The United States Marine Corps's Advanced Base Force (Advance Base Force in some references) was a coastal and naval base defense force that was designed to set up mobile and fixed bases in the event of major landing operations within, and beyond, the territorial United States.Commander Richard H. Jackson, USN, History of the Advanced Base (May 15, 1913) and The Naval Advanced Base (May 29, 1915); Subject File 408, Records of the General Board. General Board to SecNav, "Letter to the Secretary of the Navy (LSSN)"; August 13, 1906. General Board memo; May 29, 1915. Established in the beginning of the 20th century, the Advanced Base Force was the United States' first combined task force built on the concept of the Marine Corps' traditional role in expeditionary warfare. The slow development of the advanced base force played a significant role in the controversy over the removal of the ships' guards (Marines on Navy ships) in 1908–1909.Millett, Allan R., Semper Fidelis: The History of the United States Marine Corps, (New York: The Free Press, 1991).
Relying on the full projection capabilities of their naval counterparts, the Advanced Base Force enabled the United States Navy to meet all the demands for its use of naval services within its own sphere of maritime operations. It also allowed operational independence, without the cooperation of the United States Army for troops and military supplies, as such a force might not be available. The General Board had concluded that one or two regiments of the Advanced Base Force were more than adequate to defend naval bases against cruiser raids, and were also able to land with thirty emplaced naval guns, high-angle field artillery, machine guns, infantry, and water and land minefields. The Advanced Base Force is the ancestor of today's Fleet Marine Force.
Background Before the creation of the Advanced Base Force, the victory over Spain in the Spanish–American War had greatly influenced the expansion of the United States. By the time the Treaty of Paris was ratified in 1898 the United States had annexed the Philippines in the western Pacific to influence foreign relations in China and Korea; primarily through the presence of the Asiatic Squadron. United States territories under the administration of President William McKinley included GuamPaul Carano and Pedro C. Sanchez, A Complete History of Guam, (Rutland, VT: C. E. Tuttle Co., 1964). and the Hawaiian Islands, also extending to the south Pacific insular areas of Samoa. Also, Congress approved the Foraker Act for the annexation of Puerto Rico for the defense and protection of the newly independent Cuba from any possible foreign attack. The government also negotiated with Nicaragua and Colombia for the right to build an isthmian canal, eventually through Panama.
Due to the new, vast expansion of territory, the Navy began to assume strategic duties unimagined before 1898. In 1900, the "General Board of the Navy" was established to foresee and make recommendations on naval policy, assuming the tasks of the nation's naval expeditionary and strategic challenges.William M. McBride, Technological Change and the United States Navy, 1865–1945, (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000).
The General Board developed some potential war plans for possible events that might occur if attacks were to be made against the continental east coast, the Antilles of the Caribbean, or the Panama Canal. The most dangerous likely foe that the United States Navy faced was the British Royal Navy, which had been included in War Plan Red;Floyd W. Rudmin, Bordering on Aggression: Evidence of U.S. Military Preparations Against Canada, (Nashville, TN: Voyageur Publishing Co., May 1993). however, relations had improved and both already committed to a growing rapprochement. The board instead agreed that the most likely foe would be Germany's Imperial Navy, a burgeoning force of warships that were at the disposal of Emperor Wilhelm II. In response to possible German naval invasion of the Caribbean or attacks on the east coast, the United States devised War Plan Black.Michael Lind, The American Way of Strategy: US Foreign Policy and the American Way of Life, (Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006) This plan also dealt with Germany having purchased Spain's remaining Central Pacific island colonies, with the Mariana Islands and the Caroline Islands, and its establishment of a naval base in China in 1900. Also, after the Russo-Japanese War, victorious Imperial Japan had serious plans of expanding its influence south and east in the Pacific. The United States Navy solely relied on the Pacific islands as refueling stations for the coal-powered navy ships; the lifeline to the naval bases in the Philippines and Guam. If such an attack was initiated by the Japanese, a system of Pacific naval bases needed to be built in order to put War Plan Orange (a response to a Japanese attack on the Philippines) into effect.Seward W. Livermore, "American Naval Base Policy in the Far East", Pacific Historical Review; 13, pgs. 113–135.
To sum it up, the Navy's war planning after 1900 assumed that maritime attacks on the United States and its interests were possible in both the Pacific and the Caribbean. Given the thousands of miles the fleet would have to steam to provide security to the outermost bases of Guam, the Philippines, etc., the General Board was convinced that it would require hastily developed advanced bases, and it could not depend on the small and overextended United States Army to defend the bases in short order.
Definitive history In late 1901 a four-company battalion was formed at Annapolis and Newport by then-Commandant of the Marine Corps Major General Charles Heywood for expeditionary and advanced base training. General Heywood had been pressured by both the General Board and Secretary of the Navy, John D. Long, to create such a force that was to be placed on naval transport and well-drilled and equipped for duties given at short notice in any of the territories annexed by the United States, without relying on the slower and more demanding process of deploying the Army.Commandant Col. Charles Heywood to Representative E. Foss, December 12, 1898, HQMC, "Letters Sent, 1884–1911"; Record Group 127, National Archives and Administration.
Organization The Advanced Base Force was "officially" created on 23 December 1913 by Commandant William P. Biddle and was designated as the 1st Advanced Base Brigade, the lineal forebear of the 1st Marine Division.1st Marine Division: Lineage http://www.1stmardiv.marines.mil/About/Lineage/ Retrieved May 6, 2017 Briefly, two regiments were designated as the Fixed Defense Regiment and the Mobile Defense Regiment. They both are forebears of Marine regiments that exist today; the 1st Regiment of the Advanced Base Force subsequently became the 2nd Marine Regiment, whereas the 2nd Regiment became the 1st Marine Regiment.
An aviation detachment had been established a few years before in 1911, under command of the United States' sixth naval aviator, Lieutenant Bernard L. Smith. This detachment is not to be confused with the 1917 "permanent" Aviation Company, which was under command of the United States' fifth naval (and the Marine Corps' first) aviator, Marine officer Alfred A. Cunningham.
Fixed Defense Regiment On 19 June 1913, the Fixed Defense Regiment, under command of Lieutenant Colonel Charles G. Long, was formed at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. The Fixed Defense Regiment was the forerunner of the Marine Defense Battalions that were responsible for coastal defense of various naval bases throughout the Pacific during World War II.Simmons, Edwin H., The United States Marines: A History, (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1974).
On 3 January 1914, the Fixed Defense Regiment at Culebra Island, Puerto Rico, along with the Mobile Defense Force, formed the Advanced Base Force Brigade, under the command of Colonel George Barnett, who had commanded the Marine Barracks at the Philadelphia Navy Yard and the Advanced Base School. By 18 February 1914, it was redesignated as the 1st Regiment, Advanced Base Brigade. For the next two months, the regiment operated on board ship off New Orleans and Algiers, Louisiana.
In 1915, the regiment consisted of: Headquarters company C Company, the minelaying company trained to handle harbor defense mines. E Company, the signal company trained in radio, telephone, telegraph, buzzers, and visual signalling. F and I Companies were responsible for the fixed batteries to be mounted in harbor defense. H Company which was trained both as a combat engineer company and as a heavy automatic weapons company a field artillery battery which manned field pieces
The Aviation Company was established by Alfred A. Cunningham at the Philadelphia Navy Yard on 26 February 1917. The company's strength consisted of ten officers and forty men in billets as aviators and as staff personnel. The Advanced Base Force's aviation company became the first permanent aviation element in the Marine Corps.
Mobile Defense Regiment Commandant Biddle assembled the Mobile Defense Regiment at the Pensacola Navy Yard from the expeditionary battalions that had been stationed abroad in Mexican territorial waters; Commandant Biddle assigned Lieutenant Colonel John A. Lejeune as the commanding officer. The regiment was composed of four rifle companies, a machine gun company, and a field gun battery. These were divided into mobile infantry/artillery battalion landing forces, the predecessors to the Marine Regimental (RLT) and Battalion Landing Teams (BLT) that performed numerous landing operations from the Pacific Theater of World War II, to the Korean War, Vietnam War, and later years.
Between 2–3 January 1914, the Mobile Defense Regiment sailed aboard USS Prairie and rendezvoused with the Fixed Base Regiment at Culebra Island, Puerto Rico, forming the Advanced Base Force Brigade, the first operational unit of this size and type.
Institution
1900–1905 A brilliant intelligence officer, U.S. Marine Captain Dion Williams, who was serving in the Office of Naval Intelligence, wrote an extensive thesis in 1902 stressing that U.S. safety rested on the U.S. Navy's ability to coal its vessels in time of war. He endorsed that any war the United States will enter in the future should first be conceived as a "naval war". Williams, however, differentiated between fixed and mobile defense forces. He announced that the fixed defense force should be a permanent regiment of 1,312 Marines to man artillery and establish necessary minefields and barriers; the mobile defense force should be a regiment of two infantry battalions and one field artillery battery, which could be formed quickly from Marine naval base detachments. He urged stockpiling equipment and weapons, assigning transport permanently to the force, and holding annual maneuvers.Williams, Dion, Report on Men, Material, and Drills Required for Establishing a Naval Advanced Base, November 2, 1909; GB File 408.
In the summer of 1902, Secretary of the Navy William H. Moody ordered an advanced base force battalion to be prepared for an upcoming fleet exercises that winter in the Caribbean Islands. This exercise proved to the Marine Corps the necessity of naval gun emplacement and setting up base defenses. Also, the expeditionary battalion that was stationed in Cavite, Philippines had already been exercising in Subic Bay and had employed eight heavy guns at the bay's entrance.Captain G. C. Thorpe to Major H. C. Haines, April 25, 1902, "Historical Division Letters Received", Record Group 127, National Archives and Administration.Report of the Secretary of the Navy 1903, Miscellaneous Reports, Bureau of Navigation, pp. 651-660 Even though the battalion in the Philippines was not formally part of the advanced base force concept, it was marking a new ideal for the Marine Corps.