With Major Jimmy Roosevelt, the president's son, their second-in-command, the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion's daring raid on Makin was sure to make headlines during World War II. But in this informative history, Smith shows that the raid had unfortunate consequences in the long run. 32 photos. Maps.

The Japanese hold in the Pacific had to be checked. Lt. Col. Evans Carlson's hand-picked 2nd Raider Battalion moved in to do the job.

On August 17–18, 1942, 211 men of the US Marine Corps' 2nd Raider Battalion conducted a daring amphibious raid on the Japanese-occupied Makin Island in the South Pacific. This ambitious but flawed operation was intended to divert Japanese reinforcements bound for Guadalcanal, over 1,000 miles to the southwest, in the wake of the US landings there ten days earlier; the Raiders were to destroy the seaplane base and radio station, take prisoners, and collect intelligence. Although yielding limited results, it was to be an invaluable test of the innovative training and tactics employed by the Raiders, and a crucial boost to national morale at this difficult stage in the war. Featuring specially commissioned full-colour artwork and expert analysis, this gripping account of the fateful Makin Raid tells the whole story, from the plan's conception to its troubled execution and aftermath.

Provides an account of how Lieutenant Colonel Evans Carlson helped lay the foundation for Special Forces in the modern military through his leadership of the 2nd Raider Battalion in the jungles of Guadalcanal during World War II where he and his troops employed guerilla tactics against an entrenched Japanese force to disrupt their supply chain, inflict combat defeats, and gather valuable intelligence.

On October 16, 1942, on Kwajalein Atoll, at the fringe of the Japanese Empire, members of the Imperial Japanese Navy's 6th Base Unit ceremonially beheaded nine Marines from the 2nd Raider Battalion. The captives held no hopes for pardon or for rescue as they walked blindfolded, one by one, to the spot of execution, which also became their burial site. The Marine Corps and their families already thought they were dead, the men knew.Forgotten Raiders of '42 is the account of how these volunteer patriots, unbeknownst to their command, were inadvertently left behind after the Marines' raid on Makin Island in August 1942. The raid, which was a morale boost for the Navy Department and the American public, was hailed at home as a great success even as the condemned Raiders knelt to await their fate. The heroism of the Raiders-under the command of Lt. Col. Evans F. Carlson, who later received the Navy Cross-has been well documented by the press, in books, and in Hollywood. In a country craving good news and heroes, Carlson and the Navy delivered. The details of the raid's shaky beginning and tragic end, however, would not be known until many years later. After a summary of the dramatic raid, Tripp Wiles focuses on the Raiders' withdrawal from Makin and on Carlson's decisions that directly affected the men who were left behind. Wiles also examines the actions, inactions, and conditions that led to their unintentional abandonment. Finally, he reviews the Navy's private reactions and, using new documents and interviews, the Raiders' fate, bringing a measure of closure to the disappearance and execution of the forgotten Raiders.

Elliot Carlson’s award-winning biography of Capt. Joe Rochefort is the first to be written about the officer who headed Station Hypo, the U.S. Navy’s signals monitoring and cryptographic intelligence unit at Pearl Harbor, and who broke the Japanese navy’s code before the Battle of Midway. The book brings Rochefort to life as the irreverent, fiercely independent, and consequential officer that he was. Readers share his frustrations as he searches in vain for Yamamoto’s fleet prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but share his joy when he succeeds in tracking the fleet in early 1942 and breaks the code that leads Rochefort to believe Yamamoto’s invasion target is Midway. His conclusions, bitterly opposed by some top Navy brass, are credited with making the U.S. victory possible and helping to change the course of the war. The author tells the story of how opponents in Washington forced Rochefort’s removal from Station Hypo and denied him the Distinguished Service Medal recommended by Admiral Nimitz. In capturing the interplay of policy and personality and the role played by politics at the highest levels of the Navy, Carlson reveals a side of the intelligence community seldom seen by outsiders. For a full understanding of the man, Carlson examines Rochefort’s love-hate relationship with cryptanalysis, his adventure-filled years in the 1930s as the right-hand man to the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Fleet, and his return to codebreaking in mid-1941 as the officer in charge of Station Hypo. He traces Rochefort’s career from his enlistment in 1918 to his posting in Washington as head of the Navy’s codebreaking desk at age twenty-five, and beyond. In many ways a reinterpretation of Rochefort, the book makes clear the key role his codebreaking played in the outcome of Midway and the legacy he left of reporting actionable intelligence directly to the fleet. An epilogue describes efforts waged by Rochefort’s colleagues to obtain the medal denied him in 1942—a drive that finally paid off in 1986 when the medal was awarded posthumously.

On October 16, 1942, on Kwajalein Atoll, at the fringe of the Japanese Empire, members of the Imperial Japanese Navy's 6th Base Unit ceremonially beheaded nine Marines from the 2nd Raider Battalion. The captives held no hopes for pardon or for rescue as they walked blindfolded, one by one, to the spot of execution, which also became their burial site. The Marine Corps and their families already thought they were dead, the men knew.Forgotten Raiders of '42 is the account of how these volunteer patriots, unbeknownst to their command, were inadvertently left behind after the Marines' raid on Makin Island in August 1942. The raid, which was a morale boost for the Navy Department and the American public, was hailed at home as a great success even as the condemned Raiders knelt to await their fate. The heroism of the Raiders-under the command of Lt. Col. Evans F. Carlson, who later received the Navy Cross-has been well documented by the press, in books, and in Hollywood. In a country craving good news and heroes, Carlson and the Navy delivered. The details of the raid's shaky beginning and tragic end, however, would not be known until many years later. After a summary of the dramatic raid, Tripp Wiles focuses on the Raiders' withdrawal from Makin and on Carlson's decisions that directly affected the men who were left behind. Wiles also examines the actions, inactions, and conditions that led to their unintentional abandonment. Finally, he reviews the Navy's private reactions and, using new documents and interviews, the Raiders' fate, bringing a measure of closure to the disappearance and execution of the forgotten Raiders.

From the turn of the 20th century until the end of World War II, the United States Marine Corps fought a series of "small wars," starting in the Philippines in 1899, and ending in the islands of the southwest Pacific in 1945. Through this experience, the Marines perfected the prosecution of such wars in its famed Small Wars Manual, written for Marine Corps schools in the late 1930s. The present volume is a chronological examination of the various Marine expeditions in the Pacific, West Indies and Central America from 1899 through 1945, and of the lessons learned.