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The SNLFs in combat 1941-1945
In December 1941 several Special Naval Landing Forces participated in the Japanese invasion of the Philippines, and especially the multiple landing operations aimed at the main northern island of Luzon. The naval command had created the "Sasebo Combined Naval Landing Force" by grouping together the 1st and 2nd Sasebo SNLF's, under the command of Navy Commander Kunizo Mori. From this formation 490 men were put ashore with the first wave in Lamon Bay, while another 490 first occupied Batan Island in the Luzon Strait, then moved on (accompanied by a seaplane tender) to land on Camiguin Island, where the Japanese intended to establish a base for their floatplanes. However, the seas surrounding the island were found to be too rough for operating the seaplanes, and so the force was withdrawn to Formosa.
The main Luzon landing at Legaspi had 575 men from the 1st Kure SNLF in its forefront. Another 245 men of the 1st Kure accompanied the third Luzon landing at Davao, and then reboarded their ships and occuppied Jolo Island. The 2nd Yokosuka SNLF acted in a conventional amphibious role to occupy Calayan Island in the Luzon Strait, where the Japanese hastily hacked out a small emergency landing strip, before returning to their base on Formosa. A smaller, more improvised SNLF known as the Amatsukaze SNLF-- organized from shipboard marine contingents from the cruiser Jintsu and the destroyer Kuroshio, and composed of less than 30 men-- also landed in the Davao area, its mission to release Japanese civilians who had been interned by the Filipinos. It set 29 Japanese nationals free. A day earlier the Bandasan SNLF, comprising about 60 men from the same two ships, also landed at Davao with the same intent, and "liberated" two locations where Japanese had been interned, rescuing a total of 435 Japanese civilians. But these ad hoc landing forces were not really in the same category as the standard SNLF's, and were essentially one-shot expedients scared up to deal with a specific situation [ 1 ].
Meanwhile, also in December 1941, the Maizuru Independent SNLF Company provided 350 men (plus one company of 6th Base Force with 310 men) to attack the US Pacific outpost of Wake Island. When the first assault was repulsed by the determined resistance of the small US Marine garrison there, reinforcements from the 2nd Maizuru SNLF, which had been part of the garrison force at the Japanese Navy's main central Pacific base of Truk, were sent in to finally overwhelm the outnumbered Americans and secure the island.
Operations aimed against Dutch East Indies and the great oil supplies Japan coveted also began in December 1941, and again the Special Naval Landing Forces were in the forefront. The 2nd Yokosuka SNLF naval infantrymen came in by boat to land at Miri in British Borneo, and within two and a half hours had secured its objective, the Lutong oil refinery. Eight days later elements of the 2nd Yokosuka SNLF carried out another landing at Kuching, the main port of south Borneo. The 1st and 2nd Kure, 1st and 2nd Sasebo, and 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Yokosuka SNLF's were all detailed for the prolonged Indonesian operations. In January 1942, the 2nd Kure SNLF (along with one Army regiment) landed at Tarakan Island, Borneo. As related in the previous post concerning airborne operations, the 1st Yokosuka SNLF paratroopers carried out Japan's first ever combat air drop at Menado on Celebes, on January 11th. Four hours before the airborne landings, the 1st Sasebo SNLF had come ashore by sea a bit further north. Later in the month, 1st Kure SNLF occupied Amboina Island, site of an important airfield. Finally, in late February 1942, the Sasebo Combined Special Naval Landing Force were landed amphibiously and fought as ground troops in the battle for Koepang on Timor Island. Several days before the 3rd Yokosuka SNLF (a naval parachute unit) was airdropped at Koepang, suffering heavy casualties in the forthcoming battles.
The early successes of the SNLF's led to the creation of further such units, although it is possible that some drop-off in quality of the men's training and combat effectiveness was already noticeable in this "second wave." The Special Naval Landing Forces thus continued to play a role in Japanese Navy offensive operations, which were now concentrated primarily in the Solomons and New Guinea area. Both the older and new SNLF's became involved. The 3rd Kure SNLF led the way when the Japanese landed on Tulagi to establish a seaplane base there (also occupied the adjacent small islands of Gavutu and Tanambogo). These units put up a pretty fierce resistance against the US Marine landings there in August. Meanwhile the 5th Yokosuka SNLF was the only real fighting force established on Guadalcanal once the Japanese started to construct an airstrip there-- in contrast to the forces on and around Tulagi, these essentially melted away into the jungle when the Marines started coming ashore.
On New Guinea, also in August 1942, the Japanese conceived a fairly ambitious island to secure Milne Bay on the island's eastern tip. The initial landing force conisted of 612 men from the 5th Kure SNLF, 197 men of the 5th Sasebo SNLF, and 362 (non-combat) troops of the 16th Naval Construction Unit. This force was commanded by Navy Commander Shojiro Hayashi. These landed from two transport ships, escorted by cruisers, in a driving rain on the night of August 25th. The plan called for an additional 353 men of the 5th Sasebo SNLF, carried in seven large wooden motor barges, to land on the Solomon Sea side and make a separate approach by marching over the mountains. But the Japanese plan miscarried almost from the start. The Allies, too, were interested in constructing an airfield at Milne Bay, and they in fact had 4,500 Australian infantry troops in the area already, along with almost the same number of artillerymen, engineers, and construction troops (including 1,300 Americans). Even after reinforcements were sent in on August 29th, in the form of 568 men from the 3rd Kure SNLF and 200 SNLF soldiers (fighting as infantry) from the 5th Yokosuka SNLF (with them arrived Navy Commander Yano, who then took over as he had seniority over Hayashi), this left the Japanese outnumbered two to one in combat troops, and almost four to one overall, hardly promising conditions for an offensive. The Japanese naval troops did put ashore two light tanks, but these soon got bogged down in deep mud and were not able to accomplish much.
After August 1942 the Special Naval Landing Forces found themselves fighting a much different kind of war. Now they were almost exclusively involved in defensive fighting, holding various island outposts against the growing US offensive. In the Solomons, the next battle after Guadalcanal centered on New Georgia. The Japanese Navy in this area had the 6th Kure and 7th Yokosuka SNLF's (the latter sometimes cited as an example of the deficiencies in equipment, training, and hence combat performance which came to characterize SNLF operations as the war progressed). These were joined together as the 8th Combined Special Naval Landing Force, under Rear-Admiral Minoru Ota*. In the New Georgia fighting, the 6th Kure SNLF was initially on New Georgia itself (with one company on Rendova, which was actually the first island in the group attacked by the Americans). The 7th Yokosuka SNLF was brought over from the adjacent island of Kolombangara to reinforce the New Georgia force as the battle developed.
Perhaps the most famous defensive stand by the Japanese Special Naval Landing Forces came at Tarawa Atoll in November 1943. Here there were no Japanese Army troops-- only 1,497 men of the 7th Sasebo SNLF, and a little more than 1,100 members of the 3rd Special Base Unit. With more than 100 machineguns pointed at the Marine landing bases and fifty various pieces of artillery supporting them, the Japanese naval troops in their strong bunkers withstood a ferocious bombardment and still emerged to cause one of the worst bloodbaths in US military history. More than 3,000 Marines became casualties before the vicious fighting was over, one of the few times in the entire Pacific war when the Japanese forces actually inflicted greater casualties than they themselves suffered on any given island. The Japanese Special Naval Landing Forces would continue to be encountered in most subsequent major campaigns-- they were present on Saipan (where the paratroopers of the 1st and 3rd Yokosuka SNLF's, consolidated into a single unit, were essentially wiped out fighting as conventional infantry), they were on Iwo Jima Island, and naval ground troops of all kinds were very prevalent in the fighting in Manila and Manila Bay in the Phillipines (it was naval ground forces, in defiance of Yamashita's orders, who defended the city of Manila and turned it into a horrible massacre, running amok among the civilian population, about 100,000 of whom died, before the city was liberated. Naval infantry also held Corregidor and several smaller fortress islands). And there were about 10,000 naval ground troops on Okinawa, the actions of Ota's group being described done in notes. But most of the Special Naval Landing Forces and the more improvised naval ground units raised in the final two years of the war were a far cry from the well-trained units which led the way in the early successful Pacific offensives [ 2 ].
