OT: More on USMC casualties, WW II
vincent p. norris
I found while looking for comparative loss data. Many islands had to
be taken from the Japanese; this is just a sampling.
Anything not in parentheses is a quotation from the source cited.
I presume anyone reading this newsgroup already knows abut Schweinfurt
and Regensburg, not to mention Ploesti; perhaps these events are less
familiar.
GUADALCANAL
[The First Marine Division landed on Guadalcanal on August 7, 1942.
I believe, but could be mistaken, that a division had somewhere
between 16,000 and 20,000 men. I could not find a more precise
number. Anyone know?]
The sick list of the 1st Marine Division in November included more
than 3,200 men with malaria.
The total cost of the Guadalcanal campaign to the American ground
combat forces was 1,598 officers and men killed, 1,152 of them
Marines.
The wounded totaled 4,709, and 2,799 of these were Marines. Marine
aviation casualties were 147 killed and 127 wounded. The Japanese in
their turn lost close to 25,000 men on Guadalcanal, about half of whom
were killed in action.
Source:
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USMC/USMC-C-Guadalcanal/index.html
TARAWA
The final casualty figures for the 2d Marine Division in Operation
GALVANIC were 997 Marines and 30 sailors (organic medical personnel)
dead; 88 Marines missing and presumed dead; and 2,233 Marines and 59
sailors wounded. Total casualties: 3,407. The Guadalcanal campaign had
cost a comparable amount of Marine casualties over six months;
Tarawa's losses occurred in a period of 76 hours. Moreover, the ratio
of killed to wounded at Tarawa was significantly high, reflecting the
savagery of the fighting. The overall proportion of casualties among
those Marines engaged in the assault was about 19 percent, a steep but
"acceptable" price. But some battalions suffered much higher losses.
The 2d Amphibian Tractor Battalion lost over half the command
Source: http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USMC/USMC-C-Tarawa/index.html
PELELIU
What did the seizure of Peleliu cost? Marine casualties numbered
6,526, including Navy corpsmen and doctors, of whom 1,252 were killed.
The 81st [Army] Division totalled 3,089 casualties, of whom 404 were
killed in action. Total U.S. troop casualties was 9,615 for Peleliu,
Angaur and Ngesebus, with 1,656 dead.
Source:
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USMC/USMC-C-Peleliu/index.html
IWO JIMA
Iwo was invaded by the Fifth Amphibious Corps, comprising all or pars
of the 3rd, 4th and 5th Marine Divisions. I don't know how many men.
Sunday, 4 March 1945, marked the end of the second week of the U.S.
invasion of Iwo Jima. By this point the assault elements of the 3d,
4th, and 5th Marine Divisions were exhausted, their combat efficiency
reduced to dangerously low levels. The thrilling site of the American
flag being raised by the 28th Marines on Mount Suribachi had occurred
10 days earlier, a lifetime on "Sulphur Island." The landing forces of
the V Amphibious Corps (VAC) had already sustained 13,000 casualties,
including 3,000 dead.
Unfortunately, the luxury of having first-rate medical assistance so
close to the front lines took a terrible toll. Twenty-three doctors
and 827 corpsmen were killed or wounded Within the first month of the
fighting on Iwo Jima, 13,737 wounded Marines and corpsmen were
evacuated by hospital ship, another 2,449 by airlift.
In its 36 days of combat on Iwo Jima, the V Amphibious Corps killed
approximately 22,000 Japanese soldiers and sailors. The cost was
staggering. The assault units of the corps--Marines and organic Navy
personnel--sustained 24,053 casualties, by far the highest
single-action losses in Marine Corps history. Of these, a total of
6,140 died. Roughly one Marine or corpsman became a casualty for every
three who landed on Iwo Jima. According to a subsequent analysis by
military historian Dr. Norman Cooper, "Nearly seven hundred Americans
gave their lives for every square mile."
Source: http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USMC/USMC-C-Iwo/index.html
George Z. Bush
news:0kc823p5sara8jqoc...@4ax.com...
> Here are some Marine Corps casualty reports from WW II campaigns that
> I found while looking for comparative loss data. Many islands had to
> be taken from the Japanese; this is just a sampling.
>
> Anything not in parentheses is a quotation from the source cited.
>
> I presume anyone reading this newsgroup already knows abut Schweinfurt
> and Regensburg, not to mention Ploesti; perhaps these events are less
> familiar.
The Ploesti raid was made by 5 B-24 Bomb Groups, 3 from 8th AF and 2 from the
9th. Of the 162 raiders to reach Ploesti (3 crashed and 13 aborted en route),
51 were lost and 22 landed (or crashed) at Allied bases on Malta, Sicily, and
Cyprus. Of the 89 Liberators that returned to Benghazi that day, only 31 were
flyable.
Assuming a crew strength of nine per plane, that would have committed 1,458 men
to the raid, 459 of them being KIA on the 51 lost planes. That'd make the KIA
rate 31.5% which is surely understated, because there undoubtedly were
additional KIAs aboard the planes that did make it back to one base or another,
particularly on the 58 that recovered at Benghazi shot up so badly that they
were deemed unflyable.
By comparison, 1st Marine's KIAs on Guadalcanal were 1,152 which, assuming a
Division stength of 16,000, would make a KIA rate of 7.1%. I concede that these
figures are too low because the entire 16,000 men in the division were probably
not committed to combat operations although I've heard Marines claim that every
last one of them committed to battle is an infantryman (and that would include
all support troops).
I have no figures on the WIAs returning from the Ploesti raid.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-vetscor/1136027/posts
>
>
> GUADALCANAL
>
> [The First Marine Division landed on Guadalcanal on August 7, 1942.
> I believe, but could be mistaken, that a division had somewhere
> between 16,000 and 20,000 men. I could not find a more precise
> number. Anyone know?]
In general, I always thought that a division contained about 15,000 men,
although I think there were times when they attached special groups to it that
beefed up the numbers somewhat. That said, I really don't know what the 1st
Marine's strength was for Guadalcanal.
Bill Shatzer
-snip-
> The Ploesti raid was made by 5 B-24 Bomb Groups, 3 from 8th AF and 2 from the
> 9th. Of the 162 raiders to reach Ploesti (3 crashed and 13 aborted en route),
> 51 were lost and 22 landed (or crashed) at Allied bases on Malta, Sicily, and
> Cyprus. Of the 89 Liberators that returned to Benghazi that day, only 31 were
> flyable.
> Assuming a crew strength of nine per plane, that would have committed 1,458 men
> to the raid, 459 of them being KIA on the 51 lost planes. That'd make the KIA
> rate 31.5% which is surely understated, because there undoubtedly were
> additional KIAs aboard the planes that did make it back to one base or another,
> particularly on the 58 that recovered at Benghazi shot up so badly that they
> were deemed unflyable.
Actual KIAs for Ploesti seem to have been a bit over 300 - sources differ.
Obviously not all the crews of the downed planes were KIAs, many
survived. PoWs and interned (Turkey) personnel seem to have been about
two hundred - one source says 208.
So your estimate overstates the number of KIAs but understates the total
number of casualties.
Cheers,
bunghol...@lycos.com
Amerikkkan generals threw their men away as expendables for bragging
rights after the war.
vincent p. norris
>survived. PoWs and interned (Turkey) personnel seem to have been about
>two hundred - one source says 208.
Joe Harmuth, a fraternity brother of mine at Carnegie Tech (now
Carnegie Mellon) in the spring of 1946, was a B-24 bombardier shot
down on the Ploesti raid. He spent the rest of the war with
Mihailovich and the Chetniks. His nickname was "Jittery Joe," which
may tell you something about life as Chetnik, fighting both the
Krauts and Tito's Partisans.
vince norris