There was a lot of air activity on the 23d. At three periods during
the day, naval gunfire and artillery barrages were halted to allow
massive air strikes on railroad junctions, pillboxes, villages, gun
emplacements, cane fields, and the beaches at Tinian Town. More than
350 Navy and Army planes took part, dropping 500 bombs, 200 rockets,
42 incendiary clusters, and 34 napalm bombs. This was only the second
use of napalm during the Pacific War; napalm bombs were first used on
Tinian the day before.
That evening, 37 LSTs at anchor off Saipan were loaded with 4th Marine
Division troops. Rations for three days, water and medical supplies,
ammunition, vehicles, and other equipment had been preloaded, beginning
on 15 July. The troops were going to travel light: a spoon, a pair of
socks, insect repellant, and emergency supplies in their pockets, and
no pack on their backs.
“Close at hand,” the historians Jeter Isely and Philip Crowl wrote in
their classic _The U.S. Marines and Amphibious War_, “rode the ships
of the two transport divisions that would carry two regiments of the
2d Marine Division on a diversionary feint against Tinian Town and
would later disembark them along with the third regiment across the
northwestern beaches.” (A similar feint was made by 2d Division Marines
less than a year later off the southeast beaches of Okinawa, and by the
same division lying off Kuwait City nearly 50 years later in the Desert
Storm operation).
[Illustration: _White Beach 2 accommodated two battalions landing in
file, with a single rifle company in the assault. The 25th Marines
crossed this 160-yard beach on Jig Day, literally unopposed followed by
two light artillery battalions and the 23d Marines._
Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 150633
]
The 4th was designated the assault division for Tinian. The beaches
were not wide enough to accommodate battalions landing abreast,
much less divisions. Instead, the assault troops would land by
columns--squads, platoons, and companies.
The 2d Division would follow on after taking part in the massive feint
off the beaches of Tinian Town, hoping to tie down the main Japanese
defense forces and spring the surprise of a landing over the lightly
defended northern beaches.
To give the 4th more punch immediately after landing, the 2d was
stripped of some of its firepower, such as tank and artillery units. It
would, accordingly, be at the lowest strength at Tinian of any Marine
division involved in an amphibious operation in World War II.
Despite these additions, the 4th, too, would be understrength--“skinny”
was the descriptive word used by Lieutenant Colonel Justice M. “Jumping
Joe” Chambers, commander of the 3d Battalion, 25th Marines, who was
to earn a Medal of Honor in the Iwo Jima operation little more than
six months later. The division’s infantry battalions had received only
one replacement draft after the Saipan fighting. At full strength they
averaged 880 men; at Tinian the average strength was down by more than
35 percent to 565.
For all these reasons--combat fatigue, heavy losses during previous
weeks and months, and understrength units--the Marines on Tinian would
play a cautious game. Admiral Turner had said he would give them two
weeks to seize the island. Major General Harry Schmidt, who relieved
Lieutenant General Holland M. Smith as VAC commander, promised to
get it done in 10 days. In the event, the island was secured after
nine days. In retrospect, analysts say the operation could have been
finished off sooner by more aggressive tactics. Time, however, was no
great factor; the relatively slow pace of the operation probably kept
casualties at a minimum and reduced the probabilities of troop fatigue.
Tinian was easy on the eyes, but the heat and humidity were brutal, the
cane fields were hard going, and it was the season of monsoons.
[Sidebar (page 3): Selection of White Beach
The selection of the northwestern beaches was universally regarded
as the key to the quick success of the Tinian operation. The credit
for this choice, however, has been debated for years. Carl Hoffman,
in his history of the battle, quoted Major General Harry Schmidt on
the issue: “Many high ranking officers have asked who originated the
plan.... While the 4th Division was under my command and prior to the
Marianas campaign, my planning officer, Lieutenant Colonel Evans F.
Carlson, made such a plan and probably such a plan was turned in to the
V Amphibious Corps.”
The division’s intelligence officer, Lieutenant Colonel Gooderham L.
McCormick, a Reservist who later became mayor of Phildelphia, agreed.
So did Lieutenant Victor Maghakian of the division’s reconnaissance
unit: “The man who definitely planned that landing ... was Evans F.
Carlson.... He told me all about that Tinian plan before he was wounded
[22 June] on Saipan.”
Others minimized Carlson’s role, including Marine Major General Graves
B. Erskine, who was then the V Amphibious Corps chief of staff, and
Marine Colonel Robert E. Hogaboom, the operations officer for the
landing forces at Saipan and Tinian. Admiral Harry W. Hill, commander
of the Northern Attack Force, told Hoffman that “if there were plans
and I presume there were tentative ones, none of them were available to
me or my staff.”
Hoffman discovered that before the war, students at the Marine Corps
Schools at Quantico had come up with the northern beaches solution to
the “then-theoretical Tinian solution.”
But historian Ronald Spector, in his Pacific war history, _Eagle
Against the Sun_, left no doubt who had forced the issue. It was Marine
Lieutenant General Holland M. Smith. When he and Admiral Hill proposed
the use of White Beaches 1 and 2, Admiral Turner firmly vetoed [the]
proposal and told [Hill] to work on planning for a landing near Tinian
Town. Hill reluctantly complied, but he ordered part of his staff
to keep working on the White Beaches plan.... [After reconnaissance
reports] Hill and Smith tried once again to change Admiral Turner’s
mind, but he remained obstinate.
In a characteristic exchange, the admiral told General Smith: “You are
not going to land on the White Beaches; I won’t land you there.” “Oh
yes you will,” replied the general. “You’ll land me any goddamned place
I tell you to.” Turner was adamant: “I’m telling you now it can’t be
done. It’s absolutely impossible.” “How do you know it’s impossible?”
asked Smith. “You’re just so goddamned scared that some of your boats
will be hurt.”
Neither this exchange nor the more subtle efforts of Admiral Hill
served to convince Turner, so Hill reluctantly took the matter to
Admiral Spruance [Turner’s superior]. Spruance liked the White Beaches
idea, but he was reluctant to overrule Turner, his expert on amphibious
warfare. A conference with Turner and his subordinate commanders
was arranged on board the flagship. All spoke in favor of the White
Beaches. Spruance turned to Turner. The latter calmly announced that he
favored the White Beaches also.
In a letter written to Hoffman in 1950, Turner said: “... before
the reconnaissances of July 10 and 11 were made, I had (without
announcement) tentatively decided to accept the White Beaches unless
the reconnaissance reports were decidedly unfavorable.”
This was one of those cases, as John F. Kennedy once said, in which
“victory has many fathers but defeat is an orphan.”
]
[Sidebar (page 5): General Clifton B. Cates, USMC
[Illustration]
Clifton B. Cates, a native Tennessean, was commissioned in 1917,
and was sent to France with the 6th Marines in World War I. He had
outstanding service in five major engagements of the war, and returned
to the United States a well-decorated young officer after his tour in
the occupation of Germany. One of his early assignments following the
war was as aide to Major General Commandant George Barnett. During his
more than 37 years as a Marine, Cates was one of the few officers who
held commands of a platoon, a company, a battalion, a regiment, and a
division in combat. He was the 19th Commandant of the Marine Corps at
the outset of the Korean War.
His assignments during the interwar years consisted of a combination
of schooling, staff assignments, and command, such as his tour as
battalion commander in the 4th Marines, then in Shanghai. In 1940, he
took command of the Basic School, then in the Philadelphia Navy Yard.
He took command of the 1st Marines in May 1942.
In World War II, Cates commanded the 1st Marines in the landing
on Guadalcanal. After returning to the States, he was promoted to
brigadier general. He went back to the Pacific war in mid-1944 to take
command of the 4th Marine Division in time for the Tinian operation.
He also led it in the Iwo Jima assault, and was decorated at the end
of the fighting with his second Distinguished Service Medal. Part of
the citation accompanying the medal reads: “Repeatedly disregarding
his own personal safety. Major General Cates traversed his own front
lines daily to rally his tired, depleted units and by his undaunted
valor, tenacious perseverance, and staunch leadership in the face of
overwhelming odds, constantly inspired his stout-hearted Marines to
heroic effort during critical phases of the campaign.”
On 1 January 1948, General Cates took over as Commandant of the Marine
Corps, remaining until 31 December 1951, when he reverted to the three
stars of a lieutenant general and began his second tour as Commandant
of the Marine Corps Schools at Quantico, Virginia. General Cates
retired on 30 June 1954. He died on 4 June 1970.
]
_Jig Day: Feint and Landing_
The first troop ships moved out of Saipan’s Charan Kanoa harbor at
0330, 24 July. They were the transports _Knox_, _Calvert_, _Fuller_,
_Bell_, _Heywood_, and _John Land_. They were carrying the 2d and 8th
Marines (infantry regiments) of the 2d Marine Division on a mission
of deception that turned out to be far bloodier than the White
Beach landings and far bloodier than anyone had anticipated. They
had a muscular escort--the battleship _Colorado_, the light cruiser
_Cleveland_, and the destroyers _Ramey_, _Norman Scott_, _Wadleigh_,
and _Monssen_.
The convoy moved into Sunharon Harbor opposite Tinian Town just
before dawn. A few minutes after 0600, the _Calvert_ began lowering
its landing craft and by 0630 all 22 of its boats were in the water.
Marines climbed down the cargo nets. Within a half hour, 244 Navy
and Army planes began strafing and bombing runs paying particular
attention to Tinian Town. Shells and rockets from battleships, heavy
and light cruisers, destroyers, and 30 gunboats saturated the beaches.
The massed artillery battalions on southern Saipan thundered in with
their 105s and 155s.
After a half-hour of this furious bombardment, the LCVPs (landing
craft, vehicle and personnel) from _Calvert_ began their run toward the
beach at Tinian Town, receiving heavy artillery and mortar fire from
the shore. Admiral Hill, seeking to avoid casualties, ordered the boats
to withdraw and reform. A second run started and immediately drew fire
from the shore; several boats were sprayed with shell fragments. But
they continued on to within 400 yards of the beach before turning back.
While the small boats engaged in this maneuver, the battleship
_Colorado_ came under fire at a range of 3,200 yards from two 6-inch
naval guns near Tinian Town, guns that had gone undetected during the
weeks of preinvasion surveillance and preparatory fires. Within 15
minutes, the Japanese gunners scored 22 direct hits on _Colorado_ and
six direct hits on the destroyer _Norman Scott_, which was attempting
to protect the battleship. Casualties among the crews and Marine
detachments on the two ships were heavy: 62 killed and 223 wounded.
Ten Marines were among the dead, 31 were among the wounded. _Colorado_
was through for the day and limped off back to Saipan. The Japanese
battery survived for four more days until destroyed by the battleship
_Tennessee_.
[Illustration: FIRE SUPPORT SECTORS FOR JIG-MINUS 1 AND JIG-DAY]
The losses sustained by the two ships exceeded those suffered that
day by the Marine landing force on the northwestern beaches. But the
feint served its purpose. It froze in place around Tinian Town a whole
battalion of the _50th Infantry Regiment_ and various elements of the
_56th Naval Guard Force_. And it convinced the Japanese commander,
Colonel Kiyochi Ogata, that he had thwarted an invasion. His message to
Tokyo described how his forces had repelled 100 landing barges.
These “barges” were reloaded on the _Calvert_ at 1000 and the convoy
steamed north to the White Beaches where 4th Division troops had landed
after a mishap in their planning. An underwater demolition team using
floats carrying explosives swam to White Beach 2 shortly before dawn to
blast away boulders and destroy beach mines. The mission failed because
of a squall. The floats scattered, the explosives were lost and a few
hours later, Marines paid a price for this aborted mission.
To compensate for the failure of the UDT team, fire support ships lying
off the White Beaches--the battleships _California_ and _Tennessee_,
the heavy cruiser _Louisville_, and four destroyers--blasted away
at the landing areas. Air strikes were then ordered at about 0630
and observers claimed that five of the 14 known beach mines had
been destroyed. A battery of 155mm “Long Tom” guns on Saipan fired
smokeshells at the Japanese command post on Mount Lasso and also
laid smoke in the woods and on the bluffs just beyond the beaches to
obstruct Japanese observation.
[Sidebar (page 6): Napalm: Something New in the Arsenal
Early in 1944, Army Air Corps personnel at Eglin Air Force base near
Fort Walton Beach, Florida invented a new weapon. It was a “fire bomb,”
first used in combat during the Tinian campaign. The ingredients were
diesel oil, gasoline, and a metallic salt from the naptha used in the
manufacture of soap. Mixed with petroleum fuels, the salt created an
incendiary jelly that clung to any surface and burned with an extremely
hot flame. The concoction was called “napalm.” It could be dropped in
wing or belly tanks attached to the underside of an aircraft and was
fired by an igniter on contact with the ground.
On 19 July, five days before the Tinian landing. Lieutenant Commander
Louis W. Wang, USN, arrived at Saipan carrying a small supply of the
“napalm” powder and a film made at Eglin demonstrating the potency of
the bomb. It showed P-47s making low-level drops after diving from
2,000 feet.
The demonstration film so impressed Admiral Harry Hill and Major
General Harry Schmidt that Hill immediately radioed Admiral Chester
Nimitz in Hawaii, requesting 8,599 pounds of the powder. They also
ordered trial raids on Tinian by P-47 pilots of the Army’s 318th Air
Group, using powder and detonators already on hand. These trials were
not particularly impressive. Their purpose was to burn off wooded
areas that had previously resisted white phosphorous and thermite. The
“napalm” scorched the trees but left the foliage only partially burned.
One problem was the wood itself--a virtually indestructible type of
ironwood. Another was the napalm mixture. Wang had brought with him
the wrong formula. “We tried using Jap aviation gasoline,” according
to Colonel Lewis M. Sanders, commander of the fighter group, “but that
gave too much fire effect. Then we tried Jap motor gas and oil, with
the napalm powder, and it was quite successful.”
The P-47 pilots were uncomfortable with napalm missions. They dropped
their tanks at extremely low altitudes--50 feet in some cases--and were
highly vulnerable to ground fire. They were also unimpressed with the
efficiency of these “fire bombs”; much of their incendiary effect was
wasted in excessive upward flash. Napalm also had a very short burning
time--less than two minutes.
Nevertheless, 147 “fire bombs” were used during the Tinian operation,
91 of them containing the napalm mixture. They were most effective
in clearing cane fields. As Major General Clifton B. Cates, the 4th
Division commander, later recalled: “The first morning they put it
down, I went up to the front line and those planes came in over our
heads it seemed to me like about a hundred feet in the air ... [They]
let go their napalm bombs right over our heads ... maybe two or three
hundred yards in front of us. It was a very devastating thing and
particularly to the morale of the Japanese.... I didn’t feel too
comfortable sitting up there ... I figured that some of them might drop
short.”
Each bomb cleared an area approximately 75 by 200 feet and, in
some cases, left behind the charred bodies of Japanese troops. The
Marines were impressed. Infantry commanders sought napalm for their
flamethrower tanks. It was used widely in 1944 in support of ground
troops in the Philippines. On one operation on Luzon, 238 fighters
saturated an area with napalm: “The usually stoic [Japanese],” an Air
Force historian recorded, “seemingly lost all caution and fled into the
open, [becoming] easy targets for other forms of attack.”
Napalm was used effectively in the fire bombing of Japanese cities. It
was also used in preinvasion efforts to soften up the defenses of Iwo
Jima. Beginning on 31 January 1945, Liberator bombers of the Seventh
Air Force began 16 days of daytime sorties against the island in which
602 tons of bombs were dropped and 1,111 drums of napalm were used in
an unproductive effort to burn off camouflage from defensive positions
and gun emplacements. A Marine intelligence officer is quoted in the
official Air Force history of operations over Iwo Jima as saying that
“the chief effect of the long bombardment of Iwo was to cause the enemy
to build more elaborate underground defenses.”
]
_The Landing_
The assault plan assigned White Beach 1 to the 24th Marines and White
Beach Two to the 25th. In the vanguard for the 24th was Company E
of the 2d Battalion--200 men commanded by Captain Jack F. Ross, Jr.
Company A of the 1st Battalion, commanded by Captain Irving Schechter,
followed and by 0820 the entire 2d Battalion, commanded by Major Frank
A. Garretson, was ashore.
Almost simultaneously, two battalions of the 25th Marines loaded
into 16 LVTs landed in columns of companies on White Beach 2. The 2d
Battalion under Lieutenant Colonel Lewis C. Hudson, Jr., was on the
right; the 3d Battalion (Lieutenant Colonel Chambers) was on the left.
The units of the 24th, loaded into 24 LVTs, crossed the line of
departure--3,000 yards offshore--at 0717. Ahead of them, 30 LCIs
(landing craft, infantry) and a company of the 2d Armored Amphibian
Battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Reed M. Fawell, Jr., raked
the beaches with barrage rockets and automatic cannon fire. On the
26-minute run to the beach, the troop-laden LVTs took scattered and
ineffectual rifle and machine gun fire.
At White 1, members of a small Japanese beach detachment, holed up in
caves and crevices, resisted the landing with intense small arms fire.
But they were silenced quickly by Company E gunners.
Within an hour, the entire 1st and 2d Battalions of the 24th were
ashore on White 1, preparing to move inland. The 2d Battalion
encountered sporadic artillery, mortar, and small arms fire during the
first 200 yards of its advance. After that, Garretson later said, the
battalion had a “cake walk” for the rest of the day gaining 1,400 yards
and reaching its O-1 line objective by 1600. He occupied the western
edge of Airfield No. 3 and cut the main road linking Airfield No. 1
with the east coast and southern Tinian. Only occasional small arms
fire was encountered before the battalion dug in for the night.
[Illustration: PLANS FOR LANDING]
On Garretson’s left, the 1st Battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel
Otto Lessing, was slowed by heavy fires from cave positions and patches
of heavy vegetation. Flamethrower tanks were sent up against these
positions, but the Japanese held on. As a result, Lessing pulled up
late in the afternoon 400 yards short of his objective. This left a gap
between his perimeter and Garretson’s. To fill it, the regiment’s 3d
Battalion, waiting in reserve at the beach, was called up.
Almost simultaneously, the 25th ran into problems. The beach and
surrounding area had been methodically seeded with mines which neither
UDT teams nor offshore gunners had been able to destroy. It took six
hours to clear them out and in the process three LVTs and a jeep were
blown up. The beach defenses also included a sprinkling of booby traps
which had to be dealt with--watches and cases of beer, for example, all
wired to explode in the hands of careless souvenir hunters.
Behind the beach, troops from Ogata’s _50th Regiment_ put up a vigorous
defense with mortars, anti-tank and anti-boat guns, and other automatic
weapons emplaced in pillboxes, caves, fortified ravines, and field
entrenchments. Two 47mm guns in particular kept the Marines back on
their heels. They finally bypassed these troublesome positions. Later
waves took them out, leaving 50 dead Japanese in the gunpits.
The 3d Battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Chambers, later
remembered a lot of confusion on the beach, “the confusion you [always]
get when you land, of getting the organization together again.” One
of his company commanders, for example, was killed a half-hour after
landing and it took a while to get a replacement on scene and up
to speed. Then there was the problem of the mines and a problem
with artillery fire from the Japanese command post on Mount Lasso,
two-and-a-half miles away.
By late afternoon, Chambers’ battalion had reached its objective 1,500
yards inland in the center of the line and had tied in on its left
flank with Garretson of the 24th. The other battalions of the 25th came
up short of their O-1 line, creating before sundown a crescent-shaped
beachhead 3,000 yards wide at the shoreline and bulging inland to a
maximum depth of 1,500 yards.
The day’s greatest confusion surrounded the landing of the 23d Marines.
The regiment had been held on LSTs (landing ships, tank) in division
reserve during the landing of the 24th and 25th. At 0730, the troops
were ordered below to board LVTs parked cheek to jowl on the tank
decks. Their engines were running, spewing forth carbon monoxide.
Experience had shown that troops cooped up under these conditions for
more than 30 minutes would develop severe headaches, become nauseous,
and begin vomiting.
To avoid that problem and in the absence of a launch order, the
regimental commander, Colonel Louis R. Jones, soon unloaded his men
and sent them topside. They returned to the tank decks at 1030 when an
order to load and launch finally was received. The regiment debarked
and eventually got ashore beginning at 1400 despite an incredible
series of communication breakdowns in which Jones at crucial times was
out of touch with the division and his battalions.
In addition to botched radio communications, Jones was stuck in an
LVT with a bad engine; it took him seven hours to get ashore with
his staff, leading to a division complaint about the tardiness of
his regiment. The division noted that “fortunately no serious harm
was done by [the] delay,” but at the end of the operation Jones left
the division. He was promoted to brigadier general and assigned as
assistant division commander of the 1st Marine Division for the Okinawa
landings.
A similar muck-up occurred involving the 2d Marine Division. After the
feint at Tinian Town, the division sailed north and lay offshore of the
White Beaches through the day. At 1515, the landing force commander,
Major General Harry Schmidt, ordered a battalion from the 8th Marines
to land at White Beach to back up the 24th Marines. Schmidt wanted
the battalion ashore at 1600. Because of communication and transport
confusion the deadline was missed. It was 2000 when the unit entered in
its log “... dug in in assigned position.”
[Illustration: TINIAN