870: Can the Seabees rule the Pacific again? James Holmes, @NavalWarCollege,
Image: US Navy Seabees shovel backfill over cement culverts as they repair a flood-damaged railroad during exercise ATLAS RAIL James Holmes: @NavalWarCollege, first holder of the Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College and blogger at The Naval Diplomat; and Gordon Chang: @GordonGChang, Daily Beast, in re: Seabees, the Naval construction battalion, invented on the fly in early WWII. Needed bases with facilities, none of which existed in the Pacific. . . . Japanese flew in the morning, arrived about noon and bombed, then left. Seabees pushed detritus back into the holes and pulled metal mats over them, all the while being shot at by Japanese snipers. Can the US Navy today adapt when it’s overwhelmed? Hope so. Do we have the improvise-on-the-fly attitude we did in WWII? It's a story of how people ignored rules in order to get things done. Problem is, if you don’t have an adversary to keep yourself sharp, can grow lax. Chinese army in Ladakh has been very unimpressive: good at intimidating but not good in battle. Guadalcanal was a victory. Japanese troops abandoned at the end, so frustrated were they by the Seabees.