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Peleliu Part X: The Wildcats [Mission]

Map: Peleliu 1944 - 11/13/1944
Gamemode: Operation (4 phases)
Invaders: United States (allies)
Defenders: Japan (axis)

Last update: 6/3/2025


"The permanent relief of the 1st Marine Division by the 81st Infantry Division began on the morning of 15 October when the 2d Battalion, 321st Infantry, took over the area held by 3/5 across the northern end of the Pocket: the Hill 140 salient and the line extending westward from it. The following day the infantry regiment's 1st Battalion relieved 1/580 atop Walt and Boyd Ridges and facing the mouth of the Horseshoe. At about the same time elements of the 323d Infantry, newly arrived from the successful seizure of Ulithi, completed taking over the southern and western containing lines, and at 1245 on 16 October command of operations in the Umurbrogol passed officially to the commanding officer, 321st Infantry...

The number of Japanese remaining in the Pocket was unknown, of course, and estimates varied widely. Asked by the 81st Division for a tentative figure, the 1st Division staff guessed roughly 500, raised by other guessers to a maximum of 1200, "a figure which was subsequently ascertained to be underestimated."4 At the end of the operation the 81st reported: "Over 1500 Japanese were known to have been killed and fifty-eight captured",5 an estimate which would appear to disregard the possibility that a few of these might have been disposed of by the Marines during the month they had fought over this terrain. But three days after the Wildcats took over, Colonel Nakagawa, whose reports were seldom exactly pessimistic, informed his superiors on Koror: "Our total garrison units number about 700 soldiers, including the slightly wounded;" and six days later: "Garrison units number about 500 still able to fight."

Whatever their numbers, fight they did, and in the best Japanese tradition....


Thereafter these four battalions carried on the Pocket battle to the bitter end a month later, though 81st Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop participated in two more island seizures to the north: Gorokottan on 11 November and Ngeregong on the 15th. The latter island had been seized previously by personnel from the LCI gunboats operating in the region, but these had been chased out by an enemy counterlanding. The Reconnaissance Troop went in prepared for any contingency, with artillery and air preparation and LVT(A)'s and LCI's for direct support. But only three Japanese were found, all of them dead.

Back in the Pocket the methodical attrition continued. No one was in any hurry, and the Wildcats' caution was exceeded only by the thoroughness with which they did the job. Mortar concentrations and napalm air strikes prepared the way for each major attack, and extraordinary labor was undertaken to bulldoze routes for tanks and LVT flame-throwers to inaccessible enemy strong points. At times a satisfactory day's advance measured ten to fifty yards, and there were cases of men crawling ahead on their bellies pushing sandbags in front of them with poles. If any one implement could be said to have done more than any other to seal the fate of the Japanese in the Umurbrogol, it would be the humble sandbag....


No fireworks, literal or metaphorical, signalized the end of one of the most stubbornly contested campaigns in the history of this or any other war. The units in assault jumped off in all zones at 0700 on 27 November. As the 81st Division Operation Report puts it succinctly: "Resistance to this multisided attack seemed to disintegrate completely." At 1030 elements of the 2d Battalion, moving northward along the China Wall, came face to face with their comrades of the 3d Battalion, working southward. Across the few yards intervening, they could see men of the 1st Battalion perched on the rim of Death Valley. For long moments the weary Wildcats looked at one another in an uncanny silence, trying to realize that this was all there was; there wasn't any more....

The Peleliu operation closely resembled no other in the Pacific war in which Marines participated; yet in no respect was it wholly unique. In a sense it was a repeat performance of Tarawa and the Marshalls, with overtones of Saipan and Guam; and it presaged the pattern of things to come on under-tunnelled Iwo Jima and, perhaps more particularly, in the high ground of Okinawa."

https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USMC/USMC-M-Peleliu/USMC-M-Peleliu-9.html

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