page_title: Battle of Iwo Jima
section_title: Strategic importance
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Iwo Jima / Strategic importance
caption_attribution_description: English: Out of the gaping mouths of Coast Guard and Navy Landing Craft, rose the great flow of invasion supplies to the blackened sands of Iwo Jima, a few hours after the Marines had wrested their foothold on the vital island. 1945. This squad of Marines, 2nd Separate Engineer Battalion, Co. B, unloads supplies on Red Beach, Iwo Jima. To the left, (beneath the “807”) balancing two wooden boxes is Malinowski. Louis Hill, with “USMC” across his back, is to the left of Malinowski and directly across from Hill is his buddy Harry Lee Jones. Nearer the surf is Staff Sergeant Ingram lifting a box (seen as a white diagonal line). George “Frank” Hoyt is partially visible to the left of a carbine stock slung over the shoulder of an unknown Marine. To the right of the unknown Marine, is Fink, in profile. Martini, with the moustache, stands alert. The half-hidden face at the very end of the “bucket-brigade” is Cpl. Leonard W. Pojunas, Sr., just below the doors of the open LSM 201. Standing to the far right and facing away is Staff Sergeant Stubby Green. Sitting next to Green is Shirley tightening his gaiter. The 2nd Eng. Battalion had sailed from APRA Harbor, Guam February 16, 1945 on LST 725, LST 247, and LSM 143. February 20, 1945 the battalion was off Iwo Jima. February 21, at 18:30, LST 725 was beached on Iwo Jima at Red Two and LST 247 at Yellow One. Both LSTs were retracted February 22 for a more suitable ramp on Red One, where unloading continued under mortar fire from the Japanese.
context_page_description: The Battle of Iwo Jima was a major battle in which the United States Marine Corps and Navy landed on and eventually captured the island of Iwo Jima from the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. The American invasion, designated Operation Detachment, had the purpose of capturing the island with its two airfields: South Field and Central Field was twofold. The first was to provide for B-29s unable to make it back to Tinian. The second was to have air fields for shorter ranged fighters to be staged to extend fighter coverage to the bombers. The island could also serve as a staging point for attacks on the Japanese main islands. The five-week battle was some of the fiercest and bloodiest fighting of the Pacific War.
  After the heavy losses incurred in the battle, the strategic value of the island became controversial. It was useless to the U.S. Army as a staging base for ground troops and useless to the U.S. Navy as a fleet base with no
  anchorage. However, Navy Seabees rebuilt the two landing strips and added a third. which were used as occasional landing strips for USAAF B-29s, although rarely for emergencies.
context_section_description: In hindsight, given the number of casualties, the necessity and long-term significance of the island's capture to the outcome of the war became a contentious issue and remains disputed. The Marines, who suffered the actual casualties, were not consulted in the planning of the operation. As early as April 1945, retired Chief of Naval Operations William V. Pratt stated in Newsweek magazine that considering the "expenditure of manpower to acquire a small, God-forsaken island, useless to the Army as a staging base and useless to the Navy as a fleet base ... [one] wonders if the same sort of airbase could not have been reached by acquiring other strategic localities at lower cost."
  The lessons learned on Iwo Jima served as guidelines for the following Battle of Okinawa and the planned invasion of the Japanese homeland. For example, "because of the casualties taken at Iwo Jima on the first day, it was decided to make the preparatory bombardment the heaviest yet delivered on to a Pacific island". Also, in the planning for a potential attack on the Japanese home islands, it was taken into account that around a third of the troops committed to Iwo Jima and again at Okinawa had been killed or wounded.
  The justification for Iwo Jima's strategic importance to the United States' war effort has been that it provided a landing and refueling site for long-range fighter escorts. These escorts proved both impractical and unnecessary, and only ten such missions were ever flown from Iwo Jima. By the time Iwo Jima had been captured, the bombing campaign against Japan had switched from daylight precision bombing to nighttime incendiary attacks, so fighter escorts were of limited utility.
  Japanese fighter aircraft based on Iwo Jima sometimes attacked AAF planes, which were vulnerable on their way to Japan because they were heavily laden with bombs and fuel. However, although some Japanese interceptors were based on Iwo Jima, their impact on the American bombing effort was marginal; in the three months before the invasion only 11 B-29s were lost as a result. The Superfortresses found it unnecessary to make any major detour around the island. Capturing the island neutralized Japanese air attacks based from it on the Marianas, but they were too small to ever launch significant attacks.
  The Japanese on Iwo Jima had radar and were thus able to notify their comrades at home of incoming B-29 Superfortresses flying from the Mariana Islands. However, the capture of Iwo Jima did not affect the Japanese early-warning radar system, which continued to receive information on incoming B-29s from the island of Rota (which was never invaded).
  As early as 4 March 1945, while fighting was still taking place, the B-29 Dinah Might of the USAAF 9th Bomb Group reported it was low on fuel near the island and requested an emergency landing. Despite enemy fire, the airplane landed on the Allied-controlled section of the island (South Field), without incident, and was serviced, refueled and departed.
  In all, 2,251 B-29 landings on Iwo Jima were recorded during the war. Moskin records that 1,191 fighter escorts and 3,081 strike sorties were flown from Iwo Jima against Japan. A more recent Air Force study found the contribution of VII Fighter Command superfluous. Another rationale for capturing the island was to serve as a base for shorter-range B-24 Liberator bombers against Japan, but no significant B-24 bombing campaign ever materialized.
  Some downed B-29 crewmen were saved by air-sea rescue aircraft and vessels operating from the island, but Iwo Jima was only one of many islands that could have been used for such a purpose. As for the importance of the island as a landing and refueling site for bombers, Marine Captain Robert Burrell, then a history instructor at the United States Naval Academy, suggested that only a small proportion of the 2,251 landings were for genuine emergencies, the great majority possibly being for minor technical checkups, training, or refueling. According to Burrell,
  This justification became prominent only after the Marines seized the island 
caption: American supplies being landed at Iwo Jima
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