Replacements by Air and Sea
Facilities for air transport across the Pacific were limited, since the Army was also moving replacements to the Far East. A piecemeal process of shuttling Marines in plane-load increments could not be completed before 30 January. Lieutenant General Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr., commanding FMFPac, took a dim view of this delay. It would be better for the Division, he maintained, to receive even a part of its replacements before it went back into action. As a compromise, he proposed a combined air-sea lift which met the approval of Rear Admiral Arthur H. Radford, commanding Pacific Fleet.
Three replacement drafts were already on the way, with the 3d in Japan and the 4th and 5th at Camp Pendleton. General Shepherd scraped the bottom of the manpower barrel so closely that he dug up an additional 700 men from Marine security detachments in Japan, the Philippines, and other Pacific Ocean bases.
Seven trainloads of Marines from Camp Lejeune arrived at San Francisco on 10 January to join those from Camp Pendleton. On the same day 230 of these replacements were flown to Hawaii by the Military Air Transportation Service (MATS), by the R5D’s of Marine VMR-352 and of Navy VR-5, and by the “Mars” flying boats of Navy VR-9. The next day 799 Marines sailed on the fast transport USNS General W. O. Darby. The remainder were transported at the rate of one plane load a day by MATS and at the rate of three or four plane loads a day by the Navy and Marine transport planes of Fleet Logistics Air Wing, Pacific (FLogAirWingPac).[40]
[40] Material relative to Marine replacements has been derived from FMFPac HD, Dec 50 and Jan 51.
Five days later, on the 16th, the airlift had cleared the last Marine out of Treasure Island. On 21 January, 1,000 men of the special draft were already with the 1st Division at Pohang and the 799 on board General Darby were due to dock at Pusan.
It had been a fast job of coordination by the Navy, Army, Air Force, and virtually all major units of the Marine Corps. Much of the special airlift was flown by the R5Ds of VMR-352 and of VMR-152. The former, commanded by Colonel William B. Steiner, had been flying the El Toro-Tokyo flights since October, but most of its effort had been in shuttling between the mainland and Hawaii. VMR-152 had concentrated on the Hawaii-Japan leg of the long trip. During the Chosin campaign, the squadron commander, Colonel Deane C. Roberts, had maintained his headquarters and 10 planes at Itami to support the shuttle to Korea. He had barely returned to Hawaii from that job when his squadron was alerted not only for the special lift of Marine replacements but also for a return to the Far East.[41]
[41] The balance of this section is derived from the Dec 50 and Jan 51 historical diaries of VMF-352, VMR-152, 1st MAW, and FMFPac.
Hawaii had been the bottleneck in this special troop lift. Land and seaplanes were discharging their human cargo at Barbers Point, Hickam Air Force Base, and Keehi Lagoon. From there FLogAirWingPac had to space the planes over the long stretches of sea at approximately four-hour intervals. The guiding factor was other air traffic over the same route and the servicing, messing, and rescue capabilities of Guam and other points along the way, such as tiny Johnston Island. The latter was barely big enough for its single 6,100-foot runway.
VMR-152 and the Navy’s VR-21 were assigned the mission of flying the long Hawaii-Japan portion of the big lift. Itami became another collection center for the airborne replacements and five of the VMR-152 planes were retained there to shuttle the troops the last 300 miles to K-3, near Pohang ([Map 2]). On 21 January the troop lift reached virtual completion, but Admiral Radford authorized the 1st MAW to retain a couple of R5D’s at Itami a little longer. Thus the Marines were able to avoid highway and rail traffic jams in Korea by flying men and materials from troop and supply centers in Japan to K-1, K-3, or K-9.