US Marine Corps - The Black Vault

592 Amphibians Came To Conq~er
Party. But in November 1942, the Commander Transport Division Eight
still thought:
The bottleneck of unloading is still the Shore Party. . , . At Aola Bay, the
Shore Party was 800 strong (200 per ship). 400 Army, 100 Marines and
100 ACO~, personnel. . . . Unloading boats on a beach is extremely
strenuous physical Jabor and the Shore Party must be organized into reliefs
if the unloading is to extend over 12 hours.?l
Further increases in personnel as well as cleaner command lines were
again tried in TOENAILS. They paid off.
(H) Force Requirements
There was one sobering lesson from TOENAILS which carried forward
into future planning of assault and follow up forces for the island cam-
paigns of the Pacific. It was expressed in a COMINCH planners memo-
randum of 6 August 1943:
2. At the termination of Japanese resistance in Munda, there were seven
regimental combat teams, totaling more than 30,000 troops in our assault
forces. No information differing from our initial estimate of 4 to 5,oOO
troops on Munda, to which reinforcements were believed to have been added
for a time, has been received. However, of the Japanese on Munda only 1,671
are known to be dead and 28 captured. The overwhelming superiority of our
forces in numbers and equipment had to be applied for 12 days despite air
bombing and naval bombardment support before a force not more than one-
seventh its size had been overcome. If we are going to require such overwhelming
superiority at every point where we attack the Japanese, it is time
for radical change in the estimate of the forces that will be required to defeat
the Japanese now in the Southwest and Central Pacific.”
A STEP AWAY FROM WANTLESSNESS
How was Rear Admiral Turner holding up during the second six months
of his year in the tropics? His Chief of Staff recalls:
Most every afternoon about 5 p.m. Admiral Turner, Doyle, and Lewis went
ashore for drinks before dinner. I went several times as did Hamilton Haines.
They did not go to the Officers Club Bar that Marine General ‘Barney’ Vogel
had !-milt in the city-but went to a small restaurant run by a French woman,
@ COM~ANSDIV Eight to COMPHIBFORSOPAC, letter, NOV. 1942.
“ Captain Clarence E, Olsen, USN, to ACS (Plans ), memorandum, 6 Aug. 1943.