Introduction
Between the two World Wars, it was obvious that tanks would play an important role in the next conflict, and the United States Marine Corps wanted a piece of that action. But the Great Depression and the turning away from martial preparations by the US and the other democracies following the terrible, senseless carnage of the Great War meant there was little interest in arming the Marines (who had fought as infantry in France) with tanks.
Enter the US Navy.
The Navy correctly anticipated its chief adversary in the next war would be the Empire of Japan, and to that end, it would need bases in the Pacific, as well as Marines to take and defend those bases on the islands while the Navy worked its way towards Japan. The challenge would be to find tanks light enough to be transported to those islands, and to find ships capable of delivering them.
Eventually the Marines found the right combination of vehicles, and Andrew Higgins bailed out the Navy and everyone else with landing craft capable of depositing a tank on the shore of an island. There are a number of excellent books on USMC tanks in the Pacific, including two by modeling’s own celebrity, Steve Zaloga. However, I don’t know of one that is dedicated to the story of how the various Marine Corps tank units marked their vehicles that covers the pre-war right up through the post-war postings of the Marines in China and Japan.
Until now. Enter Romain Cansière and his new book from Casemate Publishers, USMC Tank Markings in the Pacific. The Marines used a huge array of schemes for marking their tanks, so the book will fill a real need for historians and modelers alike.
Contents
Modelers will, of course, want to see the 150+ photographs and many color plates in the 160 page hardcover book. But the author also provides a complete overview of the more than ten companies and tank battalions serving in the Corps' Pacific run stretching from Guadalcanal, Tarawa and New Guinea, all the way to Iwo Jima, Okinawa and the post-war in China and Japan. The layout is as follows:
CHAPTER 1 1ST TANK BATTALION
CHAPTER 2 THE TANK SECTIONS OF THE DEFENSE BATTALIONS
CHAPTER 3 1ST CORPS TANK BATTALION (MEDIUM)
CHAPTER 4 2ND TANK BATTALION
CHAPTER 5 3RD TANK BATTALION
CHAPTER 6 TANK COMPANY, 4TH MARINES
CHAPTER 7 2ND SEPARATE TANK COMPANY/TANK COMPANY, 22ND MARINES
CHAPTER 8 4TH TANK BATTALION
CHAPTER 9 5TH TANK BATTALION
CHAPTER 10 6TH TANK BATTALION
APPENDICES
1. Structure and Organization of Marine Corps Tank Units
2. Markings for Aerial Observers, 1943-1945
3. History of the Marine Corps Armored Corps
4. The Marine Corps Campaigns in the Pacific
The Review
While some might argue the European armor narrative has been told to the point of absurdity, the wartime history of armor in the Pacific has barely been scratched.
And the story of the Marines and their tanks in the Pacific is anything but straightforward, too.
The Corps makes a virtue about “doing more with less,”but they were lucky to have much at all just prior to war being declared. The Marines had been slow to man, equip and deploy their armored units. Additionally, Navy ships often lacked the kinds of equipment that could lift a medium tank over the side and into a landing vessel. So the Corps opted for the Stuart light tank they got from the Army (who quickly transitioned to Shermans when the German Blitzkrieg showed light tanks were death traps in Europe). The Japanese armor was weak and obsolete, and the Marines figured they would do fine with Stuarts.
Cansière does an excellent job of sorting out the details of the Marine tank units as they were formed, reformed and expanded during the war. Instead of starting with armored divisions like the Army, the Marine Corps opted for tank battalions that were attached to the six divisions formed during the war as needed. This mad for a hodgepodge of tactical markings, national markings and camouflage. The book deals with each battalion separately, going into great detail about how the tanks were marked initially, and how those marking evolved during the campaigns.
War can be chaotic, and Cansière includes a photo of a tank hit by a 16 inch shell from one of the Navy’s offshore gun platforms in a case of friendly fire. Not surprisingly, Marine tankers came up with stars on the turret tops, various colors and even red-on-yellow numbers to make sure spotter planes didn’t confuse them for Japanese tanks and bring down the Navy's hurt.
The book itself is gorgeous with dozens of crisp black & white photographs, with some in color, though usually taken from newsreels shot during the period. The US was shooting a lot of color film stock, but still photographers mostly employed B&W. Additionally, ample color plates show the markings in lush detail that should please our crowd.
Conclusion
Because the Japanese failed to modernize their armored units to deal with American armor superiority, they never posed a serious threat to the Marines as the hopped islands across the Pacific. The danger for Marine tankers were artillery and anti-tank guns, which could inflict real hurt on the lightweight Stuart and even the heavier Sherman. Overall, the book is a must-have for modelers and armchair historians who favor the USMC in the Pacific. It has enough ideas to build dozens of tank models, vignettes and dioramas, including some outright oddball modified vehicles and field experiments. Yet because the Corps did not move to a standardized marking system until after the War, proceed with any build at your peril without this book.
Thanks to Casemate Publishing for this review copy. Be sure to say you say this book reviewed on Armorama when purchasing your own copy.