Читать книгу Breaching the Marianas: The Battle for Saipan - John C. Chapin - Страница 4

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by Captain John C. Chapin, USMCR (Ret)

It was to be a brutal day. At first light on 15 June 1944, the Navy fire support ships of the task force lying off Saipan Island increased their previous days’ preparatory fires involving all calibers of weapons. At 0542, Vice Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner ordered, “Land the landing force.” Around 0700, the landing ships, tank (LSTs) moved to within approximately 1,250 yards behind the line of departure. Troops in the LSTs began debarking from them in landing vehicles, tracked (LVTs). Control vessels containing Navy and Marine personnel with their radio gear took their positions displaying flags indicating which beach approaches they controlled.

Admiral Turner delayed H-hour from 0830 to 0840 to give the “boat waves” additional time to get into position. Then the first wave headed full speed toward the beaches. The Japanese waited patiently, ready to make the assault units pay a heavy price.

The first assault wave contained armored amphibian tractors (LVT[A]s) with their 75mm guns firing rapidly. They were accompanied by light gunboats firing 4.5-inch rockets, 20mm guns, and 40mm guns. The LVTs could negotiate the reef, but the rest could not and were forced to turn back until a passageway through the reef could be discovered.

Earlier, at 0600, further north, a feint landing was conducted off Tanapag harbor by part of the 2d Marines in conjunction with the 1st Battalion, 29th Marines, and the 24th Marines. The Japanese were not really fooled and did not rush reinforcements to that area, but it did tie up at least one enemy regiment.

When the LVT(A)s and troop-carrying LVTs reached the reef, it seemed to explode. In every direction and in the water beyond on the way to the beaches, great geysers of water rose with artillery and mortar shells exploding. Small-arms fire, rifles, and machine guns joined the mounting crescendo. The LVTs ground ashore.

Confusion on the beaches, particularly in the 2d Marine Division area, was compounded by the strength of a northerly current flow which caused the assault battalions of the 6th and 8th Marines to land about 400 yards too far north. This caused a gap to widen between the 2d and 4th Marine Divisions. As Colonel Robert E. Hogaboom, the operations officer of the Expeditionary Troops commented: “The opposition consisted primarily of artillery and mortar fire from weapons placed in well-deployed positions and previously registered to cover the beach areas, as well as fire from small arms, automatic weapons, and anti-boat guns sited to cover the approaches to and the immediate landing beaches.”

PACIFIC OCEAN AREAS

As a result, five of the 2d Marine Division assault unit commanders were soon wounded in the two battalions of the 6th Marines (on the far left), and in the two battalions of the 8th Marines. With Afetan Point in the middle spitting deadly enfilade fire to the left and to the right, the next units across the gap were two battalions of the 23d Marines and, finally, on the far right, two battalions of the 25th Marines.

Although the original plan had been for the assault troops to ride their LVTs all the way to the O-1 (first objective) line, the deluge of Japanese fire and natural obstacles prevented this. A few units in the center of the 4th Division made it, but fierce enemy resistance pinned down the right and left flanks. The two divisions were unable to make direct contact.

“D-Day at Saipan”

Watercolor by SSgt John Fabion in Marine Corps Art Collection

A first lieutenant in the 3d Battalion, 24th Marines, John C. Chapin, later remembered vividly the extraordinary scene on the beach when he came ashore on D-Day:

All around us was the chaotic debris of bitter combat: Jap and Marine bodies lying in mangled and grotesque positions; blasted and burnt-out pillboxes; the burning wrecks of LVTs that had been knocked out by Jap high velocity fire; the acrid smell of high explosives; the shattered trees; and the churned-up sand littered with discarded equipment.

When his company moved inland a short distance, it quickly experienced the frightening precision of the pre-registered Japanese artillery fire:

Suddenly, WHAM! A shell hit right on top of us! I was too surprised to think, but instinctively all of us hit the deck and began to spread out. Then the shells really began to pour down on us: ahead, behind, on both sides, and right in our midst. They would come rocketing down with a freight-train roar and then explode with a deafening cataclysm that is beyond description.

It finally dawned on me that the first shell bursts we’d heard had been ranging shots, and now that the Japs were “zeroed in” on us, we were caught in a full-fledged barrage. The fire was hitting us with pin-point accuracy, and it was not hard to see why—towering 1500 feet above us was Mt. Tapotchau, with Jap observation posts honeycombing its crest.

D-DAY AT SAIPAN

INITIAL LANDINGS AND NIGHT

DEFENSIVE POSITION

That night the lieutenant and his runner shared a shallow foxhole and split the watches between them. Death came close:

Slowly, very slowly, the hours of my watch passed, and at last I leaned over and shook my runner awake. “It’s time for your watch,” I whispered. “Look out for that place over there, maybe Japs in it. Keep awake.” With that I rolled over on the ground and was asleep in an instant.

Right away, it seemed, someone was shaking me and insisting, “Wake up!” I jerked bolt upright—in combat your reflexes act fast and you never go fully to sleep. A glance at my watch showed that it was almost dawn.

I turned to my runner who was lying against me, asleep. “Let’s go!” I said, “Pass the word to the squad leaders to get set.” He didn’t stir. I shook him. He still didn’t move. He was dead. With the callousness that war demands, I rolled him over, reached for his canteen, and poured the precious water into my own canteen. Then I left him lying there. …

Marines dig in on the beachhead, consolidating their positions, and at the same time preparing to move out on the attack inland.

Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 81917

All the assault regiments were taking casualties from the constant shelling that was zeroed in by spotters on the high ground inland. Supplies and reinforcing units piled up in confusion on the landing beaches. Snipers were everywhere. Supporting waves experienced the same deadly enemy fire on their way to the beach. Some LVTs lost their direction, some received direct hits, and others were flipped on their sides by waves or enemy fire spilling their equipment and personnel onto the reef. Casualties in both divisions mounted rapidly. Evacuating them to the ships was extremely dangerous and difficult. Medical aid stations set up ashore were under sporadic enemy fire.

Col James A. Donovan Collection

Members of the Japanese garrison on Saipan pose for a photograph during a more peaceful time before the Marine landing.

As the Marine artillery also landed in the late afternoon of D-Day and began firing in support of the infantry, it received deadly accurate counter-battery fire from the Japanese. The commander of the 4th Division, Major General Harry Schmidt, came ashore at 1930 and later recalled, “Needless to say, the command post during that time did not function very well. It was the hottest spot I was in during the war. …”

Major James A. Donovan, executive officer of the 1st Battalion, 6th Marines, endured a mortar barrage that had uncanny timing and precision:

We entered a little village called Charan-Kanoa. We paused there to get some water. We had been pinched out of our zone of action. We were washing up and resting when all of a sudden mortar shells started to fall on us. We didn’t know it at the time, but in a tall smokestack nearby was a Japanese forward observer. He was directing the fire, looking right down on us. It didn’t occur to us that somebody could be up in that smokestack after all the preparatory naval gunfire and everything that had been fired into the area, but he was up there all right. He really caused a great number of casualties in G Company.

He caught us without foxholes. We had that false sense of security from having been pinched out of the line. We thought we had a chance to relax. We didn’t. So all had to dig holes in a hurry, and it’s hard to dig a hole when you’re lying on your stomach digging with your chin, your elbows, your knees, and your toes. It is possible to dig a hole that way, I found, but we lost far more Marines than we should have before someone finally located that observer up in the smokestack. I don’t know how tall the smokestack was, but I would say probably the equivalent of two or three stories high. From up there he could see the entire picture, and he really gave it to us.

The night of D-Day saw continuous Japanese probing of the Marine positions, fire from by-passed enemy soldiers, and an enemy attack in the 4th Division zone screened by a front of civilians. The main counterattack, however, fell on the 6th Marines on the far left of the Marine lines. About 2,000 Japanese started moving south from Garapan, and by 2200 they were ready to attack. Led by tanks the charge was met by a wall of fire from .30-caliber machine guns, 37mm antitank guns, and M-1 rifles. It was too much and they fell back in disarray. In addition to 700 enemy dead, they left one tank. The body of the bugler who blew the charge was slumped over the open hatch. A bullet had gone straight up his bugle!

One of the crucial assets for the Marine defense that night (and on many subsequent nights) was the illumination provided by star shells fired from Navy ships. Japanese records recovered later from their Thirty-first Army message file revealed, “… as soon as the night attack units go forward, the enemy points out targets by using the large star shells which practically turn night into day. Thus the maneuvering of units is extremely difficult.”

As the weary Marines finally tried to get some sleep, all along their irregular line of foxholes, two things were very clear to them: they had forced a precarious beachhead in the teeth of bitter enemy fire, and a long, tough battle obviously lay ahead.

While the thoughts of the riflemen focused on survival and the immediate ground in front of them, the senior command echelons saw the initial success of the landings as a culmination of months of planning, training, and organization for a strategic strike on a crucial Japanese stronghold. The opportunity for this sprang from earlier Central Pacific victories.

The Marine conquest of Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands in November 1943, followed by the joint Marine-Army capture of Kwajalein and Eniwetok atolls in the Marshall Islands in January-February 1944, had broken the outer ring of Japanese defenses and set the stage for succeeding operations.

These earlier victories had moved up the entire American operational timetable for the Central Pacific by three valuable months. After discussions of various alternatives (such as an attack on the vast Japanese base at Truk), the Joint Chiefs of Staff had settled on the next objective: the Mariana Islands. There were to be three principal targets: Saipan, Tinian, and Guam. It was a daring decision, for Saipan was 1,344 miles from the Marshalls and 3,226 miles from Hawaii, but only 1,250 miles from Japan. Furthermore, the islands were linchpins in the revised inner defense line which the Japanese felt they absolutely had to hold after their previous losses in the Central and Southwest Pacific.

Saipan represented a whole new kind of prickly problem for an American assault. Instead of a small, flat coral islet in an atoll, it was a large island target of some 72 square miles, with terrain varying from flat cane fields to swamps to precipitous cliffs to the commanding 1,554-foot-high Mount Tapotchau. Moreover, the Japanese considered it “their own territory,” in spite of the fact that it was legally only a mandate provided by the terms of the Versailles Treaty following World War I. The fact that Japan held the islands led it to install a policy of exclusion of all outsiders and the start of military construction, forbidden by the treaty, as early as 1934.

Attacking a formidable objective such as Saipan called for complex planning and much greater force than had previously been needed in the Central Pacific. An elaborate organization was therefore assembled. Admiral Raymond A. Spruance was in overall command of the force detailed to invade the Marianas as well as the naval units needed to protect them. Admiral Turner was in command over the amphibious task force, while Marine Lieutenant General Holland M. Smith was to direct the landing forces on Saipan and then on the neighboring island of Tinian. (A similar command structure, but with different combat units, was set up for the attack on Guam to the south.)

The operation plan for Saipan, code-named Forager, called for an assault on the western side of the island, with the 2d Marine Division on the left and the 4th Marine Division on the right. The Army’s 27th Infantry Division was in reserve, ready to be fed into the battle if needed. While each of the two Marine divisions had previously fought as a complete unit, the 27th had experienced only two minor landings (at Makin and Eniwetok islets) for some of its regiments and battalions.

The intensive training for these three divisions took place in the Hawaiian Islands with Major General Harry Schmidt’s 4th Marine Division on Maui, Major General Thomas E. Watson’s 2d Marine Division on the “Big Island” of Hawaii, and Army Major General Ralph C. Smith’s 27th Infantry Division on Oahu. As Lieutenant Chapin described it:

(These) months were busy, hard-working ones. The replacements that arrived to fill the gaps left by Namur’s casualties (in the Kwajalein battle) had to be trained in all the complexities of field work. Most of these replacements were boys fresh from boot camp, and they were ignorant of everything but the barest essentials. Week after week was filled with long marches, field combat problems, live firing, obstacle courses, street fighting, judo, calisthenics, night and day attacks and defenses, etc. There were also lectures on the errors we’d made at Namur. Added emphasis was placed on attacking fortified positions. We worked with demolition charges of dynamite, TNT, and C-2 [plastic explosive], and with flame throwers till everyone knew them forward and backward.

The month of May 1944 brought final maneuvers and practice landings for all three divisions. The operation plan looked neatly and efficiently organized on paper. In practice it looked different to that lieutenant:

To us in the lower echelons it was just the same old stuff that we’d been doing for a solid year: filing up from compartments below decks to your assigned boat station, going over the side, hurrying down the net to beat the stopwatch, into the heaving LCVP (Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel), and away. Then the interminable hours of circling, meanwhile getting wet, hungry and bored. The K rations (in a waxed box) tasted like sawdust; the weather got rougher and rougher. Some of the men got seasick, and all of us were soaking wet and cold.

Finally we headed back to our transport and clambered up the cargo net with a sigh of relief. The next day it was the same thing all over again, except that this time we went ashore. This, too, had an awfully familiar feeling: wading through the surf, getting your only pair of shoes and socks wringing wet, and then onto the beach where all the sand migrated inside your shoes. A series of conflicting and confusing orders flowed down through the chain of command: halt and move on, halt and move on, go here, go there.

The vast attack force now gathered at Pearl Harbor. Although there were unfortunate accidents to some of the landing craft, over 800 ships set out in the naval component, some for direct fire support of the troops, some for transport, and some (the fast carrier task force) to make advance air strikes and then to deal with the attack which the landing probably would incite from the Japanese Navy. Holland Smith’s V Amphibious Corps, totalling 71,034 Marine and Army troops, sailed with some slow elements starting on 25 May. The specialized craft for the ground forces ran the gamut of acronym varieties. After staging through the Marshalls, the armada headed for the target: Saipan.

At sea the troops got their final briefings: maps of the island (based on recent American aerial and submarine photographs of a hitherto “secret island”), estimates of 15,000 enemy troops (which turned out in the end to be 30,000 under the command of Lieutenant General Yoshitsugu Saito and Vice Admiral Chiuchi Nagumo), and detailed attack plans for two Marine divisions.

Simultaneously, the American fast carriers’ planes began, on 11 June, their softening-up bombing, combined with attacks on Japanese land-based air. Two days later, the main enemy fleet headed for the Marianas for a decisive battle. Then, on 14 June, the “old battleships” of the U.S. Navy, reborn from the Pearl Harbor disaster, moved in close to Saipan to pound the Japanese defenses with their heavy guns. That night underwater demolition teams made their dangerous swim in close to the assault beaches to check on reefs, channels, mines, and beach defenses. All was now in readiness for the landings.

The bloody business of D-Day was, as the troops well realized, only a beginning, for the long, gruelling fight which began the next morning.