Fireside Chat: Iwo Jima Landing in Color

hello I'm Steve McLoud author of the book black dragon the experience of a marine rifle company in the Central Pacific there was no shortage of photographers at eima on D-Day back in 1945 but some of them had color film in their motion picture cameras and while some of that footage has been used repeatedly over the decades rarely has it been known just who or what is being seen on screen so let's take a tour through some of that color footage shot 78 years ago today our journey ashore begins with LST 761 one of the four lsts of the second Battalion 23rd Marines and assigned to land assault troops at yellow Beach 2 at iima so that's where we will begin our briefing the second battalion was commanded by Major Bob Davidson and his executive officer major Jack Padley Padley had previously been the company commander of fox company second Battalion 23rd until he was promoted up to Battalion just before uh embarking for iima Davidson's Battalion would land two assault companies in the first troop waves on the left would be easy company commanded by Major Lester fought and on his right Fox company now under the command of Captain Lawrence F Snowden later Lieutenant General Lawrence F Snowden their two companies would be followed by The Reserve company G company under the command of Captain Carl OJ Gus grusendorf who would follow just a few minutes later this Photograph was taken on the troop transport on the way to um the rendevu at cpan the troop transport being the USS Mifflin the rifle platoon traveled on the LST the entire time that's a long trip on a small vessel something we can discuss another time elima's Two Mile Stretch of beach on the Southeast coast was divided by the amphibious Force into seven potential Landing beaches although they decided only to use six of them from left to right the fifth Marine Division would land at Green Green Beach one red one and red two and then the fourth Marine Division on their right would land at yellow one yellow two and blue one blue Beach 2 was not used it was ruled out because of the commanding ground that the Japanese held on the right flank so to the left of yellow two yellow Beach 1 would be assaulted by the first Battalion 23rd Marines and to the right blue Beach 1 would be assaulted by the first Battalion 25th Marines if we look at yellow 2 from this area photograph we can find some details that we'll see in the film footage and namely this block house for those who've read black dragon you'll know the significance of that and on the left on the border between easy company and fox company was a second Block House a look at the Landing wave diagram will also be helpful for us to understand what we see and don't see in the film footage from D-Day zooming in we could place the two block houses in their approximate positions on yellow Beach 2o what I really want to bring our attention to here is this line of small craft uh and this group of six on the far left there are six LCS LS that's landing craft support they're small vessels with 20 and 40 mm guns and rocket launchers able to launch 240 4 and 1/2 in rockets and there's another group of six lcss on the far side of the The Landing Beach and between the two is this group of 10 converted lcis landing craft infantry these are LCI G's and they're armed in a similar way with rocket launchers and uh 40 and 20 mm weapons as well but they'll be missing from the footage of D-Day because they suffered terribly two days earlier while supporting the operation of underwater demolition teams and therefore could not participate in the D-Day operations so fell to these 12 LCS vessels to cover the entire Landing Beach I would also bring our attention to this signature here which lies on the station between the fifth Marine Division on the left and the fourth on the right and that's a battleship that is the USS Tennessee or Pearl Harbor Survivor who's going to be right in position there lastly we have a motion picture photographer aboard this LCS and another in an track here Coast Guardsman Charles W boser with his 35mm Bell and Howell going ashore with Easy Company it's their footage that we'll combine to illustrate the D-Day landing at iojima and here we are on D-Day a beautiful morning as LST 761 is launching the Marines of Easy Company also aboard is a battalion surgeon and his aid station Corman and I guess 18 minutes after the sun's been up over the horizon it's as good a time as any for a smoke meanwhile about 3 miles away our little line of LCS craft are charging the beach again they've already launched one rocket barrage against suspected gasoline drums buried on the beach they found none and now they're firing their 40 and 20 mm guns uh in preparation for the arrival of the troops and here comes easy company in their Ram tracks if we look closely will notice a 50 caliber machine gun in the right gun position up there and to the left uh we're running alongside the Marines of a company first Battalion 23rd we can see their guide boo up in front leading the way and antr right behind them flying the yellow flag and here we are back with our boys of Easy Company it's an extraordinary look inside the Amtrak and there's some things to point out here can you see the stencils on the back of the marine and on the helmet cover that 322 is is the unit unit identification number for Easy Company second matin 23rd and if we look closely at that helmet covered uh we'll realize that that's dick nisle of Easy Company photographed here a couple of months earlier on Maui with his buddies and with his arm his right arm around John Zimmerman one of their Navy cormen meanwhile now 700 yard yards from the beach our line of lcss launched their second rocket attack a barrage of 120 4 and 1/2 in rockets and from the trajectory it looks like they're firing them somewhere along the border between yellow Beach 1 and yellow 2 and we can see that border easily by that Japanese that knocked out Japanese lugger there with a tall Smoke Stack which we'll see repeatedly in photographs and film footage that marks the barrier between yellow 1 and two and having launched their second rocket barrage the LCS is back off and point their bows toward the beach to permit the approaching assault waves to pass through their line and here they come the leading wave of armored amphibians leading the troop waves ashore and passing by the old Battleship USS Tennessee which has just fired its main batteries we can see the the brown cloud of smoke and here come the troop carrying waves passing by the old Tennessee as she blasts away at Targets ashore and she's resting right on the border between the fifth and the fourth Marine divisions initially USS California had been assigned this job but there was a switch late in the planning here we can actually see the armed M fibs ahead of us and the LCS is in the distance as well now the armored amphibs are passing through the line of lcss these are the boys of company a second armed amphibian Battalion their armored amphibs are carrying as you can see the turreted 75mm howitzers and here we can see them firing their 75 mm banging away at any Targets if they can see them and here comes the first troop wave a dozen rifle companies Landing in the assault these boys are a company first Battalion 25th Marines landing on Blue Beach 1 giving us a wave there that's boat 23 which indicates second wave third boat from the right you can see their guide boo leading them ashore at blue one that black area right in front of us on the beach is part of yellow Beach 2 one more bombing run another good view of the Japanese lugger that's knocked out there on the beach we can see those guy boats getting the heck out of the way there and now as the first troop wave approaches the shore if we look closely right now we can see the first wave of armad dam trucks clawing their way up out of the ocean and onto the beach and that appears to be the first troop wave reaching the shore and here comes the second troop wave and with it the company Commander company gunny mortar men and flamethrower men and here our photographer has captured Fox company second battal 23rd hitting the beach at eima let's pause for a closer look here first notice the height in the embankment compared to the height of the Marines uh they weren't kidding when they said this thing was 12 to 15 ft High we can also see right dead center the outline of the Block House so with one more look we see the second wave arriving bringing third platoon ashore and looking at the right we can see Marines pouring out of the an and clawing up to the top of the embankment they'll swing around the outside and push Inland quickly and there's the 25th Marines also pushing up and what of our Easy Company boys landing on the wrong side of that Japanese lugger and on the wrong Beach on y beach one notice how low the embankment is here extraordinary to be coming ashore with the first troop wave there Bo that's a a dangerous position there caught in a trap now we don't know if these are Easy Company guys or perhaps first Battalion now there was a machine gun section uh Landing in the same amra as the photographer so it could well be now we can say that that Amtrak belongs to the second Battalion 23rd Marines and those are second Battalion boys coming ashore and for some reason the ramp is not down on that Amtrak and lv4 and they're jumping over the sides don't know why easy company did come ashore with two of those LV t4s in its second troop wave but they should have been toward the center of yellow Beach 2 not way over here but who knows what's going on there could be a follow-up amra here's the classic view of second battalion Marines pushing in and trying to turn through the sand of eima but keep in mind it's not really sand it's volcanic grit 60% glass so uh not only could you barely run in it uh you couldn't dig in and if you were going to try to dig a hole they would tell you you better dig one big hole because it's just going to come right back in on you here we see the armored amphibians uh pushing Inland to provide some supporting fire where Poss possible but that word armored is a misnomer could be misleading they don't have much armor on the sides simply that how it's are up top and our photographer has captured the moment at 9:40 when LSM 126 touches down and launches finally some of major Bob neeman's tanks of C company fourth tank Battalion in fact he's got the second and third platoon tanks aboard of Max English and Hank Belmont we see Cairo headed ashore there we can tell it's a platoon leaders tank because we see that tall radio antenna sticking out the top following close behind this is Kolkata both of these of the second platoon now somewhere around 10:00 is when the Japanese they tell us began to really unload with their heavy mortars and artillery and the plunging fire and unless we thought we were going to see Seas of Marines sweeping across the beach this paints a more realistic picture for us and this is trouble this shot shows us LSM 126 backing off the beach having launched her tanks and some more of the follow on troops uh working their way in we see more lsms in the distance back there Landing ship medium is what that stands for and I wanted to include this shot for those who've read black dragon you're familiar with the plight of Lieutenant Haber and major Neeman trying to get those tanks ashore to support Second Battalion here you can see habber Slam on the brakes and throw it in reverse their struggle will go on for 4 hours

Channel: Tan Side Out

Views: 88,662

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Id: ldOcCkG8Yzs

Length: 15min 1sec (901 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 03 2023