Coral and Brass is the biography of General Holland McTyeire "Howlin' Mad" Smith, known as the "father" of modern U.S. amphibious warfare. His book is a riveting first-hand account of key battles fought in the Pacific between the U.S. Army and Canadian troops against the Japanese, including assaults on the Gilbert Islands, the Marshall Islands, the island of Saipan, Tinian in the Marianas and Iwo Jimo.
*** OVER 210,000 WEST POINT MILITARY HISTORY SERIES SETS IN PRINT *** Beginning with a look at the readiness of the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy and the United States armed forces, this book gives a detailed account of the Allies’ brutal five-year struggle with Japan. It examines the interrelationship of land, sea, and air forces as they battled over the vast reaches of the Pacific Theater of War.
The Marine Corps covered itself in glory in World War II with victories over the Japanese in hard-fought battles such as Guadalcanal, Tarawa, and Iwo Jima. While these battles are well known, those who led the Marines into them have remained obscure until now. In Commanding the Pacific: Marine Corps Generals in World War II, Stephen R. Taaffe analyzes the fifteen high-level Marine generals who led the Corps' six combat divisions and two corps in the conflict. He concludes that these leaders played an indispensable and unheralded role in organizing, training, and leading their men to victory. Taaffe insists there was nothing inevitable about the Marine Corps' success in World War II. The small pre-war size of the Corps meant that its commandant had to draw his combat leaders from a small pool of officers who often lacked the education of their Army and Navy counterparts. Indeed, there were fewer than one hundred Marine officers with the necessary rank, background, character, and skills for its high-level combat assignments. Moreover, the Army and Navy froze the Marines out of high-level strategic decisions and frequently impinged on Marine prerogatives. There were no Marines in the Joint Chiefs of Staff or at the head of the Pacific War's geographic theaters, so the Marines usually had little influence over the island targets selected for them. In addition to bureaucratic obstacles, constricted geography and vicious Japanese opposition limited opportunities for Marine generals to earn the kind of renown that Army and Navy commanders achieved elsewhere. In most of its battles on small Pacific War islands, Marine generals had neither the option nor inclination to engage in sophisticated tactics, but they instead relied in direct frontal assaults that resulted in heavy casualties. Such losses against targets of often questionable strategic value sometimes called into question the Marine Corps' doctrine, mission, and the quality of its combat generals. Despite these difficulties, Marine combat commanders repeatedly overcame challenges and fulfilled their missions. Their ability to do so does credit to the Corps and demonstrates that these generals deserve more attention from historians than they have so far received.
This meticulous study is a concentrated look at naval admiral Chester W. Nimitz and his subordinate leaders—military men under stress—and the relationship of fighting admirals to their top leaders and one another. Bull Halsey, “the Patton of the Pacific,” could win a battle; ascetic and cultivated Raymond Spruance could win a campaign; but Chester W. Nimitz, the quiet but dauntless battler from the banks of the Pedernales River, could win a war. And the way he did win that war in the Pacific is the center of this excellent and absorbing biography of naval operations and of men in command relationships. How They Won the War in the Pacific covers many leaders, including the top fighting ones afloat and ashore, and it shows Admiral Nimitz as history will record him—as the wise, calm tower of strength in adversity and success, the principal architect of victory in the Pacific during World War II.
An examination of Holland Smith's career in the Marine Corps follows its evolution from an insular constabulary at the turn of the 20th century to a juggernaut, landing American troops island by island in vital amphibious engagements up to 1945. Serving in important assignments from the Philippines to China to Latin America, Smith became deeply involved in the development of amphibious strategy and tactics, as well as in the creation of proper landing craft by the early 1930s. After Pearl Harbor, the Marines would turn to him to plan and lead operations in the Gilberts, the Marianas, and the Volcano Islands, culminating in the epic operation at Iwo Jima. Venzon details the life of this quiet, modest man who, she contends, deliberately cultivated the persona of an irascible, unreasonable perfectionist, in an effort to do everything possible to protect the Marines under his command. Smith braved malaria and dengue fever in the Philippines, sailed through the backwaters of post-Manchu China, and fought in the earliest banana wars in Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic. After World War I, he was the first Marine to attend the General Staff College at Langres, and from then on became am important member of 4th Marine Brigade Staff, and later on the staff of the army's I Corps. Here, he learned that war in the new century would be as much about planning, logistics, communications, and intelligence as it was about brute force. Upon his return to the United States, he attended both the Naval War College and the Marine Corps Command and Staff College. By 1940, he commanded the First Marine Division. His deliberately explosive behavior, however, would ultimately push him out of the circle of legendary World War II leaders.
