Wars not only bring cruelty and heroism, victories and defeats. They speed discoveries of all sorts, both terrible and benign. And they produce miracles which in the minds of military planners suggest new ideas about future wars.
Among these new ideas are often a few hoaxes and grand illusions. One of the biggest in recent times is that of the Pushbutton War, a concept that began to gain vogue in the afterglow of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and which seems to have a special fascination for many Americans. In my opinion the Pushbutton War ranks with the Mississippi Bubble, the Loch Ness Monster, and the Cardiff Giant.
The hoax has been made doubly effective in the United States because there seems to be so much to support it in the shadowland where science and fancy meet, a region always attractive to romantic artists and story-tellers; and secondly, because it appeals to one of our most admirable traits— the ability to make newer and better products than others.
This ability to create new marvels has helped to make our nation, but it could also help to break it. Unless the imagination that creates machines has the ability to appreciate them fully, to see the pitfalls as well as the potentialities, those same machines can induce a mental disease as surely as some bacteria can poison blood. Call it anything you like—“Pushbutton Philia” or “Jules Verne Neurosis.”
Probably the worst of all the effects of this disease are in the realm of morals. It dresses up the philosophy of “Let George Do It” in an attractive cellophane wrapper that smacks of modern progress. When “George” is depicted as a feelingless robot or rocket, or a force made up mainly of machines, the temptation to hand the job over to him can be made almost irresistible.
Any substitute for the fighting man that seems capable of doing our dirty work without peril or sacrifice is bound to be popular until that moment of terrible disillusionment when it is proved a fraud. At that moment, and at the eleventh hour, and after nearly everyone had put faith in “George” and based all our plans on him, the fighting man has to take over.
Then it can truly be said to have done more harm than good. For every psychiatrist and every troop leader knows that disillusionment is a primary cause of demoralization. And demoralization is a primary cause of defeat. The decline and fall of the Roman Empire came after utterly cynical mercenaries were sent to do the job once done by Empire troops. In many ways the modern search for military substitutes is just a search for another mercenary.
Regrettable though it may be, you just can’t buy the kind of talent needed to prevent a great nation from becoming a has been. A workable Maginot Line will never be put on the market.
The Pearl Harbor and Guadalcanal of the next war could be anywhere. They could start in Alaska. They could open with a riot in Downtown Manhattan. They could be launched by a bombardment, atomic or otherwise, of one or more of our West Coast cities. Or we could find that our first job was to rush a force to a foreign shore to retrieve American hostages held by an aggressor on the rampage.
In the face of these truths some reputable spokesmen have made so bold as to say: “Leave it all to airpower.” Or “The next war will be won by rockets, robots, and guided missiles.” Or “Atomic bombs will have decided everything in a matter of hours.” Or “Naval power and naval beachheads belong to the ancient past. The beachhead of the future will be the captured enemy airfield.”
What are the facts?
If we went to war tomorrow the pack mule of our strategic airpower would be slightly improved models of World War II bombers with operating radii of about 2,000 miles or less. To be effective against most foreign targets they would need foreign bases. Most of these bases are not now in our possession. Many of them might be in enemy hands from the very first day of the war.
Could these foreign bases be seized, held, and supplied by airpower alone? The facts argue convincingly that they could not. A great many partners in the components of land, sea, and air warfare would have to combine to take those bases and hold them against all attempts to throw us out. I shall discuss the role of the other partners shortly, but first I should like to dwell on one whose job I am most familiar with—-the Marine. In the easy-does-it type of global thinking so current these days there are many gaps to be filled in and one of the most important gaps is left to the Marine Corps.
A Marine’s main job is amphibious warfare. That is the chief mission assigned to the Corps by the National Security Act of 1947. From constant usage in the last few years the phrases “amphibious warfare” and “amphibious forces” have been shorn of much of their real meaning for many Americans. To some, for example, the former phrase simply means a campaign that starts with a trip in smallcraft from ship to shore. To some the latter means any expedition of land units engaged in any overseas campaign.
Actually both phrases refer to the result of a very complicated blending of naval, air, shipbuilding, engineering, infantry, artillery and chemical warfare techniques by which an assault force has been able to overcome the barriers of ocean, reef, surf, swamp and sand and—against strong opposition—win a perimeter ashore. Sometimes a small beachhead suffices for this perimeter; say a beachhead which includes an airfield. But often it has been necessary to keep the defender off balance by pursuing his forces far inland.
Techniques for successful amphibious campaigns took years to develop. Powerful amphibious forces are still a comparative rarity among the nations of the world. Though many other nations have navies, and some have marines, no other nation has a Navy-Fleet Marine Force team like our own, which can command all the oceanic approaches to all the coasts of all the continents and has the additional power of landing on those coasts and/or the islands off those coasts. The significance of this capability was borne out by all our landings in the Pacific, North Africa, the Mediterranean, and France. And the significance of not having this capability has been as heavily underlined in recent history.
It was for lack of an equivalent to our Fleet Marine Force that the British were unable to consolidate landwards their naval conquest of the harbor of Narvik. It was the same sort of deficiency that prevented the Germans from making a landing in England across the English Channel.
Only Japan’s mastery of some of the basic problems of amphibious assault enabled her to fan out in so many directions over water to grab a short-lived war empire that ranged from the Philippines, the Malay Peninsula, and the Dutch East Indies as far east as the Marshall and Gilbert Islands. And only our own much more complete mastery of this type of warfare enabled us to defeat the Japanese and win the islands from which our B-29’s struck at their homeland.
The Marine Corps has passed on, in its planning and thinking, to many improvements on the methods used in the last war. But until the power and ranges of new weapons have passed far beyond their present capacities we know we cannot ignore certain rules of air and sea logistics which the last war reemphasized. Not when the planes bearing our air power are destined for some time to have very much the same limitations. Not when amphibious techniques which put all our weapons in the global- range class may have to be used again under very much the same circumstances.
Put it this way. There is no plane, rocket, guided missile, artillery piece, mortar, rifle, or machine gun which has a global range. There will be none in the foreseeable future. Yet when one or more of these weapons are carried forward by the long arm of our amphibious striking power thousands of square miles of the earth’s surface are suddenly moved into their range. All the coasts of all the continents become potential target areas for our naval rifles, rockets, carrier aviation, artillery, and even for the infantrymen’s rifles and machine guns. A 500- mile-wide band inside all the coasts of all the continents becomes a potential target area for our carrier aircraft. A series of 2,000- mile-radius arcs, reaching inland from all the peripheral islands on all the continental coasts, define the potential target area of our strategic air power. The preponderance of these islands is such that almost anywhere in the world can be reached by one of these arcs.
In addition, as we proved in Europe, the Philippines and Okinawa, we have developed the means of building up our beachheads to provide momentum for launching land armies and air power far inland.
Our amphibious power is, in fact, a pair of globe-trotting boots that can be slipped onto all our weapons. Its capacity to extend their ranges for thousands of miles is not a flight of fancy or a bit of optimistic conjecture. It is cold fact. It has been tested over and over again in battle. It is the result of generations of increasing coordination between the different arms; so before we go overboard about new conceptions of warfare, and before I answer in detail the arguments of those who say we’ll never need it again, it is well to take a little closer look at the one global weapon already in our possession.
Experiments in teamwork and the crossing of a classic no-man’s-land are the two big stories behind the creation of American amphibious doctrine. How this came about is too long-drawn out to recount here, but there are themes in it of abiding value to all Americans.
Various degrees of coordination between different arms goes back as far as the use of the spear in one hand and the shield in the other. The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries brought integration among infantry, artillery, and armored vehicles in the land armies, and among such sea weapons as the naval rifle (surface ships), torpedoes (surface and sub-surface), and bombs and rockets (surface and air).
Until 1932, however, the advance of teamwork among the arms had always stopped abruptly at the barriers that divided the responsibilities of the Army from those of the Navy. Those barriers were the reefs, surf, shores, swamps and beaches where the land and sea joined. No army had ever mastered the military problems of passing through these barriers. Though the American Navy-Marine Corps team, in 179 landings since 1776, had made some progress with the problems, not all of them had been solved. So those barriers remained the natural division wall between land and sea forces all over the world. On either side stood the men, weapons and teams that comprised the two. The Army had its own subordinate air arm. And the Navy its fleet aircraft.
Starting in 1932 the Navy and Marine Corps went all out to overcome three deficiencies that still prevented the Corps from bursting through the barriers. These deficiencies were:
1. The Corps did not possess landing craft and amphibious shipping capable of carrying men and equipment over reefs, through surf and onto a beach-head, against heavy opposition. Its landing doctrine was based on highly vulnerable ships’ boats regularly carried aboard naval vessels.
2. It did not have a well-worked out amphibious technique for disembarking men, weapons, equipment and supplies under fire.
3. It was not an integral part of the fleet.
The Fleet Marine Force resulted from correcting these deficiencies. A unique creation, and without an exact parallel anywhere, the Fleet Marine Force is a ready striking arm based on closely-knit doctrines of air support, naval gunfire support, attack transports, armored amphibious vehicles, and all the other devices and landing craft for crossing reefs, surf, swamps, and beaches against strong opposition.
In the decade between 1932 and Pearl Harbor, the Corps, with the collaboration of the Navy and American industry, overcame its deficiencies and solved the problem of beach-head assault. It thus fell to the Navy and the Corps to cross the no-man’s- land that had separated the organization of armies and navies. Although it was the Marines’ good fortune to inspire a new teamwork and cooperation among the services, it has not had a monopoly on it, however. Quite the contrary. The crossing of the no-man’s-land set in motion a chain-reaction in favor of teamwork that rose to a climax during the last war.
It was the Air-Armor Team that put General Patton’s Third Army on the rampage in Europe. It was the Air-Naval- Ground Team that got Allied armies ashore in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, Normandy, and Southern France in strength sufficient to defeat all opposition. It was the Air- Naval-Ground Team that brought the conquest of the Marianas, Philippines, and Ryukyus and poised our heavy bombers over Japan.
All these victories were truly notable. They marked this nation’s coming-of-age as a global power, a power that had learned to wrap, pack, and stow on shipboard, and to deliver from shipboard, the land, sea, and air strength necessary to overwhelm strong naval, ground, and land-based air forces. For whenever we struck out of range of our own land-based tactical air power, as we did in the Western Pacific, the margin of difference was made up brilliantly by carrier aviation.
The team principle unified the armed forces in the heat of many battles and in the comradeship of many victories long before the drive for unification reached the halls of Congress. I am convinced that the lessons it taught us in the last war provided the impetus behind the will of Congress and the American people that resulted in the National Security Act of 1947.
I am also convinced that this team principle makes an enormous amount of sense to several million veterans of the last war who fought at the level of landing craft coxswains, tankmen, artillerymen, riflemen, machine-gunners, assault engineers, mortar- men, anti-aircraft gunners, signalmen, and crews of tactical and strategic air squadrons.
Now let’s deal with the arguments that our amphibious forces and our fighting teams are obsolete conceptions—that there is a “George” who can do what they did better than they did it, and at a cheaper price in human life.
Let us suppose that we were attacked by an Eurasian coalition. Let us suppose it was our job to carry out quick and decisive counter-measures along the lines suggested by General George C. Marshall when, in 1945, in his report as Chief of Staff of the Army, he said:
“If this nation is ever again at war, suffering as Britain did in this war the disastrous attacks of rocket-propelled weapons with explosive power like our own atomic bomb, it will bleed and suffer perhaps to the point of annihilation, unless we can move armies of men into the enemy’s bases of operations and seize the sites from which he launches his attacks.”
Could such missions be carried out exclusively by airpower? Could they be carried out exclusively by airpower and airborne troops?
Decisive negative answers to both questions can be found in a factual analysis of the problems involved in seizing and holding distant, strongly-defended bases. A look at the map will show that only a portion of the advance bases needed to blanket Eurasia with 2,000-mile-radius arcs, in other words to reach all of Eurasia with our long range airpower, could be expected to be in friendly hands at the outbreak of hostilities. Several advance bases in several sectors of the continental periphery would have to be taken. Probably they would have to be taken from the enemy and/or his satellites. Once taken, they would have to be prepared for launching a major aerial offensive. And they would have to be quickly fortified against countermeasures.
Let’s get down to cases. Island “X” must be captured in a hurry. It is 150 miles off the Southern Eurasian Coast. It is about 6,000 miles southeast of New York. It is protected by a division and a half of enemy troops. To overcome the defenders, to build the required air and ground installations, to set up and man defenses, and to provide initial supplies, we conclude that 263,000 men and 800,000 tons of cargo must be shipped 6,000 miles.
Can we do it by air? For the cargo alone it would require 80,000 transport planes manned by 960,000 men plus 712 seagoing tankers manned by 39,160 men to provide gas at some intermediate place along the route. Ignore for a moment the fact that we have nothing like a fleet of 80,000 transport planes to do this job. But take note that the total additional manpower needed for airlifting this cargo is the staggering figure of 999,160. Almost a million men. Whereas 352 surface ships manned by 24,000 men or less could carry the same load.
That’s only the cargo problem. How about airlifting those 263,000 men? Existing transport facilities make that about sixteen times out of the question, as will soon be demonstrated in detail. However, I don’t wish to make the problem too difficult. That 263,000 figure is all-embracive. It includes personnel for airfield, road, and construction engineering; for base defense, transport, and service battalions; for medical units, ammunition dumps, and supply depots. Conceivably all these troops will not be needed during the assault phase and before the beach-head has been won.
How about, then, air-lifting the assault divisions? Three divisions, exclusive of a reserve to be committed later, would be a minimum for tackling the defender’s division and a half. But before we can talk about airlifting three divisions we had better see how we are fixed for air-lifting one division.
The new Airborne Division, recently approved by the Department of the Army, has a strength of 16,569 men. Its three airborne infantry regiments are to be trained and equipped on a dual basis so that they can function interchangeably as parachute or gliderborne infantry. The best study of its potentialities and limitations that I have seen appeared recently in Infantry Journal in the form of a two-installment article, “Airborne On Paper Wings,” jointly authored by Major Donald T. Kellett and Major William Friedman.
The authors state:
“To airlift one new 11,000,000 pound airborne division completely by purely military air facilities, approximately 910 C-82 aircraft or 280 C-82 aircraft, 310 11,000-pound gliders and 242 8,000-pound lift gliders (excluding tow planes) will be required. This is just about double the number of troop-carrier aircraft now authorized by the Air Forces.
“‘The classical conception of the future employment of the airborne division is that of a long flight to a foreign destination, then the dropping of the division and then its accomplishment of a strategic mission. The action includes the air landing of reinforcements, supporting equipment and ‘tail,’ the evacuation of wounded, and ultimately, the evacuation of the entire division by air.
“The implications of this concept as to aircraft are tremendous. For the forseeable future, there is no indication that such a strategic operation would be over friendly territory all the way. Therefore, the operation could not be covered by friendly ground anti-aircraft support, and possibly not by fighter aircraft cover in its final deployment . . . the troop carriers for this hypothetical airborne operation must be more than personnel or cargo carriers. They would require the armament and fire power of Superfortresses.
“Obviously,” say the authors, “the United States has no such aircraft at the present time.” The conclusions are apparent. Under present conditions the strategic employment of even one airborne division is impossible. It is, in fact, problematical whether it would be possible to employ even a part of an air-borne division on a tactical, and not a strategical mission.
The formation of this new Airborne Division is, nevertheless, an achievement of importance. Lifting it into the air, as the authors point out, is within the air transport capabilities of the country at the present time. It would require borrowing aircraft from the commercial airlines and pooling with those available from the Troop Carrier and Air Transport Commands. It would be proportionately benefited by a speedup in production of the 16,000-pound lift glider. But its employment for distant overseas missions, against strong opposition, is not only impossible at the present time for the reasons given but because it has a non- flyable “tail”—a heavy weight of tanks, field artillery and heavy equipment which are called “attachments for sustained combat” —that must be brought along later, somehow.
Let’s consider another argument that is sometimes used by airpower’s all-out proponents to cast doubts on the value of combined arms in future warfare. That argument is summed up in the statement that the beach-head of the future will be the captured enemy airfield—that the naval beachhead gained by amphibious assault is a thing of the past.
There is no doubt whatsoever that the use of airborne infantry will continue to have brilliant possibilities until anti-aircraft weapons have made the air unsafe for anything slower than the speed of sound. And there is no doubt that paratroops could seize and hold a hostile airfield protected by a weak force, a force with no hope of reinforcement. Successful prospects for this sort of mission are areas only short distances from the United States.
Against strong opposition, however, or against opposition that can be strongly reinforced, the story is bound to be different. Except for scout and spy jumps of the nonassault variety, no paratroop drops were made by the Allies during the past war that did not call for quick consolidation with ground troops. And it is significant that in the single instance, at Arnhem, when consolidation could mot be quickly effected, the First British Airborne Division was forced to withdraw after severe losses.
I think it is clear to anyone that Island “X”—and its counterparts—can never be seized, held, and maintained from the air. I think it is clear that for many years to come the overseas beach-head won from the air will have to depend on a very close beach-head won from the sea. I think it is clear that though we should leave no stone unturned in exploring the possibilities of new amphibious, air, land, and naval techniques, the keystone of our security and readiness lies within the well-tested frame of combined arms.
What, then, is wrong with our combined arms team? Are we ready to act decisively in the face of all contingencies?
It is my belief that we are not fully prepared to resist and defeat the host of actions within the capabilities of our possible enemies or coalitions of enemies. We have wasted valuable time in a debate about whether air power could save us, or whether it should be naval power, or whether it should be more highly trained infantrymen or paratroops. The debate continues because there is an illusion that we have a choice.
There is no choice. We need them all. We need them now—in a state of readiness. And we need them blended into a team that has learned to pull together in the hundred or more exigencies that the nation may have to face tomorrow or the day after. The members of that team must be fully aware that there is no specially important member, no prima donna, no “George.”
The team concept is especially dear to the Marine Corps. It has lived by it. It has won its victories by it. It has been the Marines’ good fortune to spend a good deal more time at sea with the Navy than the Army has. It has been the Marines’ good fortune to spend a good deal more time in the field with the Army than the Navy has. Many of the best ideas and equipment for the Fleet Marine Force were drawn from the Navy. Much of its equipment was developed in the Army. The Air Force has helped the Corps in almost all its campaigns. What the Corps has learned from the others is, in fact, one of its most potent secret weapons.
That secret weapon should not be kept secret. The techniques of combined arms belong even more to the future than to the past. Indeed, preoccupation with the team concept in the Marine Corps by no means signifies that the Corps intends to sit tight with the doctrines and weapons that defeated the Japanese. Many improvements in amphibious operations have been made since the war and the Corps has taken a very big part in them.
The landing of troops from submarines (Marines made the first assault landing from the Submarines Argonaut and Nautilus at Makin Island in August 1942); the development by Consolidated of the “Flying LST,” an aerial version of the bow-unloading, ramp- equipped cargo carrier; the use of helicopters for amphibious landings pioneered by the Marine Helicopter Squadron at Quantico, Va.; the perfection of a guided missile for close support of ground troops; the equipping of infantrymen with recoil-less shoulder artillery pieces; the improvement of rocket warfare for both ground and air support; new facilities for the use by Marines of the M-26 tank and new designs for amphibious landing craft including a small, high-speed vessel with overhead cover; experiments with communication, electronic, and anti-aircraft weapons—all these are matters on which the Corps has spent much of its time, money, and manpower in the past year or so.
As a matter of fact, the nation has barely scratched the surface of the list of tactical and strategical uses for the kind of fighting forces we can put together on the Air-Naval- Ground Team principles. A specially-augmented Marine Corps Board has been convened to inquire into and determine the practical possibilities of many new concepts along these lines. Small, heavily-defended island areas like Tarawa and Iwo Jima possibly need never figure in any projected operations in Eurasia, to cite one instance. Eurasia’s coastline is eight times that of the United States. It is proportionately more vulnerable to surprise attacks from the sea in hundreds of places, including its large peripheral islands.
Possibly the clashings of massed armies need never again be the style of warfare by which a well-prepared invader gains decisive victories in Europe, Asia, or anywhere. The very enormity of some of the areas to be defended will diminish the defenders’ advantages in superiority of manpower. Employing a trained fencer’s thrust-and-parry technique, or the nimble maneuvering of an adroit matador, it is possible that the American Air-Naval-Ground Team can learn to reach the defenders’ cities, industries and heartlands in a manner that would make the last war seem cumbersomely orthodox.
These are possibilities that are not being ignored by the Navy and Marine Corps. There is just this difference between us and disciples of the Pushbutton and Let-George- Do-It Schools. In more than 300 landings since 1776, the Navy and Marine Corps, by virtue of their state of readiness, have been in George’s shoes from the very start, fighting a sort of war the sages had decried in advance as wholly obsolete. We have become wary of overly joyful announcements of glorious substitutes for the whole team.
At a time when there is a new hope for peace in the family of nations, it is important to remember with utter realism the lessons learned in wars past—and how to improve those lessons. The American fighting man has won all our wars. He has won them on an American Team, and with arms and weapons made by American industry. There is no reason to believe that future wars will be prevented or won by any other kind of combination. That combination is the one and only George who has resisted tyranny from the birth of our nation to VE Day and VJ Day.