This publication is derived from official records and appropriate published manuscript sources. It is published for the information of those interested in the history of Marine officer procurement from 1775 to 1969. In order to chronicle the history of Marine Corps officer procurement, a clarification of terminology is needed. "Procurement" is the normally accepted term to describe the obtaining of officers for the military. Actually, "procurement" is defined "as obtaining or securing." There are, of course, further definitions of the word, but all basically refer to the process of obtaining or securing. Officer procurement, however, as witnessed throughout Marine Corps history, in both lean and plentiful years, has been more appropriately reflected in the term "selection," to wit: ..".a choosing in preference to another or other; picked out especially for excellence or some special quality; picked." Consequently, the business of procuring officers for the Marine Corps is officially known as "Officer Selection" and an officer who does in fact select officer candidates is known as an "Officer Selection Officer." Historically, officer selection or officer procurement, regardless of the terminology used, is and has been fundamental to the success of the Corps. Such was the case in 1775 ... and so it will be in the future.

This concise narrative of the Marine battle for Iwo Jima and the events surrounding the famous flag raisings atop Mount Suribachi is an updated revision of one of the most popular pamphlets ever produced by the History and Museums Division. Compiled from original records and appropriate historical works and printed as two separate reference pamphlets in 1962, the chronicle was combined into one volume in 1967.

It's 1952. Marines have been fighting in Korea for just over 2 years. The daring execution of the Inchon Landing, if not forgotten, might as well have been. For instead of conducting amphibious assaults and moving rapidly though North Korean forces, the Marines of the Ist Marine Division are fighting along a main line of resistance (MLR)-outpost warfare-static warfare that consisted of slugfests between artillery and mortars, but always the infantryman moving in small groups attacking and reattacking the same ground.

This work is part of the Marines in World War II Commemorative Series and offers a concise narrative that recounts the history of African-American Marines in World War II.

This is a concise narrative of Marine Corps participation in the Spanish-American War. The chronicle was compiled from official records and appropriate historical works and is published for the information of those interested in this important period in our history.

A concise narrative of the role of the U. S. Marines in the American interventions in Nicaragua during the period of 1910-1933. The chronicle was compiled from official records and appropriate historical works and is published to give a further understanding of Marine participation in the counterinsurgency warfare during the second two decades of the 20th century.

When the United States began arming against aggression by the Axis powers - Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Fascist Italy- the Marine Corps had a simple and inflexible policy governing AfricanAmericans: it had not accepted them since its reestablishment in 1798 and did not want them now. In April 1941, during a meeting of the General Board of the Navy - a body roughly comparable to the War Department General Staff - the Commandant of the Marine Corps, Major General Thomas Holcomb, declared that blacks had no place in the organization he headed. "If it were a question of having a Marine Corps of 5,000 whites or 250,000 Negroes," he said, "I would rather have the whites." Whereas General Holcomb and the Marine Corps refused to accept African-Americans, the Navy admitted blacks in small numbers, but only to serve as messmen or stewards. The forces of change were gathering momentum, however. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, after meeting in September 1940 with a panel of black leaders, offered African-Americans better treatment and greater opportunity within the segregated armed forces in return for their support of his rearmament program and his attempt to gain an unprecedented third term in the November Presidential election. Roosevelt won that election with the help of those blacks, mainly in the cities of the North, who could still exercise the right to vote, and he did so without antagonizing the Southern segregationists in the Senate and House of Representatives whose support he needed for his antiNazi foreign policy. By the spring of 1941, many black leaders felt that the time had come for the Roosevelt administration to make good its pledge to AfricanAmericans, repaying them for their help. This book offers a concise narrative that recounts the history of African-American Marines in World War II.

The Air Force History and Museums Program has prepared accounts of the United States Air Force and the war in Southeast Asia according to a design that reflects the compartmentalized nature of the conflict itself. Besides the special studies like the illustrated history (The United States Air Force in Southeast Asia, 1961-1973: An Illustrated Account) and the monographs, some of them quite lengthy, on topics like rescue or tactical airlift, the Air Force history program has published volumes on the air wars over South Vietnam and Cambodia, North Vietnam, and Laos. This book is the last of three recounting operations in Laos, one of them dealing with the war in the northern part of that kingdom and the other two with aerial interdiction in the south. This history covers the critical years from 1968 through 1972, when the Air Force carried out the Commando Hunt series of aerial interdiction campaigns against the Ho Chi Minh Trail in southern Laos, trying, in conjunction with ground actions, to use air power and electronics to impede the movement of men and supplies from North Vietnam to the battlefields of South Vietnam. Conducted during the time the United States was withdrawing ground forces and turning the war over to the greatly strengthened armed forces of South Vietnam, Commando Hunt sought to prevent a North Vietnamese offensive that would take advantage of the declining U. S. presence. That attack did not come until March 1972 and not only stopped short of overrunning South Vietnam, but also was a setback for the Hanoi government and a cease-fire agreement. The invasion, however, signaled the end of Commando Hunt, for the South Vietnamese did not take over the electronic surveillance network-with its computer, sensors, and communications equipment-that made the series of aerial interdiction operations possible. "The real war," said Walt Whitman, "will never get in the books." Yet, even though they cannot conjure up the realities of death and suffering, heroism and sacrifice, books like this have a purpose, offering the counsel of the past to help today's policy makers. What useful principle can they derive from an account of the events of a few years in a unique part of the world? Stripped of all that links it to a particular time, place, and strategy, this narrative warns them that a determined enemy may be able to use geography, climate, and ingenuity to blunt the cutting edge of technology. Against such a foe, what seems flawless in theory or has succeeded brilliantly in tests may fail in actual combat, but what fails on one battlefield may succeed years later on another. In the last analysis, military genius does not reside in compiling lists of lessons learned, but in analyzing the past and applying its distilled wisdom in new, perhaps unique, circumstances.

Full color reprint of Naval Historical Study in the U.S. Navy in the Korean War series.

The term "Battles of the Outposts" encompasses the fighting that took place in the final two years of the Korean War. In the first year of the war sweeping movement up and down the peninsula characterized the fighting. Combat raged from the 38th Parallel south to the Pusan Perimeter then, with the landing at Inchon and the Perimeter breakout, up to the Yalu, and finally a retreat south again in the face of the massive Chinese intervention.

This publication is a concise narrative of the role of the U.S. Marines in the American interventions in Nicaragua during the period 1910-1933. The chronicle was compiled from official records and appropriate historical works and is published to give a further understanding of Marine participation in counterinsurgency warfare during the second two decades of the 20th century.

On the early morning of 26 December 1943, Marines poised off the coast of Japanese-held New Britain could barely make out the mile-high bulk of Mount Talawe against a sky growing light with the approach of dawn. Flame billowed from the guns of American and Australian cruisers and destroyers, shattering the early morning calm. The men of the 1st Marine Division, commanded by Major General William H. Rupertus, a veteran of expeditionary duty in Haiti and China and of the recently concluded Guadalcanal campaign, steeled themselves as they waited for daylight and the signal to assault the Yellow Beaches near Cape Gloucester in the northwestern part of the island. For 90 minutes, the fire support ships blazed away, trying to neutralize whole areas rather than destroy pinpoint targets, since dense jungle concealed most of the individual fortifications and supply dumps. After the day dawned and H-Hour drew near, Army airmen joined the preliminary bombardment. Four-engine Consolidated Liberator B-24 bombers, flying so high that the Marines offshore could barely see them, dropped 500-pound bombs inland of the beaches, scoring a hit on a fuel dump at the Cape Gloucester airfield complex and igniting a fiery geyser that leapt hundreds of feet into the air. Twin-engine North American Mitchell B-25 medium bombers and Douglas Havoc A-20 light bombers, attacking from lower altitude, pounced on the only Japanese antiaircraft gun rash enough to open fire. Cape Gloucester: the Green Inferno is a narrative of the activities of the Marine Corps. Official records and appropriate historical works were used in compiling this chronicle, which is published for the information of those interested in the history of Cape Gloucester.

This book, "Central Pacific Drive: History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Volume III," the third in a projected five-volume series, continues the comprehensive history of Marine Corps operations in World War II. The story of individual campaigns, once told in separate detail in preliminary monographs, has been reevaluated and rewritten to show events in proper proportion to each other and in correct perspective to the war as a whole. New material, particularly from Japanese sources, which has become available since the writing of the monographs, has been included to provide fresh insight into the Marine Corps' contribution to the final victory in the Pacific. During the period covered in these pages, we learned a great deal about the theory and practice of amphibious warfare. But most of all we confirmed the basic soundness of the doctrine which had been developed in prewar years by a dedicated and farsighted group of Navy and Marine Corps officers. These men, the leaders and workers in the evolution of modern amphibious tactics and techniques, served their country well. Anticipating the demands of a vast naval campaign in the Pacific, they developed requirements and tested prototypes for the landing craft and vehicles which first began to appear in large numbers at the time of the Central Pacific battles. Many of the senior officers among these prewar teachers and planners were the commanders who led the forces afloat and ashore in the Gilberts, Marshalls, and Marianas. Allied strategy envisioned two converging drives upon the inner core of Japanese defenses, one mounted in the Southwest Pacific under General MacArthur's command, the other in the Central Pacific under Admiral Nimitz. Although Marines fought on land and in the air in the campaign to isolate Rabaul, and played a part significant beyond their numbers, it was in the Central Pacific that the majority of Fleet Marine Force units saw action. Here, a smoothly functioning Navy-Marine Corps team, ably supported by Army ground and air units, took part in a series of tiny and heavily-defended islets, where there was little room for maneuver and no respite from combat, to large islands where two and three divisions could advance in concert. As the narrative of this volume clearly shows, victory against a foe as determined and as competent as the Japanese could not have been won without a high cost in the lives of the men who did the fighting. Our advance from Tarawa to Guam was paid for in the blood of brave men, ordinary Americans whose sacrifice for their country should never be forgotten. Nor will it be by those who were honored to serve with them.

This order is about military operations of U.S. Marines from Bunker Hill to the Hook. It goes into the details of warfare in world war one.

The brief histories of Marine involvement in the events at Harper's Ferry in 1859 and in the Civil War have been among the most consistently popular publications of the History and Museums Division since they first appeared in 1959. Revised and reprinted several times, the two accounts were combined in 1966 and the resulting book has generated a steady demand from the public.

Marine Corps Historical Reference Series, Number 6.

The air campaign mounted against North Vietnam was the first time that an integrated air defense system based around radar-controlled guns and surface-to-air missiles had been encountered. Proponents of surface-to-air missiles had claimed that their lethality would drive manned aircraft from the battlefield. At first, the U.S. Air Force was hard-pressed to neutralize North Vietnam's radar-controlled defenses, but did prevail. Electronic countermeasures support for the air war against North Vietnam included stand-off jamming, Wild Weasel operations, the use of self protection pods, and the employment of chaff. Using all these techniques, Linebacker II saw the B-52s of Strategic Air Command facing the most effective air defense system the Soviet Union could provide. The B-52s won; the much-heralded surface-to-air missiles were scoring a lower kill rate than German defenses in World War Two. This campaign laid the foundations for the technology used by the USAF to neutralize enemy defenses ever since.

The book is part of the Marines in the Korean War Commemorative Series. It depicts the Marine involvement in the events from the Nevada Battles to the Armistice.