TRAINING CENTERS
Very early in the process of creating the parachute program, the Marine Corps sought out information on the parachute tower then being used as an amusement ride at the New York City World’s Fair. A lieutenant with the Marine Detachment at the fair provided his report on May 20, 1940. He thought such a tower could be used to advantage if the Corps modified it to simulate the physical jolt that a jumper would experience when his parachute opened and radically slowed his rate of descent. The Safe Parachute Manufacturing Company, the builder of the World’s Fair ride, also owned two towers at Hightstown (New Jersey). Each stood 150 feet tall and used a large ring to lift a spread parachute with the jumper dangling from the risers. When the mechanism released its load, the descending chute automatically filled with air. One tower featured a controlled descent guided by four cables, while the other completely released the parachute for a free fall. Fortuitously, Hightstown was just 20 miles from the Navy’s Parachute Material School at the Naval Air Station Lakehurst (New Jersey), the facility that trained sailors and a handful of Marines to pack parachutes for pilots. That made Lakehurst the obvious choice as the primary instruction facility. Lakehurst eventually had room to train a maximum of 100 men at a time. Given the length of the course (which often stretched to six weeks or more due to delays because of bad weather, the Marine Corps could produce no more than 700 qualified parachutists per year.
By mid-1941 the school was not even achieving that pace, having fallen more than two months behind schedule. In July 1941, the officer in charge of the school recommended the creation of an additional parachute training facility at the burgeoning Marine base in New River (North Carolina), but it would be a while before the Corps found the resources to act on that suggestion. In the meantime, Headquarters decided to shift its primary parachute school to San Diego to allow more efficient use of training time due to better weather and the proximity of Marine aviation units.
In April 1942, the Lakehurst detachment began transferring its instructors to San Diego, a process completed in May after the last Lakehurst class graduated. The new San Diego school began training its first class on May 27. The plan called for the program to start a new class of 36 students each week, with a possible expansion to 60 trainees per week in the future. The school initially operated out of San Diego‘s Camp Elliott, but the Corps built barracks, jump towers, plane mockups, and aviation fields near Santee and moved the entire operation there at the end of August 1942. The Commandant named this small base, dedicated entirely to parachute training, Camp Gillespie (California) in honor of Brevet Maj Archibald H. Gillespie, who had participated in the campaign to free California from Mexico in 1846.
The Marine Corps established another training facility at New River‘s Hadnot Point in 1942. In June the 1st Parachute Battalion had transferred one officer and 13 NCOs to form the instructor cadre. The school opened with the first class of 54 students on August 10, but delays in constructing the jump towers and obtaining parachutes slowed training. The initial group finally graduated on October 13. The New River school’s designed capacity was 75/class, with a new class beginning every week. By the end of 1942, the Marine parachute program was finally in full swing and capable of producing 135 new jumpers per week, though actual numbers were never that high. The Marine Corps had one more source of trained parachutists. During the 1st Battalion’s initial period of recuperation from fighting on Gavutu and Guadalcanal, it had difficulty obtaining qualified jumpers from the States. To solve the problem, Col Williams organized his own informal school. It lacked towers and he ignored much of the syllabus used stateside, but during the program’s brief operation it produced about 100 trained jumpers from volunteers garnered from other units located in New Caledonia.
TABLES OF ORGANIZATION (TO&E)
When the Plans and Policies Division at Headquarters made its initial request in May 1940 for input on a Marine parachute program, it suggested that planners work with an organization for one infantry battalion reinforced by a platoon of pack howitzers and some light antiaircraft and anti-tank weapons. In late October 1940, the Commandant determined that each infantry regiment would train one of its battalions as air infantry, with one company of each such battalion prepared to conduct parachute operations. He estimated that would require 750 parachutists, about the number originally envisioned for a separate battalion. However, those men would now double as regular infantry and help fill spaces in the chronically undermanned line units. That idea did not last long and the Corps soon began talking about multiple battalions specializing in parachute operations. The first official parachute table of organization, issued in March 1941, authorized a battalion of three-line companies and a headquarters unit. The line companies consisted of a weapons platoon (three 60-MM mortars and three light machine guns), three rifle platoons of three 10-man squads (armed with six rifles, two Browning Automatic Rifles (BARs), and two Thompson sub-machine guns).
The standard squad for the regular infantry unit at the time was nine men, with eight rifles and a single BAR. The 34 officers and 832 enlisted men of an infantry battalion dwarfed the 24 officers and 508 enlisted men of a parachute battalion, with the main difference coming from the former’s company of heavy weapons. The parachutists lacked the large-caliber mortars, water-cooled machine guns, and antitank guns possessed by the infantry, but made up for it in part with a much greater preponderance of individual automatic weapons. Once the US entered the war, the parachute units went through the same process of experimentation in structure as the rest of the Corps. A 1942 revision to the tables did away with the weapons platoons, distributing one 60-MM mortar to each rifle platoon and getting rid of the machine guns. The latter change was not as drastic as it might appear since each rifle squad was to have three Johnson light machine guns. The remaining riflemen were supposed to carry Reising sub-machine guns. This mix of automatic weapons theoretically gave the parachute squad an immense amount of firepower. As things turned out, the Johnson took a long time to get to the forces in the field and the Reising proved to be an unreliable weapon.
The 1943 tables created a regimental structure consisting of a headquarters company and a weapons company. The latter unit of seven officers and 172 men served as a pool of extra firepower for the lightly armed battalions. The company was supposed to field four 81-MM mortars, one dozen each of the air-cooled and water-cooled .30-caliber machine guns, two .50-caliber machine guns, two bazookas, and eight grenade launchers. Headquarters also authorized a change in the size of the battalions from 24 officers and 508 enlisted Marines to 23 officers and 568 enlisted. The additional personnel was all in the headquarters company, though 33 of them formed a demolitions platoon that did add directly to the battalion’s combat power. Beyond that, I MAC allowed the line companies to reestablish weapons platoons exactly like those deleted in 1942. That move increased the authorized strength of each battalion by another three officers and 87 enlisted men (though manpower for these units was often taken out of hiding). The new rifle squad of 11 men was supposed to have three Johnson machine guns, three Johnson rifles, and five Reisings, but by this time the parachute regiment informally had adopted the fire team concept of three three-man teams and a squad leader.
MILITARY ACCIDENTS
Since the end of World War Two, everything has been done to tow special troops under the projectors and make peoples believe that only these troops were having a very dangerous preparation to achieve their goals, being a Pilot, a Paratroopers, a Marine Raider and so on. I have compiled a small list of Military Naval accidents that happened during training sessions or during combat without being the result of enemy action. While typing this archive I thought that citing all these long-forgotten names would be a perfect way to remember them!
In 1940, 40 sailors were killed in flight accidents during the year. On January 31, 1940, on the USS New York (BB-34), Seaman 2 class James Orville Epperson was accidentally struck by a loading tray inside the N°2 turret and fell into the gun pit. Epperson was then crushed by a 14-inch shell that fell in immediately afterward. While en route from San Diego to Pensacola on January 2, 1940, one PBY-5 aircraft encountered severe weather over Texas and 5 members of the crew were forced to bail out. One parachute failed and Aviation Machinist’s Mate 2 class William F. Percich fell to his death. On January 4, 1940, a twin-engine transport plane Douglas R2D-1, which had rescued four crewmen who had bailed out of the PBY on January 2, crashed and burned while trying to land at San Diego. Four officers and three enlisted men of the R2D-1 and the four PBY crew all died in the crash.
During the year of 1941, 110 sailors were killed in-flight accidents. On June 18, on board the USS California (BB-44) Seaman 2 class Norris Rabelee Wilson died of injuries suffered on the shell deck of the N°4 turret when he was caught between the rotating part of that turret and a secured service shell. On June 19, the USS O-9 (SS-70) submarine got lost during a deep submergence test off New London (Connecticut). The crew, 33 men, drowned. On August 14, the submarine chaser USS PC-457 sank after colliding with the merchant ship SS Norluna north of San Juan (Puerto Rico). Fireman 2 class Francis Carl McKenna, USNR, and Seaman 1 class Howard Dorsey Osborn, USNR, were both killed.
Between December 7, 1941, (Pearl Harbor) and December 29, 1946, 1469 enlisted men were killed in air combat. If 460 were killed in action on the ground, 3303 enlisted men were killed in flight accidents. On January 24, 1942, the USS S-26 (SS-131) accidentally rammed and sunk by PC-460. 46 men were killed. Six days before, on January 18, the USS Truxtun (DD-229) and the USS Pollux (AKS-2) ran aground during a storm in Placenta Bay (Newfoundland), and broke up in the surf. 204 men were killed. On June 12, 1943, the USS R-12 (SS-89) sank after flooding in the battery compartment, taking 42 men of the crew to the bottom of the sea.
On September 2, 1943, a TBF Avenger splashed on takeoff from the USS Belleau Wood (CVL-24) in the Eastern Pacific. The radioman was killed when the depth charge activated and exploded. On Oct 6, an F6F Hellcat crashed on the deck of USS Belleau Wood (CVL-24) during the Wake Island Raid, fire and explosion killed 4 flight deck crew. A little later, on October 16, the USS Moonstone (PYc-9) was lost after a collision with the USS Greer (DD-145). One man was killed. On November 20, the USS Mississippi (BB-41), while in combat operations off Makin (Gilbert Islands), suffered a cordite explosion in the N°2 14-inch gun turret, 19 men were injured and 43 were killed. Three days after the new year, on January 3, 1944, suffering a series of ammunition explosions, the USS Turner (DD-648) sank in the New York Harbor. 138 men were killed and 60 injured. On January 13, 1944, an F6F Hellcat crashed through the barrier on the flight deck of the USS Bataan (CVL-29) during one training operation en route to Trinidad. Three flight deck crew killed. An accidental ordnance blast on the LST-353 sets off cataclysmic ammunition explosions at West Loch (Pearl Harbor). Six tank landing ships (LST-39, LST-43, LST-69, LST-179, LST-353, LST-480), three tank landing craft (LCT-961, LCT-963, LCT-983), and 17 track landing vehicles (LVTs) were destroyed in these explosions and fires. 163 men were killed and 396 injured. On July 17, again an ammunition explosion on Pier #1 at the US Naval Magazine, in Port Chicago. The tremendous blast killed 1 Marine, 5 Coast Guard, and 73 civilians, 390 others were also injured including 233 African-American Navy personnel.
On August 12, Lt Joseph P. Kennedy, the older brother of John F. Kennedy, was killed with his co-pilot in a mid-air explosion after taking off from England in a PB4Y from Special Attack Unit One (SAU-1). Following manual takeoff, they were supposed to parachute out over the English Channel while the radio-controlled explosive-filled drone proceeded to attack a German V-2 missile-launching site. Possible causes include faulty wiring or FM signals from a nearby transmitter. The USS Warrington (DD-383) sank on September 13, 1944, during a hurricane off Florida. 248 men drowned. November 10, 1944, the USS Mount Hood (AE-11), with a cargo of 3800 tons of ordnance, suddenly exploded in Seeadler Harbor (Admiralty Islands), creating a mushroom cloud that rose 7000 feet into the air. The tremendous explosion ripped a 300-foot long, 50-foot wide, and 40-foot deep crater into the ocean floor. Metal fragments caused many casualties and severe damage to nearby ships and twenty-two small boats and landing craft were sunk, destroyed, or damaged beyond repair. Casualties included 45 known dead, 327 missing, and 371 injured. The only survivors of Mount Hood’s 318-man crew were a shore party of 18 sailors who saw a flash from the harbor followed by two quick explosions.
On December 18, 1944, two days after the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium, Task Force 38 was struck by a typhoon off the Philippines. The destroyers USS Hull (DD-350), the USS Spence (DD-512), and the USS Monaghan (DD-354) capsized and sank. 28 other vessels were damaged and about 790 men were killed and 80 others were injured. On January 24, 1945, the USS Extractor (ARS-15) was torpedoed and sank by the USS Guardfish (SS-217) in case of mistaken identification. Six men were killed. On June 5, 1945, Task Force 38 was again struck by a typhoon in the Okinawa area. 36 ships were damaged and at least 6 men were killed. On June 7, 1945, while replenishing ordnance in Leyte Gulf, the aircraft carrier Randolph (CV-15) was buzzed by an Army P-38 Mustang that subsequently crashed her forward flight deck. The explosion and the following fire killed 14 men. On the USS Bataan (CVL-29) on July 4, 1945, one arresting gear cable parted, killing one flight deck crew during flight operations. Another typhoon passed within 15 miles of Okinawa, severely damaging ships in Buckner Bay anchorage. 12 small ships and landing craft sunk while 222 others beached. 73 men were killed. On December 5, 1945, Flight 19, comprised of 5 TBM Avengers on a training flight from Fort Lauderdale (Florida), strayed off course, ran out of fuel and crashed into heavy seas. 14 men were killed and during the subsequent search, which involved hundreds of ships and aircraft, a PBM Mariner with a crew of 13 also crashed with no survivors.
Despite the inherent danger of jumping out of a plane high above the ground, the Marine parachute program had very few accidents. That may have been due in part to the system initially used to prepare the parachutes. From the very first training class, the Corps set the standard that each jumper would pack his own parachute. In addition, a trained rigger supervised the task and had to sign his name on the tag before the parachute was certified for use. Later this procedure was dropped and riggers packed all parachutes for use in the FMF, but by that time Marines were making very few jumps. The record indicates only one Marine accident that may have involved a malfunctioning parachute.
During training in New Caledonia, one man’s main parachute failed to open properly. He pulled the ripcord on his reserve, but it just had time to begin deploying when he hit the ground. Observers thought, however, that the main parachute did not deploy because the suspension lines were tangled up in the Marine’s rifle. Three other men died in Marine Corps jumping accidents not related to the performance of the parachute. Two men drowned after landing in water; one at Norfolk (Virginia), and one at New River (North Carolina). The final fatality occurred when a New River trainee lost his nerve just as he approached the door of the plane. He moved out of the line of jumpers, but his static line became tangled with the next man to go out. The non-jumper’s parachute opened while he was inside the plane and the billowing chute slammed him against the aircraft body hard enough to wreck the door and sever his spine.
The most unusual accident occurred near San Diego (California), on May 15, 1941. 2/Lt Walter A. Osipoff and 11 enlisted men of Able Co were making a practice jump over Kearney Mesa. Everyone else had exited the plane and he threw out a cargo pack, which possibly tangled in his static line. His parachute opened prematurely while he was still in the door of the plane; it billowed outside the aircraft and pulled him out, but the canopy and suspension lines tangled in the bundle of static lines streaming beside the transport. For a moment the cargo pack, Osipoff, and his partially opened parachute were all suspended from the cable that held the static lines. Under this combined load the bracket holding one end of the cable gave way and it streamed out the door. The cargo pack fell away, but Osipoff and his parachute remained dangling from the cable and static lines, suspended behind the plane’s tail. The accident also ruined his reserve chute and ripped away from the part of his harness attached to his chest. He ended up being dragged through the air feet-first, held only by the leg straps. The crew of the plane attempted to pull him in but could not do so. Since the transport had no radio communications, the pilot flew it over the field at North Island to attract attention. Two Navy test pilots, Lt William W. Lowery, and Aviation Chief Machinist’s Mate John R. McCants, saw the problem and took off in a SOC-1, an open-cockpit, two-seats biplane. The SOC-1 flew just below and behind the transport, while McCants attempted to pull Osipoff into his cockpit.
It was an incredible display of flying skill that gave the necessity 
to avoid hitting the Marine lieutenant with the SOC-1’s propellers. McCants finally succeeded in getting him headfirst into the plane, though his legs dangled outside. Before McCants could cut the shroud lines, bumpy air pushed the biplane up and its propellers did the job (chopping off 12 inches of the tail cone of the transport in the process). Lowery landed his aircraft as McCants maintained his tenuous grip on the Marine parachutist. Osipoff suffered severe cuts and bruises and a fractured vertebra. He spent three months in a body cast, but fully recovered and returned to jump status. Lowery and McCants received Distinguished Flying Crosses for their successful rescue.
RENDEZ-VOUS 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 3rd 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 the 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 Baker and Charlie Cos of the parachutists, took trains to the West Coast and boarded naval transports there on June 19. The rest of the 1st Parachute Battalion was part of a later Norfolk echelon, which set sail for New Zealand on June 10. While the parachutists were still at sea, the echelon of the division had already bedded down in New Zealand. But the 1st Marine Division’s commander, Gen 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 Solomon’s Group on August 1, 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 5275 enemies on Guadalcanal (home to a Japanese airfield under construction) and a total of 1850 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 seaplane 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 3rd 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 (76.2-MM) and an assortment of AAA and AT guns and machine guns. By the time the last transports docked in New Zealand on July 11, planners had outlined the operation and the execution date had slipped to August 7 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 August 7 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 2/5th Marines, would follow in trace and support the raiders. The 2nd 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.
Organization: Pestilence (TF-1), Watchover (Tulagi & Guadalcanal) and Cactus (Guadalcanal) VAdm Ghormley, exercising strategic command, set up his organization in three main groups. The Carrier Force (TF-61) commanded by RAdm Leigh Noyes, was composed of elements of three task forces from Nimitz’ area-11, 16, and 18. It would include three carriers – the Saratoga, the Enterprise, and the Wasp – the fast new battleship North Carolina, five heavy cruisers, one so-called antiaircraft cruiser, and 16 destroyers. The Amphibious Force (TF-62) commanded by RAdm Richmond K. Turner, USN, included the FMF Landing Force, 48 six heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, 15 destroyers, 13 attack transports, six attack cargo ships, four destroyer transport, and five minesweepers. Shore-Based Aircraft (TF-63) under command of RAdm J.S. McCain, USN, (Commander Aircraft South Pacific) included all aircraft in the area approximately 250 carrier aircraft available only under certain conditions, 166 Navy and Marine Corps planes including two USMC squadrons (VMF-212) and (VMO-251), 95 Army planes, and 30 planes from the Royal New Zealand Air Force, a total of 291 aircraft.
The paratroopers 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 their sister unit.
The Tulagi, Gavutu-Tanambogo, and Florida operations fell under the immediate control of a task force designated as the Northern Group, headed by Gen William H. Rupertus, the assistant division commander. After a feverish week of unloading, sorting, and reloading equipment and supplies, the parachutists boarded the transport USS Heywood (DD-663) on July 18 and sailed in convoy to Koro Island in the Fijis, where the entire invasion force conducted landing rehearsals on July 28 and 30. These went poorly since the Navy boat crews and most of the 1st Marine Division was 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.
The paratroopers had the toughest mission in many respects. With a grand total of eight small infantry platoons, they had just 361 Marines, much less than half the manpower of other line battalions. More importantly, they lacked the punch of heavy mortars and machine guns and had fewer of the light versions of these weapons, too. Even their high proportion of individual automatic weapons would not help much; many of these were the unreliable Reising sub-machine gun. The late hour of their attack also sacrificed any element of surprise, though planners assumed that naval and aerial firepower would suppress Japanese defenders. Nor was terrain in their favor. The coral reef surrounding the islets meant that the only suitable landing site was the boat basin on the northeast coast of Gavutu, but that point was subject to flanking fire from defenders on Tanambogo. In addition, a steep ship soon opened up on the initial objectives while Marines clambered down cargo nets into landing craft.
The parachutists watched while their fellow sea-soldiers conducted the first American amphibious assault of the war. As the morning progressed and opposition on Tulagi appeared light, the antiaircraft cruiser San Juan conducted three fire missions against Gavutu and Tanambogo, expending 1200 rounds in all. Just prior to noon, the supporting naval forces turned their full fury on the parachute battalion’s initial objective. San Juan poured 280 five-inch shells onto Gavutu in four minutes, then a flight of dive bombers from the carrier Wasp struck the northern side of the island, which had been masked from the fire of ships’ guns. Oily black smoke coral hill dominated the flat coastal area of each islet. Finally, despite a rule of thumb that the attackers should outnumber defenders by three to one in an amphibious assault, they were going up against a significantly larger enemy force. The parachutists’ only advantage was their high level of training and esprit. The US task force sailed into the waters between Guadalcanal and Florida Island in the pre-dawn darkness of August 7, 1942. Planes rose into the sky and most Marines assumed that few could survive such a pounding, but the display of firepower probably produced few casualties among the defenders, who had long since sought shelter in numerous caves and dugouts. The bombardment did destroy one three-inch gun on Gavutu, as well as the seaplane ramp the parachutists had hoped to land on, thus forcing the Higgins boats to divert to a nearby pier or a small beach. The intense preparation fires had momentarily stunned the defenders, however, and the first wave of Marines from Able Co clambered from their landing craft onto the dock against little opposition. The Japanese quickly recovered and soon opened up with heavier fire that stopped Able Co’s advance toward Hill 148 after the Marines had progressed just 75 yards. Enemy gunners also devoted some of their attention to the two succeeding waves and inflicted casualties as they made the long approach around Gavutu to reach the northern shore.
