Spinoff: Was Pelelieu the Biggest Waste of a Campaign in WWII?

Is Spinoff: needed in the title?

It has been a while since I read Flags of our Fathers but I seem to recall them talking about Pelelieu quite a bit, or maybe I am thinking of a different text?

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I'm only using hindsight

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Yes. Yes you are. If only we could all know the future I'm sure we'd all do things much differently.

One of my favorite anecdotes of the Pacific theater:

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During late October the Marines were relieved by soldiers of the Army’s 81st Infantry Division. Higgins boats took the Marines to waiting Navy ships. As the Marines struggled up the cargo nets and onto the decks of the ships they were stunned to see Navy officers scrubbed, clean shaven, and starched. One of the ship’s officers asked, “Got any souvenirs to trade?” A Marine stood silent for a moment, then reached down and patted his own rear end. “I brought my arse out of there swabie. That’s my souvenir of Peleliu.”

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My dad flew the Marine version of a B-24 (a photographic version) to take pictures of Pelelieu before the invasion.

In retrospect, the entire Italian campaign after the fall of Rome wasn't necessary. The thinking was we needed a southern front against the Alpine Redoubt, which we found out after the war didn't exist. It was a long, hard slog up the peninsula, and we only reached the German border as the Third Reich was collapsing anyway. I suppose we tied up a lot of German troops, but we could have done that with some feints and credible threats instead of hammering away at mountain fortifications for months.

The Ploesti Raid accomplished very little for the horrendous cost.

In the Pacific, we arguably would have been better of dispensing with the SW Pacific campaign and focusing exclusively on the Central Pacific. We didn't have enough ships and landing craft to do both at the same time, and had to alternate back and forth.