Corps Aviation. Hachette, 2024)
Note:
(i) Until I read this shortcut, I had no idea about the importance of the oft-mentioned Guadalcanal Campaign
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guadalcanal_campaign
(Aug 7, 1942 to Feb 9, 1943; or Battle of Guadalcanal; "on and around the island of Guadalcanal [of Solomon Islands] * * * It was the first major land offensive by Allied forces against the Empire of Japan. * * * with the objective of using Guadalcanal * * * as bases in supporting a campaign to eventually capture or neutralize the major Japanese base at Rabaul on New Britain [which is New Britain Province of the present-day Papua New Guinea; in 1975, Australia recognized the independence of the country]"_
Guadalcanal lies at 4 o'clock direction of Rabaul, separated by 1,064 km.
(ii)
(A) United States Marine Corps Aviation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Marine_Corps_Aviation
(1912- )
section 1 History, section 1.3 World War II: "During the war, and for the next fifty years, the Guadalcanal campaign would become a defining point for Marine Aviation. The great takeaways were the debilitating effects of not having air superiority [on America's side], the vulnerability of targets such as transport shipping, and the vital importance of quickly acquiring expeditionary airfields during amphibious operations.[22] Because of the way the Pacific War unfolded, Marine Aviation was not able to achieve its 1939 mission of supporting the Fleet Marine Force at first. For the first two years of the war, the air arm spent most of its time protecting the fleet and land-based installations from attacks by enemy ships and aircraft [and was unable to provide air support to marines who had landed in enemy territories, including supplied to them]
(B) What is "Fleet Marine Force" (FMF)? What does it do? (It still exists.) There is a wiki page for it, but it doesnot answer my questions.
Fleet Marine Force Study Guide. US Marine Crops, undated.
https://www.marforres.marines.mi ... ss/fleetmarineforce(fmf)studyguide.pdf
Quote:
history: "1933 - The Marine Corps was reorganized into the Fleet Marine Force, formally establishing the 'command and administrative relations' between the [naval] Fleet and the Marine Corps.
"seven elements of the Marine Corps mission[: (the first is to)] Provide Fleet Marine Forces with combined arms and supporting air components for service with the United States Fleet in the seizure or defense of advanced naval bases and for the conduct of such land operations [which I guess is amphibious landing] as may be essential to the execution of a naval campaign.
(iii) "the US Marines kicked off their Pacific island-hopping campaign. Their first target was Guadalcanal
`````````````````Guadalcanal
Two months after the U.S. defeated Japan at the Battle of Midway in June 1942, the U.S. Marines kicked off their Pacific island-hopping campaign. Their first target was Guadalcanal, an island some 3,600 miles southwest of Hawaii and home to a vital airfield. It was a brutal ordeal, one in which the Marines first captured Guadalcanal, then kept the Japanese from retaking it. John Bruning’s “Fifty-Three Days on Starvation Island” focuses on the air war that ensued. It is a harrowing tale of a mission that was fraught from the beginning.
The First Marine Division, tasked with holding the island, was essentially abandoned by the U.S. Navy when its support fleet was chased off by a superior Japanese force. The Japanese then proceeded to deliver additional men and supplies. For the Americans, meanwhile, food, water and ammunition, as well as fuel and spare parts, remained extremely scarce—thus the moniker “Starvation Island.”
One of the Marine pilots’ missions was to provide air cover for their fellow Marines on the ground. In this the Americans were remarkably effective, even though most of the pilots had little or no combat experience. Their other mission—intercepting Japanese bombers—proved more difficult: The enemy aircraft flew above 20,000 feet, while the Marines were not equipped with the necessary oxygen systems to get them up to that altitude.
Eventually the Navy was able to deliver more troops and aircraft and facilitate an important Marine victory. It was, Mr. Bruning argues, the turning point when Americans became a formidable fighting force. “That metamorphosis began,” he writes, at Guadalcanal. “It was a near-run, exceptionally costly victory. The Marines proved up to the task. Few if any others would have been so capable.”
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发表于 9-21-2024 10:57:14
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