The Greatest of All Leathernecks by Joseph Arthur Simon

Author:Joseph Arthur Simon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: LSU Press
Published: 2019-02-23T16:00:00+00:00

9

THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMPHIBIOUS ASSAULT, 1920–1929

In developing the mission of amphibious assault, Lejeune reshaped the Advanced Base Force into the Marine Expeditionary Force. This force became the Fleet Marine Force in 1934, which had essentially the same mission as the Expeditionary Force. By promoting, planning, and conducting amphibious assault maneuvers with the fleet and utilizing input from the MCS, Lejeune altered the face of the Marine Corps. Moving beyond providing a temporary base for the fleet and acting as a small constabulary force to protect American business and political interests in the Caribbean, the corps was being prepared to assume a major role in the American military establishment. Lejeune’s foresight envisioned the strong possibility of a major war in the Pacific, in which the Navy would need a thoroughly trained amphibious assault force to secure naval and air bases. These bases across the vast Pacific would be vital in approaching and defeating an enemy in the Far East. This new wartime mission—a highly specialized and difficult military operation—greatly strengthened the prospects for the permanent survival of the Marine Corps, a small force in the American military that had been threatened with extinction for almost 150 years through abandonment by the Navy or by absorption into the Army.

The ABF was developed by the Marine Corps in the first two decades of the twentieth century due to pressure from the Navy Board, the Navy, and the secretary of the Navy. At that time, the threat of a naval attack against the United States from Imperial Germany (War Plan Black), was considered a greater possibility than an attack from Japan (War Plan Orange). War Plan Black assumed that a large German fleet would steam across the Atlantic and attack the American homeland. First, however, Germany needed a temporary naval base near the entrance to the Caribbean Sea in the Greater Antilles to replenish its fleet before attacking the American Fleet and the United States. To defend against such an attack, a Marine brigade making up an ABF would fortify a base with naval guns (such as the island of Culebra, located east of Puerto Rico) to defend and repel an assault from a small enemy fleet of cruisers, freeing up the American Fleet to pursue and destroy the main German fleet at sea. This threat ended when Germany was defeated in World War I, causing the Navy to consider Japan as a possible enemy in the Pacific.1

Alone among Marine Corps progressives, Lejeune and Earl Hancock “Pete” Ellis saw as early as 1915 the need for an ABF to prepare also for offensive operations.2 Ellis had noted that the ABF would have to seize a temporary naval base before defending it. Lecturing before the Advance Base Schools, Lejeune mentioned that “the Marine Corps would be the first to set foot on hostile soil in order to seize, fortify, and hold a port from which, as a base, the Army would prosecute its campaign.”3 In a meeting before the House Committee on Naval Affairs on

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