Almost before the battle was over, the ACOE was at work on landing fields at Alexai Point and Casco Cove on Attu (ignoring the Japanese site at Holtz Bay) and on Shemya, where extensive fill (up to 50 feet of sand with burlap layers for stability) was required to utilize what was one of the few flat islands in the Chain. Later the Army would bring in the West Construction Company to build roads at Attu, while it put up the other facilities itself. No Japanese facilities were reused. The new airstrip at Alexai Point was ready for bomber use by mid-July. Elsewhere, Alaska continued to fill out with military construction. Navy outposts were opened at Cape Greville, Chernabura, Sanak (Caton Island), and Sand Bay, while the Army worked on port improvements at Valdez (using NG personnel), Mile 26 airfield (using Morison-Knudsen), and on the various AWS stations. ACS personnel were also involved in all advances and assaults, setting up battlefield communications and then establishing radio, telephone, and AACS facilities. Reconnaissances for additional airfields continued to be made throughout the period. In the Gareloi Island group, Ogliuga Island was selected for the site of an emergency field, built by the Seabees. Possible sites for emergency fields were surveyed at Nikolski on Umnak, but no action was taken, as was the case with the Agattu survey. Work continued on the ALCAN and CANOL projects. The ACOE also made a reconnaissance in the fall, of 1943, of petroleum areas along the North Slope, but it was not until almost a year later that the Navy would begin to develop these properties (Bush 1944). Work after Attu, however, was accomplished without Colonel Talley, who had led the ACOE since early 1941; he was decorated for his role in establishing the strategic Fort Glenn base and transferred to Europe to help plan the Normandy invasion where indirectly his experience in Alaska helped improve supply line planning.
The planning for the assault on Kiska had begun before the Attu invasion got underway. A force under Gen Corlett was authorized in early May 1943. By the end of July 1943, almost 34.000 troops, including about 4800 Canadians, had been assembled at Adak and Amchitka for the operation. The idea of bypassing Kiska and leaving it and its estimated 10.000 defenders alone was less attractive after the debacle on Attu. The Joint Chiefs approved the plan for Kiska in late May 1943, setting D-day for August 15. Instead of underestimating strength, as at Attu, the US overestimated it for Kiska: there was about 5200 personnel on Kiska, and they had been ordered evacuated to the Kuriles in late May. The problem was to get them off Kiska and through the US blockade. A submarine evacuation was tried, but subs were small and could take off very few personnel. After the sinking of three submarines, this attempt was stopped.
The US stepped up the bombing of Kiska, although during June only eight days were considered suitable for operations due to weather, even though the base at Amchitka was less than 100 miles away from the target. Navy PV-I Venturas were introduced and, with their airborne radars for navigation, aided in targeting. The Navy bombarded Kiska with four cruisers and four destroyers on July 6, 1943, adding shipborne firepower to the softening up process: naval bombardment would occur twice more before D-day. The heavy bombing continued, with pilots reporting decreasing effectiveness of antiaircraft fire. On July 28, 1943, the Japanese evacuated Kiska. The Japanese fleet with two light cruisers and six destroyers managed, after two futile attempts, to get into Kiska and load up all Japanese personnel, reportedly all in under an hour. The fleet headed for the Kuriles.
The Japanese had been very lucky. On July 26, an apparently false radar signal had sent the US fleet scrambling after what it thought was the Japanese fleet, drawing off the blockading forces in the Battle of the Pips. After the weather allowed the resumption of bombing on August 1, pilots began to report light ground fire. By late, recon showed that all vehicles were still parked in the same place. Intelligence also reported that it had not monitored any radio traffic since July 28. Knowing that the Japanese were dug in in underground bunkers and suspecting that they would not oppose the initial landing but resist from high-ground positions as at Attu, Kincaid chose not to gamble and ordered the full-scale invasion to proceed. On August 15, the over 100 vessels of the invasion fleet, including LSTs, LCIs, and LCTs with PT boats disguised with plywood panels as LCVPs acting as decoys in a feint on the southern beaches, put the troops ashore in Operation Cottage. Not a single Japanese was located, though 142 Allied troops were listed as killed, wounded, and missing as a result of firefights between patrols, booby traps, and accidents. Seventy more were lost, with 47 wounded when a destroyer, the Abner Read, hit a mine in Kiska Harbor.
The Japanese base was constructed in semi-independent units, with the main camp at North Head, expanded in the summer of 1942, to include outposts at South Head and the sub base as well as facilities on Little Kiska. In the fall of 1942, the base at Gertrude Cove became the main base and during the winter and spring of 1943, the facilities at Kiska Harbor were elaborated with the construction of roads, underground bunkers, trenches, and fortifications. The Kiska Harbor and Gertrude Cove sites were semi-independent bases. Facilities included more than 50 buildings, artillery emplacements for up to 14cm naval guns, light tanks, concrete pillboxes, radar, searchlight installations, an underground hospital facility, a submarine base (with four electric minisubs and drydock facilities), a seaplane base, machine shops (including a foundry), roads with lined drainage ditches, 60 Nissan light trucks, 20 motorcycles, eight sedans and six mini cars and an incomplete airfield (which US troops with the benefit of heavy equipment completed in a week). Most Japanese facilities and equipment had been destroyed and troops were leery of what was left, fearing booby traps, though they were soon raiding Japanese caches for food, clothing, and souvenirs.
During the Aleutian Campaign from capture to liberation, the Army had lost 35 aircraft to enemy action and 150 to other causes, flying 297 missions and dropping about 4000 tons of bombs. The Navy’s Fleet Air Wing had lost six planes to combat and 34 more to other causes, flying 12 bombing missions. The Japanese lost 60 aircraft, three destroyers, five submarines, and nine transports to combat, with others significantly damaged. With 8100 men and under 100 aircraft, they had managed to tie up 144.000 Allied troops at the height of the Kiska invasion. Of course, Japanese naval and air forces and ground troops in supporting or logistical backup positions were tied down as well.
The retaking of Attu was the high point of the war, as far as it concerned Alaska. Kiska was anticlimactic, and what happened afterward was chiefly a matter of tying up the loose threads of unfinished business. In ridding the Aleutians of Japanese invaders, the objective had been partly to eliminate a potential military threat, but mostly to eradicate a psychological blot. Those loose threads would involve a lot of building in Alaska and considerably more garrison work by the military before the stand-down came in Alaska. First, there was still to be a shooting war for some troops in the theater, though their role and numbers were sharply reduced. The main task, however, was out of the hands of the personnel in Alaska and concerned the establishment of a role for the Alaska garrison in the aftermath of the retaking of the Aleutians. The Allies had agreed to put the invasion of Europe at the top of the priorities list at the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, and during that year the US commanders had been somewhat nervous that any activity in the Aleutians would be considered as taking away from that commitment. By late summer they were already fighting in the Mediterranean and in New Guinea while preparing for an advance in the Gilbert Islands in the Central Pacific.
In August 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill met in Quebec to set a strategy for the Normandy Invasion. Their staff discussed an invasion through the Kuriles and the basing of B-29s in the Aleutians. The North Pacific invasion was advocated by Buckner, who had 144.000 troops on hand. With a mere 54.000 more, plus aircraft and shipping, he felt he could attack Paramushiro in the Kuriles, an action that might, he believed, prompt the Soviet Union to declare war on Japan and end hostilities in short order. Adm King and Adm Nimitz argued that the Central, and to a lesser extent South, Pacific theaters had better weather and better opportunities, and Gen Marshall and Gen Arnold felt a northern route was not feasible. While Shemya and Amchitka were earmarked for possible B-29 deployment, Alaska was officially written off as an offensive theater and put in a holding pattern.
Adm Kincaid was reassigned to the Seventh Fleet in the South Pacific, replaced by Adm Frank Fletcher. All but two bomber squadrons were reassigned outside or disbanded, though those two as well as four fighter squadrons remained in the Aleutians. The Signal Corps withdrew AWS and service personnel. The Canadian ground and air personnel were also withdrawn. All Army air facilities east of Adak (except Elmendorf and Ladd Field) were placed on air drome/reserve status in December 1943. The Navy continued in overall command on paper, and the ADC has finally designated a separate department in November 1943. As such, it reported directly to the Joint Chiefs of Staff but had little real responsibility. The Japanese had large Army and Navy bases in the northern Kuriles, mostly around Paramushiro. The bombing of Paramushiro commenced from Adak with refueling and bomb loading at Attu, on July 10, 1943. Results were inconclusive, and on future missions, there was heavy fighter resistance.
Missions continued throughout 1943 end of 1944, when the weather allowed, using B-24s, B-25s, and even PBYs and PV-ls. The long distances from bases at Attu and Shemya meant that many damaged aircraft had to ditch at Petropavlovsk in Siberia. Downed crews were interrogated and interned by the Soviets and their equipment was appropriated to avoid the appearance of non-neutrality. An arrangement was eventually worked out by which US crews were repatriated through Iran.
The last Japanese attack in the sector, on Attu, was a bombing run on October 13, 1943. Garfield, argues that the effect of harassment missions against the Japanese in the Kuriles tied down 500 Japanese aircraft, one-sixth of Japan’s air power near the end of the war, and 41.000 ground troops who could not be deployed elsewhere. This seems to be an exaggeration. Coles argues that 41.000 troops were occupied in the Kuriles in 1944, but that a total of 400 Japanese aircraft were stationed in the Kuriles and Hokkaido to counter a possible invasion from the North.
As the military activity in Alaska wound down, complaints about the conduct of the war in the area began to surface. Territorial Governor Gruening, in a memo to Secretary of the Interior Ickes, argued that the military development had been primarily defensive in nature, poorly conceived and organized, and essentially wasteful. Inappropriate siting and construction types had resulted in facilities vulnerable to air attack, and inadequate planning had made the defense of Alaska more costly than it should have been. The Truman Committee also investigated the CANOL Project in the fall, of 1943. The pipeline was operating from Skagway to Whitehorse and most of CANOL 3 and 4 were finished; in fact, oil was being pumped from Skagway to Whitehorse, rather than the other way around as intended. The committee was critical, citing design and cost problems, while the military took the position that the pipeline was necessary for the prosecution of the war. The wildcat drilling program sank 29 wells and found few reserves; drilling was halted in November 1943. It was not until April 1944, that Norman Wells oil reached Whitehorse. CANOL 3 to Fairbanks had been completed in the fall, of 1943, and was receiving oil from Whitehorse via Skagway by February 1944. Some 4000 ACOE and 10,000 civilian personnel had worked on the project for two years at a cost of $133 million. As a distribution network, the pipeline functioned well, but inadequate reserves of oil were located to justify its role as a production system and its contribution to the war effort was negligible.
Many construction projects continued after the shift from an active to a passive stance in Alaska. Work on base facilities at Kiska was ongoing, as were improvements at Amchitka and Shemya, including unsuccessful seawall construction which washed out shortly after construction. A small airfield was finally carved out at Dutch Harbor and plans were reportedly made to build a causeway from Amaknak to Hog Island to extend the runway. This causeway washed out in the first storm and was not rebuilt. Major depot construction began on Adak in the fall, of 1943, continuing into the spring, of 1944. But while new installations were being built, existing ones were also being shut down. In the fall, of 1943, the Navy closed down their stations at Sand Point, Entrance Point, and Port Armstrong and turned the Port Althorp and Seward facilities over to the Coast Guard. Troop strength, which had been at 144.000 in mid-summer of 1943, had fallen to 113,000 by the end of that year, and this was a harbinger of a continued cutback. At the Teheran Conference in December 1943, the Allies essentially wrote off China and Alaska as potential theaters from which to conduct operations. From then on, it would be a European and Central Pacific show.
US Army in Alaska 2023
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