The evolution of joint warfare - Joint Warfighting

Joint Force Quarterly, Summer, 2002 by Williamson Murray

U.S. joint operations reached their high point in the Pacific. The tyranny of distance meant that the services had to work together to project military power. In the Southwest Pacific, General Douglas MacArthur advanced up the coastline of New Guinea with the superb support of Fifth and Thirteenth Air Forces under General George Kenney as well as naval components. By conducting joint operations, MacArthur kept the Japanese permanently off guard. Similarly, after the losses at Tarawa alerted Admiral Chester Nimitz and his commanders to the problems of opposed landings, the Central Pacific island-hopping campaign emerged as one of the most impressive operational-level campaigns of the war, especially the cooperation displayed by soldiers, sailors, and marines. The result was seizure of bases in spring 1944 which Army Air Force strategic bombers used for their attacks against the Japanese homeland.

The situation in Europe was similar. By spring 1944 the Allies developed the capabilities to enable the most complex joint operation of the war--an opposed landing on the coast of France. Cooperation was not always willingly given. The American and British strategic bomber communities struggled in March 1944 to escape being placed under the operational command of General Dwight Eisenhower. They lost because Eisenhower was willing to appeal to Roosevelt and Churchill. Eisenhower and his deputy, Air Marshal Arthur Tedder, then used air forces, including strategic bombers, to attack transportation across France. By June 1944 the transport system was wrecked; in effect the Germans had lost the battle of the buildup before the first Allied troops landed.

Joint operations were less successful on Omaha Beach, where U.S. casualties were three times heavier than those suffered at Tarawa six months earlier. General George Marshall had been impressed by landings in the Pacific. Consequently, he detailed the commander of 7th Division at Kwajalein, Major General Pete Corlett, to pass along lessons learned. However, when he arrived in Europe, Corlett discovered that Army commanders responsible for Overlord had no interest in learning from "a bush league theater." (5) The result was that soldiers who went ashore at Omaha received twenty minutes of naval gunfire support from one battleship (whereas the enemy garrison at Kwajalein had been bombarded by no less than seven battleships). The landing at Omaha came perilously close to defeat, which might have led to the failure of Overlord.

Postwar Period

When World War II ended, Allied forces were poised to launch the largest joint operation in history--Olympic, the invasion of Japan--which would have dwarfed even Overlord. By then jointness had peaked. Unfortunately, such cooperation would not be equaled until Desert Storm in 1991. Many factors were at work. The first was the advent of nuclear weapons, which changed war to such an extent that many leaders, particularly airmen, believed the lessons of World War II were no longer valid. Secondly, those who had conducted the war in Europe came to dominate the postwar military, and that theater had seen less joint cooperation than the Pacific. Finally, while joint cooperation had reached significant levels, it was largely the result of operational and tactical requirements. The peacetime culture of the prewar military returned. Thus General Omar Bradley, who became Chairman in the late 1940s, in an effort to eviscerate the Marine Corps in the name of jointness, announced that there would never be another major amphibious operation.