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in This book, the third in a projected five-volume series, continues the comprehensive history of Marine Corps operations in World War II. The story of individual campaigns, once told in separate detai1 in preliminary monographs, has been reevaluated and rewritten to show events in proportion to each other and in correct perspective to the war as a whole. New material, particularly from Japanese sources, which has become available since the writing of the monographs, has been included to provide fresh insight into the Marine Corps' contribution to the final victory in the Pacific. During the period covered in these pages, we learned a great deal about the theory and practice of amphibious warfare. But most of all we confirmed the basic soundness of the doctrine which had been developed in prewar years by a dedicated and farsighted group of Navy and Marine Corps officers. These men, the leaders and workers in the evolution of modern amphibious tactics and techniques, served their country well. Anticipating the demands of a vast naval campaign in the Pacific, they developed requirements and tested prototypes for the landing craft and vehicles which first began to appear in large numbers at the time of the Central Pacific battles. Many of the senior officers among these prewar teachers and planners were the commanders who 1ed the forces afloat and ashore in the Gilberts, Marshalls, and Marianas. Allied strategy envisioned two converging drives upon the inner core of Japanese defenses, one mounted in the Southwest Pacific under General MacArthur's command, the other in the Central Pacific under Admiral Nimitz. Although Marines fought on land and in the air in the campaign to isolate Rabaul, and played a part significant beyond their numbers, it was in the Central Pacific that the majority of Fleet Marine Force units saw action. Here, a smoothly functioning Navy-Marine Corps team, ably supported by Army ground and air units, took part in a series of amphibious assaults that ranged in complexity from the seizure of tiny and heavily defended islets, where there was little room for maneuver and no respite from combat, to large islands where two and three divisions could advance in concert.
This book, "Central Pacific Drive: History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Volume III," the third in a projected five-volume series, continues the comprehensive history of Marine Corps operations in World War II. The story of individual campaigns, once told in separate detail in preliminary monographs, has been reevaluated and rewritten to show events in proper proportion to each other and in correct perspective to the war as a whole. New material, particularly from Japanese sources, which has become available since the writing of the monographs, has been included to provide fresh insight into the Marine Corps' contribution to the final victory in the Pacific. During the period covered in these pages, we learned a great deal about the theory and practice of amphibious warfare. But most of all we confirmed the basic soundness of the doctrine which had been developed in prewar years by a dedicated and farsighted group of Navy and Marine Corps officers. These men, the leaders and workers in the evolution of modern amphibious tactics and techniques, served their country well. Anticipating the demands of a vast naval campaign in the Pacific, they developed requirements and tested prototypes for the landing craft and vehicles which first began to appear in large numbers at the time of the Central Pacific battles. Many of the senior officers among these prewar teachers and planners were the commanders who led the forces afloat and ashore in the Gilberts, Marshalls, and Marianas. Allied strategy envisioned two converging drives upon the inner core of Japanese defenses, one mounted in the Southwest Pacific under General MacArthur's command, the other in the Central Pacific under Admiral Nimitz. Although Marines fought on land and in the air in the campaign to isolate Rabaul, and played a part significant beyond their numbers, it was in the Central Pacific that the majority of Fleet Marine Force units saw action. Here, a smoothly functioning Navy-Marine Corps team, ably supported by Army ground and air units, took part in a series of tiny and heavily-defended islets, where there was little room for maneuver and no respite from combat, to large islands where two and three divisions could advance in concert. As the narrative of this volume clearly shows, victory against a foe as determined and as competent as the Japanese could not have been won without a high cost in the lives of the men who did the fighting. Our advance from Tarawa to Guam was paid for in the blood of brave men, ordinary Americans whose sacrifice for their country should never be forgotten. Nor will it be by those who were honored to serve with them.
Pacific Blitzkrieg closely examines the planning, preparation, and execution of ground operations for five major invasions in the Central Pacific (Guadalcanal, Tarawa, the Marshalls, Saipan, and Okinawa). The commanders on the ground had to integrate the U.S. Army and Marine Corps into a single striking force, something that would have been difficult in peacetime, but in the midst of a great global war, it was a monumental task. Yet, ultimate success in the Pacific rested on this crucial, if somewhat strained, partnership and its accomplishments. Despite the thousands of works covering almost every aspect of World War II in the Pacific, until now no one has examined the detailed mechanics behind this transformation at the corps and division level. Sharon Tosi Lacey makes extensive use of previously untapped primary research material to re-examine the development of joint ground operations, the rapid transformation of tactics and equipment, and the evolution of command relationships between army and marine leadership. This joint venture was the result of difficult and patient work by commanders and evolving staffs who acted upon the lessons of each engagement with remarkable speed. For every brilliant strategic and operational decision of the war, there were thousands of minute actions and adaptations that made such brilliance possible. Lacey examines the Smith vs. Smith controversy during the Saipan invasion using newly discovered primary source material. Saipan was not the first time General “Howlin’ Mad” Smith had created friction. Lacey reveals how Smith’s blatant partisanship and inability to get along with others nearly brought the American march across the Pacific to a halt. Pacific Blitzkrieg explores the combat in each invasion to show how the battles were planned, how raw recruits were turned into efficient combat forces, how battle doctrine was created on the fly, and how every service remade itself as new and more deadly weapons continuously changed the character of the war. This book will be a must read for anyone who wants to get a behind-the-scenes story of the victory. “Pacific Blitzkrieg is not only a major contribution to our understanding of the Pacific War, but is also a delight to read. Lacey demolishes the belief, widely held among students of the Pacific War, that a deep gulf lay between the Marine Corps and the Army. In every respect Pacific Blitzkrieg is what one should expect from a scholarly book: well researched, well argued, and coherent.”—Williamson Murray, coauthor of A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War “This is a significantly fresh approach in that it goes beyond the Army-Marine controversies best exemplified by ‘Smith versus Smith.’ It does so by explaining their genesis in institutional and personal terms, then showing how both services marginalized the controversies during the war, in the interest of resolving the real problem: crossing the central Pacific with minimum cost and maximum effectiveness.”—Dennis E. Showalter, author of Hitler’s Panzers and Patton and Rommel “Pacific Blitzkrieg is an exceptional analysis of U.S. joint amphibious operations against Japan during World War II. Lacey clearly demonstrates that despite the heat of the Smith versus Smith controversy during the invasion of Saipan, in fact U.S. Army and Marine units and commanders cooperated far better than the published historical record to date suggests. A must read for current and future joint force commanders and their staffs.”—Peter R. Mansoor, author of The GI Offensive in Europe: The Triumph of American Infantry Divisions, 1941-1945