Book Review - Delivering Destruction

American Firepower and Amphibious Assault from Tarawa to Iwo Jima

by Chris K Hemler

Naval Institute Press, 2023, 229 pp.

ISBN 9781682471340

REVIEWED BY: John Nash

Many books on World War II in the Pacific focus on either land, air or naval forces, especially when examining the battles of the US Marine Corps (USMC). Chris K Hemler’s book Delivering Destruction explores four key campaigns of the Pacific War through the lens of ‘triphibious’ warfare: the land, air and sea components of these campaigns. The campaigns examined are Tarawa, the Marshall Islands, the Marianas (Saipan), and Iwo Jima. 

Hemler takes aim at two predominant ways of thinking about warfare in these campaigns. The first is the narrative—popularised, as he says, by visions of the flag raising on Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima—that these battles were won by the sheer grit and determination of infantry supported by armour. The second is that Allied victory was attributable to industrial and technological superiority above all else, an almost inevitable march of industrial might.^[1] Hemler does a fine job of threading this needle by illustrating that it was combined arms, ‘triphibious’ warfare in his parlance, of ground forces supported by naval gunfire support (NGS) and close air support (CAS) that ensured victory during these amphibious operations. This approach acknowledges both the human and the material contributions to victory, and ensures that naval and air forces are given their due credit for the vital support they provided the land forces. He also highlights the great work that was done by US Navy and USMC officers and marines ashore to coordinate these fires effectively.

The book’s first chapter deals with the critical interwar period, which saw the development of USMC amphibious doctrine—most notably, the publication in 1934 of the Tentative Manual for Landing Operations. Hemler successfully highlights the intellectual journey of the USMC at this time, contrasted with the associated difficulties in setting up realistic training (in part due to the US Navy’s focus on combat at sea rather than NGS or supporting forces ashore). These challenges came to a head during the first major opposed USMC assault of the war, the Tarawa landing of November 1943, ‘after an intellectually creative but untested interwar phase’.^[2] The test was a hard one, and as Hemler assesses it: ‘Against a dogged enemy and unaccommodating environment, the Marine landing force struggled to execute the ideas that appeared so unassailably correct in the Corps’ Tentative Manual for Landing Operations.’^[3] Chapter 3 provides a crucial bridge between the Tarawa and the Marshall Islands landings, illustrating in fuller detail how the gaps in theory that existed pre-war were exposed on the beaches of Tarawa. While there was near universal acknowledgement of the need for close naval gunfire and air support in amphibious operations, there had never been adequate time, attention and resources devoted in peacetime to practising their coordination. Culture started to shift, as did the organisation of fire control parties, leading to the establishment in late 1943 of a new unit, the Joint Assault Signal Company (JASCO). The idea for this type of unit had originated with Major General Alexander Vandergrift and the 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal, but it took the costly Tarawa experience to see it come to fruition.^[4] Top level support for the importance of NGS was provided by none other than the Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, Admiral Chester Nimitz, who in September 1943 directed that a dedicated NGS firing range in the Pacific be established. The range on Kahoolawe Island in Hawaii was opened six weeks later.^[5] This rapid adaptation and shift in attitudes was crucial to ensuring future landings would be properly supported by naval and air fires.

The payoff came during the 4th Marine Division’s assault on Roi-Namur in the Marshall Islands on 31 January 1944. Naval and air support for the landing and subsequent operations was much more responsive than in previous operations and thus proved highly effective. Post-action USMC estimates later determined that naval and air strikes killed anywhere from 50 to 75 per cent of all Japanese troops.^[6] This close support was improved further during the next major operation, against Saipan in the Marianas, which occurred just a week after the Allied landings in Normandy on 6 June 1944. Just as the ships supporting the Normandy landings had learned in the Sicily and Salerno landings, so too did the warships providing NGS in the Pacific realise that the key to responsive and effective fires was close positioning of the ship to the shore.^[7] Lessons had been learned, technology developed, culture shifted, and in the end this saw the firepower support to land forces on Saipan reach new levels of effectiveness. If there was any doubt about the air and naval support’s efficacy, Japanese prisoners of war and captured documents made it clear that this support not only made the difference but—in the words of a Japanese document—essentially made it a one-way fight in the Americans’ favour.^[8] Chapters 6 and 7 explore how this support was continually improved, first leading up to Iwo Jima and then during the battle for the island. 

Hemler’s analysis is thorough and he is able to draw together the different threads of how NGS and air support were integrated to support USMC and US Army forces ashore. His final chapter ties it all together under the apt title ‘Examining Success’. Channelling British Major Gerald Gilbert in 1907, Hemler notes: ‘The challenge of the combined arms approach— particularly in an age of rapid technological change—defined the battlefields of both world wars and often determined an army’s success.’^[9] He provides a salutary reminder that technological change must come with human adaptation, and that ‘war requires fundamentally human solutions’.^[10] Allied technological prowess and industrial might was for nought without the systems and culture in place to make best use of them. The same remains true today, though perhaps the rapid pace of technological change in the modern era has created even greater hopes of technological triumph over human systems. Many a new capability has been declared ‘revolutionary’, while countless ‘legacy’ platforms have been deemed ‘obsolete’. Delivering Destruction is an excellent examination of how the US armed forces successfully adapted new technology into more effective combat power. It is both a solid work on the historical topic of ‘triphibious’ warfare in the Pacific war, and a timely reminder of how militaries need to adapt in war. This book will provide excellent reading for anyone interested in amphibious/littoral operations and the history and practice of what we now would call ‘joint fires’. These are important topics as the Australian Defence Force integrates into a more littoral-focused force operating in the maritime and land spaces of the Indo-Pacific.

Endnotes