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I have always wondered why the damage done by massive air and naval bombardment was so little in pacwar?

Originally posted by Pyrolight:
I have always wondered why the damage done by massive air and naval bombardment was so little in pacwar?

It does have a visible effect in lowering the readiness of the defending units, which really is crucial in PacWar. Beyond that however, bombing historically had a small effect on entrenched units, in the Pacific and elsewhere. All the air and naval bombardment in the world would not have helped the Marines setting foot on Iwo Jima's black sand.....

You should see some of the bunkers and tunnel complexes still existing throughout the Pacific. Even on Okinawa, as heavily built up as it is, there's still places where entire hillsides look like a lunar landscape (under the vegetation) from overlapping shell craterscaused by naval gunfire. Every crack and crevice was walled up and used as a fighting position...you can still smell the jellied gasoline from the flamethrowers and wipe it off with your fingers inside some of them.

Wild some of the stuff you find...bodies of 4 Jp. troops nose to tail in an escape tunnel when someone stuck a flamethrower in the entrance. Hot enough it melted glass vials in their pockets and cooked off their ammo. One guy was holed up in a foxhole at the very end of a tunnel (big enough to drive a jeep into), counted 58 expended 7.7mm rifle hulls laying around it, and over 500 "craters" in the clay where the US guys shot at him...they finally got him with a bazooka round, you could see the crater in the wall behind him.

Found a Jp. field hospital site, had a roughly 2 foot sq. tunnel you could crawl through with niches for the wounded off to the sides. Niches each had a skeleton with a hole in its forehead and a .45 hull laying in the tunnel...afterward the US guy stopped, smoked a cigarette and ate chow at the end of the tunnel and left his C-rat wrappers behind.

VERY impressive to follow some of the battles on the ground. It's an education to see exactly how skillfully the Jp. troops utilised the terrain for defence.

Go to the following message on the Pacwar List for everything I have gleaned over the years on Pacwar aircraft ground support effects:

http://www.halisp.net/listserv/pacwar/0193.html


Regards,

Rich Dionne

That explains a lot but one would have assumed that on a small atol or on a island where the entrenchment was very low that LCU casualties would be signifigantly higher. If you atol is 5000 feet across there really isn't anywhere to hide Another thing I was wondering (doesn't really apply) was counter air-strikes after a sucessfull landing. Durning large operations it could take quite awhile to get all the men and equipment off the beaches. In this case an enemy air attack should have had a devastating affect against open and exposed units. ie for a turn after casualties to sucessful air strikes would be closer to the losses suffererd on the russian front. (But since I am anything but an expert on the pacific front I will leave it to those who know better )

Even on small atolls the Japanese had the ability to built formidable obstacles. On Tarawa the Marines suffered heavy casualties despite fierce pre-invasion bombardments of the Japanese positions. It is amazing how well a bunker made out of coconut logs and sand can hold up to shells and bombs. You needed a very precise hit to actually damage one and near misses simply tossed more sand and coral on top of it.