| “Up in flame — With a burst of flame, a direct hit smashed a Marine Amtrac as Jap[anese] mortarmen get the […] during the battle for Iwo Jima on D-day. Pack howitzers. Mount Suribachi on the extreme left. There are some Amtracs coming in. Apparently, there had just been a bad hit there.” Amtrac LVT-4 “Water Buffaloes” or “Alligators” carrying supplies are hit by Imperial Japanese Army mortars during the initial landings on Iwo Jima. This is 1 of a series of photographs. The ring of sandbags in the foreground is a position set up by Marine artillery. Writing in 1967, Marine veteran and author Robert Leckie (December 18, 1920 – December 24, 2001) wrote about the 1st day’s landing: “Troop Amtracs, sending up showers of sand, tried to grind through the terraces. They too became stalled, and their Marine passengers leaped out to continue inland afoot. Still, there was no fire from the enemy. In came the second wave, unopposed. The third…the fourth…Marines trudging inland through the warm, loose sand began to hope that the Japanese had fled the island. But as the American invaders climbed the terraces and began to swarm across the broad flatland beyond, the Japanese gunners opened fire.” “At first, it came as a ragged rattle of machine gun bullets, growing gradually louder and fiercer until at last all the pent-up fury of a hundred hurricanes seemed to be breaking upon the heads of the Americans. Shells screeched and crashed, every hummock spat automatic fire, and the very soil underfoot erupted with hundreds of exploding land mines. In everyone’s ears was the song of unseen steel: the shriek of shells, the sigh of bullets, the sobbing of the big projectiles, and the whizzing of shrapnel. Marines walking erect crumpled and fell. Concussion lifted them and slammed them down, or tore them apart — sometimes hurling a man’s arms or legs thirty or forty feet away from his body.” “There were few places to hide — only the shallow depressions in the sand caused by bomb and shell explosions. There was almost no place to dig. Iwo’s peculiar sands, like fine buckshot, slid back into the foxholes and filled them in again. Nor was it wise to take shelter behind a sand hummock. A Marine captain sat on one and called out an order to advance.” “The blasting of a five-inch gun beneath him knocked him unconscious.” “Nevertheless, the American Marines pressed forward. Imperial Japanese Army Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (July 7, 1891 – circa March 26, 1945) had given them time to come ashore, and that was all they needed. By the time his gunners opened up, the Marines were two hundred to three hundred yards inland.” Photographed by Warrant Officer Obadiah “Obie” E. Newcomb V (June 22, 1909 – February 25, 2004), United States Marine Corps Reserve. On Iwo, Newcomb documented the amphibious landings, ground assaults, and combat of individual Marines and small groups, as well as the treatment of wounded Marines by doctors and corpsmen. Obadiah “Obie” E. Newcomb V, of Yonkers, New York, was 1 of 3 photographers who landed in the 1st wave during the Battle of Tarawa. Working under Staff Sergeant Norman Hatch (March 2, 1921 – April 22, 2017), 5th Marine Division Photo Section, he was the 5th Marine Division Assistant Photography Officer during the Iwo Jima operation. Hatch and Newcomb landed with the 5th Marine Division’s 1st wave on February 19, 1945. He retired from the United States Marine Corps in 1962. This photo was nationally circulated from February 25, 1945, through March. | |
| Image Filename | wwii2093.jpg |
| Image Size | 755.14 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2820 x 2226 |
| Photographer | Obadiah “Obie” E. Newcomb V |
| Photographer Title | United States Marine Corps |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | February 19, 1945 |
| Location | |
| City | Mount Suribachi |
| State or Province | Iwo Jima |
| Country | Bonins |
| Archive | National Archives and Records Administration |
| Record Number | 127-GW-318-110245 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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