SILK CHUTES AND HARD FIGHTING: US. Marine Corps Parachute Units in World War II
by Lieutenant Colonel Jon T. Hoffman (USMCR)
Foreword
Silk Chutes and Hard Fighting: US. Marine Corps Parachute Units in World War II is a brief narrative of the development, deployment, and eventual demise of Marine parachute units during World War II. It is published to honor the veterans of these special units and for the information of those interested in Marine parachutists and the events in which they participated.
Lieutenant Colonel Jon T. Hoffman, USMCR, is an infantry officer currently on duty as a staff officer with the Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force-Experimental. During his 15 years of active duty, he has served as a platoon and company commander with 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines; as an inspector-instructor with 2nd Battalion, 23rd Marines; as a history instructor at the U.S. Naval Academy; and as an action officer at Headquarters Marine Corps. His reserve service has been with the field history branch of the Marine Corps History and Museums Division, the II Marine Expeditionary Force Augmentation Command Element, and the adjunct faculty of the Marine Corps Command & Staff College. He is a distinguished graduate of the resident program of the latter institution. He also holds a bachelor's degree from Miami University, a law degree from Duke University, and a master's degree in military history from Ohio State University. His 1994 biography of Major General Merritt A. Edson, Once A Legend, received the Marine Corps Historical Foundation's Greene Award and was selected for the Commandant of the Marine Corps' Reading List. His numerous articles in professional military and historical journals have earned a dozen prizes, most notably the Marine Corps Historical Foundation's Heinl Award for 1992,1993, 1994, and 1995.
The Jump into Parachuting
The widely publicized airborne coup in the Low Countries created an immediate, high-level reaction within the Marine Corps. On 14 May the acting director of the Division of Plans and Policies at Headquarters Marine Corps issued a memorandum to his staff officers. The one-page document came right to the point in its first sentence: "The Major General Commandant [Thomas Holcomb] has ordered that we prepare plans for the employment of parachute troops." The matter was obviously of the highest priority, since Colonel Pedro A. del Valle asked for immediate responses, which could be submitted "in pencil on scrap paper." Perhaps as telling, the memorandum did not direct a mere study, but the creation of a course of action.
Marines landing
Considering the Corps' complete lack of expertise in this emerging field of warfare, Headquarters quickly translated staff plans into reality. The first small group of volunteers reported for training in October 1940 and graduated the following February. Succeeding classes went through an accelerated program for basic parachute qualification, but the numbers mounted very slowly. Throughout 1941 the Marine Corps produced just a trickle of jumpers and remained a long way from possessing a useful tactical entity. Most members of the first three training classes reported to the 2d Marine Division in San Diego, California, to form the nucleus of the Corps' first parachute unit. The 2d Parachute Company (soon redesignated Company A, 2d Parachute Battalion) formally came into existence on 22 March 1941. The first commanding officer was Captain Robert H. Williams. The majority of the fourth class went to Quantico, Virginia, and became the nucleus of Company A, 1st Parachute Battalion, on 28 May. Its first commanding officer was Captain Marcellus J. Howard. From that point forward, graduating classes were generally detailed on an alternating basis to each coast. In the summer of 1941, the West Coast company transferred to Quantico and merged into the 1st Battalion. Williams assumed command of the two-company organization.
The concentration of the Corps' small paratrooper contingents at Quantico at least allowed them to begin a semblance of tactical training. The battalion conducted a number of formation jumps during the last half of July, some from Marine planes and others from Navy patrol bombers. In no case could it muster enough planes to jump an entire company at once. Captain Williams used his battalion's time on the ground to emphasize his belief that "paratroopers are simply a new form of infantry." His men learned hand-to-hand fighting skills, went on conditioning hikes, and did a lot of calisthenic exercises. A Time magazine reporter noted that the parachutists were "a notably tough-looking outfit among Marines, who all look tough." One of the battalion's July jumps demonstrated the consternation that paratroopers could instill by their surprise appearance on a battlefield. A landing at an airfield near Fredericksburg, Virginia, unexpectedly disrupted maneuvers of the Army's 44th Infantry Division, because its leaders thought the Marines were an aggressor force added to the problem without their knowledge. The same jump also indicated some of the limitations of airborne operations. An approaching thunderstorm brought high winds which blew many of the jumpers away from their designated landing site and into a grove of trees. Luckily, none of the 40 men involved sustained any serious injuries.
The first tactical employment of Marine parachutists came with the large-scale landing exercise of the Amphibious Force, Atlantic Fleet, in August 1941. This corps, under the command of Major General Holland M. Smith, consisted of the 1st Marine Division and the Army's 1st Infantry Division. The final plan for the exercise at New River, North Carolina, called for Captain Williams' company to parachute at H plus 1 hour onto a vital crossroads behind enemy lines, secure it, and then attack the rear of enemy forces opposing the landing of the 1st Infantry Division. Captain Howard's company would jump on the morning of D plus 2 in support of an amphibious landing by Lieutenant Colonel Merritt A. Edson's Mobile Landing Group and a Marine tank company. Edson's force (the genesis of the 1st Raider Battalion) would go ashore behind enemy lines, advance inland, destroy the opposing reserve force, and seize control of important lines of communication. Howard's men would land near Edson's objective and "secure the road net and bridges in that vicinity."
For the exercise the parachutists were attached to the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing, which operated from a small airfield at New Bern, North Carolina, just north of the Marine base. The landing force executed the operation as planned, hut Holland Smith was not pleased with the results because there were far too many artificialities, including the lack of an aggressor force. A shortage of transport planes (only two on hand) handicapped the parachutists; it took several flights, with long delays between, to get just one of the under-strength companies on the ground. Once the exercise was underway, Smith made one attempt to simulate an enemy force. He arranged for Captain Williams to re-embark one squad and jump behind the lines of the two divisions, with orders to create as much havoc as possible. Williams' tiny force cut tactical telephone lines, hijacked trucks, blocked a road, and successfully evaded capture for several hours. One after-action report noted that "the introduction of paratroops lent realism to the necessity for command post security."
Smith put great faith in the potential value of airborne operations. In his preliminary report on the exercise, he referred to Edson's infantry/tank/parachute assault on D+2 as a "spearhead thrust around the hostile flank" and emphasized the need in modern warfare for the "speed and shock effect" of airborne and armor units. With that in mind, he recommended that his two-division force include at least one "air attack brigade" of at least one parachute regiment and one air infantry regiment. (The term "air infantry" referred to ground troops landed by transport aircraft.) He also urged the Marine Corps to acquire the necessary transport planes. Despite this high-level plea, the Marine Corps continued to go slowly with the parachute program. At the end of March 1942, the 1st Battalion finally stood up its third line company, but the entire organization only had a total of 332 officers and men, less than 60 percent of its table of organization strength (one of the lowest figures in the division). The 2d Battalion, still recovering from the loss of its first Company A, had barely 200 men.
Manpower and aircraft shortages and the straightjacket of the parachute training pipeline accounted for some of the bottleneck, but a lack of enthusiasm for the idea at Headquarters also appears to have taken hold. By contrast, the Corps had not conceived the original idea for the raiders until mid-1941, but it had two full 800-man battalions in existence by March 1942. The Marine Corps was not enthusiastic about the latter force, either, but it expanded rapidly in large measure due to pressure from President Franklin Roosevelt and senior Navy leaders. Without similar heat from above, Headquarters was not about to commit its precious resources to a crash program to expand the parachutists and provide them with air transports. Marine planners probably made a realistic choice in the matter, given the competing requirements to fill up divisions and air wings and make them ready for amphibious warfare, another infant art suffering through even greater growing pain