artillery

All posts tagged artillery

[Tuttle commented several times about the toll taken by prolonged artillery exchanges.]

If life in our camps is made difficult by enemy artillery, for troops up on the line it is truly brutal. Soldiers and Marines in many places have been on static lines for a week or more. On these lines the Japanese deliver regular volleys of smaller artillery and mortar fire, which can reach down into the deepest protective hole. The barrages are often followed by infantry charges or preceded by sneak attacks.

Life under artillery fire is an inestimable and unrelenting agony. One is sleep deprived, lonely, scared, and above all helpless to do anything about it. There is no rational response. Some flavor of functional lunacy is required to carry on, be it bitter hardness or detached resignation. Cases of shell shock accumulate when a front is static – one more reason commanders are anxious to maneuver and push forward again.

It is certain that life on the Japanese side is even worse. For every scattering of shells they send, we are carpeting whole hills and valleys. We fire patterns of shells at the taller rocky mountains deliberately on schedule at the same time each day and night. The barrage is not meant to catch anyone by surprise. It is meant to reinforce the idea that we can do this at will and without end. Japanese there are probably hiding deep down in well stocked caves. It’s fine by us if they simply stay there.

Ernie Pyle wrote that in Italy some artillery men figured that we were spending about $25,000 for every German soldier killed. They wondered what would happen if we just offered each of them that much cash to surrender instead. Pyle didn’t think much would happen.

I put the question to members of a supply company here. They spent some time doing some serious accounting. Their total came to $127,200 for each Jap. They agree with me that few of them would surrender for even that lofty ransom. We are going to have to go get those Japanese soldiers the old fashioned way. Toward that end the first large reinforcing unit, a whole division, is due here from the Philippines in the next few days. There is no word yet on where it will go.

Facebooktwitter
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

[Close-range night fighting preceded this report from Tuttle.]

At first light there were three more young soldiers in the cramped hole with us. One of them had been injured by jumping into the hole right on top of my original companion’s knife where he had stuck it in the dirt.

The scene before us was a battle line still held by the 2nd Battalion of the 158th Infantry Regiment, but it was hardly a prize. Smoldering brush covered the southern skyline with smoke. A sickly smell of cooking meat mixed in with the burning pines to slip past the closed eyes of anyone who tried not to look at the carnage.

American soldiers got organized and walked forward in a careful line, medics close behind. They stepped over dead bodies, making sure the Japanese ones stayed dead, as they moved down to the river bank. The water ran fast, about four feet deep in that stretch. It had been a slow fording for the Japanese and many were caught there when the shooting started. A brown uniformed body floated past, face down, spinning slowly as the current carried it along toward the bay.

It is believed that the Japs in the pocket sent every last man into a final rush, realizing they were practically surrounded. My company counted almost a hundred dead in front of it; other units report the same. They also report each of them sending back about the same number in casualties, a third of them dead.

Ultimately the 158th did what was asked of it, again, but paid a high price, again. It was pulled back, again. I rode along as they moved out, listening to soldiers take a personal tally of their buddies – who made it, who didn’t, and who knows.

Facebooktwitter
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

[Tuttle climbed up to sit with an artillery battery with a high perch overlooking the next advance.]

Finally orders came in for my artillery unit to hit targets near the beach. I watched boats come in toward the beach, alternately covering my ears with one hand until someone lent me a pair of good earplugs. Our 105 mm guns walked a pattern down the northeast sides of the hill masses that overlooked the beach from the south and east. Other guns put fresh craters into the towns that bracketed the beach. Recent experience with civilian mob attacks made villages wholly expendable.

On the crumpled plain below our position I could occasionally make out vehicles moving slowly along the larger roads. There were friendly infantry in the trees nearby, clearing out brush and treetops of snipers. The snipers down there weren’t the sort who get off a couple good shots then move to another spot. The Japanese soldiers left behind tie themselves up in a tree, from which they will fire until being spotted, then shot and killed, and left hanging in the tree. It is desperate, and sad, and highly effective at slowing down the American advance.

By mid afternoon the RCTs were largely ashore, having broken firm but thin resistance at the beach. They were a mile inland into the first high ground. Below and to the east of me the 5th Cavalry had gone over two miles. Then both groups hit tough resistance at the same time. Both had to get across a river and through a narrow pass at the same time. Both were engaged separately and couldn’t support the other. Each had to work it out independently.

Artillery fire from my hilltop perch shifted from covering the RCTs to bailing out our own division. Radio traffic picked up to an overwhelming pace, as requests came in, were prioritized, then cancelled or reprioritized. More than once a major countermanded a captain, or a colonel overruled the major. Ultimately it was orderly and professional, but tense and chaotic in the moment.

My view had been obscured while friendly units were down in valley roads, but I could see more of them as they maneuvered around their problems. Both regiments pushed up onto hills to one side of the passes they needed, but in opposite directions. A spotter next to me was the first to catch Japanese moving in the gap between the forces.

Without orders, we put artillery into the river valley behind the 5th Cav, where Japanese troops and a few trucks could be seen moving in between masses of trees. They chose to attack the cavalry regiment in the back just as it was itself attacking up a serious slope. Japanese squads came out of the trees in scattered groups, finding holes to fire from and charge out of, too close for American artillery to get at them.

Impacts from some Japanese field guns hit the American held hillside as I heard a voice beside me. “Mind if I borrow those for a minute?” General Connor Colt himself had made the trip up to see the action. I let him look through my field glasses while I took a wide look around myself. Navy destroyers were conspicuously close to the beach, where landing craft were still coming in with combat troops and the first support teams. The destroyers had nothing to shoot at, with the action too close in all fronts. To the south I saw fresh plumes of smoke all across the horizon, where the 112th RCT at least had a few planes supporting it up close.

The general made a few comments to his aide and turned back toward our guns. I got my binoculars back this time. He gave final instructions to the artillery captain before heading back out.

“See what you can do about the Jap artillery down there, and for gods sake don’t let them retreat. We didn’t want to have Japs wedged in between us, stabbing us in the back, but while they’re here we might as well kill them.”

Facebooktwitter
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

[Tuttle moved with a light company to clear out a tiny peninsula which juts out into Ariake Bay.]

The official Army map clearly showed a trail continuing on out to the tip. Every person in the column wondered aloud, in a colorful palette of language, just what the map makers had seen that we couldn’t. We had assumed they used aerial photos and perhaps old file maps made by locals before the war. The analyst who drew this map may have used old horoscopes.

The trail went plainly enough to the first hilltop, where a small clearing would have been a pleasant camping spot. Today it held a captain and two lieutenants arguing about which false trailhead in front of us actually went anywhere (none of them did, it turned out). Finally they agreed to navigate by the contour map, which seemed accurate enough. We moved out line abreast, stubbornly hacking through patches of brush, to find each local high spot. No enemy were sighted, and we took no fire, even though we were making a good bit of noise, with nothing else to mask it.

About noon I did notice appreciable traffic of aircraft flying into the hills behind us, accompanied by distant thunder from exploding bombs and shells. So there was some action. Around one o’clock we were on another high spot about half way out, and a quick lunch break was called.

Out loud I ordered a hot salami sandwich with fresh pickle and a double martini. A couple guys laughed at my wisecrack so I sat with them for our lunch of cold canned rations and crackers, with vintage canteen water.

We formed up again and continued before anyone could get too comfortable. The point narrowed, so we had less area to cover, but it also got more steep. Men were walking sideways on steep slopes, ducking under branches, wary of both twisting an ankle and of being shot at from some anonymous tree top. In several places ropes were tied to make hand holds. In another two hours we were near the end and closed in on the last high spot, at the very tip of the bony peninsula.

The entire lead squad stopped, knelt down, and waved for an officer to come forward. I followed. They had come to the edge of a U-shaped clearing. The open end of the U had a clear view of the ocean. At the center was a short rectangular concrete building. It was clear even from directly behind that the front side of this reinforced pillbox had been smashed by very heavy artillery or bombs.

Supporting squads were moved out along the sides of the clearing. From the closed end the first squad advanced in line toward the wrecked fortification. A few of them had rifles shouldered, ready for trouble. Others were mostly casual, sure that the emplacement was long abandoned.

A shot rang out and an American soldier in the center of the line was down. With a bloody shriek the first Japanese soldier anyone had seen up close in days ran out the back of the bunker directly toward the American line. He fired a rifle from the hip, and got off two more wild shots before return fire cut him down. In a few seconds at least twenty American .30 caliber cartridges were snapped off toward him.

The Japanese soldier, an older corporal, fell first to his knees. He reached into a jacket pocket, which drew three more shots into his abdomen. Before he died he drew out a small crumpled rising sun flag. It fluttered open freely as he fell forward. By chance his hand caught it again on the way down. His lifeless fingers involuntarily clutched the flag, its bright red streamers flowing out across the ground next to the bleeding body.

Facebooktwitter
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

[On this day a big Japanese artillery piece was finally located and taken out of action.]

Others have written about the sound of incessant artillery, and how men, especially desperately tired men, can tune it out and get decent sleep in their cozy holes. It seems the Japanese commanders have been keeping up with the literature on the subject. The nighttime artillery focused on American troops and equipment has been just that – focused. The rounds are either spread along the lines, or the obvious places one would want to set up overnight defensive lines from our side of things, or concentrated on an actual cluster of tents or an equipment dump that was observed setting up during the day. The timing is stubbornly inconsistent, but few that I talk to think it’s random.

There are always precautions against making light at night which can draw enemy fire. In this position the rules are especially strict. There’s no hope of getting a double tent with a blackout lock set up this close to front, let alone a single tent. Everyone is dug down into the earth, as far as they can get into the rocky hillside. I am rushing to get my notes written out before complete darkness overtakes the southeastern face of this mountain.

I am with the 40th Infantry Division, near Kanoya on the first (southern) slope of the multi-ridged mountain they call Onogara-dake. Yesterday our 108th Regiment moved through Kanoya to be the first Americans to touch the precious waters of Kagoshima Bay. Today the division’s other regiments, the 160th and 185th, attacked up the first ridge face of Onogara-dake and now hold it. It was not cheap – a steady parade of stretcher bearers still working their way down the hill is ready testament to the price – but there was a prize in this box of explosive Cracker Jacks. The position of one very heavy gun that has been firing on the beach, and everywhere else for a dozen mile radius, was taken and silenced for good.

It was known that some of the Japanese navy cruisers and older battleships have had their gun turrets removed, since for a year now it has been all but impossible for a Japanese capital ship to leave port and succeed at any military purpose. Not that our submarines or bombers or navy gunners care about the purpose – they are attacked and sunk on sight. Several Jap ships have been put down in harbors while already toothless relics. It was supposed that the turrets were melted down to make other more needful things with the steel, but some wondered about the guns.

Major Benjamin Davis of the 160th Regiment staff tells me it was an eight inch gun, they’re not sure how old. It’s larger than anything the Japanese army lugs around, and dragging it up to its hole in the mountain had to be a mean feat, along with fitting out the hole. The gun could be taken back in out of sight after firing. “We didn’t see the cave, which we think was hand dug, until about 200 yards away. It was already abandoned, but a pair of machine guns was left waiting for us to approach and check it out. They had the thing on tracks, with a manual traverse that was slow, but worked. It was right under a natural brow in the hill, with brush around it, some of it drug there recently. The whole thing looked like nothing but a dark spot on the hill, on a sunny day. Oh, they had other shallow painted fake cave entrances scattered around it. One of them we pounded with 155s and rockets for days, just a hundred yards away – for nothing.”

Facebooktwitter
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

[Tuttle got back out into the field, this time west of Ariake bay.]

A few people had important jobs to do, and jeeps and trucks navigated through and around muddy holes in the narrow unimproved roads. I tried to stay out of their way, not having a particularly important job, nor any particular preference for being splashed with mud.

Along the way I passed a low lying field which had been given over to a vehicle scrap yard. Rolling machines of every variety had been driven or dragged there when it was still dry. They covered several acres, with barely room to walk between the rows. Today young privates in ponchos waded through ankle deep mud with hand tools, including a portable blowtorch, hunting the new relics for usable spare parts.

My own feet were soaked, after I used up my own luck avoiding deep puddles and clenching mud along the road west. I had managed to obtain a good poncho and one pair of dry socks back in camp, but the socks were soaked again already, along with my uniform and courier bag, my only luggage for now.

After a couple hours of miserable slog, I was made to feel better in comparison to the more miserable men I was there to find. Soldiers of the 1st Cavalry Division had found no rest in camp, no change of socks, and rarely even a flat patch of land to lie down on for the last ten days.

I checked in with one battalion CO and got up to the front to see his soldiers. From mortar men in back, machine gunners up from them, and riflemen in fresh dug (and poorly draining) holes on the line, they had stories similar to what I got out of the 43rd Division. The 1st Cavalry Division had been fighting up into steep hills, in repeating lines, for over a week. Then they had to give up much of what they had won. The Japanese rush had caught parts of the division from behind. Its other regiments had to turn around 180 degrees, come down out of the mountains, and fight on the beach again.

From there I walked just across an imaginary line to the domain of the 185th Regiment, of the 40th Infantry Division. The 1st Cav will move back into the hills now that the 40th is here. The 40th just got here and saw action right away moving in to cover the side and rear of the 1st Cav.

I spoke with some of the soldiers about the large attack by civilians. There wasn’t much chatter at first, but after the first few fellows started I couldn’t get the stories down fast enough.

Probing into the outskirts of Kanoya, keeping close to ready cover should heavy artillery start again, lead units found the trip lever of a trap. Regular Japanese army soldiers opened fire from cover to the north. It wasn’t very effective, but it made most of the regiment stop moving and find cover while they could set up a response. Fire from the north stopped and immediately American rifles on the left were engaging with a mob running in from the west. Comments on the action ran from wild to tragic.

“Civilians? That’s a laugh. We found Jap Army papers in with them. They were regular units with regular orders, no ifs, ands, or buts.” “I watched dames in kimonos get torn up by our rifles, then saw one explode! She had grenades or something under the dress – if it was a she.” Other men were closer to the fighting. “We got a lot of ‘em, but they just seemed to grow more on the spot. I emptied two clips, clubbed one guy, and knifed another before I took off… Not everybody made it back.”

In the end, the American line held, but they say about two hundred more of our men are gone, half of them for good. The burial detail has made room for five hundred Japanese, and they think that may just about do it. Facilities are being assembled to lock up the survivors, pending interrogation to sort out any regular military left among them.

Facebooktwitter
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

[After the Japanese attack into Ariake Bay, Tuttle rode along with a beat up infantry platoon as they pulled out.]

Moving the other way on the coast road in a steady stream were war-weary soldiers and trucks. One truck was barely half full of tired men. I knew it was full to capacity with stories to tell, so I hitched a ride.

Benches along either side of the bed were occupied by men sitting upright or sideways or variations in between the too. At the front on the right side was the only officer. First Lieutenant (provisional) Manchester B. Watson had his feet up on the bench and was sound asleep, possibly dreaming of his hometown of Greenville, South Carolina. “He ain’t slept in five days,” Private Johnnie Garrett told me, along the way to mentioning that he and the Lieutenant were from the same town.

On the flatbed floor was a chaotic assortment of equipment, from cases of grenades to post hole diggers. I picked up an ammunition belt that had all of 13 cartridges left in it. Private Garrett explained, “They told us to grab whatever equipment we could and move out on the first truck that came for us, after we carried back injured and dead all morning. Everyone took up exactly one armful of junk, tossed it in, and got on board.” Some of the men were asleep sitting up.

Behind us was towed a small artillery piece, an Army 105 mm, I think. I asked around and learned everyone on the truck was with the same infantry platoon. “That’s not ours, and we couldn’t tell ya where its crew got off to. Nothing but empty crates around it when we found it.” Corporal Judson McBrine of Newport, Rhode Island continued, “The driver couldn’t stand to leave it there. Whoever left it took the breech pin with them , but otherwise it’s in good shape.”

For the rest of the trip across Ariake Bay I heard competing stories of ocean fishing from men of the unit. Most of the 43rd Infantry Division was from New England, and anyone who wasn’t a commercial fisherman was a keen angler, or at least talked a good game. There were nineteen men on the truck. I asked about the rest of Lieutenant Watson’s platoon.

“This is it, the whole thing.” The new voice was Staff Sergeant Clifford Blais, who’s accent from Providence they tell me is different from the Newport man. I can’t tell the difference. “They sent two trucks to bring us back, and said a third was coming. We sent the second away and the third one is probably still looking for someone to carry.”

I moved up front with the Sergeant, the ranking non-com on board. We talked quietly as he filled me in on the experience of his unit so far. They were among the first ashore and had been fighting in the hills north of Ariake Bay since the first day.

Their regiment, the 103rd, had no trouble getting to the beach. Other parts of the 43rd Division had to maneuver around shipwrecks in the shallows and took sporadic but accurate heavy fire from hideaways in the hills. The 103rd Regiment rushed on toward its second day objectives right away – up into those hills.

All of this was perfectly predictable to the defenders, so the American charge went right into a trap with multiple rows of teeth. Little American artillery had made it ashore yet, naval support was limited by the angle of the hill slopes to the bay, and air support was limited when anti-aircraft guns became priority targets for the Navy attack planes. The infantry had to knock out positions one at a time with rifles, grenades, and a few bazookas.

Obscured by smoke from bombardment and brush which had survived the bombardment, Japanese positions did not reveal themselves until American troops were at close range. Each one generated casualties that had to be carried back to the beach, as a plan was improvised to regroup and take out the new enemy pit or pillbox or cave.

They kept at it for five days, repeatedly taking out small networks of enemy positions and seizing small objectives, until the last hills with direct view of the American beach were under American boots. A halt was called there, not that it mattered. Sergeant Blais said they were spent. They couldn’t take another ant hill, let alone the ever larger mountain peaks in front of them. Word went up and down the line that every other unit was in about the same shape.

In the course of fighting off the large Japanese counter attack of the previous days, they fell back twice, taking many casualties back with them. Fighting was hand-to hand during one early morning charge. Some small units elsewhere in the division were wiped out to a man on the worst day. But other Army units closed up those gaps, recovered the dead, and retreated in some semblance of order. This was a veteran division, and had been for some time.

withdrawal by platoons

Facebooktwitter
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

With dusk approaching, 2nd Division HQ sent a jeep bound runner out to check the disposition of all its units before nightfall. I hitched a ride along to see for myself.

Our driver was Corporal Don Blue, who said he drove a county snow plow back in central Michigan. His slick-road experience paid off, since days of intermittent rain left the winding dirt roads we had to use persistently hazardous. This section of Kyushu is composed entirely of similar rolling hills, covered in modest evergreen trees or cleared for small terrace houses and farms.

Back near the beach everything had been completely leveled – buildings, trees, and anthills. It was perfect desolation, oddly beautiful as the smoke cleared revealing its special sort of purity. Further inland some of the hill faces are partly denuded, from shell impact and fires kicked off by incendiary bombs, but the spread of fires had been damped by regular rains. A constant smell wafts through the winding valleys, mixing churned earth with burning pines, gunpowder, and occasionally cooking meat.

Going forward most of the narrow road way is bracketed by a three or four foot high stone wall to one side and a similar drop-off to the other. Traffic knots are inevitable, even for ambulances trying to haul men back to the beach front.

Navigating through it all in the other front seat was 1st Lieutenant Martin Myers. By map, temporary signposts, and a few hollered exchanges with knowledgeable looking men on the ground, we reached each regimental headquarters. Lieutenant Myers conferred with the XO of each unit to get a face-to-face run down of how they were doing and what they needed. He would take back any priority written items for HQ or division intelligence.

I wandered around outside at each stop, taking in the action. Everything up here, just a mile or two from the very hot front line, is transient. It could fall under attack at any time and will probably move again in a day or two. Yet still there is an insistent order to each outpost. Engineers were busy making a clearing to expand a tent-bound medical aid station. A kitchen unit marked out space to work, with a dedicated lane for trucks to pull in, load up, and haul hot meals as far forward as they could be served.

With limited light to drive by, we hustled back while Lieutenant Myers caught me up on the rough details of his scouting mission. “We’re about four miles inland, all along a fifteen mile front. Third division is holding at the edge of Sendai and cleaning up the chunk of land left of them out to the sea.” He pointed on a map to the lumpy peninsula that was defined by our beach head and the wide Sendai river. “Second division here is holding the same way, already stretched out thin and waiting for the Fifth to land before making another move.”

I asked how well off the units were, as we pulled over to let a line of ambulances get by. “Truth is,” the Kansas City, Missouri native admitted, “they’re pretty banged up. Everyone’s reserves are already committed. We plan a morning rush to lock up the first good line of hills.”

He pointed again at the map, touching contour bubbles in a line southeast from Sendai. “That bunch of hills will be a great place to be once we take it. Thing is, that works both ways. The Japs here are dug in on all sides and not budging. Every move we make to dig them out is spotted and opposed. These guys so far seem lightly armed, but they call in some heavy stuff from the hills behind them.”

Glancing back out to sea the Lieutenant added, “The Navy has been hot and fast with fire support, but the Japs hide on the reverse slopes most of the time and there are so damned many trees we can’t spot them until too close most of the time.” He made a sweeping gesture at the forested hillside next to us. “Even if we had enough rounds to level all the trees, it would make an impassable pile of logs, a sniper behind every one.”

Once the immediate objectives are taken, the Marines will have fought uphill about 1300 feet from the sea. I noted that beyond the first prize ridge line sits another. After that the hills become mountains that have names. Here on Kyushu there is always one more hill beyond the one you just conquered, and it’s always just a little higher.

Facebooktwitter
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

[The invasion start found Tuttle in a busy radio room, catching action all around Kyushu from a unique perspective.]

I found one of the radio men, Ensign Gaston Morton, from Stillwater, Minnesota, studiously memorizing the lists of ships from our invasion flotilla and every other squadron and fleet on this job. “There’s a slim chance I would ever need to relay a call for a destroyer on the far side [of Kyushu], and I could look them up in a minute anyway. But the only other thing I could do right now is clean and polish the vacuum tubes on the radio sets. What about you? What do you do when you’re waiting around to start an important job?”

I’m not used to my interview subjects asking back! I told him that, first of all, I don’t recall ever having a particularly important job to do. But if I did, to pass the time waiting for such a job to start, I would probably go interview someone else about his job.

There was very little time left to pass, so Mr. Morris got back to his radio set and I got back to staying out of the way. About 5 am the pre-landing bombardment kicked off, starting with the very big guns. Our shelling of the shore in the previous three days had been done during daylight. Each ship could fix its position by visual cues on land, then work accurately through its scheduled target list. Tonight the moon had set just after midnight. The pre-landing bombardment was done in pitch darkness. It was just a rolling line of thunder with no particular target except the island ahead of us.

I went back and forth between watching the action outside and listening in on radio traffic. Layered groups of fighter planes could be seen weaving a curtain to the north. Boats and amphibious transports were loaded and launched toward control lines throughout the bombardment. The other landing armies were going through the same routine at the same time. Across the island on the eastern shore they were landing on either side of the port city Miyazaki, a straight bit of coastline similar to our objective here around the town of Kushikino. In the southeast they are landing on an ideal bit of long gentle shoreline, inside Ariake Bay. But, the sides of the bay are solid lines of steep bluffs and mountain peaks.

The first serious trouble came from Ariake Bay. Over the sound of our big battleships firing in front of us, my friend Mr. Morris tuned in the Navy frequencies for the bombardment group in Ariake. The pre-invasion bombardment did not have Navy gunships enter the bay until this morning. Army bombers laid several thousands of pounds of bombs per acre all around Ariake that morning, a repeat of what they’d done three days in a row at all the invasion sites.

In a surprising development, the Navy gunships found themselves in a shooting duel with land based guns which were not hit in the earlier bombing, and which chose to reveal themselves today. Calls went out for return fire on each new enemy gun. We see the flash, in the shadows. Target square 99-11, grid S! might be one call. Mr. Morris helped me find a few of them on a copy of the same map.

The Navy had help from ground-attack aircraft under a clear sky, but still lost a cruiser and a destroyer sunk, and other ships damaged. Some number of airplanes were also lost. They had to fly low over enemy held land to make rocket attacks on the back sides of hills.

Facebooktwitter
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Today we conclude this series of specific references behind the details in X-Day: Japan. These are not formal citations, as they are not all root sources and the book is not an academic volume. The use of real historical elements for X-Day: Japan serves to educate the reader about the time, add interest to the story, and honestly it just made the thing easier to write!

November 23, 1945
Jumbo air-to-ground rocket,
airandspace.si.edu

November 27, 1945
1st Cavalry Division,
first-team.us

December 3, 1945
M29 Weasel,
m29cweasel.com

December 8, 1945
M26 Pershing tank next to M4 Sherman tank (models),
warbird-photos.com

December 9, 1945
War Department Technical Manual TM-12-247,
Military Occupational Classification of Enlisted Personnel,
archive.org

December 10, 1945
U.S. Army Center of Military History style guide,
history.army.mil

December 11, 1945
Battle Formations – The Rifle Platoon, for NCOs (1942)
youtube.com

December 21, 1945
Hospitalization and evac plan for Operation Olympic,
Logistic Instructions No. 1 for the Olympic Operation, 25 July 1945
cgsc.cdmhost.com
USS Sanctuary, hospital ship AH-17
navsource.org

December 22, 1945
Russian communists vs Chinese communists,
– Tom Clancy, The Bear and the Dragon
Chiang Kai-shek quote on the communists vs the Japanese,
izquotes.com

December 23, 1945
Sakura-jima and its volcanoes,
photovolcanica.com

December 25, 1945
USS Hazard, minesweeper AM-240 [MUSEUM SHIP],
nps.gov
tripadvisor.com

January 17, 1946
Radiation detection equipment,
national-radiation-instrument-catalog.com

July 18, 1945
PBY-4/5 Catalina flying boat,
pwencycl.kgbudge.com
Consolidated Aircraft plant in San Diego,
sandiegohistory.org
Consolidated Aircraft plant production and products, B-24 and PB4Y-2,
legendsintheirowntime.com
wikipedia.org

December 24, 1945
Pearl Harbor survivors, trapped under USS West Virginia,
nps.gov
community.seattletimes.nwsource.com

Facebooktwitter
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail