A Special Valor by Richard Wheeler

Author:Richard Wheeler [Wheeler, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781612514413
Publisher: Naval Institute Press

Exhausted campaigners display Japanese flags.

It hadn’t been necessary for the admiral to wait until Rabaul was ringed to press his campaign. Only two months after his forces had taken Tarawa, Makin, and Apamama in the Gilberts, he sent Raymond Spruance, Kelly Turner, and Holland Smith to invade the Marshalls.

16Quick Win in the Marshalls

The Navy’s long drive toward Japan was something unique in warfare, its success dependent upon the bold employment of the modern weapon of carrier air power. Above all else, it was this cover that enabled the Marine and Army amphibious troops to assault the enemy’s fortified islands. Japan’s sea and air power had to be kept neutralized. The main purpose of capturing the islands was to gain bases ever closer to the enemy’s homeland, and the most important aircraft using the bases were the Army’s long-range bombers, their mission to neutralize or soften up objectives still farther on. Nimitz was looking toward the day when his assault troops would win islands far enough westward to enable the Army bombers to begin clobbering Japan itself. Douglas MacArthur persisted in opposing the Navy’s view of the war. He still believed that his advance toward Japan by way of the Philippines should be given priority. The Navy was simply perpetrating a “stunt,” said the general and his supporters. Japan could be bombed, as originally planned, from bases established in China. But Washington continued to favor the Navy’s campaign, with MacArthur advancing in a supplementary way, as promising the quickest results at the lowest cost.

It was now two years since Pearl Harbor, and the Navy had been greatly strengthened. The vessels available for the Marshalls operation—Admiral Spruance’s 5th Fleet—made a formidable array. The carriers alone numbered six heavies, six lights, and eight escorts, and among the battleships were eight new ones capable of doing thirty knots. There were nearly 300 vessels in Kelly Turner’s attack force, including eleven of the carriers, seven battleships, eight heavy and four light cruisers, sixty-three destroyers, twelve destroyer escorts, twelve improvised gunboats, seventy-three troop and cargo transports, fifty landing ships, and about the same number of auxiliaries such as minesweepers, tugs, oil tankers, and water tenders.

The expansion of the Navy in ships and men had been paralleled by a strengthening of the Marine Corps, which now numbered five divisions and four air wings. There was also a Women’s Reserve, which would soon grow to 1,000 officers and 18,000 enlistees, their commander Colonel Ruth C. Streeter. The clerical and other noncombat duties the women performed would release enough men for the formation of still another division before the war ended. At the start of 1944 the Corps totaled 390,000 men and women.

For the work in the Marshalls, Kelly Turner and Holland Smith were given the new 4th Marine Division, commanded by Major General Harry “The Dutchman” Schmidt, which came directly from California, and an independent regiment, the 22nd Marines, which had been performing garrison duty on Samoa. The Army was represented by Major General Charles H. Corlett’s 7th

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