"U.S. MARINES SINK 2 SHIPS" - The Defense of Wake Island with Naval Rifles
“U.S. MARINES SINK 2 SHIPS”[1]
The Defense of Wake Island with Naval Rifles
John S. Naylor – December 13, 2025
This headline seems fantastic, but in December of 1941 Marines did just this in the defense of Wake Island. It may be regarded as curious event, just a small part of a tragic and heroic stand Americans took in the weeks following the Pearl Harbor attack, but should be recognized as the realization of a mission the Marines had been training for since 1900.
On December 11, 1941, Marines of the 1st Defense Battalion sank the Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer HAYATE off the beaches of Wake Island, making it the first Japanese warship sunk following the attack on Pearl Harbor. HAYATE was part of a larger invasion force sent to take Wake Atoll, with its rudimentary airfield, seaplane station, and harbor; Wake had been a U.S. territory since the 1898 war with Spain and was largely ignored until the 1930s, when Juan Trippe of Pan American Airlines, and the U.S. Navy both recognized it as a suitable waypoint between Pearl Harbor, Guam, and Manila. In December of 1941 elements of the Marines 1st Defense Battalion, Navy medical personnel, Army communicators, civilian contractors, and local Chamorros were turning Wake into an early-warning outpost— improving the harbor and building an airport — and preparing it to be a steppingstone for crossing the Pacific should a war begin. Navy war planners, sometimes working in concert with the Army, also envisioned Wake as “bait” for an attack by Japanese naval forces and land-based bombers, enticing them into a decisive battle without creating a threat to Hawai’i.[2]
The concept of a shore-based Marine unit sinking enemy shipping may sound fantastical to some but was a keystone to the identity and mission handed to the Marines in 1900 by the General Board of the Navy. With the advent of the Advanced Base Force (ABF), Navy leadership intended for the Marines to relinquish their 19th century raison d’être, which was guarding Navy yards, and providing security aboard ships, to support the operational and strategic aims of the new Navy. Intent on decisive battle with the enemy, the 20th century Navy would require bases far from American ports where they could “recoal, refit, revictual, transfer the wounded and make ready…”[3] The General Board, through the Secretary of the Navy, tasked the Marines with the occupation and defense of such advanced bases; to accomplish this mission, the plan was to use a ‘fixed unit’, employing naval guns, sea mines, signals equipment, searchlights, machine guns, engineered defenses, and eventually aircraft, to provide the Navy a secure harbor where repairs and tending to the wounded could take place. Part of the planned ABF would be a ‘mobile unit’ of regular infantry, of similar size to the ‘fixed’; infantry was thought essential to counter enemy landings or overland attacks, as the Russians had encountered fighting Japan at Port Arthur . In combination, these two units, eventually decided to be regiment-sized, would compose a Marine Brigade, itself self-contained, and capable of rapid deployment from the home naval station.
And it’s worth remembering that Marines had decades of experience as gunners aboard the cruisers and proto-battleships of the late 19th century, manning 4-inch and 5-inch deck guns. “Manning the guns” was a central point in the argument keeping Marines aboard ships of the Navy, despite the protestations of naval reformers such as William Sims and William Fullam. Marine gunners even acted as spotters when the larger caliber main guns were firing. By 1898, the Marines had as much experience firing naval rifles as they did with field artillery.
The Marines continued to develop this mission through the Great War, despite obligations in the Caribbean and France; when the Corps added the concept of amphibious assault to their portfolio, the ABF morphed into the Expeditionary Forces of the 1920s, and finally the Fleet Marine Force (FMF) in 1933. Peacetime appropriations austerity, and a national willingness to self-restrict offensive military capabilities under international naval treaties limited the Marines’ force size and structure. The competencies developed for advanced base defense atrophied; re-creating ‘base defense’ forces had to wait until 1937 when Marine leadership discussed the formation of defensive battalions, to augment offensive capabilities in support of fleet planning.
Coincidentally, defense units gained relevance in support of PLAN ORANGE[4], and its RAINBOW successors, both in defending U.S. territory from an attack from Japan, and in the prosecution of a counterattack across the Pacific. In developing the new defense battalions, the creators adopted a more flexible approach to task-organization and sizing detachments to fit geographic and tactical situations. Possibly because of constant manpower shortages and burgeoning force expansion, they did not plan for a mobile unit of infantry to necessarily accompany the new defense battalions when they deployed; planners may have assumed that fleet units would be able to detach companies of regular Marines to provide security for the new defense battalions.
Despite the inter-war austerity measures, the Marine Corps had continued to train itself in the fundamentals essential to future base defense “stressing coordination among aviation, antiaircraft, and artillery.”[5] One officer involved in this effort, Captain James Devereaux, USMC, attended the Army’s Coast Artillery School at Fort Monroe, and instructed at the Quantico’s Weapons School before assignment with established artillery batteries, and new defense battalions, based out of San Diego.[6] In December of 1940 he was assigned to H&S Battery, 1st Defense Battalion, as Executive Officer, serving under Lieutenant Colonel Bert A. Bone, USMC.
The 1st Defense Battalion was activated in November of 1939 and started garrisoning a detachment on Wake in the summer of 1941. In September of 1941 the bulk of and command element of the detachment sailed aboard USS WILLIAM WARD BURROWS and USS CASTOR, from Pearl Harbor to Wake, with Major Devereaux in command; he brought with him seven officers and ninety-six Marines, along with four Navy officers and fifteen sailors. They joined 180 Marines, a dozen sailors, 50 Pan Am employees, and 1,200 civilian contractors already on the island. The civilian contractors were building the seaplane airport to suit Pan Am, construct a Navy hospital, and dredge the harbor; the sailors and Marines were there to defend the island. Marines were not allowed to interfere with the contractors’ work or draw on them for defensive improvements.
Prior to sailing for Wake, Major Deveraux met with members of Admiral Kimmel’s staff. His detachment was expected to defend Wake from raiding Japanese forces, it was not expected that they would be subject to a full-scale attack. The Marines armed themselves with six 5-inch/51-caliber deck guns, a weapon first fielded aboard battleships in 1911. As a naval rifle, it required a mount that could be bolted to a solid surface, range finders, time-interval apparatus, Navy plotting boards, and pointer and trainer scopes; when employed ashore these guns required all this apparatus, plus a dug-in revetment where a platform of multiple layers of timbers was bolted together and partially buried, and a weatherproof magazine for rounds and charge bags. Major Deveraux recalled this:
“We had the artillery of a full defense battalion — three 5-inch batteries (two guns each) and three 3-inch antiaircraft batteries (four guns each) — a total of eighteen guns. But we literally did not have half enough Marines to man those six batteries as well as our machines in combat. The bare training allowance of a defense battalion at that time was about 850 men. We had 378 to do a battalion’s job.”[7]
The Marines dispersed their defenses to cover the three sides of the triangular atoll, pairing 5-inch anti-shipping guns with 3-inch antiaircraft units. They had not been assigned any regular infantry for local security, lacked radar, then the newest technological innovation, and had not been assigned any directional locator apparatus.
During the end of November, the Marine fighter squadron VMF-211 joined the Wake defense, bringing a dozen Grumman F4F Wildcat carrier aircraft to the anticipated fight. Twelve pilots flying twelve aircraft were accompanied by nearly fifty ground personnel. As mentioned, the Marines had 3-inch antiaircraft guns, as well as M-2 .50-caliber machine guns and .30-caliber machine guns. Major Deveraux recalled that as well as being short on manpower, the detachment was short on spares necessary for repairs to all the weapons.
Particularly susceptible to breakdown, and essential for accurate fire, were the range finders, spotting and training scopes, and the height finders for the antiaircraft guns. The Marines could turn to the civilian construction workers for spares to keep their trucks running, but when it came to ordnance parts, they were dependent on resupply from Pearl Harbor. Major Deveraux kept the Marines busy from the moment they debarked, emplacing the guns, and improving the cover and concealment. Not until Sunday, December 7, did he give them a day off.[8]
Early in the morning on the 8th, the Wake Island Marines received radio messages alerting them to the Pearl Harbor attack. Deveraux sounded general quarters, and distributed weapons to the sailors and soldiers that had arrived on-island unarmed. The Marines manned their guns around the island, and the Wildcats began flying 4-plane patrols. Japanese bombers, flying below cloud cover and avoiding the Wildcats, began their bombing run on the airfield at 1158 local time. The Japanese bombs killed twenty-three Marines at the airfield and wounded another eleven. Seven F4Fs were destroyed, and one damaged, but the squadron was left with no trained mechanics to repair the remainders. The Japanese had been flying too low for Deveraux’ 3-inch antiaircraft guns to be effective, and the 5-inch guns couldn’t elevate enough to engage them.
On the 9th, the bombers returned, bombing the hospital, killing twenty-one. The Pan Am hotel was destroyed, as was the Navy radio station. An Army radio trailer assumed communications duties. Deveraux displaced some of his antiaircraft guns and set up dummy positions which the Japanese hit on the 10th. VMF-211 continued to fly and fight, with the four remaining Grummans, cannibalizing those damaged in previous attacks. Bomb damage to the 5-inch guns was repaired to the extent part were available, but the Marines acknowledged their fire control apparatus was in poor shape.
Lookouts spotted movement on the horizon at 0300 on the 11th of December. Major Deveraux sounded general quarters but told all stations to hold fire until his order. Deveraux planned to draw the Japanese cruisers armed with 6-inch guns into range of his 5-inch guns. VMF-211’s remaining Wildcats prepared to launch upon the order to open fire.
The Japanese cruiser opened fire at 8,000-yards, and came about, steaming parallel to the southern beaches. The rest of the Japanese flotilla opened fire at 7,000-yards, and the Marines held fire. Only two of the three 5-inch batteries could draw a bead on the Japanese attacking from the south. At 0610, when the cruiser was only 4,500-yards offshore, Deveraux ordered his guns to open fire.
As far as I know, this was the first time Marines manning naval guns mounted on shore, fired a shot in anger. For forty-one years, off and on, they had practiced landing guns on a beach, assembling them in hand dug revetments, and engaging a mock enemy. On the 11th of December 1941, this concept was realized, in spades. Despite having guns lacking their entire range-finding and direction apparatus required for accurate anti-shipping fire, the Marines drew blood, hitting the cruiser at 5,700-yards, forcing it to withdraw with damage, and sinking a destroyer at 4,500-yards with shots to its hull. The Marines sank a Japanese transport. Major Deveraux reported that he ordered his units to cease fire at 0710, as the Japanese faded from the range of Marines ashore.
The Marines of VMF-211 continued the attack on the invasion force. Using jury-rigged 100-pound bombs, the Wildcats sank the first damaged cruiser that had been driven off by the shore guns. Taking fire from the Japanese ships, two of the four aircraft wound up being written off, leaving just two in the fight. While the 11th of December was a win for the Wake Island defenders, the odds were not in their favor.
From the 12th of December until Japanese forces landed infantry on the 23rd, the island’s defenders did what they could to delay the inevitable. All hands, including a few civilian contractors, assumed roles in ad hoc infantry roles, and the antiaircraft 3-inch guns were displaced to new positions to keep them in the fight against daily bombing raids. The nature of the emplacements of 5-inch naval guns prevented them from moving to secondary positions, doing so would have required additional dug-in revetments, then moving the heavy gun platforms and mounts, then moving the eight-ton guns, while under daily bombardment. VMF-211 fought until the last Wildcat was written off, then picked up rifles to join Deveraux’ defenses. Commander Winfield Scott Cunningham, USN, the island commander, ordered Deveraux to surrender when it was clear that no rescue party from Pearl Harbor would arrive. The Wake Island defenders had conducted a defense in the face of a concentrated naval assault, and amphibious assault, and found their resources lacking.
Safely removed from the events by thousands of miles and eight decades, it’s easy to qualify Wake as an abject defeat in a long string of abject defeats in December of 1941. And the employment of fixed naval guns in the defense may seem like a prosaic concept, better suited to the days of the Great White Fleet than in an age of radar and tactical bombing, yet its efficacy in defeating raiding naval forces gained a genuine amount of credibility as the Defense Marine Battalions employed them. The Marines continued to use the 5-inch/51-caliber gun in the 3rd Defense Battalion at Guadalcanal, the 5th Defense Battalion on Tulagi, the 6thDefense Battalion at Midway, and other Pacific atolls, until a modern table of equipment and organization caught up with formations in the field. As the war progressed, the makeup of the defense battalions changed as the threat to naval bases changed. The units retired their 5-inch naval guns for M1918 155mm towed guns, cast-offs from the Great War, and eventually the Marines received the M1A1 155mm Gun, the “Long Tom”. Better antiaircraft guns, radar, communications equipment, improved searchlights, and light tanks improved the capabilities of defense battalions fielded in ensuing campaigns. Marine Defense Battalions were present throughout the Pacific, supporting the ground, aviation, and naval units up until the end of the war.
It’s not the place of this article to pose the “what-ifs” of how reinforcements, or evacuation, or sticking to a plan made by admirals’ staffs in peacetime had happened to occur. The results of the prewar defense plan can be seen in the 3-1//2 years of imprisonment of the Wake Island defenders, and in the executions of dozens by Japanese forces. The events in the immediate days following the Pearl Harbor debacle were overwhelming; the loss of a coral atoll suited only for air operations had little effect on the overall prosecution of the war, except for galvanizing the resolve of American of all walks. But Wake Island did offer “lessons learned” in the defense of an isolated island position.
Under a more recent reorganization, in response to a new and still-developing threat to democracy and freedom of navigation in the western Pacific, the Marine Corps has mobilized two Marine Littoral Regiments; units with novel capabilities above and beyond those of the traditional Marine Corps air ground team. Capable of destroying enemy naval forces before they reach friendly allies’ shores, they look nothing like the units of the Advanced Base Force, or the Wake Island defenders, but are indicative of a pivot within the Marine Corps to the role of supporting naval operations in the second island chain. The past is not prologue and stand in forces are not being place in harm’s way without a robust network of support from the other U.S. services and our international allies, but a return to a ‘more maritime’ combat role for Marines is noteworthy.
The use of naval rifles in the defense of Wake Island and other positions in the opening year of the war with Japan was born from decades of practice in defending advanced bases for the Navy dating back to the War of 1898. Their employment in the face of an enemy that fully controlled the sea lanes approaching Wake Island meant they could only serve in a stop-gap effort. The purpose of the Advanced Base Force was always to hold until the fleet returned for resupply; there was always a place in the plan for infantry support in the defense. Wake’s isolation in the days following December 7th, its lack of long range sensing equipment, lack of infantry, and lack of maintenance support including spare parts, sealed its fate, but makes it a battle worthy of study in the defense of isolated island bases.
fin
SOURCES:
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/battle-of-wake-island-1941
https://www.marines.mil/Force-Design/#21-marine-corps-achievements
James P.S. Deveraux. The Story of Wake Island. Kindle Edition. 1947.
[1] Belvidere Daily Republican. December 11, 1941. Belvidere, Illinois.
[2] Edward S. Miller. War Plan ORANGE – The U.S. Strategy to Defeat Japan, 1897-1945.
[3] Dion Williams. THE NAVAL ADVANCED BASE. Lecture, Naval War College. July 1912.
[4] War planners of the era assigned colors to near-peer countries; ORANGE to Japan, BLACK to Germany, RED to Great Britain. The U.S. was identified as BLUE.
[5] Charles D. Melson. Condition Red: Marine Defense Battalions in World War II. Marine Corps Historical Center. 1996.
[6] Marine Corps Muster Rolls.
[7] James P.S. Deveraux. The Story of Wake Island. 1947. Kindle Edition.
[8] Wake is located on the other side of the international date line from Pearl Harbor; when the attack occurred on Sunday morning, December 7 on Oahu, it was Monday, December 8 on Wake.
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