US Marine Corps Pacific Theater of Operations 1941-43 (Battle Orders) [Paperback]

Gordon Rottman (Author)

Book Description

Series: Battle Orders | Publication Date: February 25, 2004

The outbreak of World War II set in motion a massive expansion of the United States Marine Corps, leading to a 24-fold increase in size by August 1945. This book is the first of several volumes to examine the Corps's meteoric wartime expansion and the evolution of its units. It covers the immediate pre-war period, the rush to deploy defense forces in the war's early months, and the Marines' first combat operations on Guadalcanal, New Georgia, and Bougainville. It focuses on the 1st, 2d, and 3d Marine Divisions (MarDivs) and the provisional 1st, 2d, and 3d Marine Brigades (MarBdes).

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Definitive guides to the actions and evolution of fighting forces, these comprehensive studies on the organisation, strength, command, deployment and evolution of forces in key military encounters, use a highly detailed 'unit-by-unit' examination.

About the Author

Gordon L Rottman entered the US Army in 1967, volunteered for Special Forces and completed training as a weapons specialist. He was assigned to the 7th Special Forces Group until reassigned to the 5th Special Forces Group in Vietnam in 1969–70. Gordon worked as a civilian contract Special Operations Forces Intelligence Specialist at the Army's Joint Readiness Center, Ft Polk, until 2002. A highly respected and established author, he now devotes himself to full-time writing and research.

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Osprey Publishing (February 25, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 184176518X
• ISBN-13: 978-1841765181
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 0.2 x 9.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,027,283 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent source, but like reading an Encyclopedia, March 24, 2004

By 

R. A Forczyk (MD, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: US Marine Corps Pacific Theater of Operations 1941-43 (Battle Orders) (Paperback)

US Marine Corps Pacific Theater of Operations 1941-43 is the first of three volumes in Osprey's new Battle Orders series, which seeks to describe "command, deployment, organization and evolution of forces in battle...including doctrine, training, tactics and equipment." Rottman's first volume covers the period from Pearl Harbor to the landing on Bougainville in November 1943. Overall, this volume is an extremely usefully research tool packed with graphically appealing data, but the narrative is too sterile and does not read well. This lack of readability appears to be due to the series format, and readers expecting something akin to the Campaign or Essential Histories series will find these volumes difficult to digest.

Despite the stylistic problems, US Marine Corps Pacific Theater of Operations 1941-43 gets off to a good start with sections that clearly define the four combat missions of the US Marine Corps, its doctrine and training, and unit organization. The 18-page organization section is particularly detailed, with numerous line and block charts of units from Amphibious Corps down to platoon. The 8-page section on tactics is also very detailed. A 7-page section on weapons and equipment and a 6-page section on C3I are also decent. The final section of the book is a 31-page summary of Marine combat operations in the Pacific in the first two years of the war (Corregidor, Guadalcanal, Russells and New Georgia, and Bougainville). While this summary section has a dozen tactical maps, it does not provide anything like the narrative provided in a Campaign title. Detailed orders of battle are provided for each operation - too detailed in fact, with names of each battalion commander taking 2-3 pages for major operations. A brief summary section at the end lists all USMC casualties in these operations. My only concern is that there is too little information on the Marine commanders, particularly notables like Vandegrift who was a major figure in these early operations.

Once these three volumes are available, readers will have a great reference tool available on USMC operations in the Pacific Theater. Those readers who require very detailed order of battle information will particularly enjoy these volumes, but readers expecting more of a campaign-style history will find this material too encyclopedic. Ideally, readers will rely on earlier Osprey Campaign series titles on the Pacific War to provide greater depth on operations and use these volumes to understand the organizations, doctrine and tactics.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars US Marine Corps Pacific Theater of Operaions, 1941-43, November 20, 2004

By 

Gordon Rottman (Cypress, TX USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: US Marine Corps Pacific Theater of Operations 1941-43 (Battle Orders) (Paperback)

This series of books is indeed intended as order of battle studies. The reason for the Battle Orders title though is becasue of disput between Osprey and another publisher. Osprey would have preferred to call the series Order of Battle, but the legal aspests precluded this.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must have Organizational History of the WWII USMC, October 27, 2004

By 

Stuart M. Kohn (Maplewood, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: US Marine Corps Pacific Theater of Operations 1941-43 (Battle Orders) (Paperback)

Gordon Rottman, a prolific writer and historian who has recent some of the best Osprey titles, succeeds brilliantly with this 3 volume organizational history of the USMC in WWII. In a clear concise manner, Rottman, manages to give a detailed overview of the development of the USMC order of battle during the war. This book, as well as the other two volumes, is a must have for those interested in the Marine Corps WWII order of Battle.