Introduction
The history of warfare has revealed that the corporate aphorism ‘the only thing constant is change’ holds true for all endeavors military as well. With the growth of knowledge, science and technology, warfare too evolved to keep pace. Amphibious operations are perhaps the most difficult and complex operations to plan and execute. The US Marine Corps (USMC) since its inception has constantly evolved its ways to fight to stay ahead of its adversaries and win. Along the way, concepts and technologies have changed, each influencing the other. Added to these paradigms has been the crucial role of thinkers, military experts and leaders who, through their intellect added impetus to the transformation in the way the Marine Corps fought. This essay examines the steady transformation in the concepts of US Marine Corps amphibious operations over the period 1915-1945 and its concomitant effect on present day transformational efforts.
Developement
As early as 1894, the Congress had assigned the Marine Corps the mission of providing troops that could establish and defend outlying bases. In 1913, the Corps began developing a doctrine to support its tasking. However, the advent of the First World War delayed this process due to the exigencies of the times. At that point in time, amphibious operations were a hazy concept as far as the USMC was concerned. The only doctrine that was available was the British doctrine which was used by the British at Gallipoli 1915, with disastrous results. The effect of the Gallipoli campaign was to discourage the move to consider amphibious operations against a defended shore. The ‘lesson learnt’ in those days was that daylight assault against a defended shore was impossible. The consensus ‘Committee System’ of Command and Control as practiced by the British Doctrine was identified as the chief weakness in the success of amphibious operations. The USMC then commenced evolving its own concept of amphibious operations based on the unified command system.
The rise of Japan was predicted with an astonishing degree of prescience as a future adversary as early as 1918. The contingency plan called ‘Plan Orange’ required the USMC to project power across six thousand miles of ocean into the distant Pacific in the event of a war with Japan. This required setting up advanced bases and a new concept of amphibious operations. In 1921, the Marine Corps planners decided that the Gallipoli lessons needed a fresh review and that planned attacks by daylight were not only possible but imperative for the success of a sustained campaign. Thereon, the Corps began fine tuning its concepts of amphibious assault with vigor. In 1922 and 1924, the Corp tested its new concepts in the Panama Canal Zone and Culebra. During these experimentations, new hardware such as pontoon bridges, docks and amphibious tractors were tested. In 1927, the amphibious assault role of the marines was declared as a national military policy. This apex level dispensation opened the doors for full scale development of amphibious operations concepts resulting in the 1935 Tentative Landing Operations Manual, a document formulated by the Marine Corps School. This manual was modified and used by the US Navy and with suitable modifications became part of the US Army military doctrine during the Second World War. The Tentative Manual though providing the basic groundwork had some shortcomings in its operative principles of Command and Control relationships. It did not clearly specify when the shift in responsibility between the Commander Amphibious Task Force (CATF), a naval officer and the Landing Force Commander (LFC), an army or Marine Corps officer should occur. As a result, when the manual was followed in actual operations in the August 1942 Guadalcanal operation, The LFC continued to report to the CATF two months after the landing force had landed at Guadalcanal. Ideally, the LFC should have linked up with the ground force commander for the further prosecution of the operations. This major command and control weakness was quickly identified and changed. Yet another lacuna was the management of the beachhead. The Tentative Manual required that all beachhead activities be coordinated under the command of a ‘beach master’ for the movements and a shore party commander for the logistics, without clearly laying down who was in command. As a result, in Guadalcanal, lack of coordination between the two resulted in a logistics logjam on the beachhead.
The technical innovations that underwent transformation to support amphibious operations dealt with the design and ability of warship guns to provide effective Naval Gunfire Support (NGFS). Naval guns with their flat trajectory and high rate of fire were useless in supporting the landing force as they could not target enemy objectives on the other side of the hill. Thus, the designs of naval guns were also changed to provide them with ‘over the crest’ firing capabilities and rudimentary fire control computing capability by means of bombardment tables and a ‘bombardment fan’. Also, the naval philosophy of sustained NGFS was considered too brief and not sufficient to adequately ‘soften up’ the beachhead to the level that the Marine Corps desired. This too underwent a conceptual change. The disparate training and lack of experience of the Naval Gunfire Liaison Officers (NGLO) was another critical weakness. The Marine Corps resorted to posting their own officers as NGLOs till such time naval officers gained the requisite knowledge and expertise.
The critical ‘ship-to-shore’ movement saw transformational changes in the hardware as the traditional ‘V’ bottom craft gave way to flat bottomed shallow draught vessels that could beach under own power and retract on completion. These led to the development of Landing Craft Utility and Landing Ship Tanks. Amphibious Fighting vehicles too came into vogue. The amphibious doctrine required all landings to be made at high tide. At Tarawa, 20 November 1943, the USMC had to commence the assault under unfavorable tidal conditions, due to other strategic and tactical factors that resulted in many of the new design flat bottomed Higgins boats to ground on the coral reefs that fringed the approaches to the beaches. This led to the development of the amphibian tractor which could negotiate the coral reefs. The breakdown of Communications at Tarawa was quickly learnt and better dedicated communication fitted command platforms were built and better communication equipment fitted on the line of departure craft and the shore units. Structurally, the Joint Assault signal company was born out of the Tarawa experience to better handle communications.
Logistics are critical in an amphibious operation. The USMC experimented with the type and procedure of loading and unloading the stores that were required in the order of priority at the beachhead. The type of stores and the procedure of loading and unloading were formalized as ‘loading tables’ which further required the US navy to not only change its loading philosophy but also effect structural changes to the amphibious vessels themselves.
As the Second World War progressed, the concepts of amphibious operations were constantly fine tuned to match up to the improvisations being effected by the enemy as also shore up the weaknesses thus far detected. The USMC had always insisted that the pre-landing bombardment needed to be more prolonged and deliberate than was being provided. At Iwo Jima, 19 February 1945, considering the formidable defenses, the USMC had asked for 10 days of heavy bombardment but received only three days, a scarcity that was to cost them dearly in terms of American casualties for capturing the island. The Iwo Jima operations brought home the importance of air power and the efficacy of carrier borne aircraft to provide air superiority and beach softening. Iwo Jima resulted in a ratio of 1:1.25 for the number of Japanese to American soldiers killed leading theorists to reconsider force level ratios and look at new ways of fighting the amphibious war.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it can be stated that amphibious warfare concepts evolved considerably from 1915 to 1945. The USMC started with a British template and went on to improve upon it and evolve its own operating philosophy. The harsh lessons of the Pacific war were adequately learnt and incorporated to refine the extant concepts. Today, technological advances are encouraging planners and theorists to consider obviating the entire beachhead phase. This has resulted in the new USMC concept of conducting amphibious operations through its Operational Maneuver From the Sea (OMFTS) and telescoping the classical phases of amphibious operations into Ship to Objective Movement (STOM), which because of the available technology viz. hovercrafts, heavy lift helicopters, V-22 Ospreys will usher a quantum jump in the complete concept of Amphibious operations.
Bibliography
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