By Joseph Alexander - Originally Published August 1994
Dawn, July 24, 1944. Two American amphibious task forces approached the west coast of Tinian. One seemed vast and powerful-battleships and heavy cruisers surrounding attack transports. The second task force, an unimpressive scattering of LSTs and smaller craft, loitered behind, near Tinian's northwest tip. Japanese defenders regarded the second flotilla as nothing more than the follow-on echelon for the first.
The larger task force steamed directly for Tinian Town. Gunships commenced a fierce bombardment. Transports lowered landing craft and dispatched them in waves toward the beach. Japanese naval gunners opened fire from camouflaged coast-defense batteries. The boat waves hesitated 400 yards from the beach, then retired at full speed to the transports. The Japanese commander wired an exultant report to Tokyo: "We have repelled an American landing with 100 barges!"
But something strange was happening with that sleepy group of LSTs up north, an area where no real landing beaches existed. To the great shock of the Japanese garrison, hundreds of troop-laden amphibian tractors (LVTs) suddenly appeared in the water, streaming in parallel columns toward those narrow patches of sand. Assault elements of the Fourth Marine Division swarmed quickly ashore, overwhelming scattered resistance and penetrating several thousand yards. The demonstration against Tinian Town had been an artful ruse. Here was the main assault. The "pipeline" never faltered. In the next 30 hours, the V Amphibious Corps intended to land two entire divisions over these unlikely entry points. Similar to the Allied invasion of Normandy on D-Day the previous month, the American seizure of Tinian would depend heavily on tactical deception, favorable weather-and audacity.
The amphibious seizure of Tinian, overshadowed by the bigger, bloodier slugfests at nearby Saipan and Guam, rarely gets the credit it deserves in the accounts of the Pacific War. But no island seized by the U.S. Fifth Fleet in the Marianas produced greater strategic dividends at less cost. Tinian, in fact, was a model of amphibious ingenuity. The Navy-Marine Corps team in that campaign made radical experiments with amphibious doctrine-bold ideas that can provide valuable lessons today.
Tinian, Saipan and Guam comprised the three objectives of Operation Forager, the American invasion of the Mariana Islands in mid-1944. While each assault represented an integral part of the operation, we would know Tinian better today had it occurred separately, by its own unique self. Where earlier amphibious assaults in the Central Pacific drive were often characterized by a costly loss of momentum at the beachhead, Tinian was just the opposite: a waterborne blitzkrieg (lightning war) and an early forerunner of "maneuver warfare from the sea." As fleet commander Admiral Raymond A. Spruance remarked, "Tinian was probably the most brilliantly conceived and executed amphibious operation of World War II."
Spruance certainly did his share to make the operation a success by dispatching Adm Marc Mitscher's Task Force 58 to whip the Japanese Mobile Fleet in the Battle of the Philippine Sea the previous month. As a consequence, American amphibious forces enjoyed near-total superiority over Japanese air, naval and ground forces in the theater of operations. Spruance had learned from Tarawa to seek overwhelming force at the point of attack. At Tinian, this philosophy paid off in spades.
The three amphibious battles in Operation Forager overlapped and tended to eclipse one another. The Second and Fourth Marine Divisions secured Saipan at high cost on July 9. The Third Marine Division and the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade would spearhead the Guam assault on July 21. Meanwhile, in the brief gap between assaults in the Northern Marianas, Major General Harry Schmidt assumed command of the V Amphibious Corps from Lieutenant General Holland M. Smith and warned the two divisions on Saipan to prepare to assault Tinian on July 24, 10 days away.
This was a risk in itself. Twenty-four days of unrelenting combat on Saipan had reduced the ranks of the infantry battalions of the Second and Fourth Divisions significantly. Replacements trickled in, but it was difficult for the veterans to integrate the newcomers. The older hands were exhausted, and reeking Saipan was hardly a place for "R&R." The Marines, redeployed southward, could see Tinian clearly, only three miles away from Aginan Point. At the last minute, some of the "walking wounded" rejoined their outfits. One Marine shinnied down a rope dangling from the side of the hospital ship, stole a raft, paddled ashore and rejoined his unit just as it embarked aboard ship, even though the turban of bandages on his head prevented his wearing a helmet. The band of brothers.
Compared to Saipan's mountains and ravines, Tinian was relatively flat, its northern two-thirds covered by a checkerboard of open cane fields and small farms. This same flatness caught the eye of strategic planners. Operation Forager sought air bases for the new B-29 Super-fortresses, and Tinian's cane fields offered a bonanza. Three decent airfields already existed. Engineers figured they could modify these, then build three more from scratch, eventually giving the U.S. Army Air Forces six bomber strips with the necessary 8,500-foot runways on northern Tinian.
On the other hand, not all the topography favored the invaders. At 50 square miles, Tinian was smaller than Saipan but still much larger than anything the Marines had experienced in the Gilberts and Marshalls. Steep escarpments around the perimeter of the island severely limited landing beaches. Jungle-covered cliffs in the south would provide dangerous cover for a last stand by die-hard defenders.
Nearly 9,000 Japanese troops-half army, half navy-stood ready to defend Tinian against the inevitable American invasion. Colonel Keishi Ogata, Imperial Japanese Army, held nominal command over all forces on the island, including his own 50th Infantry Regiment, veterans of the Kwantung Army on the Manchurian border with Russia. Navy Captain Goichi Oya commanded the keibetai of the 56th Naval Guard Force and an assortment of other maritime units. Oya was supposed to defer to Col Ogata, but the relationship was imperfect and coordination suffered. Between them, the Japanese forces could muster a few light tanks, some medium-range artillery and mortars, and several batteries of coast defense guns. The Army troops were good fighters, particularly at night, but a spirit of disorganization prevailed over the garrison from the beginning. One battalion from the 35th Infantry, based in Saipan, had been practicing amphibious landings off Tinian when the American invasion force arrived in the Marianas, forcing them to scramble ashore on the southern island. They were almost as new to Tinian as the Marines.
Col Ogata blindly followed the same defensive strategy of the preceding island commanders in the Central Pacific: defend fiercely at the water's edge and deny a beachhead; failing that, counterattack immediately with all available reserves to throw the Americans back into the sea. His "Defense Force Battle Plan" of June 25 identified only two logical landing sites: Tinian Town on the southwest coast or Asiga Bay on the northeast. There he built most of his static defenses. Those sites also received primary attention by the Naval Security Force, charged with laying antiboat mines on the landing beaches.
The 4thMarDiv, now under the capable leadership of MajGen Clifton B. Cates, would have the lead in the amphibious assault of Tinian. Cates adapted to his new role easily. He had previously held combat command on the platoon, company, battalion and regimental levels. Four years later Cates would become the 19th Commandant of the Marine Corps. During this critical point of Operation Forager, no less than six future Commandants would be engaged in the fighting: Cates, David M. Shoup and Wallace M. Greene on Saipan and Tinian; Lemuel C. Shepherd, Robert E. Cushman and Louis R. Wilson on Guam.
Tinian's shortage of suitable landing beaches presented the biggest challenge to Marine planners. Forcing a landing at Tinian Town would be foolhardy ("another Tarawa" warned Holland Smith), and Asiga Bay looked little better. The island did offer two tiny beaches on the northwest coast, near Ushi Airfield, but they were rocky and narrow, more like trails leading onto the plateau than traditional beaches.
The more the planners studied the aerial photograph mosaics, however, the more they liked the possibility of making a radical leap from established doctrine by landing two entire divisions over these improbable entry points. Tactically, it made sense: a surprise strike with plenty of mobility, early seizure of the best airfields, maneuver room for both divisions to shoulder into line and swing south. The big risk came in the arena of logistic support. Could two divisions really be supported through those tiny breaks in the escarpment? Could the Marines keep those landing points operating as funnels and prevent them from becoming bottlenecks? It would all come down to good intelligence, daring planning, tactical surprise and favorable weather. The monsoon season loomed.
Valid intelligence information on Tinian was there for the taking. The Marines on Saipan already possessed captured copies of Col Ogata's battle plans for Tinian. Pilots brought back reel after reel of low-level aerial photography. Commanders at many echelons enjoyed the almost unprecedented opportunity for advance aerial recon of the battlefield. Using the 3d Battalion, 25th Marines as one example, Lieutenant Colonel Justice M. Chambers took his operations officer and all three rifle company commanders with him on a prolonged aerial inspection of their proposed route of advance.
MajGen Schmidt and his counterpart, Rear Admiral Harry W. Hill, also made wise employment of other intelligence-gathering capabilities available in the task force. During the nights of July 1011, the Corps Amphibious Reconnaissance Bn, veterans of Apamama, and the Navy Underwater Demolition Team (UDT) conducted covert surveys of the beach at Asiga Bay and the two landing points on the northwest coast (White Beach 1 and 2). This was hairy work, often performed under the very gaze of Japanese sentries, but the findings proved invaluable. Although the Japanese had mined all of the beaches, the small landing points at White Beach were incomparably safer than Asiga Bay.
While planners wrestled with the daunting logistical requirements involved with such a unique landing, Schmidt and Hill launched an exceptional preliminary bombardment of Tinian. For once, the Americans in the Central Pacific were close enough to their next objective to pound it with their own guns from a fire support base. As early as June 20, while the fighting for Saipan still boiled, U.S. Army 155-mm. "Long Tom" field guns began bombarding northern Tinian. The number of artillery pieces firing on Tinian grew as the battle of Saipan waned. Soon the Americans had 13 batteries of XIV Corps Artillery -136 guns- firing day and night from southern Saipan. The artillerymen fired nearly 25,000 rounds before the invasion even began.
Naval gunfire ships began pounding Tinian early, too. Cruisers ranged up and down both coasts, engaging enemy targets at will. While the Marines were again unable to bring their own close air support to the battlefield, they were ably served by Navy carrier aircraft and Army P-47s flying from Saipan's captured Aslito Airfield.
Tinian saw the first operational use of napalm bombs. Army pilots dropped 150 jettisonable wing tanks filled with a mixture of gasoline and napalm jelly (although the shortage of napalm caused most "bombs" to use oil and gas). U.S. forces originally intended the napalm strikes as a defoliant. The veterans, however, quickly saw the tactical benefits of the new weapon. The bombs were inaccurate and not altogether reliable, but when they worked they were awesome.
Gen Schmidt and Adm Hill published the operation order for Tinian on July 13. The commanders established J-Day as July 24. Tactical deception and logistical innovation highlighted the plan. Since Col Ogata believed the Americans would land at Tinian Town, Schmidt would use the 2dMarDiv embarked on board a powerful task force as a decoy in that vicinity. The 4thMarDiv, embarked in LSTs. would then land over White Beach. Everything depended on maintaining the momentum of the assault. Conventional shore-party operations would not do the job. There must be no stopping on the beach for any reason. Everything coming ashore-bullets, beans and bandages-must travel on tracks and wheels, prepared to move directly to supply points well inland. The 4thMarDiv would land the 24th Marines in a column of battalions over the smallest of the two "beaches"; the 25th Marines on White Beach 2 had the luxury of attempting two battalions abreast. Tactical mobility would be critical. The Second Division would land right on the heels of the Fourth. The Japanese would surely counterattack the first night.
The plan worked to perfection. Integrated bombardment by artillery, aircraft and naval gunfire reached a crescendo on the morning of J-Day. The decoy landing effectively froze the main body of Ogata's forces in place in the south for several critical hours. Members of the 2d and 8th Marines, watching the feint from the relative safety of their transports, quickly saw the wisdom of avoiding a real landing at Tinian Town.
The old battleship Colorado, long admired by the troops for her willingness to engage enemy strong points, closed to within 3,100 yards offshore when a battery of Japanese 6-inch guns opened up from a hidden cave above the harbor. In 15 minutes these guns scored 28 direct hits on the battleship and her escort destroyer, inflicting 285 casualties. Ten members of Colorado's Marine Detachment died at their posts, the first Marines killed in the battle of Tinian.
The Fourth Division took full advantage of this distraction to hustle its assault elements ashore, using more than 500 LVTs and 130 DUKWs (amphibious trucks) to cross the reef and penetrate Japanese defenses at White Beach. Enemy mines and machine guns slowed the advance initially, but the Marines soon had the mass and mobility in place to roll over the few Japanese then present in the north. Gen Cates chose humble LST 42 to serve as his division flagship, keeping abreast of the action through a radio jeep placed on the weather deck. Rarely had the need for reliable tactical communications been more critical. The Marines had made much progress in this area since Tarawa. Most units employed the SCR-series of field radios; troops had learned waterproofing techniques and radio net discipline. Cates had few problems coordinating his maneuver elements or fire support units.
The troops found the narrow White Beaches further obstructed by underwater boulders and coral heads, dangerously constricting the flow of troops and supplies. An enterprising Seabee officer devised a portable vehicle ramp which could be emplaced by LVTs, thus offering more beach exits. Before long the Navy warped two floating pontoons into place, invaluable facilities captured from the Japanese at Charan Kanoa, Saipan. Cates also saw to it that his troops would not be encumbered by packs or personal gear. Assault troops carried only emergency rations, spoon, dry socks, insect repellent and a poncho folded over the cartridge belt. The tempo of offloading never slowed. Before nightfall, Cates had 15,000 Marines ashore, occupying a force beachhead area of several thousand yards. The cost had been astonishingly light: 15 killed, 225 wounded.
MajGen Cates had fought the Japanese before, and he knew what the night would bring. He took pains to ensure his tanks, halftracks, and light artillery (the 75-mm. pack howitzer battalions) got ashore well before dark. The artillery units included two battalions of the 10th Marines, loaned from the 2dMarDiv. Cates also sent in enough barbed wire to secure the extended perimeter, and he coordinated night defensive fires with the cruisers and destroyers assigned in support.
Col Ogata, chagrined at misjudging the main thrust of the American landing, sought to reverse the situation with a massive counterattack. Somehow he marshaled several thousand of his troops, supported by a half-dozen tanks, around the American perimeter. The attack that followed was hardly a banzai suicide charge. Ogata's veterans, adept at night fighting, were uncannily effective in probing enemy positions to locate automatic weapons and unit boundaries. These became tactical objectives for the main assault that followed the probes. At 0200, Navy keibetai guardsmen attacked from the north. An hour later, the Kwantung Army veterans launched a well-coordinated tank-infantry attack on the heels of a stinging artillery barrage.
Many Tinian survivors assert that this prolonged assault the night of July 24 was the Battle of Tinian. Close, violent combat between two veteran forces characterized the fighting. Both sides knew the success or failure of the invasion hung in the balance. But there would be no "issue in doubt" message from the landing force at Tinian. Maj-Gen Cates' forethought paid dividends. Star shells fired from offshore destroyers helped backlight the attackers. Marine tanks, halftracks, bazookas, 37-mm. guns and machine guns took a heavy toll of Japanese infantry caught up in barbed wire. The handy M3A1 37-mm. antitank guns were particularly well-suited for this kind of fighting because they could fire canister rounds very rapidly. These weapons also became targets for the Japanese. Gunnery Sergeant John G. Benkovich kept his gun crew at its exposed position until each man fell wounded. Benkovich, wounded himself, evacuated his casualties, then crawled back to dismantle the gun before the Japanese could capture it.
Sergeant John H. Frills Jr., in 2/24, became a platoon commander when his lieutenant fell. A Japanese probe discovered the location of Fritts' machine guns. Fritts, knowing what would come next, redeployed his platoon, covering the old position by machine-gun and 37-mm. fire. When the Japanese struck that point, they entered a crossfire. Dawn revealed 150 dead Japanese in that immediate area.
Other Japanese forces found the boundary between two regiments and were able to infiltrate 200 soldiers through the crack. In the wild fighting that ensued, some of these reached the artillery positions of the 14th and 10th Marines. But these cannoneers had received their baptism by fire at Saipan. While some units maintained fire missions in support of besieged infantry regiments, others leveled their barrels and mowed down the oncoming Japanese. Machine guns, rifles and bayonets finished the job. At daybreak, the Marines counted more than 1,500 dead Japanese in and around the perimeter. "We've broken their backs," proclaimed Gen Cates.
With the dawn came the 2dMarDiv, landing in trace over White Beach, maintaining the high mobility of the previous day. The two divisions moved out together, captured all of Ushi Airfield, reached the east coast, then wheeled southward. Scattered Japanese units fought bitterly, but most of Ogata's surviving forces melted away toward the south. Schmidt ordered Gates and MajGen Thomas E. Watkins, commanding the Second Division, to keep the pressure on. The terrain opened up, becoming ideal tank country. On several days after the landing, the Marines could enjoy the rarest of combat experiences in the island warfare of the Pacific, riding on tanks and halftracks pell-mell down farm roads in pursuit of a retreating enemy. The Marines soon outran the range of the artillery support on Saipan and began relying more heavily on Army aircraft, Navy gunships and their own 105-mm. artillery battalions, now ashore.
Tinian was a magnificent fight for Marine artillerymen. As one captured Japanese soldier admitted, "You couldn't drop a stick without bringing down artillery." Major Frederick J. Karch, operations officer for the 14th Marines, recalled an incident where an airburst artillery round cut down an entire Japanese machine-gun crew. "Each man fell in position, carrying his assigned component of the gun, just like a picture out of a training manual." RAdm Hill provided two ammunition ships offshore; shore party Marines used a constant shuttle of DUKWs to keep artillery units resupplied. Airborne spotters of Marine Observation Squadron (VMO) 2 and VMO-4 landed on captured Ushi Field on J+3, then provided close and continuous forward observation throughout the battle.
Compared to Saipan, the battle of Tinian was free from interservice acrimony. This was one joint operation that worked. While the 27th Infantry Division, in reserve on Saipan, never got the call to provide infantry support, the soldiers nevertheless remained on four-hour alert to join the fray. The Army also provided artillery, amphibian tractor, armored amphibian and engineer support battalions to the Marines. Army Air Force P-47s from the 318th Fighter Group flew close air support. When the tail end of a monsoon disrupted White Beach-smashing the pontoons and grounding an LST-Gen Schmidt got relief from Air Force C-47s which airdropped rations and evacuated wounded from the captured airfields. Navy fire support, from fighters flying off the escort carriers to the big guns of the fleet, was superb.
For a corps-level operation, the Marines did an impressive job of command and control. Col Robert E. Hogaboom, operations officer for Gen Schmidt, proved a master at coordinating the movement and fire support for two divisions assaulting abreast down the length of the island. Hogaboom arranged a massive naval bombardment (6,410 shells of 5-inch to 14-inch) to kick off the final assault on the south, warning the divisions to have their men dig in well in advance. Close fire support had come of age.
At the end of the Tinian campaign, it was the 2dMarDiv's turn to take the heat in a desperate Japanese counterattack. This became known as "The Battle of the Plateaus," and although most units suffered a long night, the first and second battalions of the 8th Marines bore the brunt of the fighting. Casualties were heavy on both sides, but the Japanese had then run out of organized units and room to maneuver.
Gen Schmidt declared the island secured on the afternoon of Aug. 1, though some of the troops thought him to be overly optimistic. A band of Japanese survivors made a noisy banzai attack against the 3d Bn, 6th Marines early the next morning, killing their popular commander, LtCol John W. Easley (LtCol Harry J. Zimmer, CO of 1/14, was the other battalion commander to die at Tinian). The 1st Bn, 8th Marines inherited the dubious distinction of remaining ashore the next five months to track down the die-hards; they killed 500 of these, but suffered 163 casualties of their own.
The V Amphibious Corps seized Tinian in nine days at the cost of 2,355 casualties. The losses represented but a fraction of those sustained in the taking of Saipan and Guam. Two Marines won the Medal of Honor for conspicuous bravery on Tinian, Private Joseph W. Ozbourn of the 4thMarDiv and Private First Class Robert L. Wilson of the 2dMarDiv. Both instances occurred late in the campaign and involved the Marine acting instantly to cover a live grenade with his body. Both awards were issued posthumously.
The Japanese sustained a minimum of 6,000 casualties in the fighting. The preceding American victories in the Philippine Sea and Saipan had spelled inevitable death for the Tinian garrison. Beset by interservice friction and smothered by American firepower. the defenders were outfoxed and outfought at every point. For U.S. forces, the forcible seizure of Tinian represented a landmark in naval warfare, a vivid demonstration of the flexibility of amphibious doctrine. From audacious decision-making to aggressive pursuit of an elusive enemy, the Tinian campaign reflected American naval power at its best. Tinian was the epitome of thoughtful planning and violent execution. For its size, there is hardly a finer example of amphibious virtuosity in U.S. history.
Tinian became the largest B-29 base in the world. Most Marines know that a year after the battle, a single B-29 named Enola Gay took off from Tinian with an atomic bomb destined for Hiroshima, a mission which would, eventually, end the war and herald a new and even more dangerous world.
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