The FReeper Foxhole Remembers The Battle for Saipan (Jun - July, 1944)

Amtracks heading for the beach.

Landing craft headed for the beach.

LST unloading trucks at the temporary pier created at the beachhead from pontoon barges.

Twenty four Marines head ashore in an amphtrac

Marines in LCVP

The First Armored Amphibian Battalion was built around an extraordinary, now almost forgotten, vehicle, the amphibious tank. This vehicle and weapon came into being in World War II, played a very special role in combat, and then faded into history. It was called variously, an armored amphibian, amphibious tank, or amtank. And in the Equipment Tables it was designated the LVTA, for Landing Vehicle, Tracked (Armored). It is not entirely accurate to call our strange vehicle a seagoing tank, but we regularly went ashore from over two miles out to sea, and could also maneuver on land. That made us amphibious.

LVTA-4, armored amphibian with 75mm howitzer

Both the Marine Corps and the Army operated two types of amphibious tracked vehicles. One was the amphibious tractor, also called an amtrac or LVT. The other was our amtank, the LVTA. Though tracked amphibs were no doubt important in the European Theater, there was a special need for them in the Pacific. Most Pacific islands were ringed by coral reefs, often more than a half mile across. If those islands had had sandy beaches, then the Navy could have continued its usual practice—bring troops in close to shore by boat and let them wade in a few yards to the beach. But for a hostile beach with a wide coral shelf in front of it, the boats could not move in all the way to the shore, only to the edge of the coral reef. In such a situation, a Marine wading ashore on a rough coral reef, from a thousand yards out, was an easy target for enemy fire, assuming he didn't fall into one of the many potholes common to coral reefs.

Amphibious tracked vehicles were the only solution found for that problem. Both the amtrac and the amtank could climb onto the reef from the sea and advance across the rough coral to the beach. The amtracs transported troops ashore where they could continue the assault. Our amtanks led the way, firing at the beaches from the time that Naval gunfire and air strikes lifted till the troops were ashore to continue the assault.

Tracked landing vehicles evolved from a most unlikely prototype. In the 1930s, Donald Roebling developed a tracked vehicle called a swamp buggy or alligator for rescuing people stranded in the Florida Everglades. Some Marine Corps planners saw possibilities in Roebling's alligator for amphibious military operations. After long negotiations, the Navy issued a contract with Roebling in 1940 to design a military vehicle, and another contract to the Food Machinery Corporation to build 100 of them.

LVTA-1, armored amphibian with 37mm cannon

Those first models were amtracs—not amtanks— and were delivered in 1941. Later they mounted a turret on the amtrac and gave it more fire power and light armor. That was the amtank, first delivered in 1943. In the First Armored we had two models of LVTAs. For our first two invasions, Kwajalein and Guam, we operated the LVTA-1, with an M-3 light tank turret mounting a 37mm gun. Then, for Okinawa, we had the upgraded LVTA-4, which mounted a 75mm howitzer in an uncovered mount.

In early campaigns, in the Solomons, amtracs had only logistical assignments, as amphibious transport for men and matériel. At Tarawa, however, they demonstrated their value in assault. Unfortunately, there were only half enough amtracs at Tarawa, and no amtanks at all, and the consequences were bloody. From Kwajalein on, both vehicles were permanent players in all invasions from the sea.

Though we had other assignments, beach assault was always the primary mission of our armored amphibians. At sea we were usually transported on LSTs (Landing Ship, Tank), but once we traveled on LSDs (Landing Ship, Dock), and once on LSMs (Landing Ship, Medium). In a landing our tanks would debark before dawn through the bow doors of the LSTs, two miles or more at sea. While we were forming up at a Line of Departure, the Navy would be bombarding shore targets, and planes would be bombing and strafing the beaches. The last naval vessels to fire on the beaches were little LCIs near the edge of the reef, armed with cannons and rockets. As the LCIs turned away, the armored amphibians would climb onto the reef, continue the assault by fire, and lead the first waves of amtrac-borne Marine infantry onto the beach. We would then act as land tanks until the heavier conventional armor was ashore.

Amtanks were awkward, ungainly beasts. The designers kept working to improve them. Our second model, the LVTA-4, was certainly better than the earlier LVTA-1. Basically amphibious tractors (LVTs) with a turret superimposed on the hull, amtanks were powered by a Continental aircraft engine. They floated because the sides were empty, compartmented pontoons. Their top speed may have been as high as 20 to 25 miles per hour on land, 5 to 7.5 mph in the water, but actual speed was much affected by terrain or surf. They depended on their cleat-equipped tracks for traction on land and propulsion at sea. Steering was accomplished by the difference in speed between the left and right tracks. To put on brakes, you reversed the track. Though we were sometimes given assignments on land, LVTAs made poor land tanks, mainly because they had so little heavy armor.

They tended to take on a lot of water, especially in rough seas. Seawater entering around the hatches could disable the auxiliary generator. Dripping onto the hot transmission, the water produced a steambath atmosphere, fogging up the periscope. Our radio operators improvised with ponchos to protect radio equipment from seawater, and with condoms to keep their microphones dry and working. Amtanks had a bilge pump to pump out water, but if a tank ran out of gas, the engine would stop, and so would the bilge pump. If the pump stopped and the waves were high, the tank could take on water and likely sink. We lost a few tanks that way.

Our first amtank model, the LVTA-1, weighed 16 tons, and was 16 ft., 1 in. long, 10 ft. 8 in. wide and, at the turret, 10 ft. 1 in. high. It carried a 37mm cannon and four .30-caliber machine guns—the scarf-mounted gun in the turret, one machine gun in the radio operator's position in the cab, and two on scarf mounts in cockpits behind the turret. The LVTA-1 carried a crew of seven: the 37mm gunner in the port side of the turret, the tank commander beside him, the driver seated forward in the port side of the cab, the radio operator (also machine gunner) to starboard in the cab, two machine gunners firing from waist mounts—one to port, one to starboard—aft of the turret, and the ammunition passer working down in the hull.

In late 1944 our LVTA-1 tanks, with their 37mm cannon, were replaced by new LVTA-4s, with a turret which carried a 75mm howitzers in an uncovered mount. That not only gave us more fire power, but made possible a new mission. Although beach assault remained our primary mission, we were also able to operate as artillery. Our battalion commander, Major Louis Metzger, had artillery experience in his background, and we began to learn how we might function as artillery. We organized our platoons into artillery batteries and were trained by artillerymen of the newly formed Sixth Marine Division. Part of our value as artillery was that we were the first troops ashore, and, depending on conditions, could, in minutes, be in position, register, and be able to provide supporting fire for the attacking Marines. It would take several hours to bring conventional artillery ashore. In the Okinawa campaign, especially in the south, we became an integral part of the of the massed artillery bombardment of entrenched Japanese defenses.

Because of our amphibious character, we had a maneuvering flexibility lacking in conventional artillery. An action in northern Okinawa demonstrates this special capability. On Motobu Peninsula, Japanese resistance centered around a mountain called Yae Take There, 1500 to 2000 well-armed troops in rugged terrain and caves, were holding off the 29th Marines and causing heavy damage with artillery fire. Neither naval shelling from the sea nor aerial bombing had proved effective against them. Regular artillery could not reach the area because all bridges had been destroyed. On orders from the 6th Division, two platoons of D Company amtanks went to the area by sea. We put in to shore at a site where we could most effectively bring our 75mm howitzers to bear on the enemy in ravines and caves. We were credited with silencing enemy field pieces, covering advances of the 29th Marines, and making possible the evacuation of wounded.

LVTA-4s made only one appearance after World War II. They were used in the Korean War, but as artillery, not for amphibious assault. But amtanks, as we knew them, did become forerunners of more powerful amphibious assault vehicles. They were the Model-Ts of amphibious assault. For a while, in the ‘50s and ‘60s, with helicopter gunships that could fly right over coral reefs, it looked as though amphibious vehicles would become obsolete.. But that has not happened. In the Persian Gulf War and other recent actions, modern amphibious vehicles have shown there are modern uses for them. A direct descendent of the old amtracs, the AAV-7A1, and also an air-cushioned vehicle (the LCAC) are faster and more maneuverable both at sea and on land, have heavier armor than our old clunkers, and have a lot of fire power.

The amtracs and amtanks we knew may have passed into history. But they did a job in their day, and it is fitting that their story can now be told in this new electronic medium, the Internet.

-- Dale Barker

LVT-1

LVT-4

My father served in the Rocky Mount which was scheduled to participate in Operation OLYMPIC, the invasion of Kyushu, Japan. My father-in-law was in the Army that was being prepared to take part in that invasion as well.

If these men had perished (like these Americans on Saipan) in the fierce fighting that was expected, none of the people in this picture [family photo at link below] would be alive today.

I wish to thank the veterans who preserved my freedom. I also wish to thank Harry Truman who preserved the lives of so many servicemen by ending the war before the invasion.

Paul Berver

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