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By 1945 the Marine tank-infantry team had reached its full maturity. Leaders at every echelon recognized the importance of mutual support and cooperation to achieve maximum combat power. Tanks gave the infantry an effective and deadly weapon. Infantrymen protected the tanks while making the assault across an objective. The synergy enabled tanks to maximize their firepower and shock effect. while providing the infantry with protection and long range fires beyond the capabilities of small arms.
In the final decisive campaigns on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, the Marine tank-infantry team operated effectively across the full spectrum of military operations. Infantrymen and tankers depended on each other even though they came from different units and often didn't even know each other's names. Against a suicidal enemy bent on destruction, the tank-infantry team of 1945 fought across some of the toughest objectives of World War II. Using weapons that would have been unthinkable to a prewar Marine, they burned and blasted their way into the teeth of the staunchest Japanese defenses. But this skillful employment of armor didn't happen in a vacuum. It was the end state from years of planning, testing, trial and error. It was also a result of experiences in some of the toughest combat in US history. At places like Guadalcanal, Cape Gloucester, Bougainville, Tarawa, Peleliu, and many others, Marines had learned the hardest lessons of all. A great deal of the tactics, techniques and procedures that Marines developed and honed during the war years came through trial and error. But much more was the result of careful study, analysis of lessons learned, and continuous work on the basics.
Just getting tanks to a contested shore was a major undertaking. This problem, completely divorced from tactical questions, was a pure matter of weight and shipping space. To bring tanks, especially the M4 medium tank, into the combat zone, required modern ramped ships to transport them, new landing craft to carry them from ship to shore, specialized fording equipment so the tanks could operate in the surf zone, radio equipment impervious to moisture and corrosion, techniques to lead and direct tanks across shell-scarred reefs, and a thousand other issues large and small.
Then there were the problems in tactical employment of tanks. How would tankers talk to infantrymen, who controlled the tanks, how would they integrate fires with the infantry, who protected the tanks from close-in attacks? What sort of terrain were tanks best employed in, where would they spend the nights, should tanks be subordinate to the infantry, or should armored units operate semi-independently, or even under their own tactical control? All these questions had to be worked out. And in the far-flung expanses of the Pacific, the land itself was an obstacle that worked against machines of any sort. Even vehicles that stayed on roads were subject to an immense amount of wear and tear, and tanks were anything but on-road vehicles. By their very design, they were intended to traverse shell-torn ground, through mud and across obstacles. On the battlefields of the Pacific islands, the tank went where few vehicles could. The harsh and rugged nature of these islands is demonstrated by the stripped and rusting wrecks of knocked-out tanks that dot these landscapes to this day. Abandoned where they were destroyed, many of these tanks were left because they simply could not be recovered. Mute witnesses on now-silent battlefields, they are monuments of a sort to war's ferocity.
The climate itself was a major obstacle, for both men and machines. Heat-stress was an ever-present danger, especially in conditions where the temperature could easily soar above 100 degrees and the humidity hovered near the 100% mark. Tankers could not drink enough water to stay hydrated and the tanks trapped in the heat of the day and reflected it into the crew compartment for hours and hours after dark. The tank's interior often became a sweat box where every piece of exposed metal was hot to touch, and the temperature inside was easily over 130 degrees. The Japanese armed forces were equipped with a range anti-tank weaponry. Their 47mm anti-tank gun was among the best weapons of its' type, and could knock out any American tanks deployed to the Pacific. Also, the Japanese often employed artillery pieces in direct fire mode. These weapons could also destroy the tanks with a direct hit. But the code of bushido also dictated that Japanese soldiers sacrifice their own lives in suicidal attacks against Marine armor. In many instances, Japanese troops equipped with magnetic mines would run up to American tanks, throwing themselves against the armor, and destroy a tank, killing themselves in the process. Also, from shaped charge mines to command-detonated aerial bombs buried in the ground, mines and improvised explosive devices, mines were an ever-present hazard lurking under the ground. Bertram Yaffe saw combat service in three campaigns as a tank officer in Company B, 3rd Tank Battalion, 3rd Marine Division. In his memoir Fragments of War, Yaffe tried to relate the alien nature of the tanker's world in the Pacific:
In August 1945 as the war drew to a close, the Marine tank force had reached a size that it would never again achieve. Six medium tank battalions were then in active service, as were three battalions of amphibian tanks, as well as a large support and training structure. After victory over Japan and the inevitable draw-down of forces, the number of tanks in the Marine Corps shrunk significantly. But some of the fine units that served in the war remained in service to fight on other far-flung battles of the Cold War and beyond. The tankers of those units could draw on the example of their World War II fore bearers; steadfast, courageous, determined and tough. The World War II Marine tanker was every inch the warrior, and he proved it every time he climbed into his crew station to go into battle.
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