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SILK CHUTES AND HARD FIGHTING: US. Marine Corps
Parachute Units in World War II
by Lieutenant Colonel Jon T. Hoffman (USMCR)
Rendezvous at Gavutu
After four months of war, the 1st Marine Division was
alerted to its first prospect of action. The vital Samoan Islands
appeared to be next on the Japanese invasion list and the Navy called
upon the Marines to provide the necessary reinforcements for the meager
garrison. In March 1942, Headquarters created two brigades for the
mission, cutting a regiment and a slice of supporting forces from each
of the two Marine divisions. The 7th Marines got the nod at New River
and became the nucleus of the 3d Brigade. That force initially included
Edson's 1st Raider Battalion, but no paratroopers. In the long run that
was a plus for the 1st Parachute Battalion, which remained relatively
untouched as the brigade siphoned off much of the best manpower and
equipment of the division to bring itself to full readiness. The
division already was reeling from the difficult process of wartime
expansion. In the past few months it had absorbed thousands of newly
minted Marines, subdivided units to create new ones, given up some of
its best assets to field the raiders and parachutists, and built up a
base and training areas from the pine forests of New River, North
Carolina.
The parachutists and the remainder of the division
did not have long to wait for their own call to arms, however. In early
April, Headquarters alerted the 1st Marine Division that it would begin
movement overseas in May. The destination was New Zealand, where
everyone assumed the division would have months to complete the process
of turning raw manpower into well-trained units. Part of the division
shoved off from Norfolk in May. Some elements, including Companies B and
C of the parachutists, took trains to the West Coast and boarded naval
transports there on 19 June. The rest of the 1st Parachute Battalion was
part of a later Norfolk echelon, which set sail for New Zealand on 10
June.
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While the parachutists were still at sea, the advance
echelon of the division had already bedded down in New Zealand. But the
1st Marine Division's commander, Major General Alexander A. Vandegrift,
received a rude shock shortly after he and his staff settled into their
headquarters at a Wellington hotel. He and his outfit were slated to
invade and seize islands in the southern Solomons group on 1 August,
just five weeks hence. To complicate matters, there was very little
solid intelligence about the objectives. There were no maps on hand, so
the division had to create its own from poor aerial photos and sketches
hand-drawn by former planters and traders familiar with the area.
Planners estimated that there were about 5,275 enemy
on Guadalcanal (home to a Japanese air field under construction) and a
total of 1,850 on Tulagi and Gavutu-Tanambogo. Tulagi, 17 miles north of
Guadalcanal, was valuable for its anchorage and seaplane base. The
islets of Gavutu and Tanambogo, joined by a causeway, hosted a sea plane
base and Japanese shore installations and menaced the approaches to
Tulagi. In reality, there were probably 536 men on Gavutu Tanambogo,
most of them part of construction or aviation support units, though
there was at least one platoon of the 3d Kure Special Naval Landing
Force, the ground combat arm of the Imperial Navy. The list of heavy
weapons on Gavutu Tanambogo included two three-inch guns and an
assortment of antiaircraft and antitank guns and machine guns.
By the time the last transports docked in New Zealand
on 11 July, planners had outlined the operation and the execution date
bad slipped to 7 August to allow the division a chance to gather its
far-flung echelons and combat load transports. Five battalions of the
1st and 5th Marines would land on the large island of Guadalcanal at
0800 on 7 August and seize the unfinished airfield on the north coast.
The 1st Raider Battalion, slated to meet the division on the way to the
objective, would simultaneously assault Tulagi. The 2d Battalion, 5th
Marines, would follow in trace and support the raiders. The 2d Marines,
also scheduled to rendezvous with the division at sea, would serve as
the reserve force and land 20 minutes prior to H-Hour on Florida Island,
thought to be undefended. The parachutists received the mission of
attacking Gavutu at H plus four hours. The delay resulted from the need
for planes, ships, and landing craft to concentrate first in support of
the Tulagi operation. Once the paratroopers secured Gavutu, they would
move on to its sister. The Tulagi, Gavutu-Tanambogo, and Florida
operations fell under the immediate control of a task force designated
as the Northern Group, headed by Brigadier General William H. Rupertus,
the assistant division commander.
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Marine Parachute Pioneers
In October 1940, the Commandant sent a circular
letter to all units and posts to solicit volunteers for the
paratroopers. All applicants, with the exception of officers above the
rank of captain, had to meet a number of requirements regarding age (21
to 32 years), height (66 to 74 inches), and health (normal eyesight and
blood pressure). In addition, they had to be unmarried, an indication
of the expected hazards of the duty. Applications were to include
information on the Marine's educational record and athletic experience,
so Headquarters was obviously interested in placing above-average
individuals in these new units.
The letter further stated that personnel qualified as
parachutists would receive an unspecified amount of extra pay. The
money served as both a recognition of the danger and an incentive to
volunteer. Congress would eventually set the additional monthly for
parachutists at $100 for officers and $50 for enlisted men. Since a
private first class at that time earned about $36 per month and a second
lieutenant $125, the increase amounted to a hefty bonus. It would prove
to be a significant factor in attracting volunteers, though parachuting
would have generated a lot of interest without the money. As one early
applicant later put it, based on common knowledge of the German success
in the Low Countries, many Marines thought "that this was going to be a
grand and glorious business." Parachute duty promised "plenty of
action" and the chance to get in on the ground floor of a revolutionary
type of warfare.
To get the program underway, the Commandant
transferred Marine Captain Marion L. Dawson from duty with the Navy's
Bureau of Aeronautics to Lakehurst, New Jersey, to oversee the new
school. Two enlisted Marine parachute riggers would serve as his
initial assistants. Marine parachuting got off to an inauspicious start
when Captain Dawson and two lieutenants made a visit to Hightstown, New
Jersey, to check out the jumping towers. The other officers, Second
Lieutenants Walter S. Osipoff and Robert C. McDonough, were slated to
head the Corps' first group of parachute trainees. After watching a
brief demonstration, the owner suggested that the Marines give it a
test. As Dawson later recalled, he "reluctantly" agreed, only to break
his leg when he landed at the end of his free fall.
On 26 October 1940, Osipoff, McDonough, and 38
enlisted men reported to Lakehurst. The Corps was still developing its
training program, so the initial class spent 10 days at Highstown
starting on 28 October. Immediately after that they joined a new class
at the Parachute Material School land followed that 16-week coursed of
instruction until its completion on 27 February 1941. A Douglas R3D-2
transport plane arrived from Quantico on 6 December and remained there
through the 21st, so the pioneer Marine paratroopers made their first
jumps during this period. For the remainder of the course, they leapt
from Navy blimps stationed at Lakehurst. Lieutenant Osipoff, the senior
officer, had the honor of making the first jump by a Marine paratrooper.
By graduation, each man had completed the requisite 10 jumps to qualify
as a parachutist and parachute rigger. Not all made it through —
several dropped from the program due to ineptitude or injury. The
majority of these first graduates were destined to remain at Lakehurst
as instructors or to serve the units in the Fleet Marine Force as
riggers.
By the time the second training class reported,
Dawson and his growing staff had created a syllabus for the program.
The first two weeks were ground school, which emphasized conditioning,
wearing of the harness, landing techniques, dealing with wind drag of
the parachute once on the ground, jumping from platforms and a plane
mockup, and packing chutes. Students spent the third week riding a bus
each day to Highstown where they applied their skills on the towers.
The final two weeks consisted of work from aircraft and tactical
training as time permitted. Students had to complete six jumps to
qualify as a parachutist. The trainers had accumulated their knowledge
from the Navy staff, from observing Army training at Fort Benning, and
from a film depicting German parachutists. The latter resulted in one
significant Marine departure from U.S. Army methods. Whereas the Army
made a vertical exit from the aircraft, basically just stepping out the
door, Marines copied the technique depicted in the German film and tried
to make a near-perpendicular dive, somewhat like a simmer coming off the
starting block.
Marine paratroopers used two parachutes in training
and in tactical jumps. They wore the main chute in a backpack
configuration and a reverse chute on their chest. When jumping from
transport planes, the main opened by means of a static line attached to
a cable running lengthwise in the cargo compartment. Once the
jumpmaster gave the signal, a man crouched in the doorway, made his exit
dive, and then drew his knees toward his chest. The parachutist, arms
wrapped tightly about his chest chute, felt the opening shock of his
main canopy almost immediately upon leaving the plane. If not, he had
to pull the ripcord to deploy the reserve chute. (When jumping from
blimps, the parachutists had to use a ripcord for the main chute too.)
A parachutist's speed of descent depended upon his weight, so Marines
carried as little as possible to keep the rate down near 16 feet per
second, the equivalent of jumping from a height of about 10 feet. At
that speed a jumper had to fall and roll when hitting the ground so as
to spread the shock beyond his leg joints. Training jumps began at 1,000
feet, while the standard height for tactical jumps in the Corps was 750
feet. The Germans jumped from as low as 300 feet, but that made it
impossible to open the emergency chute in time for it to be
effective.
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After a feverish week of unloading, sorting, and
reloading equipment and supplies, the parachutists boarded the transport
USS Heywood on 18 July and sailed in convoy to Koro Island in the
Fijis, where the entire invasion force conducted landing rehearsals on
28 and 30 July. These went poorly, since the Navy boat crews and most of
the 1st Marine Division were too green. The parachute battalion was
better trained than most of the division, but this was its very first
experience as a unit in conducting a seaborne landing. There is no
indication that planners gave any thought to using their airborne
capability, though in all likelihood that was due to the lack of
transport aircraft or the inability of available planes to make a
round-trip flight from New Zealand to the Solomons.
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