Second World War

Introduction

In wartime the sailors who man the ships of the U.S. Navy fight enemy ships, submarines, and aircraft; transport troops, equipment, and supplies; and back up amphibious operations. Those on aircraft carriers provide a base for navy planes, maintenance crews, and pilots. The navy works closely with the U.S. Marine Corps, which has two primary functions: first, to protect the security of the ships to which the marines are assigned by maintaining order and fighting against enemy attack, and second, to make amphibious landings. In wartime the navy takes over the Coast Guard. In peacetime until 1967 it was under the Treasury Department. As an arm of the navy, the Coast Guard escorts convoys to protect them against submarines, conducts amphibious landings and search-and-rescue operations, provides port security, and patrols beaches. The navy also of course cooperates with the U.S. Army. However, the role of US Marine corps had a lot of value during the Second World War. Therefore, all the issues related to the involvement of US Marine Corps in the Second World War will be discussed in detail.

Overview of the US Marine Corps

When World War II broke out in Europe in 1939, the U.S. Navy, though superior in naval aviation and submarines, lagged behind in antisubmarine warfare, a deficiency that was to cost the nation dearly. Improvement began with the passage of the Two-Ocean Navy (Naval Expansion) Act of 1940 and progressed with the Lend-Lease Act of 1941, which sent much outdated equipment to the Allies, allowing the U.S. Navy to build modern replacements. Many volunteers preferred the navy to the army because it was smaller, older, and to some ways of thinking more elite and more romantic. Although its men faced the additional danger of drowning, their daily life appealed to some as more comfortable than that in the army; it even had a reputation for better food. Accordingly, the proportion of volunteers to draftees was considerably higher than in the army (Butterworth, 87).

The Marine Corps, noted for the hardihood and courage of its men, challenged other volunteers. The Coast Guard, best known for its search-and-rescue operations, appealed to others. A naval recruit might be assigned to shore duty or put on a naval ship, an aircraft carrier, a battleship, a destroyer, a submarine, a submarine chaser (sometimes made of wood in the early days of the war), a mine hunter, a patrol torpedo boat (PT boat), an amphibious assault ship, or one of the many small vessels that maintained and supplied the larger ships and their crews. Or he might be sent to a unit of the Seabees, the "Build and fight!" construction battalions that on six continents built airstrips, bridges, roads, warehouses, hospitals, gasoline storage tanks, and housing. Of the 16 million men and women in the U.S. armed forces during World War II, most were in the army; only about a quarter were in the three sea-borne forces. At the navy's height in 1945, it enrolled 3,405,525 personnel. The Marine Corps ...