Opening Moves: Marines Gear Up For War

The drums of war echoed across Europe in September 1939, but half a world away, the United States Marine Corps faced its own formidable challenge: transforming itself into a force capable of projecting American power across the Pacific. This book chronicles the extraordinary eighteen-month sprint from late 1940 through early 1941 when Marine officers scoured both American coasts in search of ideal sites to train amphibious assault divisions. Their urgent mission: build from scratch the infrastructure that would turn the Marines into the world's most lethal expeditionary fighting force. Shaw meticulously traces how the Corps settled on base locations, established airfields near proposed training grounds, and fundamentally reoriented itself toward amphibious warfare. The result was a Service reborn and ready when Pearl Harbor brought America into the conflict.