Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!cbnews!military
From: rab%ginger.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Robert A. Bruce)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Shore bombardment (was Re: Possible BB mission in Gulf)
Message-ID: <1990Aug30.025707.28318@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 30 Aug 90 02:57:07 GMT
References: <1990Aug17.023708.1350@cbnews.att.com> <1990Aug22.025605.16798@cbnews.att.com> <1990Aug28.042652.28982@cbnews.att.com>
Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker)
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
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From: rab%ginger.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Robert A. Bruce)

In article <1990Aug28.042652.28982@cbnews.att.com> n8443916@unicorn.wwu.edu (John Gossman) writes:
>	My father was among the Marines that landed on Saipan.  He recalls
>American BBs and Cruisers shelling the beaches for hours before the landing.
>When the Marines hit the beach everything looked like it had gone through
>a grinder.  BUT... The dug in Japanese positions were relatively undamaged.
>Basically its better than nothing, but pre-invasion bombardment is not
>going to substitute for hard fighting at the beachhead.
>

In his book "Men Against Fire", S.L.A. Marshall describes the pre-invasion
bombardment of Tarawa.  After three days of continuous shelling by the
entire fleet, the fleet commander said to the landing force commander
"Now all you have to do is wade ashore and count the bodies."  When the
island was finally secured, they examined the Japanese corpses, and
determined that only about 2% had been killed by the pre-invasion
bombardment.

The destructiveness of indirect fire support tends to be greatly
overestimated.  If you shell prepared enemy positions, without
following up with an immediate ground assault, then you are wasting
your ammunition.