This work comprises an effort to answer the question of how an airman can be qualified to be a Joint Force Commander, using the biographical example of General Roy S. Geiger, USMC. Geiger was the fifth designated Marine Aviator, earning his wings in June of 1917. He then served as a squadron commander in the First Marine Aviation Force in World War I (WW I), where he flew combat sorties and earned his first Navy Cross. In the interwar years, he served in multiple command billets, acted as head of Marine Aviation, and performed with distinction as a student at the Army Command and General Staff School and the Army and Navy War Colleges. During World War II, Geiger commanded the First Marine Aircraft Wing and the CACTUS Air Force in the dark days of the Guadalcanal Campaign in 1942, where at age fifty-seven he again flew in combat, earning his second Navy Cross. He went on to serve as an Amphibious Corps Commander in the Pacific Theater, where he led campaigns at Bougainville, Guam, and Peleliu. Finally, he distinguished himself in the battle of Okinawa as the only Marine ever to command a field Army, the Tenth Army. After World War II, Lieutenant General Geiger continued to shape the Marine Corps in command of Fleet Marine Forces, Pacific until his premature death in 1947. The study is a chronological account of the life of Roy Geiger, with a focus on his leadership traits, extensive professional military education, remarkable joint relationships, and innovation, all of which contributed to his success as a Joint Force Commander. The author argues that Geiger was the most influential Marine aviator and among the most successful operational commanders in the history of the United States Marine Corps. Roy Geiger was the prototype for a Joint Force Commander.

The Marine Corps covered itself in glory in World War II with victories over the Japanese in hard-fought battles such as Guadalcanal, Tarawa, and Iwo Jima. While these battles are well known, those who led the Marines into them have remained obscure until now. In Commanding the Pacific: Marine Corps Generals in World War II, Stephen R. Taaffe analyzes the fifteen high-level Marine generals who led the Corps' six combat divisions and two corps in the conflict. He concludes that these leaders played an indispensable and unheralded role in organizing, training, and leading their men to victory. Taaffe insists there was nothing inevitable about the Marine Corps' success in World War II. The small pre-war size of the Corps meant that its commandant had to draw his combat leaders from a small pool of officers who often lacked the education of their Army and Navy counterparts. Indeed, there were fewer than one hundred Marine officers with the necessary rank, background, character, and skills for its high-level combat assignments. Moreover, the Army and Navy froze the Marines out of high-level strategic decisions and frequently impinged on Marine prerogatives. There were no Marines in the Joint Chiefs of Staff or at the head of the Pacific War's geographic theaters, so the Marines usually had little influence over the island targets selected for them. In addition to bureaucratic obstacles, constricted geography and vicious Japanese opposition limited opportunities for Marine generals to earn the kind of renown that Army and Navy commanders achieved elsewhere. In most of its battles on small Pacific War islands, Marine generals had neither the option nor inclination to engage in sophisticated tactics, but they instead relied in direct frontal assaults that resulted in heavy casualties. Such losses against targets of often questionable strategic value sometimes called into question the Marine Corps' doctrine, mission, and the quality of its combat generals. Despite these difficulties, Marine combat commanders repeatedly overcame challenges and fulfilled their missions. Their ability to do so does credit to the Corps and demonstrates that these generals deserve more attention from historians than they have so far received.

A detailed history and analysis of the most controversial amphibious operation in the Pacific during WWII: the Battle for Peleliu. On September 15, 1944, the United States invaded the tiny Pacific island of Peleliu, located at the southern end of the Palau Islands. Boasting a large airfield from which the Americans could mount bomber campaigns, Peleliu was a strategically essential part of Gen. MacArthur’s long-awaited liberation of the Philippines. With the famed 1st Marine Division making the amphibious assault, Pacific High Command was confident that victory would be theirs in just a few days. They were drastically wrong. A mere week after landing, having sustained terrific losses in fierce combat, the 1st Marine Regiment was withdrawn. The entire division would be out of action for six months after sustaining the highest unit losses in Marine Corps history. This book analyzes the many things that went wrong in the Battle for Peleliu, and in doing so, corrects several earlier accounts of the campaign. It includes a comprehensive account of the presidential summit that determined the operation, details of how new weapons were deployed, a new enemy strategy, and command failure in what became the most controversial amphibious operation in the Pacific during WWII.

This one-volume anthology provides a comprehensive analysis of the role that air power has played in military conflicts over the past century. Comprising sixteen essays penned by a global cadre of leading military experts, A History of Air Warfare chronologically examines the utility of air power from the First World War to the second Lebanon war, campaign by campaign. Each essay lays out the objectives, events, and key players of the conflict in question, reviews the role of air power in the strategic and operational contexts, and explores the interplay between the political framework and mil.

William Halsey was the most famous naval officer of World War II. His fearlessness in carrier raids against Japan, his steely resolve at Guadalcanal, and his impulsive blunder at the Battle of Leyte Gulf made him the “Patton of the Pacific” and solidified his reputation as a decisive, aggressive fighter prone to impetuous errors of judgment in the heat of battle. In this definitive biography, Thomas Hughes punctures the popular caricature of the “fighting admiral” to reveal the truth of Halsey’s personal and professional life as it was lived in times of war and peace. Halsey, the son of a Navy officer whose alcoholism scuttled a promising career, committed himself wholeheartedly to naval life at an early age. An audacious and inspiring commander to his men, he met the operational challenges of the battle at sea against Japan with dramatically effective carrier strikes early in the war. Yet his greatest contribution to the Allied victory was as commander of the combined sea, air, and land forces in the South Pacific during the long slog up the Solomon Islands chain, one of the war’s most daunting battlegrounds. Halsey turned a bruising slugfest with the Japanese navy into a rout. Skillfully mediating the constant strategy disputes between the Army and the Navy—as well as the clashes of ego between General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Chester Nimitz—Halsey was the linchpin of America’s Pacific war effort when its outcome was far from certain.

During the early stages of helicopter development, when helicopters were able to lift just slightly more than their own weight, the military services were eagerly seeking to obtain a variety of larger, more useful helicopters. The youthful helicopter industry expressed optimism, although at times unrealistic, in its ability to meet the military requirements. The development of the helicopter program within the Marine Corps was sparked by the foresight and imagination of the officers of the period. While early helicopters provided stepping stones for an orderly progression of the program, the slowness of the technical advances and the periods of financial austerity after World War II and Korea prevented the Marine Corps from developing the vertical envelopment concept as rapidly as desired. The program gained interest and momentum, however, as a result of the success of helicopters in Korea. As Lieutenant General Gerald C. Thomas stated: "Indeed, the helicopter gave clear evidence, from its first tactical employment, that a major advance in combat was at hand." This history, which traces the development of helicopters in the Marine Corps from 1946 to 1962, offers a tribute to the creative vision and planning of a handful of Marine officers who conceived of the vertical assault concept in amphibious operations at a time when suitable aircraft to make it work did not exist. The story of the subsequent struggle to procure and develop those aircraft, to refine a doctrine for their employment, and to familiarize the Marine Corps with their use is an interesting and vital part of modern Marine Corps history. The documentary basis for this monograph was primarily the official records of the Marine Corps and Navy Department, but considerable use was made of interviews and correspondence with key individuals involved in all phases of helicopter development.

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Liberation: Marines in the Recapture of Guam" by Cyril J. O'Brien. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.