The Amphibious Revolution

NAVAL HISTORICAL CENTER, TROOPS GOING DOWN LANDING NETS, BY JAMES TURNBULL

By Richard B. Frank Naval History, August 2005

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During World War II, U.S. Forces transformed amphibious warfare from a discredited notion into a key to Allied victory.

At the start of World War II, conventional wisdom ranked horse-cavalry

charges well above amphibious landings as an effective means of waging war. Military critic B.H. Liddell Hart declared in 1939: "A landing on a foreign shore in the face of hostile troops has always been one of the most difficult operations of war. It has now become almost impossible. . . .1" By 1945, however, the United States had transformed not simply amphibious landings but the very nature of modern warfare. For Hart and a generation of officers, Great Britain's 1915 Gallipoli disaster had conclusively demonstrated the folly of assault landings. Between the world wars, however, the U.S. Marines were shifting to a new institutional mission of amphibious attack in order to seize advanced bases for the U.S. Navy's anticipated trans-Pacific campaign against Japan, and discerned that the problem was not the concept but the execution. In the 1920s and '30s, the Marines and Navy forged a workable method of modern amphibious assault. The Marines' seminal Tentative Landing Operations Manual emerged in 1935. The Navy adopted it in 1938 as the Landing Operations Doctrine (FTP 167). It became the bible of amphibious landings in World War II and provided the indispensable foundation for everything that followed. 2

The pre-war legacy of amphibious warfare also extended to the most fundamental tools. Prior to the U.S. entry into the conflict, the Navy had converted specialized auxiliaries into what came to be called "combat loaders" or later "attack transports" (APAs). Most were fitted to carry about a battalion of troops and a complement of landing craft to deliver them ashore. Some specialized in hauling heavy equipment, such as artillery (AKAs).3

Amphibious Vessel Production Explosions

The prewar development of landing craft followed a tortuous pathand here the Navy's record sports some blemishes. Translating the Marines' concept of specialized armed and armored landing craft into reality took years of experimentation. Eventually, the 1926 "Eureka" boat design by Andrew Higgins evolved into the immortal Landing Craft, Vehicles and Personnel (LCVP) over fierce opposition from the Navy bureaucracy, which favored its own designs. An enlarged Higgins design to carry tanks became the Landing Craft, Mechanized (LCM). Meanwhile, a 1937 article in Life magazine drew the Marines to inventor Donald Roebling's remarkable amphibious vehicle. Originally intended to rescue aviators in Florida's Everglades, it employed cupped tracks for power both on land and in water. Moreover, it could cross the surf line. Thus, it promised seamless service from ship to inland destinations. The Marines overcame Navy resistance to secure procurement of what was christened the Landing Vehicle, Tracked (LVT) and commonly called the amtrac (amphibious tractor).4

During World War II, the United States built an astonishingly large number of amphibious ships and craft. Type Produced Landing Ship, Tank (LST) Landing Ship, Medium (LSM) Landing Ship, Medium, Rocket (LSM(R)) Land Craft, Infantry, Large (LCI(L)) Landing Craft, Support, Large (LCS(L)) Landing Craft, Tank (LCT) Landing Craft Vehicle, Personnel (LCVP) Landing Vehicle, Tracked (LVT) Year Operational 1943 Number Completed 1,054

1944

496

1945

62

1943

941

1945

130

1942

11,383

1942

23,397

1941

18,620

Source: Norman Friedman, U.S. Amphibious Ships and Craft: An Illustrated Design History (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2002), Appendix B.

The Test of War

The first American offensive of the war commenced with daylight landings on Guadalcanal and nearby islands in August 1942. This initial amphibious adventure indelibly taught the lesson followed thereafter in the Pacific theater: The target area must be isolated and local air and sea superiority established. In November 1942, the U.S. Navy and Army mounted landings on the coast of North Africa. The Army demanded quite different operational and tactical techniques because it correctly appreciated that in the Mediterranean and European arenas, Allied forces could never completely isolate the landing area. The Army therefore put a far higher premium on the methods to achieve tactical and operational surprise: night landings, no extensive air or sea bombardment around the invasion site, and little or no preassault naval bombardment by Pacific standards. To its ultimate cost, the Army proved disdainful of Pacific developments. From the soldiers' viewpoint, scale was the key experience, and no Pacific landing prior to late 1944 matched the size of North Africa, Sicily, Salerno, or Anzio. At Normandy, the Army discovered that the key was not the scale of the landings but the scale of the defenses. The initial landings also underscored a handicap that bedeviled all U.S. amphibious assaults during the war: Perfection was virtually impossible because assembling all the air, sea, and land elements and rigorously training them was never feasible. As Samuel Eliot Morison aptly commented, "It was as if a football coach were required to form a team from different parts of the country, brief them with a manual of plays, and, without even lining them up, send them against a championship opponent."5 The early operations acted as an audit of the prewar doctrine and techniques and ignited a supernova of creative energy that propelled both doctrine and techniques beyond imagining in five areas.

Intelligence and Deception

NAVAL INSTITUTE PHOTO ARCHIVE

Loading supplies at an English port in preparation for the Normandy invasion, early June 1944. In the foreground, jeeps are being driven onto LCMs while heavier supplies are delivered to the LSTs behind them.

Amphibious operations usually relied on information from code-breakers and captured documents. For example, intercepts disclosing Japanese intentions to build an airfield on Guadalcanal triggered that campaign and played a key role in selecting targets thereafter.6 For all of its contributions, however, code-breaking was no panacea. In fact, it inadvertently played a huge role in the heavy losses at Tarawa when intercepts led to the sinking of a Japanese ship carrying a replacement defensive garrison for the main island of less than half the strength of the unit that the Marines would confront. 7 It also failed to identify more than half the defenders at Luzon, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa and missed the first-class German 352nd Division defending Omaha Beach. The initial landings wanted for tactical intelligence on beaches. Aerial photographs and submarine periscope pictures partly filled this void. The August 1942 Makin Island raid marked a turning point when the designated landing beach proved completely unusable. That convinced the Navy's premier amphibious warrior, Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner, that he needed a specialized unit to survey the subsurface geography from the line of departure to the beach. Underwater Demolition Teams, or "frogmen," met this need and appeared in time for the Marshall Islands operation. 8 Intelligence needs also gave birth to an array of specialized units within both the Army (like the "Alamo Scouts") and the Marines (the Marine Amphibious Reconnaissance Company).9

Another tool much refined during the war in order to support amphibious warfare was deception. As Thaddeus Holt's The Deceivers: Allied Military Deception in the Second World War illuminates, Allied arts in this field were far more expansive and sophisticated than prior histories revealed and worked across the spectrum, from tactical to strategic. The grandest of the deceptions, christened Fortitude, exquisitely coordinated code-breaking, double agents, simulated units, and decoys in order to convince the German high command that the landings in Normandy were a feint. The needs of operational or tactical deception prompted the creation of "Beach Jumper" units in time for the invasion of Sicily. Their array of boats, visual and sound effects, and phony radio messages created false impressions of landings. Operation Olympic, the planned initial invasion of the Japanese home islands, featured a vast deception plan to confuse the Japanese, from the tactical to the strategic levels, about the timing and location of the invasion. 10
Command and Control

Failure of the Anglo-Free French expedition to capture the French West Africa port of Dakar in September 1940 demonstrated to the British that it was imprudent to command an amphibious operation from a large warship, such as a cruiser or battleship, that might be summoned away on another mission. They began converting two merchant ships for the purpose of providing a joint headquarters afloat. The U.S. Navy immediately recognized the value of such ships and placed the first class of them on order even before having any operational experience. Besides permitting direct consultation between sea and land officers, the ships maintained plots of the air, surface, and land situation. These invaluable vessels also performed fighter direction.11 Once the order to commence a landing was given, the lack of effective communications meant that wave after wave of landing craft would charge shorewardsometimes to the wrong beachheedless of any tactical or logistical considerations. This problem prompted the creation of a ladder of control vessels, prominently Patrol Craft (PCs) and Submarine Chasers (SCs). The PCs and SCs not only marked the line of departure, but they also regulated the flow of reinforcements and resupply. Perhaps the single most important contribution of this innovation came at Omaha Beach, where an unknown officer in a PC decided within an hour of the first landings to redirect subsequent waves away from the deadliest segment of the beach, fronting the Vierville drawa decision that proved vital to victory. Actually locating individual beach segments and guiding waves in became the function of Landing Craft, Control (LCCs). These boats were larger than an LCVP, heavily armed, and fitted with radar and radios.12

New Ships and Craft

The third level of development involved new species of landing ships and craft. This is largely a story of American designers transforming British concepts into hulls. The single most compelling challenge emerged immediately after Dunkirk: transporting a tactically significant number of tanks and depositing them in good order on a beach in northern Europe. The British swiftly devised Landing Craft, Tanks (LCTs) that generally carried three to five tanks. They also looked to something larger and invented the well-decked Landing Ship, Dock (LSD), effectively a powered dry dock capable of hauling tanks already loaded in landing craft. This proved to be a fruitful long-term concept, but too sophisticated for mass production. An American engineer, John Niedermair, conceived the amazingly versatile but simple, blocky, and plodding Landing Ship, Tank (LST) that proved the linchpin of landings from 1943 onward.13 A British specification for a smaller vessel to carry a raiding party gave rise to the Landing Craft, Infantry, Large (LCI(L)). It evolved into a craft that could lift a rifle company and deliver it to the beach via gangways on each side of the bow (although late models featured ramps). American designers then created the Landing Ship, Medium (LSM), essentially an enlarged LCT able to keep pace with the LCI. 14 When the Marines examined the problem of attacking Tarawa Atoll in the Gilberts, they faced the challenge of breasting the fringing coral reef and for the first time intentionally confronting formidable beach defenses. The LVT could vault the reef, but the available vehicles, conceived strictly as amphibious motor transport, needed much more armament and armor to convert them into assault vehicles. Frantic efforts readied just enough of them to make the costly but successful assault on the main island of Betio. From that operation forward, the LVT was reborn as an assault vehicle. Moreover, LVT hulls were converted into amphibious light tanks to escort troop carriers and support Marines beyond the beach.15

The Amphibious Revolution

NAVAL INSTITUTE PHOTO ARCHIVE

Troops of General Robert L. Eichelberger's 8th Army wade ashore from an LCI at Luzon, 29 January 1945. This photograph clearly shows the side ramps used for egress.

Prewar exercises had exposed the need for a truck fleet to clear supplies off the landing beach. Although the Navy explored the idea of a swimming truck (not as a cargo carrier from ships but as a means of getting enough trucks ashore promptly) it was the Army that developed an amphibious version of the standard 21/2-ton truck. This became the famous "Duck" (a coinage playing off the official designation of DUKW). Like the LVT, the DUKW was a modest and slow swimmer and so small it could not carry a standard cargo-net load from a ship.16

Fire Support

History furnished many examples prior to 1939 of warships supporting amphibious assaults with naval gunfire. During World War II, it played key roles in the success of assault landings, perhaps most conspicuously at Sicily, Salerno, and Normandy. Moreover, the effectiveness of naval gunfire grew by leaps and bounds during the war primarily due to the creation of observation parties landing and advancing with the troops and outfitted with radios capable of calling for and adjusting fire. This enormously extended the reach and accuracy of naval gunfire. The only serious shortcoming was that the relatively flat trajectory of ship-mounted guns made them ineffective against reverse slopes.17

American and British officers recognized before World War II that pinpoint firepower applied from close-in would be essential to overpower beach defenses. Even early landing craft were routinely fitted with machine guns for this purpose.18

NAVAL INSTITUTE PHOTO ARCHIVE

LVTs, or amtracs, carrying the first wave of Marines toward the Iwo Jima shore, 19 February 1945. Although slower than the more ubiquitous LCVP, or Higgins boat, the amtrac could cross coral reefs and, instead of having to stop at the water's edge to unload its occupants or supplies, could proceed inland.

A converted Higgins design fitted with machine guns and later rockets, the Landing Craft, Support, Small (LCS(S)) debuted in North Africa. 19 They proved useful, but officers recognized the need for something heavier. In the Southwest Pacific theater, the Navy improvised, using a converted LCI(L) hull to fill this gap in 1943. Ever more sophisticated versions appeared as the war progressed. The ultimate product mounted a 3-inch/50caliber gun and two 40mm mounts, supported by 20mm guns and rockets, designated Landing Craft, Support, Large (LCS(L)). Success with the LCI(L) naturally led to mounting a 5-inch/38-caliber mount and progressively more sophisticated rocket batteries on Landing Ship, Medium hulls. 20 Too unstable to accept a heavy armament, the American LCT became the odd man out in the fire-support role. Rocket-armed LCTs proved a decidedly limited success because the whole vessel had to be maneuvered to aim the rockets and there was no effective ranging method. The LCTs reached their pinnacle in the fire-support role at Normandy, where they appeared not only as rocket launchers but also in up-armored versions carrying M-4 Sherman tanks to provide high-velocity direct-fire support while still others served as platforms for the standard U.S. Army M-7 self-propelled 105mm howitzer in the low-velocity direct-fire role.21

Steps Toward Victory

Major Allied Amphibious Operations of World War II

Unloading

1940 April 14: British and French troops land in Norway to aid the Norwegians in response to the German invasion of 9 April. 1942 August 7: In the first offensive by U.S. forces in the Pacific, Marines land on Guadalcanal (Solomon Islands) to prevent the Japanese from advancing farther south toward Australia. August 19: Canadians and British assault Dieppe (Operation Jubilee) in a probing operation to test German defenses along the French coast. November 8: Operation Torch, the invasion of Vichy French-held North Africa, serves as the baptism of fire for green U.S. troops in the Mediterranean theater. 1943 May 11: U.S. and Canadians land in the Aleutians to recapture the islands taken by Japan in June 1942. June 20: U.S. forces invade New Georgia in the central Solomons (Operation Cartwheel) to isolate and neutralize Rabaul, the main Japanese base in the area. July 10: U.S. and British troops land in Sicily (Operation Husky) in preparation for invasion of the Italian mainland. September 3: Allies invade Italy near Reggio di Calabria (Operation Baytown) as part of a pincer movement across the Strait of Messina that included landings at Salerno. September 9: Allies land at Salerno (Operation Avalanche) following the Italian surrender of 8 September. Expecting an unopposed landing, they are nearly driven into the sea by a German counterattack. November 20: The invasion of Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands opens the way for U.S. forces to start their drive across the central Pacific. 1944 January 22: Allies land at Anzio (Operation Shingle) in an attempt to break the deadlock in Italy and capture Rome. January 31: U.S. forces invade the Marshall Islands, part of the strategic defensive perimeter defending Japan, and force the Japanese fleet to flee Truk. April 22: General Douglas MacArthur's forces

Of all the difficulties highlighted in early operations, probably none produced more ill-tempered comment than the chaotic morass that landings generated on the beach. In retrospect, the miserly initial provision for control, manpower, and equipment was ludicrous. Gradually, doctrine evolved to provide a beach master of at least commander rank to boss the shore; vastly expanded work parties of sailors, Marines, or soldiers; and palletloaded supplies to ease handling. Another fruitful technique first used at Empress Augustus Bay at Bougainville was restricting sharply the amount of supplies loaded on transports.22
Milestones

How then did all these developments fit into the chronology of World War II? The German conquest of Western Europe created a flood of fresh converts to the heretofore lonely and despised church of amphibious warfare, which had been ministered by U.S. Marine Corps and Navy officers between the wars. More-or-less successful small raids balanced failure at Dakar. Between May and November 1942, British and American forces conducted successful landings at Madagascar, Guadalcanal, and North Africa that ruptured the orthodoxy of Gallipoli pessimism. The transforming year was 1943. The new landing ships and craft, such as the LST, LCI, and LCT, initially appeared in large numbers during the first half of that year. The repulse of an Italian and German armored counterattack at Gela on Sicily in July 1943 established the role of naval gunfire support. But Tarawa was the key turning point. It marked the fundamental amphibious-assault shift from flanking maneuvers aimed to avoid prepared defenses to storm landings straight into the teeth of those defenses. The best-remembered amphibious operation is D-Day, the Normandy landings on 6 June 1944. American soldiers paid a stiff price on Omaha Beach for Allied commanders ignoring the Pacific amphibious experience. But here they must be cleared from false charges. The main culprit was not the air and sea bombardment plans, per se; the duration and effectiveness of both were properly subordinated to the need for tactical surprise and to limit beach cratering in order to permit rapid inland movement of vehicles. Further, the Army actually requested a full complement of the specialized, odd-looking, and effective British assault armor, but the British simply lacked the resources to manufacture enough of the "funnies" for their ally. Thus, commanders' one truly culpable failure was leaving 300 LVTs to stand idle. Pacific experience highlighted that they could have enormously reduced casualties by transporting troops, under protection from small-arms fire, from the water's edge all the way to the seawall. Further, a night landing

may have lessened losses, but the ripple effect of that choice on the other beaches may have created other perils to the whole scheme. 23 The signal moment of 1944 arrived at mid-year in the Pacific when the combination of stupendous firepower and armored landing craft completely reversed the prewar conventional wisdom. American amphibious assaults were unstoppable, and the Japanese gave up even trying to defend at the water's edge. Thereafter, however, American commanders did not simply bludgeon NAVAL HISTORICAL CENTER their path forward. Perhaps the most This 1945 painting by Standish Backus depicts elegant and effective landing Higgins boats, the workhorse of World War II operation of the war occurred in July amphibious warfare, carrying the first wave of at Tinian. There, in an extraordinary, Marines ashore for occupation duty in Japan. The landing was tense since the Marines could not be daring stroke, the obvious and wellsure whether the Japanese would offer resistance or defended beaches were shunned in abide by the negotiated surrender terms. favor of tiny patches of shore on the northern coast. This was only feasible because of the extraordinary efficiency of U.S. amphibious technique. The unimaginable growth of amphibious warfare during World War II is illustrated by the contrast between the first U.S. operation and the proposed initial invasion of Japan in November 1945. Admiral Turner led only 51 vessels of the Amphibious Force South Pacific to Guadalcanal in August 1942, of which just 22 embarked approximately 19,000 Marines and their equipment. For Operation Olympic, Turner would have commanded some 2,700 ships and craft. This armada embarked simultaneously about 350,000 men (132/3 divisions plus support troops). Its vessels included hundreds of small combatants to provide fire support and control, hundreds more to haul tanks and vehicles, more than 500 LSTs, and attack transports and cargo ships in triple figures.24 Keeping pace with the astronomical increase in numbers was the quantum leap in every phase of technique. Amphibious warfare did not simply come of age during World War II; it transformed the very nature of how wars are fought. As practiced by U.S. forces, it was more revolutionary and enduring than the Blitzkrieg because it incorporated sea power as well as air and land arms. In fact, amphibious warfare proved the key to victory for the Western Allies, for every step

toward that goal began with a landing. The amphibious warfare revolution so comprehensively reversed military thinking that only five years later it permitted the Inchon landingarguably the single greatest U.S. military masterstroke of the 20th century. 1. George C. Dyer, The Amphibians Came to Conquer: The Story of Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner, Washington, D.C. Government Printing Office, 1971) p. 318 (hereafter, Dyer, The Amphibians Came to Conquer). back to article 2. See Generally Merrill L. Bartlett, Assault from the Sea: Essays on the History of Amphibious Warfare (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1985); Norman Friedman, U.S. Amphibious Ships and Craft: An Illustrated Design History (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2002), p. 6 (hereafter Friedman, U.S. Amphibious Ships and Craft); Dyer, The Amphibians Came to Conquer, pp. 208, 223-27. back to article 3. Friedman, U.S. Amphibious Ships and Craft, pp. 15, 23-65. back to article 4. Friedman, U.S. Amphibious Ships and Craft, pp. 99-100. back to article 5. Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Vol. VII, Aleutians Gilberts and Marshalls, April 1942 to April 1944 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1968) p. 88 (hereafter Morison and the individual volume).
back to article

6. Richard B. Frank, Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle (New York: Random House, 1990), pp. 35-36. back to article 7. Col. Joseph H. Alexander, USMC (Ret.), Utmost Savagery: The Three Days of Tarawa (New York: Ivy Books, 1995), pp. 41-42 (hereafter Alexander, Utmost Savagery). back to article 8. Dyer, The Amphibians Came to Conquer, p. 744. back to article 9. For a concise synopsis of these specialized intelligence units see Gordon L. Rottman, U.S. Special Warfare Units in the Pacific Theater 1941-45 (New York: Osprey Publishing, 2005). back to article 10. Thaddeus Holt, The Deceivers: Allied Military Deception in the Second World War (New York: Scribner, 2004), Chapters 8, 10, 16, especially, pp. 770-777; Morison, Vol. IX, Sicily, Salerno, Anzio, June 1943- June 1944, pp. 20n-21n, 172.
back to article

11. Friedman, U.S. Amphibious Ships and Craft, pp. 261-278. back to article 12. Friedman, U.S. Amphibious Ships and Craft, pp. 228-29, 278-283; Joseph Balkoski, Omaha Beach, D-Day, June 6, 1944 (Mechanicsburg, PA, Stackpole Books, 2004) p. 168 hereafter Balkoski, Omaha Beach). back to article 13. Friedman, U.S. Amphibious Ships and Craft, pp. 103, 111-27. back to article 14. Friedman, U.S. Amphibious Ships and Craft, pp. 138-148, 202. back to article 15. Friedman, U.S. Amphibious Ships and Craft, pp. 213-219; Alexander, Utmost Savagery, pp. 62-65. back to article 16. Friedman, U.S. Amphibious Ships and Craft, pp. 100-101 back to article 17. Morison, Vol. IX, Sicily, Salerno, Anzio, June 1943- June 1944 , pp. 103, 118-19, 122. back to article 18. Friedman, U.S. Amphibious Ships and Craft, p. 223. back to article 19. Friedman, U.S. Amphibious Ships and Craft, pp. 223-26. back to article 20. Friedman, U.S. Amphibious Ships and Craft, 223-226, 233-240, 246-253. back to
article

21. Friedman, U.S. Amphibious Ships and Craft, 227-228, 242, 246. back to article 22. Dyer, The Amphibians Came to Conquer, pp. 457-58, 745-46, 844, 883 1038-39; Morison, Vol. VI, Breaking the Bismarcks Barrier, 22 July 1942-1 May 1944 , pp. 289, 303-04. back to article 23. Balkoski, Omaha Beach, passim, provides an excellent discussion of planning. Steven Zaloga made the important discovery that contrary to long-standing belief, the Army requested British specialized armor in February 1944, with the results listed in the text. D-Day (1) Omaha Beach (New York: Osprey Publishing, 2003) pp. 21-30. Adrian R. Lewis provides a trenchant critique fixing the main flaw as failing to choose. back to article 24. Dyer, pp. 281-82, 1109; Richard B. Frank, Downfall: The End of the Japanese Empire (New York: Random House, 1999) pp. 118-122. back to article Mr. Frank is the author of Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle (Random House, 1990), and Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire (Random House, 1999).