Defense of Wake Island - 8 December 1941

[Vulture6]

Most everyone knows what happened at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, and commemorations were held across the country yesterday to remember the attack that finally drew the US into WWII combat. Unfortunately, we are losing our remaining veterans of WWII at a rapid rate, and many in today's society have but glancing knowledge of the events of WWII that helped shape what this nation (and this world) has become.

Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese bombers attacked the American outpost at Wake Island. Although the attacks occurred within hours of each other, the attack at Wake was on 8 December, since Wake is on the other side of the international date line. What follows is a brief account of the stand by the Marines and Sailors of Wake Island in December 1941.

V

[Vulture6]

Wake Island

The subject Marines surrendering has come up in a couple of recent posts, and both Wake Island and the Philippines were mentioned. I already posted a little something on the actions at Bataan and Corrigedor, so I thought that I would provide a little history about Wake for those not familiar with the story.

In 1940, as the U.S. Navy was expanding its Pacific strategy, Wake Island was one of many outposts that the Navy decided would serve as a forward base / coaling station / and base for maritime patrol planes. Construction of defenses began in earnest around April 1941. By June 1941, the 1st Defense Battalion, FMF was designated to be assigned to Wake. This force was to consist of three 5 inch coastal defense batteries, four 3 inch anti-aircraft batteries, a fire control radar station and a radar search station. Also assigned would be a compliment of up to 2 infantry companies. As was the case across the Pacific, the Corps was greatly under strength and short on equipment. The 1st Defense Battalion was no exception.

In October 1941, Major James Devereaux, the 1st Defense Battalion Executive Officer assumed command of the battalion, and temporarily, the entire garrison at Wake. Within a few weeks, U.S. Navy Commander W.S. Cunningham arrived to take command of the garrison. By early November, the Marine forces on Wake were reinforced and came up to strength of 15 officers, and 373 enlisted. If the battalion had been at full strength, it would have fielded 43 officers and 939 enlisted Marines. This meant that the battalion could only man parts of two of the anti-aircraft batteries, and only the 5 inch batteries were fully manned. As far as the infantry companies, they could man only half of their machineguns. They had no early warning / search radars, and the batteries were plagued by a shortage of spare parts for almost all of their equipment.

On 4 December 1941, VMF-211 (fighter squadron) flew from the USS Enterprise to Wake Island. The squadron was equipped with 12 new F4F-3 Wildcat fighters. While this was the best carrier fighter in the US inventory in 1941, it was new to all of the pilots of VMF-211, who were unfamiliar with its capabilities and idiosyncrasies. The landing strip on Wake was long but narrow, allowing only one aircraft to land or take off at a time. In addition, revetments for the aircraft parking area had not been built. The fighters landed with uncertain orders, and a lot of work still to do to make Wake an operational fighter base. In addition, VMF-211 undertook a rigorous training regimen for its pilots, so that they could become familiar with their new aircraft. The squadron consisted of 12 officers and 49 enlisted Marines.

On December 6, 1941, the total number of Marines of all ranks and specialties available on Wake for defense was 449. In addition, there were approximately 1200 unarmed civilian contractors.

On the morning of 6 December, Major Devereaux held the first drills of the coastal defense battalion since he had assumed command in October. The Marines had been working in shifts around the clock, seven days a week to get the defenses ready. Devereaux was pleased with the drills, and granted the Marines an afternoon off – the first one they had experience in over two months – and declared a holiday routine for Sunday, 7 December.

Since Wake is west of the International Date Line, when the attack occurred on Pearl Harbor, it was already 8 December on Wake. By 0650 on 8 December, an uncoded message from Hickam Army Airfield in Hawaii got through to Wake, alerting them of the attack on Oahu. The Marine garrison had already finished chow, and by 0735 were under arms at their defensive positions. VMF-211 already had the “Dawn Patrol” up and flying when the news came in. By 0800, all extra arms and ammunition were being issued to the civilian contractors, but the supply didn’t go far.

Shortly before noon, the first Japanese bombers arrived, coming out of a rain squall to drop their loads on the defenders of Wake. Less than 15 minutes later, the bombers left, and 7 of the 8 Wildcats at the airstrip were destroyed. The 8th was damaged and could not fly. The remaining 4 were airborne, patrolling well to the north of Wake, and missed the engagement. The fuel dump was on fire, and 23 of the squadron’s personnel were killed, 11 were wounded. To add insult to injury, one of the 4 remaining Wildcats was damaged by debris while landing after the airstrike.

The Marines and several of the civilian contractors worked through the night to repair damages and prepare revetments for the remaining aircraft. When no further strikes came by midnight, everyone assumed that the land based Japanese bombers wouldn’t be back until around noon (assuming that they took off at dawn). They came on shortly before noon and repeated their strike from the day before. This time the Wildcats downed one bomber and the anti-aircraft batteries downed another. These raids continued almost like clockwork on the 9th and 10th of December.

Reinforcements for Wake
Plans were immediately made to reinforce Wake. The USS Saratoga was dispatched from San Diego to deliver the fighters of VMF-221 to the defenders at Wake, first stopping off at Pearl to join up with the remainder of Task Force 14 with embarked supplies and Marines from the defense battalions on Hawaii. They started loading the ships at Pearl with men and equipment on 10 December (the same day that Guam fell), and had completed embarkation by the evening of 13 December. The Saratoga arrived at Pearl on the 15th, and refueled for the journey to Wake. But it was already becoming too late. The task force could only proceed as fast as the slowest ship, and the need for a “zig-zag” course to avoid Japanese submarines slowed them even more. They were set to arrive at Wake on 23 December.

Meanwhile, Back On The Atoll…
In the early morning darkness of 11 December, the ships of the Japanese landing force arrived just south of Wake, and were spotted about 0300 by the defenders. By 0500, the lead Japanese ships began their shore bombardment from a range of about 8000 yards, and the defenders at the 5 inch batteries held their fire – refusing to give away their positions.

Shortly after 0600, with the bombarding ships on the southern side of the atoll were about 4500 yards off the beach, the shore defense batteries opened up. The first salvos were high, and the ships immediately increased speed and turned seaward. By the time the range had increase to 6000 yards, the batteries had two direct hits on a Japanese cruiser. At 7000 yards, they scored two more hits. The destroyer escort accompanying the cruiser was also hit, and the shore bombardment ships fled out of range and over the horizon.

Meanwhile, on the northwestern end of the atoll, more destroyers and cruisers were accompanying the two troop transports in close to shore. The shore battery on that end of the island opened fire at a range of 4000 yards, and within two minutes, the lead destroyer was broken in half and sinking. A second destroyer was engaged and hit, but soon smoke from the burning ships blanked the battery, and observed fire was impossible. The battery shifted fire to the transports 10,000 yards off shore and scored one hit. At this point, the Japanese ships withdrew over the horizon. In just over an hour, the 5 inch batteries had sunk one destroyer, damaged three others, severely damaged a cruiser, and also inflicted damage on a light cruiser and a troop transport, all while suffering four wounded casualties and one 5 inch gun damaged.

As the Japanese ships sailed out of range, on their way back to Kwajalein, the combat air patrol of VMF-211 pursued them, dropping 100 pound bombs and strafing the ships. The planes would expend all ordnance, return to Wake to re-arm, and return to the ships until they were out of range. One of the troop transports was set afire, and the attempted landing was thwarted.

Two of the Wildcats were damaged in the repeated attacks on the ships, and while all of them made it back to Wake, one was destroyed totally when it crash landed on the beach. By mid-morning the action was over, the Japanese had lost two destroyers sunk, three cruisers damaged, and one troop transport damaged, with an estimated total loss of around 700 personnel. The Marines defending Wake lost one aircraft (recovered the crew), one 5 inch gun, and had 4 Marines wounded.

By 1000 on the 11th, 30 Japanese land based bombers arrived at Wake to exact their toll. The two remaining Wildcats of VMF-211 had refueled, switched for fresh pilots, and were airborne again. Between the two Marine fighters and the fire of the anti-aircraft batteries, three bombers were shot down and four were damaged. The bombing was largely ineffective, and the defenders of Wake suffered no casualties. After the bombers departed, Major Devereaux ordered the displacement of his batteries, figuring that the Japanese had plotted their positions. The Marines worked through the night building new positions, and wrapped up shortly before dawn.

On 12 December, shortly before dawn, two Japanese flying boat bombers showed up and attacked the airstrip at Wake. The two remaining Wildcats were already airborne, and managed to shoot one of the bombers down. This was the last attack of the day. During the first calm day since the attacks began, defenses were improved and one of the damaged Wildcats was repaired to flyable condition. That evening, while on combat patrol, one of the Wildcats spotted a surfaced Japanese submarine. The pilot dropped two 100 pound bombs (near misses) and strafed the sub. The sub dove leaving behind an oil slick. Unfortunately, the fighter had suffered damage to its wings from the frag pattern of its own bombs (flew to low before releasing). After a day of calm, the Marines took their first opportunity to burry their dead.

The Japanese continued to fly bombers over Wake, targeting the 5 inch gun emplacements and the airfield. Some of these were land based bombers that showed up in the late morning, and others were flying boats, which could show up at any time. By 16 December, the Japanese bombers had struck Wake 10 times, with varying degrees of success. Major Devereaux make maximum advantage of “dummy” positions and displaced his guns frequently.

By 17 December, the engineers of VMF-211 again had four Wildcats in flyable condition. Air raids continued, and the pilots of VMF-211 and the gunners of Devereaux’s anti-aircraft batteries took their toll on the enemy bombers. However, the bombing slowly wore down the defenders, including their only source of fresh water, one of the Navy’s large evaporators, and by 19 December, only one fighter plane remained in flyable condition.

By 21 December, Wake was attacked by carrier based aircraft, as a flight of 29 dive bombers and 18 fighters attacked. (These were part of the Pearl Harbor attack force). Only hours later, 33 shore based bombers also attacked Wake, and these planes succeeded in severely damaging the anti-aircraft batteries fire control mechanisms, leaving only one gun with adequate range finding and fire control capabilities. By the end of the day on 21 December, only one of the 12 anti-aircraft guns was functional, and only two Wildcats were operational (and they were held together by salvaged and improvised parts).

On 22 December, with the two remaining Wildcats aloft, a Japanese flight of some 33 carrier based aircraft (Zeros and dive bombers) arrived over Wake. The two pilots (Captain Freuler and Lt. Davidson) unhesitatingly dove into the enemy fighters and dive bombers. Freuler downed two Zeros, and saw Davidson’s plane come under attack. Freuler managed to out-dive his pursuers, but his plane was badly shot up and he was wounded. He did managed to land in a controlled crash at the airfield, but his plane was lost. No one saw Davidson or his plane go down, but he never returned. VMF-211 was out of aircraft, and was now forming as infantry, consisting of 20 Marines, both officer and enlisted.

23 December 1941
The night of 22/23 December was lashed by rain squalls with no moon or starlight. There was a false alarm around 0100 of landings of the north point of the atoll, and this put everyone at General Quarters. While there were no landings at this time, the Japanese invasion force was arriving at Wake and preparing for their assaults. They would take no chances with the 5 inch batteries that had dealt them so much harm on the 11th, and sought to land at several different sites around the island under the cover of darkness.

In order to ensure that the bulk of their invasion force did make it ashore, the plan was to beach two “destroyer-transports” on the southern shore of Wake and unload the assault forces directly. These two ships did beach themselves sometime between 0200 and 0230. By 0215 the Marines knew that a landing was coming – they could see faint lights off shore and hear ominous sounds in the darkness. By 0245, Marines in the beach defenses had spotted one of the ships and opened fire with their .50 cals, and turned an anti-aircraft searchlight on the closest ship. Meanwhile, landing barges and rubber rafts were approaching the beaches at other parts of the island. Two of the barges were held at bay off shore with .50 cal fire, forcing the barges to pull back and try several times to make landfall. Unfortunately, the landings weren’t discovered in time to use the 5 inch batteries that had dealt with the attempted landings on the 11th. (The guns couldn’t depress far enough, or the landings were masked by terrain. One of the 3 inch anti-aircraft guns was employed in direct fire mode against the two beached destroyer transports and quickly set them afire.

Within a few hours, communications among the defenders was cut. The Marines made a stand (with a handful of Sailors and civilian contractors) along the airstrip, facing the main landing force coming in from the southern beaches. The mobile reserve, a whole 8 Marines with four .30 caliber machineguns, raced in trucks to help bolster the line at the eastern end of the airfield.

As the Japanese increased their strength ashore, the 5 inch batteries and remaining 3 inch batteries destroyed their guns and fell back to fight as infantry.

The fight for Wake in the early morning hours of 23 December was characterized by many small unit and independent actions. The Marines were necessarily dispersed, and were facing an estimated 1500 Japanese invaders. Groups of 2 to 3 Marines worked their way through the darkness and underbrush to engage and beat back frequently larger forces of Japanese. In one case, three Marines, covered by fire from two .50 caliber machineguns, waded into the surf to throw grenades at and into the approaching Japanese landing barges. In another instance, a machinegun position commanded by a Marine Corporal, and supported by six other Marines and three civilian contractors, held off a reinforced Japanese company. This Corporal, coordinating with another machinegun position 400 yards away, stopped this company’s advance. He held them for well over an hour and a half, until it started to get light.

Fewer than 500 defenders (Marines, Sailors, and civilian contractors) started the battle, trying to defend over 21 miles of shoreline. When you consider that half of this force was initially tied to either the 5 inch batteries or the 3 inch batteries. More Marines were stationed at machinegun and searchlight positions around the island, many out of the initial landing zone. Add to that casualties inflicted during the night’s fight, and by 0600, approximately 85 Marines were in a position near the airfield to face the main Japanese landing force. Of these 85, approximately half were detailed to machinegun crews, leaving about 40 Marines as riflemen, and these included the Marines of VMF-211. It was under these conditions that Commander Cunningham, the Island Commander, sent his last message to Pearl Harbor “ENEMY ON ISLAND – ISSUE IN DOUBT.” With this message, Pearl Harbor recalled Task Force 14 that was approximately 425 miles away from the defenders. Had they continued, they would have encountered 17 Japanese surface ships including two carriers, and an assortment of heavy and light cruisers, and a myriad of destroyers. They certainly would have lost Saratoga and several other ships.

As the sun came up, the Japanese started to employ their light mortars with devastating effect. It was also discovered that many Japanese had crawled forward under the cover of darkness, and as daylight came, many lay among the dead only to rise up and throw a grenade at an opportune moment.

At 0530, Major Devereaux mustered every Marine he could find, from headquarters and supply personnel to walking wounded (a total of 40 additional personnel) and formed a final defensive line. At this point, Major Devereaux informed Commander Cunningham that he didn’t think that they could hold out much longer. He did dispatch orders for those Marines on the other parts of the island to make for the airfield to reinforce their line for a final stand.

As the dawn grew lighter, Japanese destroyers moved in to begin shelling the defenders, and carrier based aircraft began attacking the remaining Marine positions. Cunningham asked Devereaux about the situation, and Devereaux again stated that he “couldn’t hold out much longer.” Cunningham asked if Devereaux thought that they should surrender, and Devereaux again repeated that they couldn’t hold out much longer. At 0700, Devereaux called Cunningham again and asked whether any more friendly forces were available to bolster their line. With Cunningham’s negative reply, and Japanese dive bombers attacking his command post, at 0800 Devereaux followed Cunningham’s instructions and passed the word of the surrender.

It took until 1330 that day to get the word passed to all defenders about the surrender, and even then many refused to believe it. Devereaux and his executive moved under a white flag with a Japanese officer from position to position to pass the word. When they came to the VMF-211 position, only 10 men remained from the squadron. Of these ten, nine were wounded, and all were still fighting. Individual Marines, when they heard the news of the surrender, stripped the bolts from their weapons and threw them in the brush or in the surf.

Aftermath
In the end, the Marines, Sailors, and civilian defenders of Wake Island had held out under attack for 15 days with no re-supply or reinforcements. The final battle lasted for 11 hours from the first shots until the last Marine hold outs surrendered under orders. Over the course of the 15 days, the Marines suffered about 20% casualties, and the Japanese losses were estimated at over 1000 killed (to include those lost during the actions on 11 December). The Japanese also lost at least 4 warships, had 8 more ships significantly damaged, had 21 aircraft shot down by fighters and anti-aircraft fire, and 51 others damaged.

The surviving defenders of Wake were shipped to Japanese POW camps in China, and eventually northern Japan. Many survived the over 1100 days of captivity and were liberated with the fall of Japan.



Although Cunningham and Devereaux both wrote books about their experiences on Wake, if you are interested in learning more about the battle, I would recommend Pacific Alamo: The Battle for Wake Island by John Wukovits and Given Up for Dead by Bill Sloan who both write from a much more unbiased and well researched view of the battle.

[Batgirl]

Unfortunately, we are losing our remaining veterans of WWII at a rapid rate, and many in today's society have but glancing knowledge of the events of WWII that helped shape what this nation (and this world) has become.

I strongly agree with that Vulture. There's a real risk that once the world war veterans have all died their sacrifices will be forgotten unless there is an ongoing effort to educate the younger generations of the debt owed to these veterans and ensure they understand the importance of commemorating those who participated by observing traditions such as Remembrance Day/Veterans Day/Memorial Day etc.

[USMC Chuter]

I couldn't agree more. We all need to honor our WWII vets and keep their stories alive.