The Defense Battalion’s 5-Inch Guns
In the photo above, a 5-inch/51 seacoast gun of Battery A, 1st Defense Battalion, rests at the Marine Corps Base, San Diego, on 21 October 1940, prior to its being deployed “beyond the seas.” Private Edward F. Eaton, standing beside it, serves as a yardstick to give the viewer an idea of the size of the gun that could hurl a 50-pound shell at 3,150 feet per second up to a range of 17,100 yards. These guns gave a good account of themselves at Wake Island, particularly in discouraging Admiral Kajioka’s attempted landing in December 1941.
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Captain Henry T. Elrod (seen at right in the fall of 1941), VMF-211’s executive officer, distinguished himself both in the air and in the ground fighting at Wake, with deeds which earned him a posthumous Medal of Honor. Born in Georgia in 1905, Elrod attended the University of Georgia and Yale University. Enlisting in the Corps in 1927, he received his commission in 1931. Elrod is the only Marine hero from Wake who has had a warship—a guided missile frigate—named in his honor.
‘Still No Help’
Well before dawn on 12 December, unsynchronized engines heralded the approach of a Japanese flying boat. Captains Freuler and Tharin scrambled their planes to intercept it. The enemy plane—a Kawanishi H6K Type 97 reconnaissance flying boat (Mavis) from the Yokohama Air Group dropped its bombs on the edge of the lagoon and then sought cover in the overcast and rain squalls. Tharin, although untrained in night aerial combat techniques, chased and “splashed” it. None of its nine-man crew survived.
Later that same day, 26 Chitose Air Group Nells bombed Wake Island. Returning aircrewmen claimed damage to a warehouse and an antiaircraft gun in the “western sector.” Antiaircraft fire shot down one plane and damaged four; Japanese casualties included eight men killed. Once the bombers had departed, “Barney” Barninger’s men continued working on their foxholes, freshened the camouflage, cleaned the guns, and tried to catch some sleep. The daily bombings, he wrote later, “were becoming an old story, and it was a relief from waiting when the raid was over.”