United States Army in World War II: The War in the Pacific. Campaign in the Marianas
Washington, DC: United States Army, Center of Military History, 1993. Commemorative Edition. Trade paperback. xx, [2], 505 pages, wraps, illus., maps (including 7 color maps in separate map envelope), charts, tables, bibliographical note, glossary, index. Philip A. Crowl (1914-1991) was a military historian who taught at universities and conducted research for the United States government, and also served as an intelligence officer. He earned a doctorate in history from Johns Hopkins University in 1942. He served in the United States Navy, serving from 1942 to 1945 in the Pacific and reaching the rank of lieutenant commander. He was an assistant professor of history from 1945 to 1949. In 1949, Crowl became a civilian historian for the Office of the Chief of Military History of the United States Army in Washington, D.C., and remained in that position until 1957. He then became an intelligence officer for the United States Department of State, serving to 1967. He published many works on military history during this period of his career, including The U.S. Marines and Amphibious War with J. A. Isley (1951), Seizure of the Gilberts and Marshalls with E. G. Love (1955), and Campaign in the Marianas (1961). He made his last career move in 1973, becoming the Ernest J. King Professor of History and chair of the department of strategy at the U. S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. He retired professor emeritus in 1980. Corners of a few pages bent, slight wear to cover edges. This Commemorative Edition was published on the 50th anniversary of World War II; the book was first printed in 1960. In the capture of the southern Marianas, including the recapture of Guam, during the summer of 1944, Army ground and air forces played an important, though subordinate, role to that of the Navy and its Marine Corps. Marine personnel constituted the bulk of the combat troops employed. The objective of this campaign was "to secure control of sea communications through the Central Pacific by isolating and neutralizing the Carolines and by the establishment of sea and air bases for operations against Japanese sea routes and long-range air attacks against the Japanese home land." Its success would provide steppingstones from which the Americans could threaten further attack westward toward the Philippines, Formosa, and Japan itself, and would gain bases from which the Army Air Forces' new very long range bombers, the B-29's, could strike at Japan's heartland. Recognizing and accepting the challenge, the Japanese Navy suffered heavy and irreplaceable losses in the accompanying Battle of the Philippine Sea; and the islands after capture became the base for all the massive air attacks on Japan, beginning in November 1944. In the operations described in the present volume, landings against strong opposition demonstrated the soundness of the amphibious doctrine and techniques evolved out of hard experience in preceding Pacific operations. Bitter inland fighting followed the landings, with Army and Marine Corps divisions engaged side by side. The author's account and corresponding Marine Corps histories of these operations provide ample opportunity to study the differences in the fighting techniques of the two services. Dr. Crowl also deals frankly with one of the best-known controversies of World War II, that of Smith versus Smith, but concludes that it was the exception to generally excellent interservice co-operation. With team effort among the military services the order of the day, this record of the Army's experience in working with the Navy and the Marine Corps should be particularly valuable both now and in the future. Condition: good.
Keywords: WWII, Pacific Theater, Mariana Islands, Saipan, Tinian, Naval, Marines, Guam, Official History, Andrew Bruce, Roy Geiger, Tapotchau, Holland Smith
ISBN: 0070630000
[Book #56983]
Price: $30.00