US Marine Corps - The Black Vault

74 Amphibians Came To Conquer
Turner a chance to participate in the 1925 Joint Amphibious training exercise
which the Commandant of the Marine Corps described as:
The outstanding activity of the year was the Joint Army and Navy Problem
No. 3 held off Hawaii. . . . The exercises which took place at Hawaii were
completely successful from the standpoint of the Marines. The plan worked
to perfection and the landing was accomplished.38
Planning by the Marines had been on the basis of 40,000 troops. Fifteen
hundred Marines represented the 40,000.
The extent that these operations raised the planning interest of Lieutenant
Commander Turner in air and amphibious operations is unknown, since all
the oflicial records of the Mervine, except the Ship’s Log, have been destroyed
by the pitiless burners of the Record Depositories.
On 8 April 1925, six days before Lieutenant Commander Turner was to be
relieved, the Metwitie, while anchored in San. Francisco Bay, dragged anchor
in the late afternoon and fetched up across the bow of the battleship
Colorado, “the latter’s bow striking at the forward end of the deck house.”
Collisions in 1925 generally meant Boards of Investigation or Courts of
Inquiry and all too frequently these were followed by general courts martial
for the unwitting or negligent. Fast paper work and a ‘