The FReeper Foxhole Remembers The Battle for Peleliu (Sep-1944)

The original assault plan for central Peleliu had envisioned a south to north linear advance. This was before the naval bombardment stripped away the dense jungle cover revealing the true nature of the Umurbrogol terrain. In spite of this unsettling discovery, General Rupertus maintained his inflexible position of continued frontal assault along a south/north axis. Although recent aerial reconnaissance via light observation planes suggested a less costly, northern approach, Rupertus stuck to the original plan. The next few weeks would see Marine and Army forces advancing into redoubts dubbed "the Horseshoe" and "Wildcat Bowl" only to relinquish their positions at day's end because of ferocious Japanese firepower.

The need for the immediate seizure of Ngesebus and northern Peleliu was stepped up when it was discovered that Japanese troops from the northern Palaus were getting through to reinforce Nakagawa's garrison. Although U.S. amtanks had discovered and destroyed several Japanese landing barges, it was estimated that at least an infantry battalion had managed to get through and disappear into Peleliu's cave system.

The American plan to encircle the Umurbrogol "Pocket" called for two regiments to attack up Peleliu's West Road, with the 321st RCT spearheading the attack and the 5th Marines following. After Army units had come abreast of the Pocket to its right, elements of the 5th Marines were to pass through the 321st and take northern Peleliu and Ngesebus. The 321st would then pivot to the east and south to close the northern end of the Pocket.

The northern assault was launched on September 23rd, but executing the plan in the 321st's zone of action proved extremely difficult due to torturous terrain features that prohibited the use of tanks or any vehicular support. After the 321st captured then relinquished the high ground paralleling the West Road, the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines was ordered to recapture this ridgeline, with the 321st moving further north to its assigned objective. Meanwhile, at the north end of Peleliu, Harris' 5th Marines confronted a series of ridges and hills that, for a change, could be assaulted individually without receiving Japanese fire from all sides.

With the close support of Marine Corsairs flying from the newly captured airfield, the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines crossed the 600 yard channel to attack Ngesebus and Kongauru Islands on September 28th. Ngesebus' unfinished fighter strip constituted one of the original objectives of the campaign, and enemy weapons on both islands had been inflicting increasing casualties on the 5th Marines. After a day and a half, the 5th Marines succeeded in wiping out the 500-man Japanese garrison.

Over the next eight weeks, the fight for the Umurbrogol Pocket would devolve to that of a siege, using siege tactics. After sealing off the northern end of the Pocket, the 321st was relieved by the 7th Marines who were now ordered to move south and apply pressure on the redoubt. To reinforce the 7th Marines, and because of the heavy casualties sustained by all Marine combat units, it was now necessary to pull hundreds of non-infantry support personnel out of rear areas and plug them into the front lines.

On October 3rd, the first of several attacks was launched on the north and both ends of the Pocket, supported in some areas by tanks and flamethrower-equipped amtracs. But again, due to the intense Japanese fire, positions gained in the Horseshoe and Five Sisters proved untenable and had to be abandoned. The next day saw an equally frustrating firefight in a series of coral knobs near Hill 120 at the Pocket's northern end, which resulted in more heavy casualties and the loss of a company commander. By October 5th the 7th Marines had exhausted their combat efficiency and were replaced in the lines by the weary 5th Marines who carried on doggedly, winning ground but taking further punishment.

The siege necessitated innovative means to get at the stubborn defenders. Marine units resorted to light mortars and napalm to clear all vegetation and expose enemy gun positions. A 75mm pack howitzer was disassembled and humped to the top of a key ridge to fire point-blank into Japanese caves that had previously been unreachable. With Peleliu's hard, unyielding coral preventing the digging of protective foxholes, sandbags were also used to help bolster hard-won positions and help reduce further casualties.

After another week of arduous siege activity, the battle's assault phase was declared ended, with the Pocket now having been reduced to an oval of some 800 yards north to south, and 400-500 yards east to west. Colonel Nakagawa's forces now amounted to some 700 defenders, all prepared to fight to the bitter end.

With the declaration that Peleliu had been effectively secured, General Geiger ordered all remaining Marine units relieved. This was accomplished by the recent arrival of the Army's 323rd RCT, which had just arrived from its recent seizure of Ulithi atoll. On October 20th, the 81st Division, under General Mueller's command took custody of the Pocket and all final mopping up operations. Marine Air Group 11 stayed on to support the Army units.

But the battle would drag on for another five weeks, with the 322nd, 323rd and elements of the 321st RCTs slugging it out from ridge to ridge, and making ample use of pack howitzers, tanks and flamethrowers. On the Japanese side the end was drawing near. The defenders were low on water, ammunition, rations and medical supplies. Many of the surviving Japanese were sorely tempted to end their lives through a traditional banzai attack, but nevertheless clung to their strategy of "delay and bleed."

Finally, on November 24th - two and a half months since D-Day - Colonel Nakagawa radioed a final message to his superior on Babelthuap to the north, stating that he had burned his regimental colors and that his remaining force of some 60 men had been split into infiltration parties to carry on the fight. He and General Murai then committed ritual suicide in their command post. Three days later, Army units moving northward in the Pocket's last area of resistance met Army units moving south. Operation Stalemate II was finally over.

The Cost

The battle for Peleliu was one of the bloodiest of the Pacific War, costing the U.S. Marines and Navy some 6,526 casualties, including 1,252 killed in action. Meanwhile, the Japanese suffered the near total destruction of their garrison, with over 10,900 killed and 202 prisoners of war captured, most all of whom were conscripted laborers. With such high American casualties, the Japanese command affirmed the success of their strategy of attrition, which now set the tone for the even bloodier assaults on Iwo Jima and Okinawa the following year.

While the Marines and soldiers were slugging it out in the ridges of Peleliu, General MacArthur had already landed on Leyte in the Philippines and the naval battle for Leyte Gulf had been fought and won. The Peleliu operation, which was launched to secure MacArthur's flank for his recapture of the Philippines, had played no part in his return to the archipelago. Perhaps Admiral Halsey had been right - Peleliu should have been called off.

Peleliu: The peril and the price

The stench of death happens quickly in tropical heat. The immediacy for elimination corrupts the silence in an aftermath of savagery. Blow flies hover like angels in a hell where the drone of their efficiency increases with the temperature. The first in every burial detail, the scavengers of war don't acknowledge death: they consume it. Theirs is the tearless retrieval of peace to a broken Earth.

Maggots maraud, while soft breezes come in off the water and tug at the ponchos, but unflappable, the men beneath them don't respond. The pulse of their last fight taken in the clink of dog tags, and on that sun-scorched beachhead in Peleliu, the cold grasp of fingers when pressed down for prints.

They had fought with all the grit, gore and gonads of every combat Marine to hit a beach in World War II. Now, mounds of men in parade formation, they wait for the final muster. The remains of their short lives rest always as unfinished snippets of experience, snuffed out on the sharp coral and sandy beaches of a tropical atoll, where 55 years ago, its warm clear waters darkened crimson with the blood of Marines.

The old black and white photographs appear on the pages of history like pieces of amber with the faces of young men captured in them forever in a place and a time when the measure of a moment could be eternity. On the morning of Sept 15,1944, thousands of them crowded the rails of transports to watch in awe and numbing terror as the big guns of the Navy's battleships and cruisers shelled the beaches and terrain of Peleliu for two hours. The smoke and flames of the constant bombardment tangled red and black in the early dawn light and eclipsed the blue of another day in paradise.

Carrier planes supported the big guns with dive-bombing and strafing runs, while the Japanese crouched in the caves and crags that formed a natural defense against invasion. Many of them veterans, they were an elite fighting force that had come to Peleliu to die. And, they did. Less than 300 of the 13,000-man garrison survived.

The bellies and bladders of the waiting Marine assault troops contested duty, most of whom were in their teens and early '20s, while they looked on. Nervous faces told of the agonizing period between waiting on a crammed and bobbing boat and jumping into the water. The normally clean salty air was acrid with the smells of explosives and diesel fuel. Men shouted to one another trying to outscream the din of the overhead explosives. A burning in their gut and a small voice in their ear clearly whispered, "survival this day will not be for the bravest or the fittest but the luckiest." And, to the roll of a gentle ocean, the first wave assembled.

Lean men-of-war and fat transports ringed the horizon, while in between them and the reef, 200 yards wide in some areas, that guarded this Central Pacific atoll, floated the amtracs and Higgins boats filled with thousands of Marines. While the engines idled, they waited for 0800 and the order to take the beach. The "Old Breed," veterans who had already seen action at Guadalcanal and Cape Gloucester, still braced themselves as they sat shoulder-to-shoulder with men as apprehensive as they were.

Resistance was heavy when the amtracs crunched their way out of the sea onto the reef. The Japanese mortar and artillery fire ripped into the landing craft and coral until the ocean became a debris-laden froth. Smoldering amtracs stacked up on the reef and landing beaches, but the others kept coming with more men in them. Stalled in the water or caught up on the reef, they were death traps with the Japanese bombardment. Flames licked at the sky from the beach, and into that fiery maelstrom of smoke and mortar, the Marines kept coming. Huge geysers of water shot upwards with the exploding shells, and to the men lucky enough to hit the beach, it would only be the hot breath of God and their senior NCOs scalding their necks that would keep them alive.

The Marines waiting on the transports watched in silence, ready to descend into the bobbing Higgins boats to bring them to the reef. The waiting amtracs transferring them to the increasingly violent beach. Landing craft glutted the sea jammed with troops depositing them as replacements for the wounded they picked up. Each wave of Marines advanced them inch-by-bloody-inch up the beach. Bellies pressed into sand; wet red, and awash in the entreaties of the dying, the "First" crawled over body parts and bodies. By dawn of the second day, the Marines of the lst Division moved inland. They would bleed more at "Bloody Nose Ridge" in the Umurbrogols, the Point and, in all, suffer 95 percent of the casualties on Peleliu. Although the vicious battle would go on for another two months, the most strategic terrain was taken by the lst Division during the first week of bitter fighting.

The Army's 81st Infantry Division would see combat for the first time on Peleliu as the reserve force for the lst Division. Although novices, they were brave and they fought smart.

The total American casualties in Peleliu were 8,769 men: killed, wounded, or missing in action. Eight Marines earned the Medal of Honor. One of them was Corporal Lewis K. Bausell. He had just turned 20 aboard ship en route to Peleliu. Bausell was with the lst Battalion, 5th Marines. One hour after he landed, Corporal Lewis K. Bausell wrapped those 20 years around a Japanese grenade, saving the lives of four fellow Marines. On June 11, 1945, his parents were presented with their son's posthumous Medal of Honor. His selfless act was part of the lore of the Marines, which is no more apparent than in combat. A Japanese soldier, interviewed after the battle, remarked he and his comrade had felt fear for the first time when they noticed a wounded Marine shooting directly at them coming out of the water dragging a dead comrade behind him. He was not they realized, as they had been led to believe by their officers, afraid to die.

There is still debate about the necessity of Peleliu. Writer of the battle, Bill D. Ross, called it "a guilty secret…a place where nearly 15,000 men, American and Japanese, met violent death in a terrible conflict that should never have been fought." A moot point now except for the survivors, because the final scoop in every war... for every fatality... is a spadeful of dirt.

Peleliu is a six-mile long, 2 mile wide chunk of blood-soaked coral located approximately 550 miles due east of the Southern Philippines. To understand its worth is to read aloud the names on the ancient casualty list and know that behind each one is a story of family, of dreams, and ultimately of heroic sacrifice; a litany of the heroes on a god-forsaken atoll, where 55 years later, atonement is only in the remembrance.

Mary Alice Altorfer

Additional Sources:

oregonmag.com
www.nps.gov
www.seraphingallery.com
www.militarygameronline.com
www.archives.gov
www.thewarpage.com
www.discovery.com
www.milhist.net
www.army.mil
www.voughtaircraft.com
www.pbs.org
www.bluejacket.com

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Lance Cpl. John A. Marcogliese stands guard at one of several Olympic stadiums in Baghdad, Iraq. The 1st Marine Division established a forward command post inside at least one arena. Marcogliese and other Marines scribbled a new tally on the Iraqi scoreboard behind him. “U.S.: 2, Saddam: 0”. U.S. Marine photo by Sgt. Joseph R. Chenelly

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Air Power
Vought F-4U Corsair

Originating in a 1938 Navy spec, when the need to replace the F2A and F4F could already be foreseen, the Vought Corsair was designed around an engine that also didn't exist yet: the Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp, a monster 18 cylinder double radial, eventually capable of 2250 horsepower. (During the Corsair's development, corporate reorganizations brought the Vought company into Vought-Sikorsky and then Chance Vought, all part of United Aircraft, along with Pratt & Whitney and Hamilton Standard.)

The huge engine dictated much of the plane's design. Such a powerplant needed a comparably big propeller to absorb all that horsepower. Thus the 13' 4" diameter Hamilton Standard prop, the largest fittest to a fighter at that time. The Corsair's fuselage had to be high in the air, to give the prop clearance, But ordinary, straight wings at that height would have implied long (and weak) landing gear. The distinctive bent wings were developed to permit a reasonably short undercarriage.

The XF4U first flew in May 1940, and in October flew faster than 400 MPH, a record for a production fighter. A major re-design pushed the cockpit back 32 inches, which resulted in poor forward vision for the pilot, at least on take-off and landing. Development continued into 1942, when Vought delivered the first production F4U-1 to the Navy, which didn't like what it saw, especially when compared to the easier-handling, and very capable F6F Hellcat. The F4U had dangerous stall behavior, had tendency to yaw suddenly when landing, and, worst off all, bounced when it hit the deck. For use on carriers, these problems caused the Navy to insist that they be fixed, while it went ahead equipping with the Hellcat.

But the Marines, operating from land bases in the Solomons, needed capable new fighters to replace their aging F4F Wildcats. By late 1942, the first USMC squadron, VMF-124, took delivery of the Corsair F4U-1. In early 1943, they began to see combat, and were a huge success - with speed, maneuverability, firepower, and ability to absorb battle damage. By the summer of 1943, most of the Marine fighting squadrons had transitioned to the F4U-1, the first operational model, fitted with a distinctive "birdcage" canopy, as shown in the detail of a plane flown by Ed Olander (number 576). Boyington's squadron, VMF-214, switched over to Corsairs before they started their September 1943 combat tour.

The F4U is regarded by many as one of the greatest combat aircraft in history, and was in production for a longer period of time than any US fighter other than the F4 Phantom. As conceived it was intended to mount the most powerful engine, and biggest propeller, of any fighter in existence, and the prototype was the first US combat aircraft to exceed 400mph. However, early experience suggested that the design was in fact a disastrous failure, especially for carrier operations. The extraordinarily long nose interfered with visibility ahead in a way which particularly caused problems during landing and take-off. The undercarriage had a tendency to break, and the aircraft also had an inclination to bounce alarmingly on landing. As a result the US Navy at first rejected it for shipboard operation. Nonetheless the F4U was adopted by the Marine Corps and quickly demonstrated its effectiveness. Although its low rate-of-turn made it a very limited dogfighter its merits more than compensated for this and its other faults. Its great power, speed and rate of climb, its capacity to roll very rapidly, combined with a powerful armament - and large ammunition supply - and a quite exceptional resistance to battle damage, meant that in early 1943 ( in the Solomons) it quickly demonstrated its great superiority over the enemy fighters. By the end of hostilities in the Pacific War it had established an 11:1 "kill" ratio against Japanese aircraft.

At a time when the US Navy still considered it unsuitable for carrier use it was provided to the British Fleet Air Arm under Lend-Lease. The British Navy was desperately short of suitable high-performance fighters and therefore persevered with the Corsair, despite its problems, and the Fleet Air Arm's pilots quickly learned to cope with some of the aircraft's idiosyncracies. In any event improved versions, which amongst other things corrected the faults in the undercarriage, were later to became available.

The US Navy finally adopted the F4U as a shipboard fighter-bomber in November 1944, and by early 1945 large numbers were operating from the fast carriers of the Pacific Fleet - although the longer-established and very capable Grumman F6F Hellcat remained somewhat more numerous aboard the carriers right up to the war's end.

However, while the F6F was phased out shortly after World War Two the Corsair continued in service, and new versions were developed. The F4U was used extensively in the Korean War, and production continued until December 1952, by which time 12,571 had been built.

Many remember this plane from TV show about Maj. Greg "Pappy" Boyington, and his BLACK SHEEP (VMF-214)

Specifications

Contractor Chance Vought Division of United Aircraft Corporation (also built by Brewster and Goodyear)

Type: Single-seat carrier-based fighter-bomber

Dimensions:
Span: 41' (12.48 metres) British version 39' 7"
Length: 33' 8" - 34' 6" according to version

Weight: (F4U-1A) 8,873 lb (4,025 kg)

Engine:
(F4U-1) 2,000 hp Pratt & Whitney R-2800-8 (B) Double Wasp 18-cylinder two-row radial
(F4U-1A) 2,250 hp R-2800-8 (W) with water injection
(F4U-4) 2,450 hp R-2800-18 (W) with water-methanol
(F4U-5) 2,850 hp R-2800-32 (E) with water-methanol

Maximum Speed: (F4U-1A) 395 mph (F4U-5) 462 mph

Initial Climb: (F4U-1A) 2,890 feet per minute (F4U-5) 4,800 feet per minute

Service Ceiling: F4U-1A) 37,000 feet (F4U-5) 44,000 feet

Range: (on internal fuel): 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometres)

Guns:
(early versions) 6 x 0.5" Browning MG53-2 machine-guns in outer wings, with 390 rounds per gun
(F4U-1C onwards) 4 x 20mm. cannon in wings

Bombs/Rockets:
(F4U-1D and most subsequent versions) 2 x 1,000 lb bombs or 8 x 5-inch rockets under wings

A pair of VMF-312 F4U-4 Corsairs, armed with a full load of rockets and napalm tanks, are parked on the pierced steel plank ramp at Wonsan Airfield during November of 1950.

Lieutenant Ira "Ike" Kepford in the #29 Corsair of the Jolly Rogers (VF-17)

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