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Author: Stephen Taaffe
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 1682477096
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 213
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Book Description
The Marine Corps covered itself in glory in World War II with victories over the Japanese in hard-fought battles such as Guadalcanal, Tarawa, and Iwo Jima. While these battles are well known, those who led the Marines into them have remained obscure until now. In Commanding the Pacific: Marine Corps Generals in World War II, Stephen R. Taaffe analyzes the fifteen high-level Marine generals who led the Corps' six combat divisions and two corps in the conflict. He concludes that these leaders played an indispensable and unheralded role in organizing, training, and leading their men to victory. Taaffe insists there was nothing inevitable about the Marine Corps' success in World War II. The small pre-war size of the Corps meant that its commandant had to draw his combat leaders from a small pool of officers who often lacked the education of their Army and Navy counterparts. Indeed, there were fewer than one hundred Marine officers with the necessary rank, background, character, and skills for its high-level combat assignments. Moreover, the Army and Navy froze the Marines out of high-level strategic decisions and frequently impinged on Marine prerogatives. There were no Marines in the Joint Chiefs of Staff or at the head of the Pacific War's geographic theaters, so the Marines usually had little influence over the island targets selected for them. In addition to bureaucratic obstacles, constricted geography and vicious Japanese opposition limited opportunities for Marine generals to earn the kind of renown that Army and Navy commanders achieved elsewhere. In most of its battles on small Pacific War islands, Marine generals had neither the option nor inclination to engage in sophisticated tactics, but they instead relied in direct frontal assaults that resulted in heavy casualties. Such losses against targets of often questionable strategic value sometimes called into question the Marine Corps' doctrine, mission, and the quality of its combat generals. Despite these difficulties, Marine combat commanders repeatedly overcame challenges and fulfilled their missions. Their ability to do so does credit to the Corps and demonstrates that these generals deserve more attention from historians than they have so far received.
Author: Stephen Taaffe
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 1682477096
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 213
Get Book
Book Description
The Marine Corps covered itself in glory in World War II with victories over the Japanese in hard-fought battles such as Guadalcanal, Tarawa, and Iwo Jima. While these battles are well known, those who led the Marines into them have remained obscure until now. In Commanding the Pacific: Marine Corps Generals in World War II, Stephen R. Taaffe analyzes the fifteen high-level Marine generals who led the Corps' six combat divisions and two corps in the conflict. He concludes that these leaders played an indispensable and unheralded role in organizing, training, and leading their men to victory. Taaffe insists there was nothing inevitable about the Marine Corps' success in World War II. The small pre-war size of the Corps meant that its commandant had to draw his combat leaders from a small pool of officers who often lacked the education of their Army and Navy counterparts. Indeed, there were fewer than one hundred Marine officers with the necessary rank, background, character, and skills for its high-level combat assignments. Moreover, the Army and Navy froze the Marines out of high-level strategic decisions and frequently impinged on Marine prerogatives. There were no Marines in the Joint Chiefs of Staff or at the head of the Pacific War's geographic theaters, so the Marines usually had little influence over the island targets selected for them. In addition to bureaucratic obstacles, constricted geography and vicious Japanese opposition limited opportunities for Marine generals to earn the kind of renown that Army and Navy commanders achieved elsewhere. In most of its battles on small Pacific War islands, Marine generals had neither the option nor inclination to engage in sophisticated tactics, but they instead relied in direct frontal assaults that resulted in heavy casualties. Such losses against targets of often questionable strategic value sometimes called into question the Marine Corps' doctrine, mission, and the quality of its combat generals. Despite these difficulties, Marine combat commanders repeatedly overcame challenges and fulfilled their missions. Their ability to do so does credit to the Corps and demonstrates that these generals deserve more attention from historians than they have so far received.
Author: Stephen R. Taaffe
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781682477083
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
"The Marine Corps covered itself in glory in World War Two with victories over the Japanese at Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Iwo Jima, and elsewhere. Despite its success, the Corps' high-ranking combat commanders remain virtually unknown to both historians and the general public. Stephen R. Taaffe explains that marine division and corps chiefs played a vital role in organizing, training, and leading their units in the American counteroffensive across the Pacific. Marine combat generals had to overcome both bureaucratic obstacles and enemy opposition to fulfill their amphibious missions"--
Author: Brayton Harris
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0230393640
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 344
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Book Description
The biography of legendary admiral Chester W. Nimitz, master military strategist and visionary of submarine operations. Chester Nimitz was an admiral's Admiral, considered by many to be the greatest naval leader of the last century. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Nimitz assembled the forces, selected the leaders, and - as commander of all U.S. and Allied air, land, and sea forces in the Pacific Ocean - led the charge one island at a time, one battle at a time, toward victory. A brilliant strategist, he astounded contemporaries by achieving military victories against fantastic odds, outpacing more flamboyant luminaries like General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral "Bull" Halsey. And he was there to accept, on behalf of the United States, the surrender of the Japanese aboard the battleship USS Missouri in August 1945. In this first biography in over three decades, Brayton Harris uses long-overlooked files and recently declassified documents to bring to life one of America's greatest wartime heroes.
Author: Edwin P. Hoyt
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 076276614X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 531
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Book Description
This meticulous study is a concentrated look at naval admiral Chester W. Nimitz and his subordinate leaders—military men under stress—and the relationship of fighting admirals to their top leaders and one another. Bull Halsey, “the Patton of the Pacific,” could win a battle; ascetic and cultivated Raymond Spruance could win a campaign; but Chester W. Nimitz, the quiet but dauntless battler from the banks of the Pedernales River, could win a war. And the way he did win that war in the Pacific is the center of this excellent and absorbing biography of naval operations and of men in command relationships. How They Won the War in the Pacific covers many leaders, including the top fighting ones afloat and ashore, and it shows Admiral Nimitz as history will record him—as the wise, calm tower of strength in adversity and success, the principal architect of victory in the Pacific during World War II.
Author: Louis Morton
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781515023258
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 792
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Book Description
For the United States, full involvement in World War II began and ended in the Pacific Ocean. Although the accepted grand strategy of the war was the defeat of Germany first, the sweep of Japanese victory in the weeks and months after Pearl Harbor impelled the United States to move as rapidly as it could to stem the enemy tide of conquest in the Pacific. Shocked as they were by the initial attack, the American people were also united in their determination to defeat Japan, and the Pacific war became peculiarly their own affair. In this great theater it was the United States that ran the war, and had the determining voice in answering questions of strategy and command as they arose. The natural environment made the prosecution of war in the Pacific of necessity an interservice effort, and any real account of it must, as this work does, take into full account the views and actions of the Navy as well as those of the Army and its Air Forces. These are the factors-a predominantly American theater of war covering nearly one-third the globe, and a joint conduct of war by land, sea, and air on the largest scale in American history-that make this volume on the Pacific war of particular significance today. It is the capstone of the eleven volumes published or being published in the Army's World War II series that deal with military operations in the Pacific area, and it is one that should command wide attention from the thoughtful public as well as the military reader in these days of global tension.
Author: David Zimmerman
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774830379
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 206
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Book Description
The Royal Canadian Navy crews that sailed the Atlantic during the early Cold War held a contemptuous view of their West Coast brethren, likening the Pacific fleet to a “yacht club” where sailors enjoyed a life of leisurely service on a tranquil sea. As David Zimmerman reveals, nothing could be further from the truth. From the fleet’s postwar downsizing, through to its rapid expansion in the wake of the Korean War as Cold War fears gripped the nation, Maritime Command Pacific fought to hold steady amid drifting Japanese mines, Soviet submarines, and joint US-Canadian training exercises.
Author: Adm. Frederick C. Sherman
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1787206912
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 314
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Book Description
COMMANDING THE LEXINGTON DURING THE BATTLE OF THE CORAL SEA I saw the enemy torpedo planes coming in on both bows. The air was full of antiaircraft bursts and the din was terrific. I motioned to the helmsman for a hard left rudder, just as the enemy planes started disgorging their fish. The water in all directions seemed full of torpedo wakes. Bombs were dropping all around us. Great geysers of water from near misses were going up higher than our masts, and the ship shuddered from the explosions of the ones that hit. The enemy planes split up to fire on both bows, the hardest maneuver for us to counter. Then I remember seeing two wakes coming straight for our port beam, and there was nothing I could do about them. The wakes approached the ship’s side, and I braced myself for the explosion.... COMBAT COMMAND
Author: James Dean Ladd
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 1612510175
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 302
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Book Description
Faithful Warriors is a memoir of World War II in the Pacific by a combat veteran of the 8th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division. Written with award-winning author Steven Weingartner, Col. Ladd’s book recounts his experiences as a junior officer in some of the fiercest fighting of the war, during the amphibious invasions of Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, and Tinian. Ladd's recollections and descriptions of life--and death--on the far-flung battlefronts of the Pacific War are vividly rendered, and augmented by the personal recollections of many of the men who served with him in his wartime journey across the Pacific. This vividly written memoir will stir the memories of those who lived during these trying times and will help future generations of readers to understand the realities of the Pacific War.
Author: Sharon Tosi Lacey
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781574416091
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
Winner of the Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award, 2014 Selected by General Raymond Odierno, 38th Army Chief of Staff, for the U.S. Army Chief of Staff's Professional Reading List, February 2014. Pacific Blitzkrieg closely examines the planning, preparation, and execution of ground operations for five major invasions in the Central Pacific (Guadalcanal, Tarawa, the Marshalls, Saipan, and Okinawa). The commanders on the ground had to integrate the US Army and Marine Corps into a single striking force, something that would have been difficult in peacetime, but in the midst of a great global war, it was a monumental task. Yet, ultimate success in the Pacific rested on this crucial, if somewhat strained, partnership and its accomplishments. Despite the thousands of works covering almost every aspect of World War II in the Pacific, until now no one has examined the detailed mechanics behind this transformation at the corps and division level. Sharon Tosi Lacey makes extensive use of previously untapped primary research material to re-examine the development of joint ground operations, the rapid transformation of tactics and equipment, and the evolution of command relationships between army and marine leadership. This joint venture was the result of difficult and patient work by commanders and evolving staffs who acted upon the lessons of each engagement with remarkable speed. For every brilliant strategic and operational decision of the war, there were thousands of minute actions and adaptations that made such brilliance possible. Lacey examines the Smith vs. Smith controversy during the Saipan invasion using newly discovered primary source material. Saipan was not the first time General "Howlin' Mad" Smith had created friction. Lacey reveals how Smith's blatant partisanship and inability to get along with others nearly brought the American march across the Pacific to a halt. Pacific Blitzkrieg explores the combat in each invasion to show how the battles were planned, how raw recruits were turned into efficient combat forces, how battle doctrine was created on the fly, and how every service remade itself as new and more deadly weapons continuously changed the character of the war.
Author: Stephen R. Taaffe
Publisher: Modern War Studies
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
"Stephen Taaffe takes a close look at this command cadre, examining who was appointed to these positions, why they were appointed, and why so many of them ultimately failed to fulfill their responsibilities. He demonstrates that ambitious officers such as Gouverneur Warren, John Reynolds, and Winfield Scott Hancock employed all the weapons at their disposal, from personal connections to exaggerated accounts of prowess in combat, to claw their way into these important posts." "Once there, however, as Taaffe reveals, many of these officers failed to navigate the tricky and ever-changing political currents that swirled around the Army of the Potomac. As a result, only three of them managed to retain their commands for more than a year, and their machinations caused considerable turmoil in the army's high command structure."--BOOK JACKET.
