Lieutenant General Lewis B. Puller, U. S. Marine Corps
(Smith Hempstone in The Evening Star, Washington, D.C.., 20 October 1971)
They buried Chesty Puller at high noon on an apple-sweet October day, the notes of taps thin and sad on the crisp Tidewater air. The most decorated Marine in the history of the Corps did not hit his last beachhead alone.
They were all there: Chapman, Walt, Shoup, Greene, Silverthorne, Thomas, more than two dozen generals from a service in which stars come neither quickly nor easily. Pink-cheeked recruits down from Quantico and turkey-necked old timers, crackers who could remember how Chesty won his first Navy Cross against Sandino in Nicaragua 40 years ago. More than 1,500 Marines and ex-Marines found their way to that remote churchyard in Virginia to pay final homage to a superlative fighting man who in his own lifetime had become a legend.
The wonder of it all is that Lewis Burwell Puller lived either to make general or to die in bed at the age of 73. Haiti, Nicaragua, Guadalcanal, Peleliu, Inchon, Yongdonpo, Chosin Reservoir—at any of half a dozen places Puller might have left his bones to whiten with those of so many of the brave men he led. For Chesty led from out front and insisted that his officers do so, which is why his 1st Marines lost 74% of its officers and “only” 60% of its enlisted men in the caves of Peleliu’s Bloody Nose Ridge.
But although Puller bore to his grave the scars of a dozen wounds, the God in whom he reposed such quiet trust denied him the battlefield death for which, in reality, he was born. Making general was another matter.
For in the Service, as in civilian life, there is a small hello for a man with a salty tongue unafraid to use it on his superiors. Chesty always maintained that “the fat-assed generals” had it in for him and, indeed, he did not win his first star until he had served 33 years, won an unprecedented five Navy Crosses and led his 1st Marines out of “Frozin Chosin,” carrying their dead and wounded, trailed by the shattered remnants of less-favored regiments and better equipped (from materiel abandoned by other units) than when the Korean front collapsed.
Those “fat-assed generals”—or perhaps the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (he always insisted that Marines fought better on whisky than on ice cream)—saw to it that the barrel-chested Puller never commanded anything larger than a regiment in combat. His third star was a “tombstone” promotion (made on the occasion of his retirement because of his 56 decorations for valor) and they turned him down in 1965 when he tried to get recalled to active duty so that he could go to Vietnam. Instead, his son went; young Puller lost both legs and parts of six fingers in a landmine explosion.
To serve under Chesty was to have a good chance to die. And yet enlisted Marines, who are not given to the adulation of their generals, fought for the chance to follow him and came down out of the mountain hamlets of half a dozen states to bury him last week.
Curious. Or is it? It was much the same with that strange, harsh, Godfearing man, “Stonewall” Jackson, Puller’s fellow-Virginian. Jackson would have a hungry Confederate soldier shot for stealing apples in Maryland and yet his butternut legions cheered him to a man whenever he showed himself. As Lee remarked sadly after Chancellorsville, Jackson’s presence on the battlefield was worth that of two crack regiments. So it was with Puller.
No soldier ever loved the brilliant Douglas MacArthur. Which leads one to the conclusion that enlisted Marines, with that curious intuition of unschooled men, realized two things: That Chesty Puller was tougher than any of them and that, despite this and almost because of it, he genuinely cared about them. He might—almost certainly would—lead them into hell, but he would be with them all the way and lead them out the other side, savoring their victories and mourning their deaths, for they were all, no less than his own blood and bone, Chesty’s true sons.
The Services are experiencing a difficult period. Men not fit to shine the boots of Chesty Puller make a mockery of everything for which he stood. You have to go into the rural areas to find a post office outside which enlistment posters can stand undefaced. A boy-man who has served his country in Vietnam, laying his life on the line, has to apologize to hairy stay-at-homes for his deeds.
And yet this, too, will pass. For ever since the world began there have been meat-eaters and grass-eaters, those who would fight and those who would rather talk. And both in the cities and in the boondocks, in the concrete hell of Spanish Harlem and in the grim coal mines of Harlan County, Kentucky, the Marine recruiters are still finding raw-boned youngsters willing and eager to go through the valley of the shadow for a lantern-jawed, profane, compassionate man like Chesty Puller.
In the end, it matters little whether the rest of us understand or appreciate warriors such as Puller; there is little we can do to add to or detract from what they have been and are. But this nation would not exist without them and all of us comfortably at home today owe each of them an immense debt of gratitude. And when the smoke of that last volley cleared over the grave of Chesty Puller, it would have been a small man who would not have conceded that.
Japan-U. S. Relations Discussed With Eyes Toward China
(Jun Tsunoda in The Christian Science Monitor, 22 October 1971)
When the Japanese see Americans, they see people who have traditionally come across the sea to Japan in ships. Therefore, it is natural for the Japanese to think of Americans as seafarers.
The national interests of the United States and of Japan are, though not identical, similar to a large extent. Consider for a moment that Japan has been, and is, an island-trading nation, and so our existence and prosperity depend overwhelmingly on the seas around us. It is only logical that we can neither be secure nor prosperous without being on friendly terms with the United States, the contemporary holder of Neptune’s trident in the Pacific, a power bequeathed by the seafaring nations of Europe.
Again, there has been a strong historical correlation between a national maritime tradition and the emergence of democracy. Postwar Japan is no exception to this generality. Even in the area of economic activity, which is presently troubling relations between the United States and Japan, the national interests of both nations can be served by relying on their community of problems and political organization. Where Japan’s and America’s interests meet in their dependence on the sea, I foresee no difficulties.
In financial, industrial, and agricultural policy, where American and Japanese interests occasionally diverge, we must strive to achieve a compatibility which serves both nations. This last adjustment can be realized by public discussion, careful bargaining, and continuing trust.
In a sense, the issue of economic activities can be solved most rationally, because settlement in this field has always been brought about by calculations of such niceties as tariff rates, export ratios, and so on. We can, therefore, reach an agreed figure established by mutual concession. Japan has no intention of threatening the economic stability of the American nation as a whole. It is quite ready to make concessions to reach a necessary adjustment on tariffs, exports, and so on, on the basis of fair competition and mutual benefit.
With regard to the issue of the security of East Asia, Japan could maintain a one-sided, limited self-defense capability of the home islands, in the air and on the waters around Japan; or it could gradually supplant the American naval presence, especially in the seas around Korea and Taiwan, in response to the Nixon doctrine.
My guess is that Japan will pursue neither of these courses. Instead, it would rather continue its present policy of self-defense complemented by American forces, but with more vigor and with an expenditure of more of its resources. First, it will ask the United States to retain its military presence in and around Japan, with an inescapable modification of base agreements. Second, it will cooperate with the United States, in return for a continued American presence, and countenance full use of U. S. bases in Japan (for the security in and around Japan). Third, it will carry on its program of building up its own defense forces, especially its seapower.
This conjectural plan fulfills rather fairly the requirements suggested by Secretary Laird at his press conference, held during his recent visit to Japan. He said that the responsibility of America’s allies in the field of conventional arms has to increase gradually, and that Japan needs qualitative improvement in its defense forces. This set of requirements creates a second problem.
Of course we have been putting our full trust in, and we have been trying to conform to, the official advice offered by the American government. At the same time, we have to confide our real embarrassment in being confronted with repeated suspicion from some influential quarters in the United States of the revival of Japanese “militarism.”
We very earnestly hope the American government can help us discern a safe way out of this uncomfortable dilemma; especially when it was reported by Mr. Reston that the Chinese Prime Minister demanded the checking of the rearmament of Japan as one of the conditions for his program of normalizing China’s relations with the United States.
The superficial answer, which has usually and formally been given to Japan, to the effect that it is up to Japan as a sovereign state to decide, does not, speaking bluntly, make any real sense, because it does not address itself to the problem of how to quiet American and Chinese anxiety about the prospect of Japanese “militarism.” Furthermore, that answer causes vacillation in the Japanese effort to share a more equitable defense burden with the United States.
I would propose that we initiate a thorough public inquiry into the defense question, the basic issue confronting Japan in the 1970s, as a common American-Japanese project. Japan has no intention of becoming either a nuisance, or a menace to the stability of East Asia, but if we shrug off the notion of that sort of conduct, what is the proper part Japan should play in its relations with America, and in the world community’
What kind of role should Japan be allotted in a regional security system in East Asia, politically then militarily?
The answer must be found, and Japan, which, in the final analysis is in a position of the “junior” partner, has to seek clarification from the “senior” ally. I believe that Japan would accept a two-sided or many-sided organization which would integrate and make interdependent all forces along the lines of NATO in Europe.
Sea-Control Ship Concept Test Underway With USS Guam
(L. Edgar Prina in the San Diego Union, 11 November 1971)
Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr., U. S. Navy, Chief of Naval Operations, plans to give his idea for a new sea-control ship (SCS)*—one which would carry vertical-short take-off and landing (V/STOL) aircraft and helicopters—a thorough test at sea beginning early in 1972.
According to Pentagon officials, the amphibious assault ship, USS Guam (LPH-9), will be designated as an interim SCS.
The Navy will “borrow” a number of Marine Corps Harriers, the British-built supersonic V/STOL aircraft, and their pilots and assign them to the Guam. The ship, which also will have helicopters on board, will conduct her experiment as a unit of the U. S. Atlantic Fleet.
Zumwalt, who says it is inevitable that V/STOL aircraft eventually will operate from Soviet ships, believes that the U. S. Navy must be ready for this eventuality. He said:
The Soviets are fully capable of basing V/STOL aircraft aboard ships like the Moskva to give them the limited local air coverage needed to supplement their land-based naval aviation forces.
Accordingly, the U. S. Navy should move to provide a broad spectrum of sea-based air capability, the admiral asserted, with attack carriers at the top end and helicopter-carrying patrol frigates and destroyers at the bottom.
* See F. A. Hill, “View From the Bridge—1980,” U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, September 1971, pp. 103-104.
The admiral stated:
In between, in addition to the flexibility inherent in the CV (carrier) concept of varying the mix of aircraft to match the immediate mission of the large carrier, we see a place for a new air-capable platform to fill the gap between these extremes—thus, the evolution of the sea-control ship.
The Chief of Naval Operations described the new-type vessel earlier in 1971 in these terms:
As now defined, the sea-control ship is an extremely austere 12,000-ton ship, configured in profile much like an LPH, capable of operating either V/STOL or helicopter and requiring no catapults or arresting gear. Enough helicopters would be carried to keep one aloft at all times for surveillance and early warning, with one or two for reaction missions; and enough V/STOL aircraft to provide limited air defense, or permit limited strike against a surface target. Ship and aircraft would be designed as complementary subsystems, with maximum capability in weapons and sensors being placed in the aircraft, minimum in the ship.
Zumwalt stressed that the SCS is not intended as a replacement for the more powerful aircraft carrier. He said:
Rather it will be employed in supplementary and complementary roles essentially related to the sea-control mission of our Navy. Outside the umbrella of Navy tactical air, it will provide an operating deck for aircraft where the larger numbers of an attack air wing may not be required.
Sea-Control Concept Receives First Helicopter ASW Squadron
(John Stevenson in the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, 2 November 1971)
The Navy’s first sea-control helicopter squadron, commissioned 29 October 1971 at Lakehurst, New Jersey, is an important stepping stone toward a new class of warfare designed to counter “. . . the continued and dramatic build-up of Soviet missile-firing surface and underseas fleets,” a government spokesman has said.
The squadron, Helicopter Antisubmarine Squadron 15, eventually will operate from still-to-be-built sea-control ships that will be larger, yet cheaper than the Navy’s newest destroyers, the spokesman said.
A prototype of the ships will be tested off the East Coast beginning in January 1972. It is expected that the evaluation period will last 18 months.
When sea-control ships become operational, they will pack some of the punch of an aircraft carrier, and it has been forecast that they eventually will replace some of the Navy’s destroyers and attack carriers.
The vessels will be different from normal Navy ships, the spokesman said, because they will carry a greatly reduced number of electronic sensors and weapons.
In most ships, about 45% of the cost goes into the hull and engines, and the remainder is poured into sensors and weapons. In sea-control ships, however, the extra 55% will go for helicopters and planes to extend the ship’s reach.
A spokesman said that money for the ships probably will be requested in 1973. It is hoped that the vessels can be constructed for $85 million apiece, including fully-equipped helicopters or planes. In contrast, the price for the Navy’s latest destroyers has reached $90 million.
Sea-control ships first came into the public light when the Navy sent to Congress an outline for a $50-billion program to rebuild the Fleet over the next ten years. The outline called for building the vessels at a rate of two a year.
Tests of the sea-control concept were begun in the spring of 1971 with two amphibious transport docks, the USS Duluth (LPD-6) in the Pacific and the USS Austin (LPD-4) in the Mediterranean.
The tests indicated that sea-control aircraft, launched from the new ships, will be able to detect surface vessels, submarines, aircraft, and missiles, a spokesman said. A helicopter patrolling a 10-mile-wide sweep of ocean at 120 miles per hour would cover 1,200 square miles each hour, he added. The principal mission of these aircraft, the spokesman said, will be to protect underway replenishment groups, amphibious groups, convoys, and any task groups that do not include an aircraft carrier.
Helicopter Antisubmarine Squadron 15 will be supplied initially with jet-powered, twin-engine SH-3G Sea King choppers.
NATO Differs With U.S.S.R. Over Baltic Naval Rights
(David Binder in The New York Times, 7 November 1971)
A Soviet publication has demanded that the Baltic Sea be closed to the naval units of all non-Baltic powers, and this development is reported to have aroused concern in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
The demand was published in the newly-issued Soviet Diplmatischesky Slovar (Diplomatic Lexicon), whose chief editor is Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko.
The reaction in NATO naval circles was reportedly compounded by a unilateral oral concession to the Soviet standpoint by the new Danish Foreign Minister, Kjeld Olsen.
Olsen said in Copenhagen that Denmark and the other NATO partners had agreed to stage alliance naval maneuvers in the Baltic only west of the Danish island of Bornholm.
“There has been no such decision by NATO,” said a spokesman of the West German Defense Ministry. “On the contrary, Defense Minister Schmidt has repeatedly spoken out for the freedom of movement of all navies on the seas, saying this is irrevocable. This is the consensus of the NATO ministers.” Confining NATO maneuvers in the Baltic to the narrow area west of Bornholm would leave virtually the entire Baltic, including the areas off the Polish and Soviet coasts, to the Warsaw Pact naval units.
The practice of Western naval units, including American and British ships and planes, has been to move about the shallow Baltic as if it were the open sea, sailing up to and into the Bay of Finland, for example.
Taking note of this practice, the new Soviet Lexicon charges the Western alliance navies with “misusing” the Baltic. The relevant passage demanding that the Baltic be barred for non-Baltic navies says:
Warships of the Soviet Union and other countries bordering on the Baltic Sea must possess the unlimited right to sail the Baltic Sea waters as well as the Great and Little Belts. In contrast to this the Baltic Sea must represent a closed sea for the warships of other nations.
The Great and Little Belts are straits off Denmark between the Baltic and the North Sea.
The Lexicon passage goes on to accuse Denmark of allowing its NATO partners greater freedom of passage for warships through the narrow sound between Denmark and Sweden than it allows Soviet bloc warships. It was on this point that Olsen apparently made his oral concession saying that future NATO maneuvers would be restricted.
Prime Minister McMahon Says U. S. Plans Indian Ocean Force
(Terence Smith in The New York Times, 4 November 1971)
Prime Minister William McMahon of Australia said that he had been assured by President Nixon and Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird that the United States would provide a “counterbalance force” to the growing Soviet naval power in the Indian Ocean.
McMahon, who is here on his first visit as Prime Minister, told a National Press Club audience that he had been advised that an American force would visit the area “from time to time” to prevent the Soviet Union from attempting to establish a naval hegemony in the Indian Ocean.
The Australian leader applauded this prospect and said that U. S. ships and planes would be welcome to use the repair and refueling facilities at the Cockburn Sound Naval Base and Learnmonth Air Station in Western Australia.*
The aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CVAN-65) and the frigate USS Bainbridge (DLGN-25) recently completed a four-day cruise through the Indian Ocean and the Andaman Sea of the sort Prime Minister McMahon was describing. Defense officials said at the time that, although the United States had no plans to maintain a permanent force there, they would, however, be carrying out more operations in response to the Soviet naval build-up in that area.
The Soviet Union has doubled its strength in the area in the last three years, according to American sources, and maintains 12 to 15 vessels there.
The only permanent American presence nearby consists of two destroyers and a converted seaplane tender based in Bahrain, in the Persian Gulf.
Anticipating the gradual reduction of American influence in Southeast Asia, McMahon called on the smaller nations in the area to form a “close-knit community which will have its own political weight and importance.”
* See L. Griswold, “From Simonstown to Singapore,” November 1971, pp. 52-57; and E. H. Dar, “Australia’s Defense Policies and the Asian Point of View,” December 1971, pp. 56-59, U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings.
U. S. Navy Research Base To Be Located In Wales
(The Chicago Tribune, 15 November 1971)
The U. S. Navy will set up a base on this western-most tip of Wales, Nicholas Edwards, the local member of Parliament, said.
About 350 American Servicemen and technicians, plus families, will be required. The exact nature of the work is currently regarded as secret, Edwards told The Chicago Tribune.
The British Ministry of Defense described the base as “an oceanographic research center” and said operations would “involve sonic underwater tests.”
The description caused speculation that the base would be concerned with nuclear submarine communications. The Navy is steadily widening the patrol areas of its Polaris missile submarines.
The defense ministry is making available to the Navy part of Brawdy Air Base five miles from St. David’s. During World War II, it was the largest of the Welsh airfields used by planes guarding Atlantic convoys. Lately, it was used for training British carrier pilots. The British Navy gave up the base earlier in 1971, but the Royal Air Force is moving a weapons development unit there.
The American Navy will require new buildings for its operations. Existing barracks and housing will be made available, but more may be needed when the base reaches full strength in 1975.
Pollution Solutions
The growing concern over the threat, to the ecology, posed by oil pollution, has stimulated massive research and development efforts along several approaches—mechanical and chemical—to obtain solutions. Presented here are several current examples of devices and methods being suggested for application to the problem of cleaning up oil spills on the high seas, off shore, and in harbors and waterways.
[6 illustrations]
Evaluations Are Successful For New Corps Weapons Systems
(Marine Corps Headquarters News Release, 1 November 1971)
Acronyms are now a large part of the American vocabulary, especially in the military. One of the latest—NOGS—is a new development in Marine Corps aviation. The letters stand for Night Observation Gun System, another pioneering development of Marine Aviation undertaken because of a need found in Vietnam.
Experience gained in Korea in the early 1950s prompted development of weapons systems for the airborne delivery of ordnance during all-weather conditions. This was essential for the success of the Marine air-ground team. These systems proved themselves in Vietnam, but the Marine Corps faced a different enemy and a major problem surfaced. This problem was the inability to detect enemy movement at night in jungle environment. The problem was complicated by the small size of the enemy groups and the vast geographical areas in which they moved. What was needed was a weapons system that could survey wide areas, detect enemy movement at night and, where appropriate, engage the enemy with fire.
It was quickly discovered that a weapons system was required that could detect, fix, and attack these fleeting targets during the time needed to get other supporting arms into action.
The immediacy for NOGS was apparent, and it was natural for the Marine Corps to first look into modification and evaluation of two OV-10 Bronco aircraft, configured with 20-mm. gun and infrared (IR) target acquisition systems. Both the IR device and 20-mm. gun are forward-looking and turret-mounted, with the gun turret slaved to the IR turret.
These aircraft, designated as YOV-10D night observation gunships, have the capability to immediately and independently attack enemy units operating against friendly base camps, both at night and during the day. In addition, they have the capability of night surveillance and reconnaissance of enemy lines of communication and base camps within the tactical zone of responsibility.
An additional laser designation capability is planned for incorporation in the forward turret. This will provide pinpoint guidance information for other attack aircraft systems.
The NOGS program is divided into two phases: the first included the engineering development and operational evaluation; the second focuses on equipping our forces with NOGS to provide the Fleet Marine Force with numbers of this remarkable new weapons system.
As with any new equipment, much preliminary testing was required. In Phase I components, subsystems and full system were tested by contractors and government activities to assure reasonable operation without undue risk to personnel or material.
In operational evaluation, NOGS has performed in excess of specified requirements. Laser evaluation will continue in the near future before entering Phase II, the prototype build up for production of the YOV-10D.
Pass-Down-The-Line Notes
In its November 1971 issue—Approach, the Naval Aviation Safety Review, presented a rather chilling example of an entirely unwarranted hazard to which passengers of military aircraft may be subjected: “On 30 June 1971, United States Customs Inspectors at Travis AFB, California confiscated the following explosives from the luggage of a member of our military services: 53 rounds, .45-caliber; 2 rounds, 12-gauge Flechette; 1 round, 9-mm., 19 rounds, ChiCom 7.65-mm.; 41 rounds, ChiCom AK-47 ammunition; 109 MK 140-D Signals; 5 Personnel Distress Signals; 41 Pen Gun Flares.”
The needless jeopardy, to the safety of military airlift passengers, represented in such examples—there appears to be a considerable increase in the number of such incidents—well-warrants this additional notice, for the concern of all who might be involved, even though “To date, there has been no transoceanic shuttle flight explode high over the Pacific. . . .”
The authors of a book in progress: History of the United States Naval War Against the Slave Traders and Pirate off the West Coast of Africa, 1820-1840, request information for identifying captains, owners, and vessels engaged in the slave trade, together with names of U. S. naval officers and vessels engaged in their capture, with special interest in names of U. S. Navymen who died in the “War on the Slavers.” Address replies to Lieutenant Colonel Earnest E. Eells, Chaplain Corps, U. S. Army (Retired), 4 Terrace Gardens. Lakeland, Florida. 33801.