This thesis is concerned with the Marine Corps' actions in the discovery and development of the Land Vehicle Tracted (LVT) through World War II, and focuses on its use in the Solomon Islands and the Central Pacific. A concluding part deals with post-war development and the future of the vehicle.

This thesis is concerned with the Marine Corps' actions in the discovery and development of the Land Vehicle Tracted (LVT) through World War II, and focuses on its use in the Solomon Islands and the Central Pacific. A concluding part deals with post-war development and the future of the vehicle.

The American military establishment is intimately tied to its technology, although the nature of those ties has varied enormously from service to service. The air force evokes images of pilots operating hightech weapons systems, striking precisely from out of the blue to lay waste to enemy installations. The fundamental icon for the Marine Corps is a wave of riflemen hitting the beaches from rugged landing craft and slogging their way ashore under enemy fire. How did these very different relationships with technology develop? During the interwar years, from 1920 to 1940, leaders from the Army Air Corps and the Marine Corps recreated their agencies based on visions of new military technologies. In War Machines, Timothy Moy examines these recreations and explores how factors such as bureaucratic pressure, institutional culture, and America's technological enthusiasm shaped these leaders' choices. The very existence of the Army Air Corps was based on a new technology, the airplane. As the Air Corps was forced to compete for money and other resources during the years after World War I, Air Corps leaders carved out a military niche based on hightech precision bombing. The Marine Corps focused on amphibious, firstwave assault using sturdy, graceless, and easytoproduce landing craft. Moy's astute analysis makes it clear that studying the processes that shaped the Army Air Corps and Marine Corps is fundamental to our understanding of technology and the military at the beginning of the twentyfirst century.

In this story of men, machines and missions, Kenneth Estes tells how the U.S. Marine Corps came to acquire the armored fighting vehicle and what it tried to do with it. The longtime Marine tank officer and noted military historian offers an insider's view of the Corps's acquisition and use of armored fighting vehicles over the course of several generations, a view that illustrates the characteristics of the Corps as a military institution and of the men who have guided its development. His book examines the planning, acquisition, and employment of tanks, amphibian tractors, and armored cars and explores the ideas that led to the fielding of these weapons systems along with the doctrines and tactics intended for them, and their actual use in combat. Drawing on archival resources previously untouched by researchers and interviews of both past and serving crewmen, Estes presents a unique and unheralded story that is filled with new information and analysis of the armored vehicles, their leaders, and the men who drove these steel chariots into battle. Such authoritative detail and documentation of the decisions to acquire, develop, and organize armored units in the U.S. Marine Corps assures the book's acknowledgement as a definitive reference.

Over the Beach, written by historian and retired Army Colonel Donald W. Boose Jr., is the definitive history of the extensive but little known US Army amphibious operations during the Korean War, 1950-1953. Building on its extensive experience in World War II, the Army conducted three major landing operations during the war, including the assault at Inchon in September 1950. After the massive Chinese attacks two months later the Army executed a series of amphibious withdrawals as it fell back to more defensible positions farther down the peninsula. Throughout the war the Army also conducted a number of massive and complex over-the-shore logistical operations, as well as several amphibious special operations along the Korean littoral. Colonel Boose's work, commissioned by DAMO-ODG, Operations and Technology Office, provides the historical context for any subsequent amphibious operations on the Korean peninsula. As such, this thought-provoking study may provide insights to modern planners crafting future joint or combined operations in that part of the world. -- Publisher's Description.