Learning under Fire PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Learning under Fire PDF full book. Access full book title Learning under Fire by James S. Powell. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: James S. Powell
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1603441719
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 261
Get Book Here
Book Description
Thrown into the heart of war with little training--and even less that would apply to the battles in which they were engaged--the units of the 112th Cavalry Regiment faced not only the Japanese enemy, but a rugged environment for which they were ill-prepared. They also grappled with the continuing challenge of learning new military skills and tactics across ever-shifting battlefields. The 112th Cavalry Regiment entered federal service in November 1940 as war clouds gathered thick on the horizon. By July 1942, the 112th was headed for the Pacific theater. As the war neared its end, the regiment again had to shift its focus quickly from an anticipated offensive on the Japanese home islands to becoming part of the occupation force in the land of a conquered enemy. James S. Powell thoroughly mines primary documents and buttresses his story with pertinent secondary accounts as he explores in detail the ways in which this military unit adapted to the changing demands of its tactical and strategic environment. He demonstrates that this learning was not simply a matter of steadily building on experience and honing relevant skills. It also required discovering shortcomings and promptly taking action to improve—often while in direct contact with the enemy.
Author: James S. Powell
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1603441719
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 261
Get Book Here
Book Description
Thrown into the heart of war with little training--and even less that would apply to the battles in which they were engaged--the units of the 112th Cavalry Regiment faced not only the Japanese enemy, but a rugged environment for which they were ill-prepared. They also grappled with the continuing challenge of learning new military skills and tactics across ever-shifting battlefields. The 112th Cavalry Regiment entered federal service in November 1940 as war clouds gathered thick on the horizon. By July 1942, the 112th was headed for the Pacific theater. As the war neared its end, the regiment again had to shift its focus quickly from an anticipated offensive on the Japanese home islands to becoming part of the occupation force in the land of a conquered enemy. James S. Powell thoroughly mines primary documents and buttresses his story with pertinent secondary accounts as he explores in detail the ways in which this military unit adapted to the changing demands of its tactical and strategic environment. He demonstrates that this learning was not simply a matter of steadily building on experience and honing relevant skills. It also required discovering shortcomings and promptly taking action to improve—often while in direct contact with the enemy.
Author: Christopher M. Rein
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817321349
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 342
Get Book Here
Book Description
"Throughout its history, the United States has fought its major wars by mobilizing large numbers of citizen-soldiers. While the small, peacetime, regular army provided trained leadership and a framework for growth, the citizen-soldier, from the minuteman of the American Revolution to Civil War volunteers and the draftees of World War II, have successfully prosecuted the nation's major wars. But the Army, and the nation, have never fully resolved the myriad problems surrounding the mobilization and employment of reserve troops. National Guard divisions in World War II suffered from neglect during the interwar period and Great Depression, and regular Army commanders often replaced or relieved National Guard officers, which generated lingering resentment. At the same time, draftees from across the nation diluted the regional affiliations of many units, with a corresponding effect on morale and esprit de corps. Chris Rein's study of one division, recruited from the Gulf South and employed in the Southwest Pacific Theater in 1944 and 1945, highlights the challenges of reserve mobilization, training, and the combat deployment of National Guard units. His account demonstrates the still-strong connections between the local communities that hosted and supported National Guard companies before the war, even after an influx of new personnel nationalized the units and they shipped overseas. The 31st Division, reorganized after combat deployment in World War I, consisted primarily of infantry regiments from Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and, until 1942, Louisiana. Mobilized for federal service in late 1940, the division participated in the critical Louisiana and Carolina Maneuvers in 1941, but then languished for the next two years as a training organization, though it provided trained cadres and replacements for other divisions the Army deployed to Europe and the Pacific. In 1944, the division finally shipped overseas, enduring the brutal conditions in the Southwest Pacific, but successfully conducting landings on the New Guinea coast in support of Gen. Douglas MacArthur's "island hopping" campaign directed at liberating the Philippines. After a change in leadership, on the second day of the amphibious assault on Morotai, the division supported the liberation of Mindanao, the southernmost major island in the archipelago, before redeploying for demobilization at the end of 1945. Rein's study traces the division's decades of duty from the interwar period, when it contended with a series of devastating natural disasters, through its mobilization and combat deployment. However, within the 31st Division's story, there are several significant issues that remain highly relevant for reserve deployment today. The first centers on the issue of World War II-era National Guard leadership. The Army implemented a "purge" of overage and less competent National Guard division commanders in order to replace them with younger officers of the regular Army. Maj. Gen. John C. Persons, a pre-war Birmingham resident and Alabama National Guard officer, commanded the division throughout the peacetime mobilization and training and the first operation in New Guinea, only to be summarily fired on the second day of the Morotai landings, an action not adequately explained in the existing literature. The second issue concerns the Army's "nationalization" of regional units. While this policy has the benefit of spreading any casualties across the nation, rather than duplicate the horrific losses of the "Bedford Boys" of the 29th Infantry Division that devastated one small Virginia community, it also erodes regional identity and esprit de corps. This work is a case study of the strength and weaknesses of units with a regional identity and explores the connections with the home front once that identity erodes. It also examines the Dixie Division's operational and strategic evolution, but just as importantly details drawn from soldiers' correspondence and oral histories to show how their exposure to a larger world, including service alongside African-American and Filipino units, changed their views on race and post-war society"--
Author: Robert Peyton Wiggins
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786485299
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 205
Get Book Here
Book Description
This narrative tracks the experiences of three veterans while providing a comprehensive account of Troop G activities during the war years. The text follows the regiment from its time as mounted cavalry based in Fort Clark to New Caldonia, where the men gave up their horses to become infantymen in General Douglas MacArthur's conquest of New Guinea and the Philippines. Never as famous as the federalized infantrymen of the Texas 36th, the men of the 112th have often been overlooked in discussions of World War II, and this text seeks to restore them to their rightful place in the history of the Pacific theater operations.
Author: Harry Gailey
Publisher: Presidio Press
ISBN: 0307415937
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 314
Get Book Here
Book Description
A GREAT WARRIOR AT THE PEAK OF HIS POWERS In March 1942, General Douglas MacArthur faced an enemy who, in the space of a few months, captured Malaya, Burma, the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, and, from their base at Raubaul in New Britain, threaten Australia. Upon his retreat to Australia, MacArthur hoped to find enough men and matériel for a quick offensive against the Japanese. Instead, he had available to him only a small and shattered air force, inadequate naval support, and an army made up almost entirely of untried reservists. Here is one of history’s most controversial commanders battling his own superiors for enough supplies, since President Roosevelt favored the European Theater; butting heads with the Navy, which opposed his initiatives; and on his way to making good his promise of liberating the Philippines. In the battles for Buna, Lae, and Port Moresby, the capture of Finschhafen, and other major actions, he would prove his critics wrong and burnish an image of greatness that would last through the Korean War. This was the “other” Pacific War: the one MacArthur fought in New Guinea and, against all odds and most predictions, decisively won.
Author: Kaushik Roy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317538315
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281
Get Book Here
Book Description
This is the first book to provide a comprehensive overview of the land war during the Second World War in South-East Asia and the South and South-West Pacific. The extensive existing literature focuses on particular armies – Japanese, British, American, Australian or Indian – and/or on particular theatres – the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Malaya or Burma. This book, on the contrary, argues that warfare in all the theatres was very similar, especially the difficulties of the undeveloped terrain, and that there was considerable interchange of ideas between the allied armies which enabled the spread of best practice among them. The book considers tactics, training, technology and logistics, assesses the changing state of the combat effectiveness of the different armies, and traces the course of the war from the Japanese Blitzkrieg of 1941, through the later stalemate, and the hard fought Allied fightback. Although the book concentrates on ground forces, due attention is also given to air forces and amphibious operations. One important argument put forward by the author is that the defeat of the Japanese was not inevitable and that it was brought about by chance and considerable tactical ingenuity on the part of US and British imperial forces.
Author: Edgar F. Raines
Publisher: U.S. Government Printing Office
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400
Get Book Here
Book Description
CMH Pub. 70-31. Army Historical Series. Examines the institutional origins of modern Army Aviation by recounting the experiences of the men who flew observed fire missions, or Air Observations Posts (AOP) in light aircraftfor the Field Artillery during World War 2. Identifies the circumstances and debate that gave rise to the AOP program.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Infantry
Languages : en
Pages : 684
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Edgar F. Raines
Publisher: Government Printing Office
ISBN:
Category : Aerial observation (Military science)
Languages : en
Pages : 396
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: United States. Superintendent of Documents
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Government publications
Languages : en
Pages : 32
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Robert Ross Smith
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : World War, 1939-1945
Languages : en
Pages : 642
Get Book Here
Book Description
