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Title: Us Marine Corps Pacific Theater of Operation, 1941-43 by Gordon Rottman ISBN: 1-84176-518-X Publisher: Osprey Publishing (UK) Pub. Date: 01 March, 2004 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)

Rating: 4
Summary: Excellent source, but like reading an Encyclopedia
Comment: US Marine Corps Pacific Theater of Operations 1941-43 is the first of three volumes in Osprey's new Battle Orders series, which seeks to describe "command, deployment, organization and evolution of forces in battle...including doctrine, training, tactics and equipment." Rottman's first volume covers the period from Pearl Harbor to the landing on Bougainville in November 1943. Overall, this volume is an extremely usefully research tool packed with graphically appealing data, but the narrative is too sterile and does not read well. This lack of readability appears to be due to the series format, and readers expecting something akin to the Campaign or Essential Histories series will find these volumes difficult to digest.

Despite the stylistic problems, US Marine Corps Pacific Theater of Operations 1941-43 gets off to a good start with sections that clearly define the four combat missions of the US Marine Corps, its doctrine and training, and unit organization. The 18-page organization section is particularly detailed, with numerous line and block charts of units from Amphibious Corps down to platoon. The 8-page section on tactics is also very detailed. A 7-page section on weapons and equipment and a 6-page section on C3I are also decent. The final section of the book is a 31-page summary of Marine combat operations in the Pacific in the first two years of the war (Corregidor, Guadalcanal, Russells and New Georgia, and Bougainville). While this summary section has a dozen tactical maps, it does not provide anything like the narrative provided in a Campaign title. Detailed orders of battle are provided for each operation - too detailed in fact, with names of each battalion commander taking 2-3 pages for major operations. A brief summary section at the end lists all USMC casualties in these operations. My only concern is that there is too little information on the Marine commanders, particularly notables like Vandegrift who was a major figure in these early operations.

Once these three volumes are available, readers will have a great reference tool available on USMC operations in the Pacific Theater. Those readers who require very detailed order of battle information will particularly enjoy these volumes, but readers expecting more of a campaign-style history will find this material too encyclopedic. Ideally, readers will rely on earlier Osprey Campaign series titles on the Pacific War to provide greater depth on operations and use these volumes to understand the organizations, doctrine and tactics.

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