Wait let me get this straight.
You expect the US Air Force to land a cargo plane on an enemy airstrip to take it with the loaded troops?
No just no. This is not Hollywood.
They don't have to land, they can just slowly keep driving while the guys in the back get out. Anyway you're right,
it's real life.
Port Salinas's parachute drop was considered a tad too dangerous for the mission because of its proximity to water and it was supposed to be done at nighttime. Which is why the Rangers were going to land, Mikado style, and get out the rear ramp to seize the airstrip. Cubans don't have night vision. How will they hit a C-130 if they can't even hit the orbiting AC-130s and got caught with their pants down? The Rangers were supposed to land on the airstrip at nighttime, get out, and take it, but the Combat Talons had a funny haha happen to their INS and they spent like half an hour flying in a circle or something.
They got word from Deltas on the ground or a AC-130 or something that the Cubans had parked a bulldozer and some other junk on the runway, making it too short for the Hercs to land, and decided to change from an airlanding to a parachute assault. Everyone put on their chutes and made the jump instead. Enough Rangers landed on the strip that they were able to take it and the resort town of True Blue, against a combat engineering battalion of Cubans with automatic rifles, BTRs, and ZPUs. Easy peasy.
The physical geometry of the drop zone was not substantially bigger than Fiery Cross Reef and Port Salinas is also surrounded by water.
It's just a counter example to your statement that "paratroops will land in water" because it doesn't really happen. If wind is too strong to jump, then you can hit the ground and dismount at like 20-30 knots or something slow-ish while taxiing, but fast enough for the plane to get back into the air after everyone piles out the cargo ramp. Or you taxi to a pad and wait while the Rangers take the airbase. There's more important stuff for those dudes with guns to shoot at besides a fat empty plane. Like the guys on the ground shooting back at them.
Is it dangerous? Damn right. Is it useful? If you want to drop dudes right on a target. Have people done it? More or less.
If the Nazis can land dudes in a dozen floatplanes right on a river, get out in their little dinghies, and steal a bridge right from under the defending Dutch Marines; or literally land on top of Dutch anti-air batteries and on the roofs of the infantrymen's barracks in Rotterdam, I'd think the Rangers can do Mikado. Plainly stupider things have been done, and worked fine, and often stupidity is just a synonym for having brass.
Some things from WW2 are worth looking at. Island hopping campaigns ain't one of 'em.
You dont fucking do that at all. Its a great way to lose entire companys when the thin skin aircraft gets hosed down by an few assualt rifles, let alone a MG or manpads.
Better get out quick!
And most of those poor troopers are going to be stuck in the ocean with their water wings.
Oh well. They'll be picked up by a boat when the battle is over. Whether it's American or Chinese is whatever. Beats drowning.
Likely getting machine gun.
That's one less machine gun shooting at the guys who landed on dirt. Fair trade. If I were defending an airstrip I'd be more concerned about the guys on the runway than the guys in the water myself.
No the best way to take an island air feild like Salinas is a combine arms deal of both air assualt and water borne attacks.
Port Salinas was taken by a daylight parachute assault, actually.
If anything, that indicates the best way to take an airfield is by daylight parachute assault. Not that it matters, since the original plan by the Navy called for choppers dropping Marines and Rangers in combined battalions to seize the airstrip. The second plan called for JSOC to take it with the Delta Force or SEALs, who ended up just setting up an observation post instead. The third plan called for Rangers to airland and take it. They went with the last one except it was a parachute assault.
It still worked. Even if the first plan was more "common sense", the subsequent "stupid plan" didn't lead to any undesirable outcomes except when a pair of BTRs rolled into the airstrip and started plastering Hercs with 14.5mm before they flipped over after running into some stray 90mm rounds. That's not really the fault of the Rangers those boys just had some cojones.
In other words: All those are things the Marines can't do with their 10-ship airlift squadrons and increasing lack of LCACs?
Perferablely after the big carriers do their thing.
Why exactly would you want to capture some radioactive ruins? The "big carriers" will just erase the airbase from the map.
Also those water wings? Only are rated for bout 200 ish pounds. Paratroops BASIC gear average about 70 pounds, with the average trooper being bout 170. And dont get issued to paratroopers.
Yes they do on training jumps. Natick even has
a new set of water wings in the works.
Basically you land in the drink you not doing anything.
Yes, but at least your water wings will keep you from drowning? Isn't that your original complaint?
"Not doing anything" is different from "drowning".
The Army down two, 4 counting Grenade and Panama, combat jumps since korea.
It's more than four. Way more. Airborne did combat jumps in Vietnam in Junction City and Grenada and Panama are like 5 separate jumps.
One was in Nam irc, another was in Iraq freedom knew for sure. Both had US Armor forces pushing on at the same time.
Here is a list of unclassified operations, there's nine big ones. Even if you discount the two jumps in Afghanistan that were reclassified, it's many more amphibious assaults that the Marines actually did.
Maybe the Marines have threatened to do more amphibious assaults than air drops but they never carried them out.
And the Iraq one was to take an air field that the Armor forces have all but taken already. Like apparently one poor soldier nearly got munlch when his parachute got tangled up in a moving Abrams treads. As is they basically did nothing and took all the credit.
Yes, airborne jumps are typically used in low intensity actions.
i.e. the most likely future wars that the Marines have built themselves to be entirely unable to support.
Eyeah the Airborne is as rusty as the Marines are in taking contested things.
Except Airborne has taken multiple contested objects from Rio Hata to Port Salinas to Objective Rhino in the past 40 years?
So rusty they maintained relevance in every small war America has fought in the past three human generations? They'll do it again too. Because 1) it's funny 2) they can actually get to places and do stuff because they know what they're about. Marines don't.
The Corps seems to think their little restructuring is going to be a value add component in WW3, which is frankly bizarre. Those stupid sandbar reefs they're wringing their hands about will just be nuked by JSFs, Tomahawks, or B-21s, perhaps literally, since it'll be WW3. Conversely, if the Marines ever have to take a similar obstacle in a totally different war, like Port Salinas, they're poorly equipped to do so. Because their big dogs think a 14 knots LST is faster than a 140 knots Hercules and can do the same job. Wild. I want to live a day in that world.
Perhaps Berger simply doesn't understand the whole purpose of the island hopping campaign has been obsolete since 1955 though? There ain't gonna be no island hopping campaign in the South China Sea. It'll be more like an island regrading campaign from aviation flying in from outside the sea, because supercarriers hate closed seas (at this point we might classify the North Atlantic as a "closed sea") and because the SCS is going to be inhabited by nothing but Chinese aeronaval surface units and diesel sub battling US Navy SSNs and JSFs.
When you do have to take an airfield in Grenada 2 or Nicaragua 2 or Vera Cruz 2, you'd call the Rangers. Now it'll be exclusively the Rangers, because everyone will be playing a dirge for the actually useful-to-American-policy air assault troops of the Marines when they receive their 14 knot LSTs.
You literally doing the two face talking again boss.
Nah, I'm talking about Marines doing air assaults. They had helicopters once. Mattis did air assaults with Super Stallions in Afghanistan to make his FOBs with 15th MEU after Rangers built Rhino. Marines did air assaults again in Al-Faw and amphibious landings after the British Commandos took the beach zone.
The entire history of the US Marines, outside WW2, is showing up after someone has already got a foothold and can't go further.
Marine cant do nothing that the Army Airborne cant.
Nah they're too slow and take a week to arrive to anywhere.
This is still faster than an armored brigade from Ft. Riley which is twice as long.
The Army Airborne cant do what the Marines do.
Airborne can arrive anywhere in the world in brigade strength in 72 hours. Marines would be lucky to do it less than 96.
Also
Cause Airborne are the guys with patachuts.
Yes.
Air Assault are the guys in the Helicopters. Who can carry far more stuff.
I'm not talking about Aerosol. They don't do anything they need boats and planes to bring their dumb whirlygigs anywhere. Useless.
The Marines are the real air assault because they have little helicopter carriers.
There is a major difference between the two.
Airborne is the crowbar. Marines are the forearm. Armored brigade or Aerosol is the boot that kicks in the door. The boot depends on terrain. Aerosol is prime in mountains and jungles and armor's prime anywhere else.
At least that's how it should be. Marines are looking less like the forearm these days and more like the arm's cast.
Forcible entry is just the international form of a B&E after all.
