soc.history.war.world-war-ii

On Mar 12, 5:45pm, Cubdriver
wrote:
> On Tue, 11 Mar 2008 13:27:47 -0400, Dave Anderer
> wrote:
>
> >Second, the Japanese had no real experience for staging an opposed
> >landing against a well-entrenched foe and no doctrine for naval fire
> >support
>
> Yes, in the Malaya landing, they basically put the troops in lifeboats
> and had the sailors row them ashore, or anyhow close enough to the
> beach so they could jump out and mostly wade ashore. They were lucky
> indeed that the British defenders were elsewhere (and had no doctrine
> either!).
>
Refer to Wake Island - 1st attempt (Dec11) there were only 450 men
from Special Naval
Landing force as assault element. On the island were about 400 men
from 1st Marine
Defense Battalion (actually about 1/2 of the battalion - had more
weapons than men to
use them) There were another 60 men (12 pilots, 49 EM (before
casualties) VMF211, 70 more
from Naval detachment and 6 more from Army (to refuel planes on way to
Philipines)
Add to that 1200 civilian contractors. US forces actually outnumbered
Japanese. 1st
attempt was beaten off with heavy losses (2 DD sunk with all hands, 3
CL, 2 DD, 1 AK
damaged by gunfire/bombs/strafing) Japanese commander was actually
prepared to run
destoyers aground and use crews to supplement assualt foreces

On 2nd attempt - there were some 1500 men in assualt force - There
were only about 200
marines available for beach defense and Japanese able to ground 2
patrol boats (old destroyer
used as transports), before Marines could react. Even then inflicted
heavy losses - on one
island Wilkes - 70 Marines supplemented by civilians wiped out a whole
Japanese company
of 100 men losing only 11 men (9 marine, 2 civilians)> Simply too
much ground and too many
Japanese to handle.