The U. S. invasion of the Palau Islands in September 1944 originally was considered a necessary element in General Douglas Mac Arthur’s recapture of the Philippine Islands en route to the Japanese homeland. Although military historians now consider this costly lodgment as probably unnecessary, the record of the air- support operations—U. S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Army Air Forces (USAAF)—provides a stop-time display of the array of aircraft used, the great variety of missions carried out, and the operational techniques developed to respond to Japanese defensive tactics.
During the August 1943 Quebec “Quadrant” Conference for the continued planning of Allied strategy, the Palaus, lying at the western end of the vast Micronesia chain, were designated as targets for invasion. The projected invasion date was December 1944, but it later was moved to September to protect the right flank of the northward advance. (See Map 1.) In the sequence of U. S. island-hopping, the operation occurred after the Gilberts (Tarawa), Marshalls (Kwajalein), and Marianas (Saipan- Guam) and before Iwo Jima and Okinawa. The invasion’s original objectives were to take out the Japanese air, sea, and land forces on Peleliu, Babelthuap, and Angaur and to secure anchorages at nearby Kossol Passage and Ulithi. Japanese aircraft operating from Peleliu were the main threat.1 (See insert to Map 1.)
Events leading to the invasion picked up momentum in March 1944. On 12 March, the invasion date was officially moved. The Fifth Fleet’s Task Force 58 (TF 58) was tasked with attacking the Palaus and collecting intelligence by photographic reconnaissance. On 29 March, TF 58 was moving toward the Palaus when it was spotted and then bombed by Japanese Betty bombers operating from Peleliu. Navy antiaircraft fire and protective air cover destroyed the bombers with no U. S. losses. The reaction of TF 58 to these annoyance bombings was immediate and violent. On 30 and 31 March, squadrons VT-10, VB-10, and VF-10 from the USS Enterprise (CV-6), flying TBM Avengers, SBD Dauntlesses, and F6F Hellcats, were joined by aircraft from other carrier squadrons and shot down or destroyed 160 Palau-based Japanese aircraft on the ground. Many naval and merchant marine vessels also were destroyed, all of this with few U. S. losses.3 These early air preparations, made more than five months before ground forces landed, in effect removed Japanese aircraft and local naval vessels that would have been a substantial factor in Japanese defense.
In early April, Lieutenant General Sadae Inoue brought the Kwantung Army’s 14th Division with accompanying tanks and artillery to join elements of the Japanese Naval Infantry in the Palau area group.4 Until September, despite poundings by Navy and Army Air Forces planes, mining, submarine patrols, and a warning from Japanese Imperial General Headquarters about the impending invasion, Inoue focused his defensive efforts on Babelthuap and the smaller island of Koror, the seat of the district headquarters, which he considered to be primary U. S. objectives. He also decided to send the 14th Division’s 2nd Regiment down to Peleliu with orders to expand and improve upon that island’s natural and man-made cave and bunker fortifications. Antiaircraft defenses were expanded throughout the islands. The weapons array (dual purpose for aerial defense and for direct fire against ground troops) included 7.7-mm. machine guns, 25-mm. twin cannon, and 37-mm., 75-mm., and 105-mm. guns. Invading U. S. troops would soon feel the effectiveness of the full range of Inoue’s preparations.
In May, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz’s Pacific Ocean Areas Headquarters issued warning order Stalemate to take all the Palaus, plus Yap and Ulithi. A revision, Stalemate II, issued on 7 July, dropped the big island of Babelthuap, estimated to have 25,000 defenders on easily defended terrain. Peleliu and Angaur would be primary objectives, with Yap and Ulithi to follow. The invasion force would be a two-division organization with the “Western Troops and Landing Force” commanded by Marine Major General Roy Geiger; his ground forces would be the “Old Breed” of the 1st Marine Division and the “Wildcats” of the Army’s 81st Division. D-Day would be 15 September.5
In August, TF 38’s SB2C Helldivers (which had replaced the Dauntlesses), TBM Avengers, and F6F Hellcats stepped up pre-invasion attacks. Just as they had in the earlier operations against Guam and Saipan, the carrier planes used 1,000-pound bombs, 500-pound bombs, and five-inch rockets. Napalm tanks were yet to come.6
With increasing frequency since June, more aircraft joined the attack, including the Fifth Air Force squadrons, flying long-range B-24 Liberators from their bases on New Guinea, and more B-24s from the Thirteenth Air Force, flying from Admiralty Islands, Noemfoor and Wakde.7 During the last week of August and the first week of September, more than 300 B-24s conducted nine major raids to drop 600 tons of explosives on Inoue’s cavehiding defenders.8 Also from Fifth Air Force in New Guinea, the reliable two-engine, twin-boomed P-38 Lightnings flew against the Palaus.9 These missions were the subject of some side interest. Lieutenant Colonel Charles Lindbergh, the national hero of 1927 who later was to be condemned for his apparent Nazi sympathies before World War II, flew as an observer and technical consultant with the 475th Fighter Squadron, and barely escaped destruction by a Japanese plane.10
As the 15 September invasion date approached, and the invasion fleet sailed from Guadalcanal, Third Fleet Commander Admiral William F. “Bull” Halsey, Jr., realized that the apparent lack of Japanese aircraft must mean that the Palaus could not pose an actual threat. On 13 September, Halsey recommended to Admiral Nimitz that the whole operation be canceled and invasion forces shifted to support the Philippines operations.11 Nimitz did not agree; he still saw a credible threat and particularly believed that the Peleliu airfield and Ulithi anchorage would be necessary for continued advance.12 In the terse assessment of Marine Corps historian Allan R. Millett, “ . . . once ordered, Stalemate moved forward of its own momentum, in part because Nimitz wanted no more confrontations with Mac Arthur.”13
Peleliu is six miles long, and the airfield occupied the flat southern end. The island’s backbone, a rugged lime-stone ridge, about 200 feet high and honeycombed with caves, was known to the natives as the Umurbrogol. U. S. Marines came to know it as “Bloody Nose Ridge.” Against this small, remote place, the process of amphibious operations went forward. Naval gunfire and aerial strikes began on 12 September, and Major General W. H. Rupertus, commanding the 1st Marine Division, earned himself a place in history when he said, “We’ll be through in three days. It might take only two.”14 As the operation developed, the 1st Marine Division carried out the primary actions while the Army’s “Wildcats” learned fast and Performed well in a lesser role. The performance of these ground units has been described in fine detail elsewhere, and their actions are presented here only to the extent that they generated and relate to air-support requirements.15
Peleliu’s assault beaches were directly west of the airfield at the bottom of the island. The 1st Division’s three regimental combat teams were to attack abreast: Colonel Herman H. Hanneken’s 7th Marines in the south. Colonel Harold D. Harris’s 5th in the center, and Colonel Lewis Chesty” Puller’s 1st on the upper flank. As the amphibious craft approached the beaches and for the next two days, the Japanese gave unexpectedly violent beachhead resistance with artillery, mortars, machine guns, and even a tank-infantry counterattack at the end of the first day. The 1st Marines turned north to the Umurbrogol, the 5th went straight ahead to start their advance across the fire- sprayed airfield, and the 7th began to move south; but by dark fewer than half of the D-Day objectives had been taken.16
Life magazine writer-artist Tom Lea, who landed with the first wave, provided a memorable description of how the air support appeared to the men on the ground:
“Immediately from out of the sun dive bombers plummeted with the sound of some huge ripping fabric, as if they were tearing holes in the sky itself. We watched the black eggs leave the plane bellies, and as the divers pulled out and soared, the 1,000-pounders blump into the jungle.
“The torpedo bombers ran down the sky in steep slants, releasing their multiple rockets with a terrifying whoosh, and at the end of their runs dropping whole nests of small black eggs that rattled in the air and roared as they tore into the earth. Finally came the fighters, whole squadrons diving in by sections, strafing. We watched the flaming orange path of their tracers while the air was filled to the bursting with the stuttering of their guns.”17
The Japanese then changed their defensive tactics. At Tarawa and at Kwajalein, they had used strong beachhead defenses and massed infantry “Banzai!” counterattacks. Beginning at Biak, and to an extent at Saipan, they anchored on prepared bunkers and layered the defense, allowing for prolonged “hold at all costs” resistance that made the attacker pay full price for digging them out.18 Successively, the 1st and 5th Marines and then elements of the 81st Division faced the caves and tunnels of the Umurbrogol. Air support was generous on Peleliu, but in the end footsoldiers had to use the “blind ’em-blast ’em- burn ’em” method of destroying the Japanese bunkers. The airstrip—the piece of Pacific island for which this whole operation was conducted—was fully overrun by the second day, but artillery placed high on the Umurbrogol made it a dangerous place for days to come. On the morning of 17 September, the 81st Division made assault landings on Angaur, just south of Peleliu, supported by 40 fighter bombers. By mid-morning on the 20th, a report stated that “organized resistance” had ended, and work began that day on an airfield. Meanwhile, the infantry continued the deadly business of eliminating the Japanese with demolition charges and flame throwers.19
By 26 September, the northern end of the Umurbrogol had been swept, but Marines there received strong defensive fires from the small island of Ngesebus, about 600 yards north across a shallow reef. Two days later, a strongly supported 3rd battalion and 5th Marines would take Ngesebus. In the annals of Marine Corps aviation, Ngesebus is noted as the first operation in which air support for a Marine landing was furnished exclusively by Marine Corps planes. The missions were flown by Corsairs from Marine Fighter Squadron (VMF)-114, which had arrived just two days earlier.20 (It would be joined by another Corsair squadron, VMF-122, by 1 October.) During this small operation the last 200-yard advance of the assault wave was covered by continuous strafing parallel to and on the beaches, and that support continued until the leading wave was 30 yards from the shoreline. U. S. forces suffered no casualties crossing the beach. A captured Japanese commander reported that the strafing was his most terrifying war experience; the Japanese had no opportunity to defend the beaches.21
By the end of September, all of Peleliu had been captured except for a stronghold on the middle of the Umurbrogol heights. Eventually reduced to an area one- half-mile long and one-quarter-mile wide, the Japanese held out until the Japanese commander shot himself on 24 November, almost two and a half months after the 1st Marines came ashore. For the next weeks, Marine aviators could go on a strike mission against the Umurbrogol and return to the field without retracting their landing gear. They could be over the caves and tunnels, about 1,000 yards from the strip, in 15 seconds.22 An account of these determined but frustrating efforts was furnished by author and historian Stanley Falk:
“They plastered the Japanese positions with bombs and napalm and strafed them freely, but rarely managed to inflict too much damage. They tried steepangled glide-bombing and low-level treetop attacks. They dropped 500- and 1,000-pound bombs. They fired rockets and machine guns. And above all, they tried to burn out the Japanese with thousands of gallons of napalm. The latter tactic was particularly disappointing, since everyone had been led to believe that it would be irresistible.”23
To counter Falk’s negative account, we must balance the fact that U. S. airpower reportedly had completely eliminated any resistance from Japanese aircraft; that the tactical aircraft had driven the enemy to caves and bunkers; and that increasingly effective aerial observer techniques brought quick attack on any visible activity. Then, too, the standout effectiveness of close support at Ngesebus would prove a model for the future. By way of lessons learned, the Americans now better understood the nature of cave warfare, and changes were made in organizations and equipment. Fire support coordination centers were developed to tie in close-air support, naval gunfire, and artillery.24 And yet, in his concise and objective assessment of air support, historian Frank O. Hough was constrained to write:
“Yet it would be difficult to substantiate a report that all of this fine work, with the conspicuous exception of Ngesebus, had any important tactical effect on the out-come of the campaign or the duration of the fighting.”25
The battered and exhausted 1st Marine Division was relieved by the 81st Division in mid-October, and finally departed on 30 October. Even before the Marines left, however, four Army divisions of the MacArthur forces had moved onto Leyte on 20 October.26 That action directly contributed to the obscurity of the savage events on Peleliu. It was, in the words of author Allan R. Millett, “overshadowed by MacArthur’s Leyte landings and fought outside the boundaries of both military and public awareness.”27
With the departure of the Marine division, the airfield was used to support the 81st Division, and Marine Air Group 11 flew antisubmarine, combat air patrols, routine transport requirements, and attacks against the Japanese that remained on Babelthuap and Koror.28 Beginning in October, it was used as an emergency landing field and as a base for Squadron VT-18 from the USS Intrepid (CV- ll).29 Such missions continued on into 1945, but actions from Angaur and Peleliu phased out as squadrons moved their support to Okinawa.
The capture of Angaur and the eventual construction and use of the airfield proved to be of marginal significance. Army engineers had prepared the field for its first landings by mid-October. By November, the USAAF Seventh Air Force’s heavy bombers—the B-24s of squadrons 854, 865, 866, and 877 of the 494th Bomb Group— began to fly missions against Babelthuap and Koror and against targets in the Philippines.30 Angaur’s role as an operating base and staging area in early 1945 has been judged useful but “hardly essential.”31
On Babelthuap, about 25,000 Japanese stood isolated and harmless until the final capitulation. To the south, the taking of Angaur, Peleliu, and Ngesebus had cost the United States nearly 2,000 dead and 8,000 wounded.32 In the absence of Japanese air opposition, and as their capability for strong ground antiaircraft gradually was eliminated, U. S. losses in aircraft and crews were not dramatic in comparison with other Pacific events.
The initial goal of protecting MacArthur’s flank for the invasion of the Philippines by securing the Palaus clearly was overtaken by events. The early, bedrock assessment by historian Samuel Eliot Morison was that:
“It would take more arguments than this writer can muster to prove that Operation Stalemate II was necessary, or that the advantages were worth the cost. Admiral Halsey had the right idea; they should have been bypassed . . . ”33
But to those who now take a look back, the historical write-off by Morison and others, even if realistic, presents an unhappy outcome. Even as Hough wrote for publication in 1950, he said the doubts raised by others relegated the Palaus to a status of “among the least known and least understood of the entire war.” The prevalence of these doubts was, in his poignant phrase, “unfortunate to the memory of the men who fought and died there.”34 In 1944, Time magazine also published the following tribute:
“Peleliu is a horrible place . . . incomparably worse than Guam in its bloodiness, terror, and climate and the incomprehensible tenacity of the Japanese. For sheer brutality and fatigue, I think it surpasses anything yet seen in the Pacific . . . ”35
The Palaus Updated
The Palaus, currently called the Republic of Palau, are again a matter of special consideration in the U.S. Pacific Ocean strategy. The question is whether elements of the U. S. defense forces could be stationed in the Palaus if they are equipped with nuclear weapons. The possibility that in 1991 the United States might be denied the use of Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base in the Philippines calls attention to these alternative sites.
In 1947, the vast area of Micronesia, roughly the breadth of the United States—extending from the Marshall Islands (Bikini, Eniwetok) in the east to the Western Carolines in the west, where the Palaus are only some 600 miles from the Philippines—were declared by the United Nations to be the United States Trust Territories. Palau adopted its constitution in 1980 as the Republic of Palau. In November 1986, the United States and the government of Palau signed a Compact of Free Association that would give full responsibility for its defense to the United States. The United States would have been allowed to use certain lands for military purposes and could have invited military forces from other nations to use the same lands. Before Palau pulled out of the talks in September 1988, a 75% majority of Palau’s citizens still had to approve the Compact. The primary issue at hand was the South Pacific Nuclear-Free Zone Treaty, one of a number of proposals for regional nuclear-free zones, and whether the United States would have agreed to it.
The Palaus Predicted: 1921
In any account of the 1944 invasion of the Palaus, it is obligatory to remind a new generation of readers that in 1921 a Marine Corps staff planner prepared for the contingency of a war with Japan.1 He predicted that Japan would strike first, that seizure of bases in the Pacific would require assault against heavily defended beaches, and he outlined with accuracy the tactics and supporting logistics that would be required.
The author, Major Earl H. “Pete” Ellis, titled his 50,000- word report “Advanced Base Operations in Micronesia.” After submitting the report, Ellis in May 1921 departed on a lengthy reconnaissance in the guise of a U. S. businessman. With the sanction of Marine Corps Commandant John A. Lejeune, Ellis covered the Marshall and Caroline Islands and several locations in Japan. In 1923, Ellis died in the Japanese-held Palau Islands under circumstances that are still recorded as “mysterious.”
Rolfe L. Hillman III
1. Ronald H. Spector, Eagle Against the Sun (New York: Free Press, 1985), pp. 276-278; and Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II (15 vols.), Vol. 12, Leyte (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1953), p. 32.
2. Morison, op. cit., Vol. 8, New Guinea and the Marianas, p. 9.
3. Edward P. Stafford, USN, The Big E (New York: Random House, 1962), pp. 322-328. Comprehensive accounts of the organization and operations of Navy carrier task forces arc in C. G. Reynolds, The Fast Carriers (New York: McGraw Hill, 1962) and James H. and William M. Belote, Titans of the Sea (New York: Harper & Row, 1975).
4. Harry A. Gailey, Peleliu 1944 (Annapolis, MD: Nautical and Aviation Publishing Co. of America, 1983), pp. 35-51.
5. Allan R. Millett, Semper Fidelis: The History of the United States Marine Corps (New York: Macmillan, 1980), p. 420, and Frank O. Hough, The Assault on Peleliu (Washington, D. C.: Historical Division, Headquarters U. S. Marine Corps, 1950), pp. 15-18.
6. Edwin H. Simmons, USMC (Ret.), The History of the United States Marine Corps: The First Two Hundred Years, 1775-1975 (New York: Viking Press. 1976), p. 195.
7. Robert Ross Smith, U. S. Army in World War II (20 vols.). The War in the Pacific: Approach to the Philippines (Washington, D. C.: Department of the Army, Office of the Chief of Military History, 1953), p. 279.
8. Stanley Falk, Bloodiest Victory: Palaus (New York: Ballentine Books, 1974), p. 35.
9. Ibid., loc. cit.
10. Walter S. Ross, The Last Hero: Charles A. Lindbergh (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), p. 330.
11. Adm. William F. Halsey, USN, (Ret.), and LCdr. J. Bryan III, Admiral Halsey’s Story (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1947), p. 200.
12. Smith, op. cit., p. 492.
13. Millett, op. cit., p. 420.
14. Rafael Steinberg, Island Fighting (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1978), p. 174.
15. See especially the official U. S. Marine Corps history by Hough, op. cit. and the more recent by Gailey, op. cit.
16. See the concise account in Simmons, op. cit., p. 92.
17. Tom Lea, Peleliu Landing (El Paso, TX: Carl Herzog, 1945), p. 32. A series of Lea’s starkly graphic paintings of the ground action are in Steinberg, op. cit.
18. Falk, op. cit., p. 16.
19. See especially the account in Gailey, op. cit., pp. 109-113.
20. Details of the first uses of the Peleliu airfield are found in Hough, op. cit., pp. 123-125, and Gailey, op. cit., pp. 154-155. A complete account of the Marine Corps’s staging of units into Peleliu, at the invasion and subsequently, is in Robert Sherrod, History of Marine Corps Aviation in World War II (Baltimore, MD: Nautical & Aviation Pub. Co., 1952), pp. 256-257, and Appendix IX, Unit Sketches.
21. Hough, op. cit., p. 124, footnote 56.
22. Capt. Donald A. Stauffer, “Marine Aviation at Peleliu,” Marine Corps Gazette, Feb. 1945, p. 18.
23. Falk, op. cit., p. 143.
24. Millett, op. cit., p. 428.
25. In Hough, op. cit., Appendix E, Aviation at Peleliu, pp. 198-199.
26. Spector, op. cit., pp. 426-427.
27. Millett, op. cit., p. 428.
28. Sherrod, op. cit.. p. 257
29. Charlcs L. Scrivener, TBM/TBF Avenger in Action (Carrollton, TX: Squadron/Signal Publications, 1987), p. 21.
30. Kenn C. Rust, Seventh Air Force (Temple City, CA: Historical Aviation Album. 1978), p. 23.
31. Falk, op. cit., p. 157
32. Hough, op. cit., p. 183.
33. Morison, Leyte, p. 47, Spector agrees, op. cit., p. 421.
34. Hough, op. cit., p. 179.
35. Robert Martin, Time, 16 October 1944.
1. Lt. Col. John J. Reber, USMC "Pete Ellis: Amphibious Warfare Prophet," U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, November 1977, pp. 53-64. A good summary is in Allan R. Milieu's Semper Fidelis (New York: Macmillan, 1980), pp. 325-326.