World War II Pacific: Battles and Campaigns from Guadalcanal to Okinawa 1942-1945 (WW2 Pacific Military History Series)

by Daniel Wrinn

  Well-armed and confident enemy troops waited for the advance of the V Amphibious Corps. Kuribayashi ordered occasional company-sized attacks to recapture lost terrain or disrupt enemy assault preparations—but these were not sacrificial or suicidal. These mainly were preceded by stinging mortar and artillery fires and aimed at gaining limited objectives. General Kuribayashi’s iron will kept his troops from large-scale, futile banzai attacks until the last few days.

  An exception was on the evening of March 8. General Senda, frustrated at the noose the 4th Division were applying, ordered 800 of his surviving troops into a ferocious counterattack. Finally, the Marines had targets out in the open. The suicidal Japanese attackers were cut to pieces with machine-gun and small arms fire.

  For the first week of the drive north, the Japanese on Iwo had the assaulting Marines outgunned. The enemy’s 120mm mortars and 150mm howitzers were superior to most of the weapons of the landing force. Marines found the enemy’s direct fire weapons deadly. Especially the dual-purpose antiaircraft guns and the 47mm tank guns, buried up to their turrets. Retired General Donn Robertson said: “the Japs could snipe with those big guns. They also had the advantage of knowing the ground.”

  Most of the casualties in the first three weeks of battle were from high explosives: rocket bombs, grenades, mines, artillery, and hellacious mortars. Robert Sherrod (Time correspondent) wrote that the dead on Iwo Jima, both Japanese and Marine, had one thing in common: “they all died with the greatest possible violence. Nowhere in the Pacific War had I seen such badly mangled bodies. Many men were cut squarely in half.”

  The close combat was savage. Another constant stress for Marines was no secure rear area to put wounded troops. Kuribayashi’s gunners hammered the beaches and airfields. Massive spigot mortar shells and rocket bombs tumbled from the sky. Japanese defenders were drawn to softer targets in the rear. Anti-personnel mines and booby-traps were everywhere and on a large scale for the first time in the Pacific.

  Exhausted Marines stumbled out of the front line, seeking nothing more than a helmet full of water to bathe in and a deep hole to sleep in. Instead, Marines spent their rare rest repairing weapons, dodging incoming rounds, humping ammo, or having to repel another nighttime enemy probe.

  General Schmidt planned to assault the northern Japanese positions with three divisions abreast. The 5th on the left, the 3rd in the center, and the 4th on the right. This northern drive would jump off on D +5: the day after securing Mount Suribachi. Preparatory fires along the high ground north of the second airfield would last for an hour. Then three regimental combat teams would advance abreast: 26th Marines on the left, 24th on the right, and the 21st in the center. For this assault, Schmidt merged all three divisions’ Sherman tanks into one armor task force—commanded by Colonel “Rip” Collins. This would be the largest concentration of Marine tanks in the Pacific War: an armored regiment.

  Marines recognized they were trying to force a passage through Kuribayashi’s primary defensive belt. The assault deteriorated into multiple desperate small unit actions along the front. While the 26th Marines (with the help of tanks) gained the most yards, it was still relative. Airfield runways were lethal killing zones. Mines and high-velocity direct fire destroyed Sherman tanks all along the front. On the right flank, Colonel Alexander Vandegrift (son of Marine Commandant Alexander Vandegrift) was wounded.

  During the fighting on D +5, General Schmidt moved his command post onshore from the amphibious force flagship Auburn. Schmidt now had eight entire infantry regiments committed to the battle. General Holland Smith still had the 3rd Marines and expeditionary troops in reserve. Schmidt made his first of multiple requests to Smith to release that seasoned outfit. The V Amphibious Corps had already taken 6,845 casualties.

  On February 25, D +6, enemy resistance intensified. Small Marine units escorted by tanks made progress along the runway. Each Marine was under the impression he was alone in the middle of a giant bowling alley. Often, holding newly gained positions across the runway proved more deadly than capturing them. Resupplying the troops became virtually impossible. Precious Sherman tanks were getting destroyed at an alarming rate.

  General Schmidt got two battalions of 105mm howitzers ashore under the command of Colonel John Letcher. Well-directed fire from these heavy field pieces eased some of the pressure on the assaulting Marines. While fire from destroyers and cruisers was marginally effective, air support was a total disappointment. The 3rd Marine Division later complained that the Navy’s assignment of eight fighters and eight bombers on station was utterly inadequate.

  At noon, General Cates sent a message to Schmidt requesting the strategic Air Force in the Marianas immediately replace Navy air support. Colonel McGee, air commander on Iwo, took heat from the frustrated division commanders. He later wrote: “those little spit kit Navy fighters up there were trying to help but were never enough and were never where they needed to be.”

  In fairness, it’s debatable if any service could have provided adequate air support within the opening days of the northern drive. The air liaison parties within each regiment played hell trying to identify and mark targets. The enemy kept a masterful camouflage. Japanese frontline units were often eyeball to eyeball with Marines, and the air support request net was often overloaded.

  Navy squadrons flying from the decks of escort carriers eventually improved by adding heavier bombs and improving their response times. A week later, General Cates rated his air support as satisfactory. But the battle of Iwo Jima would continue to frustrate Allied forces; the Japanese never assembled legitimate targets in the open. Captain Fields of the 26th Marines wrote after the war: “the Japs weren’t on Iwo Jima. They were in Iwo Jima.”

  Richard Wheeler, who survived Iwo Jima with the 28th Marines, wrote two books about the battle. “This was one of the strangest battlefields in history. One side fought wholly above ground, and the other operated within it. During the battle, American aerial observers marveled that one side of the field had thousands of figures milling around or in foxholes while the other side was deserted. But the strangest of all was that the two contestants sometimes made troop movements simultaneously in the same territory with one maneuvering on the surface and the other using tunnels below.”

  As the Marines fought like hell to capture the second airfield from the Japanese, the terrain features rising to the north caught their attention. While there were three hills named 362 on the island, Marines had different nicknames for them: “Amphitheater” and “Turkey Knob.” But the bristling complex of hills and terrain would be forever known as “The Meatgrinder.”

  The 5th Marine Division earned their spurs and lost many of their precious veteran leaders fighting on “The Gorge” and attacking Nishi Ridge (Hills 362-A and B).

  The 3rd Marine Division focused their assault north of the second airfield and then onto the heavily fortified Hill 362-C beyond the airstrip. Finally, they attacked the moonscape jungle of stone, soon to be known as “Cushman’s pocket.”

  Colonel Robert Cushman commanded the 2/9 Marines on Iwo. Cushman and his Marines were veterans of heavy fighting on Guam but were stunned by their first sight of the battlefield. Burned out and smoldering Sherman tanks dotted airstrips. Casualties streamed to the rear. The terrific and horrific echo of machine-gun fire was everywhere. Cushman mounted his troops on the surviving tanks and rumbled across the field. They met the same reverse-slope defenses that dogged the 21st Marines. But after three days of savage fighting, Cushman’s Marines secured the two Hills north of the second airfield, Peter and 199-Oboe.

  General Schmidt made the 3rd Division attack in the center of his main effort. He gave the 3rd priority fire support from the corps artillery. He directed the other two divisions to allocate half of their regimental fire support to the center. The other commanders were not pleased. Neither the 4th Marine Division, who took heavy casualties in the Amphitheater, nor the 5th Division, who struggled to seize Nishi Ridge, wanted to dilute their organic fire
support.

  General Graves Erskine argued the main effort should receive the primary fire. Schmidt never solved this problem. His corps artillery was too late, and he needed twice as many battalions and bigger guns: the 8-inch howitzers, which the Marines had not yet fielded. Schmidt had plenty of naval gunfire support available and used it abundantly. But unless targets were in ravines facing the sea—he lost the advantage of observed direct fire.

  General Schmidt’s fire support problems were eased on February 26. Two Marine observation planes flew in from the carrier Wake Island and were the first planes to land on Iwo’s recently recaptured, fire swept main airstrip. These were single-engine observation planes (Grasshoppers). They were followed the next day by similar planes from VMO-5. The pilots of these fragile planes had already had an exciting time in the waters off Iwo. Many were launched from the experimental catapult on LST-776: “like a peanut from a slingshot.”

  All fourteen of these observation planes took heavy enemy fire airborne and while serviced on the airstrips. But these two squadrons flew 612 missions supporting all three divisions. Few units contributed as much to the eventual suppression of Kuribayashi’s murderous artillery fire. The mere presence of the small planes overhead caused Japanese gunners to cease fire and button-up against the inevitable counter-battery fire soon to follow. Grasshopper pilots would fly predawn or dust missions to extend a protective umbrella over the troops. This was risky flying because of Iwo’s unlit fields and snipers hidden in the hills.

  When the 4th Marine Division finally secured Hill 382 at the highest point north of Suribachi, they still suffered heavy casualties moving through the Amphitheater against Turkey knob. The 5th Marine Division seized Nishi Ridge and bloodied themselves on Hill 362-A’s elaborate defenses. Colonel Tom Wornham, CO, 27th Marines: “they had interlocking fields of fire the likes of which I’d never seen before.”

  General Cates redeployed the 28th Marines into the fight. On March 2, an enemy gunner fired a high-velocity shell that killed Colonel Chandler Johnson one week after his glorious seizure of the Suribachi Summit. The 28th Marines captured Hill 362-A—at the cost of 200 casualties.

  The same day, Colonel Lowell English, CO 2/21 Marines, took a bullet in his knee. Colonel English was upset that his battalion was not rotating to the rear: “We took heavy casualties and were disorganized. I had less than 300 Marines left of the 1,200 I came ashore with.” Colonel English received orders to turn his Marines around and plug a gap in the front lines. “It was an impossible order. I couldn’t move that disorganized battalion a mile back to the north in thirty minutes.”

  But General Erskine did not want excuses: “tell that God-damned English he’d better be there.”

  Colonel English replied: “you tell that son of a bitch I will be there, and I was, but my men were still half a mile behind me, and I got a hole in my knee!”

  The 26th Marines fought their bloodiest and most successful attack of the battle on the left flank—finally securing Hill 362-B. This all-day battle cost 500 Marine casualties and produced five Medals of Honor. For Captain Frank Caldwell of Company F, 1/26 Marines, it was the worst day of his life. His company took forty-nine casualties on that hill—as well as the first sergeant and all the original platoon commanders.

  The first nine days of the V Amphibious Corps’ northern drive produced a net gain of only 4,000 yards at a horrific cost of 7,000 Marine casualties. Several of these pitched battles in The Meatgrinder would’ve been worthy of a separate book. The fighting was one of the most brutal and bloody in the Marine Corps’ history.

  On D +13, March 4, came the turning point. After alarming and frightful losses, Marines had torn through a substantial chunk of General Kuribayashi’s primary defenses. Forcing the enemy commander to shift his command post to a northern cave. On this afternoon, the first crippled B-29 landed. In terms of Allied morale, it couldn’t have come at a better time. General Schmidt ordered a standdown on March 5 to enable the exhausted assault forces a brief rest and the opportunity to absorb replacements.

  The issue of replacement troops throughout this battle is controversial—even seventy-seven years later. General Schmidt had suffered losses approaching the equivalent of an entire division (6,561 Marines). Schmidt urged Holland Smith to release the 3rd Marines. While each division had been assigned several thousand Marine replacements, Schmidt wanted the cohesion and combat experience of Colonel Jim Stewart’s regimental combat team. Holland Smith argued the replacements would suffice and believed that each replacement Marine in these hybrid units had received sufficient infantry training to enable his immediate assignment to the frontline outfits.

  The next challenge was distributing the replacements in small arbitrary numbers—not teamed units—to plug the gaping holes in the assault battalions. These new men were expected to replace the vital veterans of the Pacific War. These replacement Marines were not only new to combat but also to each other—an assortment of strangers that lacked the lifesaving bonds of unit integrity.

  One frustrated Marine officer said: “they get killed the day they go into battle.” Losses among the replacement Marines within the first forty-eight hours of combat were shocking. Those who survived and learned the ropes established a bond with the veterans and contributed significantly to the battle’s victory. Division commanders criticized the wastefulness of this policy and urged for replacements from the veteran battalions of the 3rd Marines.

  General Erskine later wrote: “I asked Kelly Turner and Holland Smith to give us the 3rd. They said, ‘you got enough Marines on the island now. There are too damn many here already.’ I said, ‘this is an easy solution. Some of these Marines are tired and too worn out, so take them out and bring in the goddamn 3rd Marines.’ They said, ‘keep your mouth shut. We made our decision.’ And that was that.”

  Most surviving officers agreed that the decision not to use the veteran 3rd Marines at Iwo was wasteful and ill-advised. But Holland Smith never wavered: “sufficient troops were on Iwo Jima for the capture of the island. Two regiments were sufficient to cover the frontal assault assigned to General Erskine.”

  On D +14, March 5, General Holland Smith ordered the 3rd Marines to sail back to Guam.

  While Holland Smith may have known the overall statistics of the battle losses sustained by the landing force at that point—he did not fully appreciate the tremendous attrition of experienced junior officers and senior noncoms taking their place every day. For example, the day after the 3rd Marines sailed for Guam, the 2/23 Marines’ E Company suffered the loss of their seventh company commander since the start of the battle.

  Colonel Cushman’s experiences with the 2/9 Marines were typical: “casualties were brutal. By the time Iwo was over, we’d gone through two complete sets of lieutenants and platoon leaders. After that, we had forward artillery observers commanding companies and sergeants leading half strength platoons. It was that bad.”

  Colonel English wrote: “After twelve days, we’d lost every company commander. I had one company exec left. I’d lost all three of my rifle company commanders killed by the same damn shell.”

  Many infantry units and platoons ceased to exist. Depleted companies were merged to form half-strength outfits.

  Northern Allied Drive

  The Allied drive continued north after the March 5 standdown. It did not get any easier. The Japanese had changed tactics: fewer big guns and rockets and less observed fire from the highlands. But now, the terrain had deteriorated into narrow twisted gorges, enveloped in sulfur mists—killing zones.

  Allied casualties mounted. Gunshot wounds now outnumbered the high explosive shrapnel hits. A myth among Marine units was that the Japanese were nearsighted and poor marksmen. In close quarters fighting in northern Iwo, Japanese riflemen shot down hundreds of advancing Marines in the head or chest with well-aimed fire. Captain Caldwell of the 1/26 Marines said: “Poor marksmen? All the Japs we faced were expert shooters.”

  Supporting arms coordination becam
e more effective during the battle. Colonel “Buzz” Letcher established the first SACC (Supporting Arms Coordination Center), where senior artillery, naval gunfire, and air support representatives pooled their talents and resources. While Letcher lacked the manpower and communications equipment to run a full-time SACC, his efforts significantly advanced this challenging art.

  Colonel McGee’s Landing Force Air Support Control Unit worked in harmony with the fledgling SACC. Still, friendly fire incidents happened. Perhaps friendly fire was inevitable on that crowded island, but positive control at the highest level did much to reduce the frequency of these accidents.

  The lack of preliminary naval bombardment on Iwo angered Marines. While all hands valued the responsive support received from D-Day onward, the lack of initial fire was blamed for the horrific Marine casualties. The gunfire ships stood in close—less than a mile offshore—and hammered the flanks and front lines. Many ships took hits from the hidden enemy coastal defense batteries. There were no safe zones in or around Iwo Jima.

  Two characteristics of naval gunfire on Iwo were notable: The extent ships provided illuminating rounds over the battlefield, especially during the early days before the landing force artillery could assume the bulk of these missions. Second was the degree of assistance provided by the smaller gunships, frequently modified with 4.2-inch mortars, 20mm guns, or rockets. These “small boys” were vital along the northwestern coast as they worked in lockstep with the 5th Marine Division advancing toward The Gorge.

  While the Marines comprised most of the landing force on Iwo, they still received support from the army. Two of the four amphibious truck companies on D-Day were army units. The 138th Antiaircraft Artillery Group placed their 90mm batteries around the newly captured airfields. General Jim Chaney (later to become Iwo’s island commander) landed on D +8 with elements of the Army’s 145th Infantry.