MARINE TANKS V. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

With the capture of Okinawa, Marine tankers began preparing for the ultimate test of wills - the planned invasion of Kyushu, southernmost of the Japanese home islands. With a tentative start date of 1 November 1945, Operation OLYMPIC, as it was codenamed, would have seen Marine armor employed on a massive scale. Nearly the entire Fleet Marine Force was scheduled to participate in OLYMPIC, or in its follow-on operation, dubbed CORONET. This operation, set for the spring of 1946, would have launched an amphibious assault against the east coast of Honshu onto the Kanto Plain surrounding Tokyo The combined operations would have dwarfed any seaborne assault in history.

The price of victory - the wreckage of an M4 medium tank on Okinawa, 1945. This vehicle struck a Japanese landmine. This Marine was crushed by the tank when it was blown over from the blast. Still image from USMC combat camera film

Thankfully, these immense operations were never executed, thereby saving countless lives and immeasurable suffering. With the atomic bombings of August 1945, the Pacific War drew to a close. But Marine tankers had other missions to perform before the books could be closed on World War II. Some headed to China for occupation duty. Others landed in Japan, not in a forcible assault from the sea, but as occupiers who soon learned that the Japanese population was as sick and tired of war as they were.

As 1945 drew to a close, and the new year of 1946 rolled on, the Marine tank force shrunk in size to a shadow of the powerful that had fought across the Pacific. The 1st and 2nd Tank Battalions continued in service with their divisions. But the other four tank battalions were deactivated in the late winter of 1945 through the spring of 1946. All of the three armored amphibian battalions were deactivated after the war. From a combined strength of nearly a thousand tracked armored vehicles, less than two hundred were still in service by the end of 1946.

Iwo Jima, 1945. An M4 medium tank is silhouetted against the setting sun. Still image from USMC combat camera film

So this proud force passed into history. Prior to World War II, tanks were mostly an afterthought in the Marine Corps, with its infantry-centric doctrine. Certainly, planners had considered the role of armor and how it could be of use on the battlefield, and especially in the amphibious assault. But budgetary concerns, lack of real tanks, and the focus on infantry tactics kept the spotlight away from armored vehicles.

The early campaigns of the war showed major deficiencies in the employment of tanks in the Pacific. There was simply no opportunity to use armor in the type of mechanized warfare that worked in Europe. Only in the crucible of combat could many of the techniques and tactics of armor deployment be ironed out. The relationship between the infantry and tankers, methods of communication between men on the ground and those in the tanks had to be invented and refined. A thousand ways to do things needed to be worked out. New vehicles and equipment had to be developed and fielded.

Marines of the 1st Tank Bn with their M3A1 light tank. Guadalcanal, 1942. USMC Photo

From the first small steps on Guadalcanal, up the Solomons chain to Bougainville, and then ultimately westward across the broad Pacific expanses, Marine learned the hard lessons of war. The light tanks were relegated to history, and newer models came into service, along with weapons and ammunition to defeat an enemy that would not surrender. But above all, it was the men in those tanks who did the work. From the beginning of a war under the most primitive and harsh conditions, Marine tankers fought with determination and courage. In those early battles, men in the armored machines made the difference. That they wore the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor was their tribute.

Each of the amphibious landings that Marines embarked upon served as one hammer strike against the shell of the Japanese Empire. Japanese tenacity and barbarity, demonstrated from the earliest stages of the war, only grew as US forces drew closer and closer to the final enemy-held objectives. With no practical way to withstand the iron will of the US armed forces to achieve victory, the Japanese - pinned into a corner by their own twisted code of bushido - developed the stalling tactic followed by mass suicide. With no real military objective other than to buy time, the enemy's main goal was to kill as many Americans as possible.

Iwo Jima, 1945. A flame tank burns out suspected Japanese positions. Still image from USMC combat camera film

Although infantrymen may have envied the armored protection afforded to their mounted brethren, in reality, tanks were terribly vulnerable to a range of weapons that could disable or destroy them. And the cold equation of war dictated that more often than not, a tank crew incurred multiple casualties when its vehicle was knocked out. And the wounds themselves were horrendous. High velocity ammunition, fuel, the heat of flash fires, spall from penetrated armor plate; it was no optimal recipe for survival.

Tanks on the battlefield presented major targets for enemy fire. Doctrinally embedded with the infantry, Marine tanks were almost never used in rapid operational-level maneuver. Their tactical speed was that of the infantrymen they supported. The infantry themselves often had a love-hate relationship with armored units. They respected and valued the long-range, massive firepower of tanks, but hated the attention that armored vehicles often drew to themselves on the battlefield. But in the final estimation, it was a symbiotic relationship at the sharp end of the spear. That the Marine Corps' tank-infantry tactic has endured relatively unchanged into the modern era is a testament to its tactical sense and effectiveness. It reached the pinnacle in the war's final campaigns:

"On Okinawa, in the judgment of General [Lemuel] Shepherd [Commanding General, 6th Marine Division], "if any one supporting arm can be singled out as having contributed more than any others during the progress of the campaign, the tank would certainly be selected."" (1)

General Shepherd, not a man given to hyperbole, understood the importance of combined arms warfare. He read the casualty lists each day, and no doubt made an analysis of the ground captured versus the casualties incurred for each of his division's objectives. He knew from first-hand experience that out where courage was more important than armor plate, where men made the difference and not their guns, it was not the vehicles themselves, but the Marines inside them.

The driver and assistant driver of a 4th Tank Bn M5A1 light tank during the capture of Roi-Namur in the Marshall Islands. Still image from USMC combat camera film

Guam, 1945. A pass-in-review of the 3rd Tank Bn as part of a large parade with the 9th Marines. Life Magazine

Notes
(1) Okinawa - Victory in the Pacific, pg 271.

Marine Corps Armored Unit Casualties in Selected Pacific Campaigns

There is no simple way to determine how many Marine tankers were killed or wounded in World War II. To cite but a few examples the following table breaks down a sampling of this human toll.

Notes on above table
Casualty data extracted from the following sources:
(1) Saipan - The Beginning of the End, appendix III.
(2) The Recapture of Guam, appendix III.
(3) Iwo Jima - Amphibious Epic, appendix III.
(4) Okinawa - Victory in the Pacific, appendix VI.
N/A - Not applicable. for casualty accounting in these sections, totals for killed in action and died of wounds are included in one combined column.
ND - No data. In this columns, no data on the number of combat fatigue was included in the casualty accounting.

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