History of Marine Corps Aviation

Occupation & Demobilization/Post WWII Operations

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The Occupation of Japan and Demobilization

For the occupation, two MAGs went to Japan and several units were assigned to China, with the rest eventually sent home. The drop in strength of the Marine Corps and Marine Aviation began as abruptly as it had increased at Pearl Harbor - almost immediately.

Marine Aviation assignments during the occupation period after the war were largely confined to Japan and mainland China. MAG-31 was established at the Yokosuka naval base airfield at Oppama, five days after the formal surrender aboard USS Missouri. The mission of MAG-31 was surveillance and reconnaissance of the Tokyo Bay area, and it was a key air unit of the Japanese occupation until July 1946, when it returned to the U.S.

MAG-22 flew into the Omura airfield on Kyushu from Okinawa, the entire logistic move being made by airlift. The group then moved to the U.S. in early December 1945. MAG-22 had been formed on Midway in the spring of 1942, and it saw home for the first time that December.

Headquarters of the 2nd Marine Air Wing, with MAGs 14 and 33, remained at Okinawa until February 1946, when they returned to the continental U.S. Marine air units in the occupation of China consisted of the 1st Marine Air Wing and its attached groups, MAGs 12, 24, 25 and 32. Their mission was primarily to fly show-of-strength patrols, and provide reliable air transport and logistic services to all Marine units in the occupation, MAGs 12 and 32 were tranferred back to Marine Air West in California in the spring of 1946. Remaining units were gradually reduced, the last element, Air Fleet Marine Force WestPac, in January 1949.

In the 10 months from V-J Day to July 1, 1946, Marine Aviation went from 103 fighter and bomber squadrons to only 27, and in the next year the total dropped to 21. This level was held until June 30, 1950, when squadron strength dropped to 16, only three more squadrons than the total number in Marine Aviation on December 7, 1941. The Marine Corps was not alone in this seeming rush backward to a state of unpreparedness.

Post WWII Operations

The period following the end of WWII brought a cascade of technological advances, unprecedented in both volume and application to almost all fields of endeavor. For aviation in general, the advent of the jet age opened new horizons in transportation and worldwide communication, but for military aviation it was a new ball game. An era of range extension, compression of speed/time factors, routine all-weather operations, and greatly improved weapons delivery accuracy.

The major problems that dominated the period following V-J Day, from the Navy's and Marine Corps' viewpoints, was the effect of the atom bomb on future amphibious operations. For the planners and architects of tactics, the problem boiled down to devising some means of rapid concentration of troops from greatly increased dispersal distances that went with fleet cruising dispositions in the atomic age. It had to be a swift concentration in order to gain the relative safety of close contact with defending forces in minimum time, to lessen the likelihood of enemy atomic attack. The most promising design for a vehicle which might accomplish this turned out to be that of rotary-wing aircraft. The operational concepts were explored by special boards and study groups at Quantico, while the Division of Marine Aviation was investigating every rotary- wing aircraft idea that industry was trying to put into flying form. A developmental helicopter squadron, HMX-1, was formed at Quantico, and much in the same way that the development of amphibious landing craft was pursued in the thirties, each idea was given consideration and tested.

Progress was slow because the state of the art was in its infancy but, by the early fifties, some realistic capabilities were in hand.

The first major surprise of the post- WW II years came when, in late June 1950, the United States responded in crisis fashion to the North Korean invasion of the new Republic of South Korea (RoK), just four years and nine months after V-J Day.

Sources:

U.S. Marine Corps Aviation, by Maj. Gen. John P. Condon, at the excellent U.S. Navy Historical Center's public domain web site

History of Marine Corps Aviation in WWII, by Robert Sherrod - the authoritative reference work on this topic

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