Just One Lesson Short of Three Useful Lessons

This article highlights several lessons of the World War II defense of Wake Island in 1941 which have use today for Marine units put ashore to help the Navy fight naval adversaries. I'd like to point out one more lesson.

This article about the Marine defense of Wake Island is interesting and I don't dispute the lessons of outranging the adversary, weakening his air support, and defense is stronger than offense.

The last lesson on the ability of the garrison to defeat an invasion is an untested "lesson" that states that the 450 Japanese naval infantry could not dislodge the 390 Marine because of the 3:1 rule.

I dispute that. First, the 3:1 rule says, all things being equal, an attacker needs a 3:1 advantage to defeat an enemy in a ground battle. But all other things are rarely equal. The Marine garrison was not an infantry force. It was a force of shore batteries, heavy machine guns for beach and air defense, and a small air contingent.

If you doubt this, explain the Japanese victory at Singapore where the British had nearly a 3:1 advantage over the Japanese and were on defense.

Or consider the loss of Guam around the same time when the decisive battle on the land--backed by a lot of Japanese firepower--was waged by a similarly sized naval landing force against a small Marine garrison.

The initial Japanese invasion force was actual infantry. And if the Japanese had the naval firepower to destroy the Marine shore batteries and suppress their air defense, leaving the Marines defending Wake open to bombardment from sea and air, I am pretty darned sure that the Japanese would have seized the island with that small battalion.

I have no problem with Marines deploying anti-ship and air defense outposts to help the Navy.

But the Marines might want to consider that the Marines bring a land combat core competency to the fight and ignoring that capability to be a land-based Navy abandons the real synergy of what joint operations can achieve.

If the Marines can't hold the land where their land-based anti-ship and air defense weapons are located, the Navy will get no Marine support for the aero-naval battle.