US Marine Corps - The Black Vault

226 Atn~hibians Came To Conquer
Panama in 1923. He was in the Saratoga in 1935, but she did not participate
in FLEX 1.
Starting in late 1938 when Captain Turner was back afloat in command
of the heavy cruiser A~toria, the Fleet Landing Exercises had become pretty
much the property of the Atlantic Fleet and the A~tor;a was in the Pacific
Fleet so he missed the experimental night landings of 1939 and 1940. By
October 1940, Captain Turner was back in the Navy Department. He
participated in planning Fleet Problems and Joint Exercises at the departmental
level but again he missed both FLEX 7 which took place in the
Atlantic and the Joint Landing Exercises in the Pacific in 1940 and 1941.
In his younger years, like all naval officers facing promotion examinations
and annual inspections, he had studied the Navy’s 1920 and the 1927 revised
edition of the Landing Force Manual, At the Naval War College he studied
the Joint Board pamphlet, titled ]oint Ovetseas Expeditions, promulgated in
1933, as well as the Navy’s 1935 Tentative Landing Operations Manrzal
which, though based on the Joint Board text, was drafted at the Marine
Corps Schools at Quantico.
Final reports on Fleet Problems and Fleet Landing Exercises were comprehensive
documents circulated by the Navy Department and by Fleet
Commanders to ships and stations. In this way, all officers were generally
in touch with amphibious warfare techniques, lessons learned and sugges-
tions made for improvement. Yet, Admiral Turner, an avid student of all
that related to past and present naval operations, stated that he had nothing
but “a highly theoretical knowledge of amphibious warfare” and a ‘“willingness
to learn” to take into the WATCHTOWER Operation.go It was the
“willingness to learn” that paid such high dividends to the Navy.
THE AMPHIBIOUS OPERATION BIBLE
The 1938 edition of Latiding Operations Doctrine, United States Navy
(FTP-167) is a rare publication in its uncorrected and original condition,
but a necessary bench mark for the status of United States amphibious
techniques and material development before World War 11 started in
Europe. It superseded the 1935 Tentatiue Landing Opevatiovzs Manua~.
The 1935 Manual was very largely based on the Tentative Manual for
Landing Operations drafted by four officers, including Lieutenant Walter C.
m Ibid.