Blast from the past. Corregidor. Temp-plate for future Airborne/Amphibious Assault Ops?

How many of you know about the Battle for Corregidor?

Not that many huh?  Not surprising.  For some reason the US Army emphasizes its exploits in Europe during WW2 but is silent about what it did in the Pacific. The fight for Corregidor should be required reading for both Marine and Army leadership.

If we are going to fight in the Pacific in the future, I believe that the fight will look somewhat like Corregidor...except we won't have as much naval gunfire...we won't have as much close air support...and we'll still lack armored firepower to take the fight to the enemy.

What caught my attention about this fight wasn't the amphibious assault portion of it. No, what made me pause is how the airborne assault was carried out.  Check this out from HyperWar.

In formulating final plans for the drop, planners had to correlate factors of wind direction and velocity, the speed and flight direction of the C-47 aircraft from which the 503d RCT would jump, the optimum height for the planes during the drop, the time the paratroopers would take to reach the ground, the 'troopers' drift during their descent, and the best flight formation for the C-47's. Planners expected an easterly wind of fifteen to twenty-five miles per hour with gusts of higher velocity. The direction corresponded roughly to the long axes of the drop zones, but even so, each C-47 could not be over the dropping grounds for more than six seconds. With each man taking a half second to get out of the plane and another twenty-five seconds to reach the ground from the planned drop altitude of 400 feet, the wind would cause each paratrooper to drift about 250 feet westward during his descent. This amount of drift would leave no more than 100 yards of ground distance at each drop zone to allow for human error or sharp changes in the wind's speed or direction.
The 503d RCT and the 317th Troop Carrier Group--whose C-47's were to transport and drop the paratroopers--decided to employ a flight pattern providing for two columns of C-47's, one column over each drop zone. The direction of flight would have to be from southwest to northeast because the best line of approach--west to east--would not leave sufficient room between the two plane columns and would bring the aircraft more quickly over Manila Bay, increasing the chances that men would drop into the water or over cliffs. Since each plane could be over the drop zone only six seconds, each would have to make two or three passes, dropping a "stick" of six to eight 'troopers each time. It would be an hour or more before the 1,000 or so troops of the first airlift would be on the ground. Then, the C-47's would have to return to Mindoro, reload, and bring a second lift forward. This second group would not be on the ground until some five hours after the men of the first lift had started jumping.

Think about that.

You're conducting a parachute drop and you're basically circling the drop zone dropping six to eight paratroops on each pass?

This is the poster boy operation for a confined battle zone.  I don't know if today's planner are actually considering the type of land that they're going to be sending our forces to fight over but its going to be extremely compact and that will bring difficulties that are not being properly anticipated.

Study Corregidor.  Its the future of the fight in the Pacific....at least for ground pounders.