US Marine Corps - The Black Vault

318 Amphibiatu Came To Conquer
Compare it with the one sent out from Vice Admiral Ghormley’s Headquarters:
We look to you to electrify the world with news of a real offensive. Allied
ships, planes and fighting men carry on from Midway. Sock ‘Em in the
Solomons.T6
HISTORY FORETELLS
One of the better students of military history, Captain B. H. Liddell Hart,
had written in 1939:
A landing on a foreign coast in the face of hostile troops has always been
one of the most difficult operations of war. It has now become almost impossible,
because of the vulnerable target which a convoy of transports offers to the
defender’s air force as it approaches the shore. Even more vulnerable to air
attack. is the process of disembarkation in open boats. 7S
Admiral Turner later said:
I had read Lidell Hart’s book and that part of it kept coming back to my mind
as we chugged around Guadalcanal in the haze on 6 August.so
“AT LAST WE HAVE STARTED”
With these words CINCPAC advised COMINCH that the WATCH-
TOWER Operation was underway. Where did Admiral Nimitz first learn of
the start ? From COMSOPAC or from Commander Expeditionary Force?
Neither. He learned it from reading Japanese radio traffics’ Six hours later
CINCPAC still had no report from COMSOPAC or Commander Expeditionary
Force, but the Japanese were keeping him informed of the favorable
progress of the WATCHTOWER Operation.s’
The first detailed summary report of the operation was sent by COM-
PHIBFORSOPAC to all interested seniors as of 2000, local time on 7 August,
a bit late for a good staff officer. In this summary report, COMSOPAC and
CTF 61 were requested to provide “scouting against approach enemy forces
from westward.” 8’ It was a wise but fruitless request.
78COMSOPAC to TF’s 61, 62, 63, 061040 Aug. 1942.
n B. H. Llddell Hart, Tbe Dejeme of Brkzitr (New York: Random House, 1939), p. 130.
wTurner.
a CINCPAC to COMINCH, 062045 Aug. 1942.
* CINCPAC to COMINCH, 070231 Aug. 1942.
= CTG 61.2 to COMSOPAC and CTF 61,071030 Aug. 1942.