Battles Long Ago: Operation Vengeance 1943

"Operation Vengeance" (Solomons Campaign - 339th Fighter Squadron mission over Bougainville) Date: 18 APR 1943Forces Engaged: - United States (Army Air Force) 16 x P-38G (Lightning) fighter aircraft大日本帝國海軍 Dai-Nippon Teikoku Kaigun (Imperial Japanese Navy) 2 x G4M1 medium bomber aircraft 式陸上攻撃機, 一式陸攻 Isshiki rikujō kōgeki ki, Isshikirikkō (Allied designation: "Betty")6 x A6M2 fighter aircraft (Allied designation: "Zeke" - but better known as the "Zero")A Brief Note: I have considered writing this engagement up - although it is already relatively well-known in WW2 lore (a war which is already over-documented as well as effectively supporting the operations of The Military Channel on cable television...) - ever since the recent assassination of Osama bin Laden. I simply thought that it would be worth noting that the regular military of the U.S. has, indeed, been used to rub out a specific enemy leader before, and talk about the actual incident and the various counterfactuals and implications of the event and how it played out in the larger context of a genuine global war.The Sources: Well documented, especially from the U.S. side with photographic (including gun-camera) footage and a wealth of primary sources.

You can find a wealth of information on Operation Vengeance on the internet, including the decently organized Wiki entry, and the U.S. Naval Institute has a decent blog post about the operation.

And there's this: The second part appears to be from a Japanese documentary on the mission, with much of the film other than stock footage from U.S. sources. But the first part is a delightful trip down memory lane to the days when Our Boys in Uniform really were all heroes, our enemies were Evil, and killing them was not just necessary but really, really good.The Background: Even today, most Americans with any sort of knowledge of history know the story of Pearl Harbor, the broad outline of the course of Great Pacific War (as they know it in Japan) and the role of ADM 山本 五十六 (Isoroku Yamamoto) in crafting the attack on the U.S. fleet that opened the conflict.ADM Yamamoto was unquestionably a gifted military leader. He was also an interesting contradiction, a very able naval commander who disagreed strongly with his country's geopolitical aims.Yamamoto had spent some time outside Japan - atypical for the Japanese political and military leaders of the Thirties and Forties - and had some better sense of his nation's extreme vulnerability to an economic war of attrition. Resource-poor, Japan was dependent on surface shipping for pretty much all its industrial materials. An enemy with a powerful navy - the United States, for instance - would be extremely likely to put Japan in danger through a campaign of commerce raiding.

This, in turn, led Yamamoto to oppose the Army leadership's desire for conquests both in China and elsewhere in southeast Asia.

But the man was not big enough to force the issue. While he considered his nation dangerously reckless in seeking war with the United States, he continued to plan that war.And Yamamoto's great innovation was to overthrow the strategic thinking of Japan's naval planners. The 軍令部 (Gunreibu) - the Navy General Staff - had always thought in terms of fighting a Mahanist battle against the USN in the western Pacific, after using light forces to attrit the American fleets advancing to meet the IJN near the Home Islands, where the IJN would smash them in a classic Tsushimaesque gunbattle.Yamamoto dryly noted that even in the Gunreibu's own wargames this cunning plan had worked like a fucking sieve spoon. The U.S. simply had too much shipbuilding and force-construction might. Given the time and the space the USN would just load up, steamroller west, and overwhelm the IJN.

The cost to the gringos might be be enormous, but the end result would always be bloody defeat for Japan.

What's my understanding that Yamamoto honestly believed that there was never any real means of defeating the U.S.

He is said to have remarked that if he was allowed to fight the war his way that he could run wild in the central Pacific for half a year or so; then the U.S. would begin putting the squeeze on and the endgame would begin.

His idea was said to be, rather, to force an immediate decisive battle on the USN in the central Pacific, defeat it, and - with the prospect of a Japanese invasion of the U.S. west coast (which he knew in fact to be logistically impossible and strategically suicidal) - frighten the Americans into a negotiated peace.

The other thing to remember is that the U.S. didn't really have anything the Japanese wanted in 1941. The war didn't happen because the Japanese wanted to fight us.No, the real objectives of the Army and militarist-civilian cabal that ran the country were territorial gains in China. In order to keep the Japanese war machine running, though, the Army needed petroleum. The nearest, and most seizable, petroleum producing region was in the Dutch East Indies (modern Indonesia).But to get to this region the Army would need command of the South China Sea and there, like a great big fucking unsinkable aircraft carrier, was the Philippine Islands just sagging with U.S. aircraft and warships.

So the Japanese government needed the U.S. to stay out of their Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. But the signs at the time weren't good.

For one thing, the Japanese were their own worst enemy. The Army really was a brutal disaster in China, murdering, raping, and generally acting like the Ugly Japanese. Add to that stuff that showed their contempt for the whities like the Panay Incident, and the result was that the Americans had already embargoed a number of critical war materials to show Japan their dissatisfaction; Miss America was not a happy gal.


And then, worse. No, the worst; in July 1941 the U.S. stopped oil exports to Japan.

For the Imperial war machine this was hell and fucking disaster. At the time the Japanese purchased 80% of their petroleum products from the U.S. (Hard to believe now, innit? But we were one of the major oil producing nations in the Forties).

The end of American oil meant the end of mechanized war and the end of the conquest of China, unless the Indonesian fields could be seized. And all that lovely dinosaur wine from the "Southern Resources Area" would be practically unuseable if the U.S. fleets and aircraft from the Philippines were in place and the command of a government furious at Nipponese aggression, and capable of attacking Japanese shipping.

So the Americans had to go.

Well, we know how that went.The screwups began 7 DEC; Yamamoto's boy Nagumo missed the American carriers at Pearl, failed to smash the tank farms and drydocks.

And, true to his prediction, in June 1942 the IJN was viciously hammered at Midway. In general terms Midway meant that the IJN's air arm was no longer capable of inflicting the decisive defeat on the USN that Yamamoto had hoped for. But in human terms, Midway meant that Yamamoto was no longer the Golden Boy of the Gunreibu; the General Staff wanted no more of these grandiose flotillas across the Pacific.

Now they would play the game they had all during the Twenties and Thirties. The Army would capture the islands of the Solomons and New Guinea, and then the Japanese would await the coming of the Americans.This plan, in turn, fell apart.

The Imperial Japanese Army proved unequal to the task of securing New Guinea and Guadalcanal

(One thing I don't think really receives enough attention - which is fairly amazing, since all things WW2 have been scrutinized and re-scrutinized and re-rescrutinized - is the strategic and tactical crudity of the IJA. In short, the Japanese Army really was almost comically inept. Of all the major powers in 1941 the IJA was virtually incapable of sustained strategic mobility and on the tactical level was largely pathetic at combined arms warfare. The infantry was decent and the artillery was crude but effective but its armor was already antique before the beginning of the Pacific War and the Japanese never figured out close air support. For a bunch of impulsive, arrogant racist hotheads who dragged their country into a war they couldn't win, tactically the Imperial Army generals generally were a bunch of worthless fucking oxygen thieves.Worse, the Army had very little intellectual horsepower involved in war planning and was violently bitten with senshobyo ("victory disease"; the intellectual conviction that one's own military is incapable of being defeated) and thus tended to completely overestimate its own capability)

and the Navy, reeling from the loss of pilots and carriers at Midway, continued to bleed from naval battles that, while often victories or at least favorable draws, cost it ships, sailors, and especially planes and pilots it couldn't afford.So by April 1943 Yamamoto was a very diminished man. He is said to have been retained as commander of the Combined Fleet more because of the Japanese government's fear that his sacking would be admission of defeat - Japanese never lost, senshobyo, remember? - and therefore a blow to morale than for his strategic abilities.

In fact, the Tojo government cancelled Yamamoto's planned attacks down the Solomons chain - Plan FS - after the defeat at Midway. The supposed commander of the Combined Fleet was informed that he would fight the battle of attrition he loathed.By the spring of 1943 Yamamoto must have known that the clock was counting down his navy and his nation; the mindset of the man is hard to imagine, but I suspect that he was resolved on seeing what he saw as his duty through to the end.Certainly that must have been in his mind when he decided on an "inspection tour" of the southern Solomons in that spring. Guadalcanal had been abandoned in February, and the losses there and in the surrounding islands must have been eating away at the Japanese troops enjoying the lush tropical islands (read malaria, beri-beri, jungle rot, and starvation rations) of the Solomons chain.

In the United States of 1943 the architect of the Pearl attack was a symbol of Japanese treachery; the ultimate in Charlie Chan villains, sneaking up bowing and hissing only to stab the honest cowpoke in the back.Along with the Emperor himself and the leader of the military cabal that ran the Japanese civil government Yamamoto symbolized the Ultimate Evil that we were fighting.I have never read anything that suggests that the U.S. government or any of the military branches of the U.S. War Department had any sort of ideas, much less a pre-prepared plan, to assassinate any of the Japanese leadership. Certainly there must have been some idle sorts of coffee-table speculation; there definitely was in the case of Hitler (and the decision, I understand, was that - logistical and operational difficulties aside - the geopolitical value of Hitler in place, making mistakes, was more valuable than Hitler assassinated) and may well have been on the part of the Japanese leaders.But the nature of the war, and, in particular, the geography of the fighting areas, meant that an enemy leader was typically located well behind a thicket of armies, fleets, and/or aircraft. And operational security meant that the physical location of the enemy's higher was often a matter of conjecture; you might know where their headquarters was, or where they were likely to be found, but getting a man or a bullet within the same room? A lucky bomb might dispatch one or two but nothing specifically directed at these leaders was either practical or even really possible. It wasn't that the U.S. wouldn't have liked to - the Japanese leaders were hated as few enemies in U.S. history have been;But the technical and tactical capabilities just weren't there.

Until...on 14 APR 1943 at least three U.S. radio intercept stations picked up a broadcast cyphered in the Japanese naval code "D" that the U.S. cryptanalysts called "JN-25". It began:

"ON APRIL 18 CINC COMBINED FLEET WILL VISIT RXZ,R–, AND RXP IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE FOLLOWING SCHEDULE: 1. DEPART RR AT 0600 IN A MEDIUM ATTACK PLANE ESCORTED BY 6 FIGHTERS. ARRIVE RXZ AT 0800. IMMEDIATELY DEPART FOR R- ON BOARD SUBCHASER (1ST BASE FORCE TO READY ONE BOAT), ARRIVING AT 0840..."

The achievements of the Allied codebreakers are now art of the public record, so this interception - part of the overall cryptanalysis war against the Japanese that has been called "Magic" - was pretty much part of business as usual for the American electronic warfare people.

The critical parts were in the message itself. From other traffic the analysts knew that "RR" was the Japanese main installation at Rabaul on the island of New Britain, and that "RXZ" was the airfield at Ballale, a tiny island in the Shortlands chain to the southeast of New Britain.

For perhaps the only time in the entirety of WW2 one side knew, to the minute, where one of their enemy leaders would be. And not just any leader, but the man who, to many Americans, symbolized the evil treacherous enemy they were fighting.

The authority for the mission went all the way up the chain to President Roosevelt, who ordered the military to attack the flight carrying Yamamoto. The order was relayed from the War Department through CINCPAC to ADM Halsey, CINC South Pacific Area, and from there to the 13th Air Force on Guadalcanal, the so-called "Cactus Air Force".On 17 APR 1943 the commander of the 339th, MAJ Mitchell, was briefed on the concept of operation by the naval officer commanding the Guadalcanal area, VADM Mitscher, and his staff. Here's how the U.S. Navy account describes that morning;

"Most of the disagreement centered on whether to shoot his plane down or try and get him on the sub chaser. Eventually Mitchell was pulled back into the planning discussion, and asserted that the P-38’s would go for an air- vice ship-borne intercept (“My men wouldn’t know a sub-chaser from a sub. It’ll have to be in the air,” Mitchell said).

Special long-range tanks would be needed, and of course, weren’t’ available on Henderson. They were, however, at “nearby” Port Moresby and were quickly located, placed on a transport and flown to Henderson where the modifications to fit them to the P-38s immediately began.

Mitchell, wary of the long overwater distances involved and mindful of the importance of precise dead reckoning navigation would have on mission success, asked that the “wet” magnetic compass in his aircraft be replaced with a larger and more reliable Navy compass."

In fact, the mission profile was extremely complex due to the problem of flying around the Solomon islands still held by the Japanese. The route looked like this:
Leg # Compass Miles Time
1 265° 183 miles 55 min
2 290° 88 miles 27 min
3 305° 125 miles 38 min
4 020° 16 miles 5 min + 16 min loitering
5 090° 69 miles 21 minThe P-38 fighter was a critical element to the success of the mission. Huge for a fighter, with twin engines and enough fuel space to fly long distances overwater, the P-38 was a perfect fit for this attack. The only potential problem was at the actual site of the ambush; while the P-38 was fast and well-protected it couldn't "dogfight" with an A6M; the "Zero" was simply too nimble. So surprise was critical; a swarming defense of Zekes might make interception too chancy. The assassination team had to get in unseen.

Eighteen aircraft were prepped for the strike; at 0700 local time sixteen took off from "U.S. Airfield Lunga Point Guadalcanal" - Henderson Field - and rose into the bright April sky, headed northwest.Operation Vengeance had begun.

The Engagement: The U.S. aircraft flew their long route at very low level; the flight was, as military flights often are, remarkable only for its boredom. About two hours later the aircraft approached the southern tip of the island of Bougainville, Point Moira and began looking for their target.The Japanese flight had taken off on schedule (0600 Tokyo time, about 0800 local time), and about an hour later were approaching Ballale from the northwest. The U.S. fighters sighted the Japanese about 0930.The pre-flight briefing had told the American pilots to expect a G4M "Betty" twin-engined bomber and small escort; the approaching aircraft included two "Betty"s and six A6M "Zeroes", but were right on time and in the right place. The U.S. fighters had their target.One of the 339th pilots, 1LT Caning later wrote about the brief gunfight:

"Mitchell later said that he was not sure that we had our target as we had been briefed that there would only be one Betty bomber. However, he quickly realized we had our enemy in sight and said, “Skin em off” meaning to get rid of our belly tanks and then said “go get em Tom”.

At that time it appeared we still had not been seen by the enemy. As I later read in the mission report, Tom and his flight immediately turned towards the enemy with max power and climb. As he neared the Jap formation, Tom saw that if he turned left into the nearest Zeroes he could divert them allowing Rex to go in and shoot at the lead Betty bomber. Rex did so coming out of his right turn slightly to the left of his target. He corrected and began shooting at the bomber getting hits on the fuselage and right engine. Shortly after that the bomber crashed in the jungle."

"The second bomber made a right turn toward the ocean. Besby Holmes who had had trouble dropping his belly tanks now was able to get on the tail of the second bomber getting numerous hits on it. In the meantime Rex turned to his right, but was being pursued by the second vee of Zero’s, however he was able to get enough distance to where he was able to shoot at the second bomber too. It then crashed in the ocean. Besby Holmes at this time was chasing Zero’s off of Rex’s tail. After the crash of the second bomber there were three survivors, one of whom was Admiral Ugaki, Yamamoto’s chief of staff."

With both the potential victims down and dusted the U.S. attackers accelerated out southeast before support from the nearby Japanese airfield at Kahili could arrive.

One U.S. pilot died, his aircraft damaged in the fight with the escorts and was then lost en route to Henderson.

All nineteen passengers and crew on G4M1, tail number T1-323, were killed either in the air or on impact.A patrol from the IJA post near Aku on Bougainville, is supposed to have arrived the following day to secure the crash site. In the Wiki entry one LT Hamasuna is described as finding the Admiral's body:

"Yamamoto had been thrown clear of the plane's wreckage, his white-gloved hand grasping the hilt of his katana, still upright in his seat under a tree. Hamasuna said Yamamoto was instantly recognizable, head dipped down as if deep in thought"

. The website Pacific Wrecks adds a ghoulish detail.In its entry for the wreck of the bomber, the website's author claims that "Next, a Japanese Navy patrol was sent to the site to recover the Admiral's body. When they arrived, they found Yamamoto's sword and Admiral rank insignia (shoulder bars) missing. They have never been located to this day."

I have no idea what to make of this tale or whether it is true; frankly, it sounds implausible. The only people hanging around the wreckage that day would have been Japanese soldiers, and a private Japanese soldier found in possession of a dead Japanese flag officer's personal sword and uniform items, especially that Japanese officer, would have suffered a particularly nasty fate.

Again we have a discrepancy between the standard accounts and the Pacific Wrecks website. Most published accounts describe the admiral's injuries as fifty-caliber bullet wounds, either one to the head and one to the upper torso (or only one, to the chest), either of which would have been fatal.

But the Wrecks account states that

"According to the the Navy doctor who examined his body at the crash site and performed his autopsy, Yamamoto's had no visible wounds aside from a small cut above his eye. This caused speculation he might have survived the crash, but died hours later from internal injury or shock."

Again, I have not idea whether this is correct, and it disagrees with most of the other accounts; I think that it should be treated with skepticism.

In accordance with Shinto tradition the admiral's body was burned, and his ashes returned to Tokyo. His death was announced on 3 MAY 1943, and he received a "state funeral in June. Some of the remains of the man still lie at Tama Cemetery in the countryside west of Tokyo, while the remainder of his ashes were buried in his family shrine at Nagaoka.

The reaction in the United States is said to have been a sort of muted satisfaction. There was little of the excitement that surrounding the assassination of bin Laden, up to and including the T-shirts. The American people of 1943 knew perfectly well that there was a lot more war and a lot more dying yet to come.

Perhaps the most ridiculous sideshow associated with the assassination was the minor USAAF conniption about "who killed Yamamoto". The credit at the time was given to two officers, 1LT Barber and CPT Lanphier. The latter then went on record as claiming the "credit" for the assassination which provoked a nasty little scuffle in which his claim was largely debunked. LT Rex Barber, of the little town of Culver, in eastern Oregon, is now officially credited with the shootdown.He and Lanphier were both awarded Navy Crosses for the action in 18 APR 1943.

The Consequences: It's interesting to speculate about the larger effect that the death of Yamamoto had on the Pacific War.On the one hand, Yamamoto was a very gifted officer, and there is no reason to assume that he would have ceased to fight for his country before the atomic bombs fell. Such a commander might have made the eventual defeat - and, as he himself understood, by 1943 defeat really was unavoidable - much more painful and bloody than it was, for both sides.

Plus the man was still an important symbol for the Japanese nation and its armed forces. By reaching out and striking him down the U.S. military seemed to prove that no one, not even the feared artisan of Pearl Harbor, was safe. Several historians have claimed that the news of Yamamoto's death was the equivalent of a major military defeat in shaking the resolve of the Japanese fighting forces.

So his killing might well have helped shorten the war.

On the other hand, by April 1943 Yamamoto was a much-diminished factor in the war. His carrier strike force had been largely destroyed at Midway, and his pilots were being decimated; the Battle of the Philippine Sea the following year would finish the Japanese naval air arm as a combat force. Even at the time the IJN was reduced to trying to fight the war of attrition its own forecast predicted it would lose.

And for all the claims that Yamamoto's death was a crucial blow to morale the U.S. had still to fight on for more than two years. Tens of thousands of U.S. and Japanese soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines would die at places like Biak, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, retaking the Philippines, and Okinawa. Yamamoto himself said; "To die for Emperor and Nation is the highest hope of a military man. After a brave hard fight the blossoms are scattered on the fighting field. But if a person wants to take a life instead, still the fighting man will go to eternity for Emperor and country. One man's life or death is a matter of no importance."So the death of this one man may not have so much as knocked a single day off the war.

One thread of commentary that I consider an extreme counterfactual is the notion that a living Yamamoto in 1944-45 brings a moderating force into the decisions of the Tojo government, possibly even pushing them into accepting unconditional surrender earlier in the war and avoiding the hideously bloody battles of the spring of 1945.

Given what we know of the man's intellectual objections to the initial attack but involvement in the planning I find it impossible to believe that he would have seriously pressed for surrender late in the war, even as Japan's position became untenable.His attitude was always one of obedience to his country's political leadership, and I can't think that he would have had the gumption to change, even with disaster apparent and no end in view but a sanguinary defeat. No, the entire idea is extremely weak sauce; Operation Vengeance may not have had a decisive impact on ending the war, but what it did not do was lengthen it by removing Yamamoto as a voice for surrender...

What is hard to escape is that in a sense, everyone involved in Operation Vengeance got what they wanted.

The U.S. - from the public to the Roosevelt Administration to the fighting troops - got revenge and a fearful victory to boost their spirits.Yamamoto died facing his enemies, before being faced with the choice between betraying his nation by continuing the hopeless war and betraying his military oath.

Idle Thoughts and Random Speculations: When I started writing this I had a small tangle of ideas bouncing around inside my head.

One was that the thing that strikes me about Operation Vengeance, the thing that got this post started, is the similarity between it and last year's Operation Neptune Spear, the military operation directed against bin Laden.

In both cases we had the use of strategic intelligence and communications interception to pinpoint an individual high up in the enemy chain-of-command followed by a military mission tailored to kill that individual. The only real difference I see seems to have been in method; somehow the air-to-air scrap seems more impersonal, makes the 1943 event seem more like a "battle" and less like cold-blooded murder.

The 1943 assassination seems to me to stand on its own as a legitimate military operation.

The U.S. had no idea where Yamamoto stood in the IJN heirarchy in 1943, but they knew he had hurt them badly before and might again. As an enemy commander he seems to me to have been a legitimate "target" the same as any other Japanese troop.The bin Laden operation seems less straightforward.

First there's the entire question of whether the U.S. was "at war" with bin Laden's organization or "terror" in general. I don't buy the nonsensical "War on Terror", and think that we would have done better to show up at his door with a Pakistani cop backed up by the local SWAT team.(Isn't that a great image, by the way? "Knock, and the door shall be opened"? I guess the graphic artist wanted us to know that Gott was really mit uns.)

While it is not always good to confirm your enemy's vision statement, in all honesty there seems little chance that law enforcement could have worked, given the conditions in Pakistan.

And I cannot second-guess the acts of the troops on the ground; it is highly likely that the possibility of capture for his crimes was not ever possible.Interestingly, I also think in both cases the benefits of the success of the operations were and are overstated.

Both targets were past their prime as enemy leaders.

Both of the deaths had, or currently appear to have had, little active effect on the geopolitical situations of the factions the two leaders belonged to.

Both were, to some extent, I think, vanity projects; designed more than anything else to please the U.S. public.

And, in the end, both men died as they would have preferred, at the hands of their enemies as soldiers in combat, rather than being hung for war criminals after a victor's tribunal.

Perhaps the most difficult part of judging these two events is that we know the outcome of Operation Vengeance; we have run out all the threads of possibility to their ends, while the conflict between the West and his faction still continues so we are yet unsure what the effects of the killing of bin Laden will be.For us the stone in the Tama-Reien 多磨霊園 lies quiet beneath the pines, and in the deep forest of Bougainville the vines grow thick on the wreckage of airframe aluminum and shattered glass that slowly returns to the fecund jungle around them.

Battles Long Ago: First Stronghold 1873

The First Battle of the Stronghold Dates: 16-18 JAN 1873(Author's Note: Well, I've finally run out of "decisive battles" and even "battles that changed history".

December?

I got nothin'.

Trenton? Done to death. Pearl Harbor? Likewise.

So now I begin writing purely based on my own whim, about places and people that interest me just...because. Because of some personal connection, or because I think the story should be told, or because the mood is upon me.

So this month begins the third and final series in the "battles" posts at GFT; those engagements I want to write about merely because I can.)

Forces Engaged: United States - Regular Army From what I can tell, the following units of the regular U.S. Army were engaged in the combat fought along the south shore of Tule Lake in January of 1873;21st U.S. Infantry
Company B
Company C
Company F (detachment)

1st U.S. Cavalry
Company B
Company F
Company G

4th U.S. Artillery
Battery A (detachment) [2 x 12lb howitzers]

The force also included a variety of somewhat "irregular" military organizations, ranging from volunteer state militia (that ranged from somewhat organized to a complete shambles) to paid mercenary "scouts" from tribes hostile to the Modoc. Probably the best organized, if not the most fierce of these were the

Oregon Volunteer Militia
Company A
Company B

the California Volunteer Militia was in fact nothing more than an armed mob.

The mercenaries included Klamath Scouts and Snake Scouts.

There is some disagreement about both the total number of troops engaged and the number of each type. LTC Wheaton, the force commander during January 1873, reported roughly 400 effectives including 225 regulars. MAJ Greene, commanding the west wing, reported a total of 300, including only 175 regulars. The difference in these numbers results from a difference in method of assessing combat power, as we will see.

The U.S. cavalry fought as infantrymen in this engagement, making the actual force composition simpler to estimate. Given that the mortar section of Battery A, 4th Artillery was unlikely to have consisted of much more then 30-50 redlegs the U.S. force must have consisted of between 250-360 infantry, of which slightly more than half were regular soldiers of the United States Army, and 30-50 artillerymen with two howitzer cannon under the command of LTC Frank Wheaton.

Modoc Nation - Kintpuash's Band The entire portion of the Modoc tribe present in the Lava Beds during this time (many of the tribespeople remained on the Klamath Agency to the north and took no part in the fighting) consisted of little more the 150-160 men, women, and children.

Of this group approximately 52 or 53 were men of military age and both capable and willing to fight. We know this because the white neighbors of the Modocs have testified to the names of pretty much every man there who fought for their people.The actual order-of-battle of the little Modoc force, however, is more difficult to assess. Modoc, as many tribal peoples, organized themselves into bands or groups that nucleated around several different centers. Families and relative groups tended to fight, as they lived, together. Strong soldiers, smart war-leaders, tended to accumulate followers. Some tribes, like the Cheyenne, had organized "soldier societies" that acted as elite troopers in war and, often, as policemen and proctors in peace, but the Modoc had none of these warrior groups.

It is likely that in January 1873 the Modoc fought in groups of between 10 and 20 under the men we still recognize as their leaders, the most prominent of them being Kintpuash, better known by his "white man's name", Captain Jack.Other native leaders included Schonchin John (brother of Old Schonchin, the titular leader of the entire Modoc), Black Jim, Boston Charley, Slolux, and a man known either as Brancho or Barncho.

And another name we should remember: Hooker Jim.This beauty (that heavy-lidded face almost cracks the lens - this is a man who liked killing) was a natural-born fighter and had even more prestige because of his father-in-law, Curley-headed Doctor, who was the spiritual adviser - the "medicine man", in Hollywood lingo, of the band. His love of bloody-handed murder got Kintpuash and his group in a lot of trouble in 1872, and we'll hear more from him in the future.

So a total force of roughly 50 light infantry under Kintpuash and his captains.

The Modoc: Before we go on any further I'd like to introduce one of our combatants to you, largely because they and their little war are typically well and truly forgotten today.The Modoc - or as they called themselves, the Moatokni maklaks or "People of the South" - are one of the many interior plateau tribes that owned the central western and central northwestern part of the North American continent prior to 1492. This group is diverse linguistically and culturally, but can be generally characterized by a relatively sedentary life, with a slow movement between drier summer encampments and winter housing generally near the interior lakes. A hunter-gatherer society the Moatokni maklaks used the great salmon fishery on the western rivers as well as the plateau game - deer and antelope, principally - as well as wild vegetables such as biscuitroot and camas.As with many tribal societies the men's hunting skills translated easily into the raid-and-ambush style of warfare that was endemic to the plateau. The ?ewksiknii, the Klamath people to the north, were the most common victims of and danger to the Modoc, but the young men also raided south into the Achomowai people for slaves, and fun, and I suspect that relations with the tough Northern Paiute weren't always cordial.They were never numerous. Modern guesstimates of the Modoc population of the plateau in the century or so preceding the battle of the Stronghold usually run about 300 to 500; larger than a band but not anywhere near the thousands of Klamaths or the big tribes of the fertile lands to the west and northwest. Life on the interior plateau could be hard; winters were cold, summers hot, and rain always an uncertainty. This was not the lush fecundity of the valleys west of the Cascades.

But overall the Modoc were well suited to their home, and the Moatokni maklaks way of life remained largely unchanged for the thousands of years between the settling of the plateau and the arrival of the newcomers.

The first trickle of white men began in the early 1800s; the Modoc were far enough north of have had little contact with the Spanish and too far inland to have encountered Russians. So the first white-eyes to turn up were Canadians or Americans in the 1820s; Peter Skene Ogden, Hudson's Bay agent, explorer, and general frontier hard man showed up among the Klamaths in 1826 and passed through Modoc lands on the way to Mount Shasta.

But the real collision began in 1846, when a group of Americans led by Lindsey Applegate surveyed out what came to be called the South Road or South Emigrant Trail, or the Scott-Applegate Trail.The groups of white people that passed along this thoroughfare probably had no notion that they were trespassing on someone else's home. Had they, given the way that most contemporary caucasians felt about the native inhabitants of North America they probably wouldn't have cared.

Whatever their feelings, their stock ate the grass and competed with whatever game the travelers didn't shoot or at least shoot at (legend and NRA folklore to the contrary, most white settlers were completely useless with firearms except as a means of killing or injuring themselves or each other), got lost, and then the white men blamed the locals for hunting and eating these stray critters. The whites often took the good watering spots, as well, and tended to shoot when nervous.

Of course, the Moatokni maklaks weren't angels, either. These white people carried cool stuff, were fun to raid, and, being outsiders, the Modoc all agreed that killing them wasn't like killing real people, anyway (the whites would have agreed in reverse).

White historians have estimated that between the two groups perhaps 500 to 600 people of all varieties were killed on and around the South Emigrant Trail between 1846 and 1873.

One thing that really chapped the white boys was that the redsticks had no particular taboos about killing white women.

Mind you, the white-eyes returned the favor with interest. But for a white man on the frontier slotting a white girl of a certain age was the equivalent of throwing away a delicious meal, or burning down a sturdy house - the careless waste of a precious resource.

Women - marriageable, white women - were scarcer than rubies on the frontier, so stories like that of the "Bloody Point Massacre" of 1852, where the Modoc raiders were supposed to have chased two young women several miles for the pure vicious entertainment of their terror before killing them, sent the white guys damn near frantic. Here were two precious chances of gettin' busy with an actual white girl lost forever because these damn savages just whacked 'em in the skull and walked away whistling!

It was enough to make a white boy want to go kill some redskins.

The killing and counter-killing continued well into the 1860's.

Things got so bad that the U.S. government tried to clear the road. In 1864 the federal government strongarmed the Modoc, Klamath, and Yahooskin band of the Shoshone tribe into signing away much of their lands along the trail. In return, the groups would get a one-time kick down of $35,000 in cash and about five grand a year for 15 years, plus three hots and a cot on the Rez.

As part of this shrewd deal the Moatokni maklaks had to give up all their holdings along Tule Lake, Lost River and Lower Klamath Lake, and bunk in with their Klamath cousins along Upper Klamath Lake.This worked about as well as you'd expect.

In his delightful style, Gary Brecher ("The War Nerd") paints us a little picture of domestic life on the Upper Klamath Rez, circa 1868:

"The move to a shared Modoc/Klamath reservation made both tribes miserable. How can you run a feud properly when you're living in the same camp? Where's the fun in that? Gotta stand in line for your Federal rations with some Klamath devil who killed your great-great-great grandma and made her teeth into a necklace - it's embarrassing. Socially awkward: "I see you're wearing grandma's incisors. Mmm, remind me to massacre your entire clan when I get the chance..." then one of those awkward pauses and some phony exit line, "Well, let's have lunch one of these days!" Enough to send anybody on the warpath."

And it did.

Specifically, it sent Kintpuash and his band of Modoc off the rez in 1870.

Kintpuash and his bunch had been latecomers to the Upper Klamath party, and after Klamaths began jockeyboxing the lumber they were issued at Modoc Point (the part of the rez Kintpuash's band was assigned) - and the BIA agent turned out to be a useless example of douchbaggery and didn't do squat about it - AND a move to another part of the rez didn't stop the Klamaths from being pains-in-the-Modoc-ass...well, Kintpuash and about 200 of his posse grabbed a hat.

They headed back to Lost River only to find a bunch of white squatters on their turf and ended up hootched up around Clear Lake on the Klamath River, still pretty pissed off about the whole sorry business.

The BIA boss in Oregon was a pretty sharp guy named Meacham who knew Kintpuash and the Modoc. He suggested to his Higher - the federal Commissioner of Indian Affairs - that the Modoc be settled around Yainax in the far southern part of the Upper Klamath Rez.

The Commissioner never replied.

After raid and counterraid between settlers and Modocs went on for several months there was almost even a prospect of some sort of deal (Meacham, GEN Ed Canby [the commander of the Department of the Columbia, the flagpole for the region]and Kintpuash were within an ace of sitting down to discuss the Yainax plan) but then in the spring of 1872 the Commission of Indian Affairs replaced Meacham with a guy named Odeneal who in turn appointed a cherry agent for the Klamath Agency.

That tore things.

Kintpuash and his gang of Modoc continued to hang out in their old lands, and while they weren't exactly good neighbors they weren't raping and killing, either. You get the sense that Meacham probably would have waited them out and kept pushing the Yainax deal.

Odeneal wasn't that sort of guy.

In late November of 1872 Odeneal requested troops from Fort Klamath force the Kintpuash band back to the Klamath Agency. Company B, 1st U.S. Cavalry and a straggle of militia, all led by one MAJ Jackson, turned up at the Modoc camp near what is today Merril, Oregon on 29 NOV 1872.

Online sources disagree about what happened next, but I'm willing to bet is was something like one of the tales below.

The Wikipedia entry claims that the Modoc leaders came out and listened to Jackson's demand and they agreed to the deal. Then the major demanded that Modoc put their weapons down - which they didn't like but were willing to go along with grudgingly - but as they were complying some sort of donnybrook broke out between Chǐkclǐkam-Lupalkuelátko - "Scarface Charley" - and one LT Boutelle.

Charley, who was a pretty tough guy, was probably not to thrilled about laying down his hogleg. Boutelle, who was a cavalry lieutenant and thus probably about as smart as his horse, probably said something or might even have made a snatch for the pistol, and Charley reacted by reversing the weapon, cocking back the hammer and letting fly. Boutelle pulled his shootin' iron, as well.

And then both men missed from what must have been touching distance - which says a lot about what happens when adrenaline, fear, and sudden panic make your firing arm into a licorice whip.

A scrambling firefight is supposed to have followed.

The Modoc then either conducted a withdrawal south under pressure or were driven off by fire; the regulars and militia did not effectively pursue, however, suggesting the former more likely. One soldier was killed and seven wounded; the Modoc left two dead on the ground and were supposed to have carried off three injured.

That's one story.

However, the Park Service website claims that Kintpuash never showed. Instead the Modoc group which included Charley was milling about when the cavalrymen arrived and...

"(s)eventeen of them dismounted and formed a skirmish line. Seeing (a group of about 10) armed Indians had gathered together about 30 yards in front of his skirmish line, Jackson ordered Boutelle to take some four to six men from left of the skirmish line to arrest this group. Applegate...ran back toward Jackson shouting, "Major, they are going to fire!" Perhaps a trifle too eagerly Boutelle yelled to his men, "Shoot over those Indians," raised his pistol, and fired at Scarfaced Charley. At that precise moment, Charley fired also. Neither bullet, though coming close, found its mark. The Modoc War had commenced."

Whatever happened, we do know that Kintpuash with the main band of Modoc retreated across Tule Lake in boats through the night of 29-30 NOV to the volcanic fortification that he had apparently been contemplating as a refuge for some time.

And we know this, too; our boy Hooker Jim now got involved in the business, and not in a good way.

He led a group of riders, somewhere around a dozen, on the long way around the east side of Tule Lake. This also took them the better part of the next day - the group didn't join the Lava Beds group until two days later.

And on the way they killed 14 unarmed men.

To Hooker Jim and his riders this was payback for the Army's attack. To the good people of Oregon and California this meant that the Modoc were now murderous savages and needed to be hunted down and exterminated. At least, that's the explanation the U.S. government gives for what happened next.

The Sources: One of the most accessible, and readable, online sources is presented by the U.S. National Park Service here: it is an html transcription of "Modoc War, Its Military History & Topography" (1971) by Erwin N. Thompson. A relatively unbiased source, and one of the better secondary materials on the subject. Well worth the time.

One of the more interesting sources has to be "The Indian History of the Modoc War, and the Causes That Led to It" written by the son of the man who was GEN Canby's interpreter, Jeff Riddle in 1914. Said to be told in the vernacular and somewhat dry, it would be worth reading for the familiar connection alone but is said to contain some good contemporary photos.

Of course, all the usual archival sources are present for the Army side of the story; the Park Service lists most of them here.

As always, the Modoc story is told only secondhand and by inference. But go there, stand on the edge of one of the schollendomes and listen to the sound of the cold wind over the black rock and the sage.You'll get the idea, I think.

And I want to recommend one delightful resource that is not a historical document at all, but rather a geologic field trip guide of the Stronghold, entitled "CAPTAIN JACK'S STRONGHOLD (The Geologic Events that created a Natural Fortress)" (Waters, 1981) in Johnson and Donnelly-Nolan, (eds.), (1981) Guides to Some Volcanic Terrances in Washington, Idaho, Oregon, and Northern California: U.S. Geological Survey Circular 838. Lovely piece of work, and, as you'd expect, just the sort of thing I enjoy and I think you will, too.

The Campaign: Well, some of the both of them - the white-eyes and the Modoc - had been spoiling for a fight for some time. You get the feeling that had they been the same color Hooker Jim and LT Boutelle would have got along like a house afire, abusing those they didn't like (which seem to have been most people outside themselves) and generally being assholes - and now they had got it. But you get the feeling that whilst Kintpuash had been thinking this through for a while Canby, Odeneal and the rest of the government types were pretty much making shit up as they went along.

The government types knew what they wanted to do.

But they were stymied about how to do it.

And, worse - they had no real idea of WHERE they were trying to do it.

Waters (1981) sums up the crux of the Modoc War biscuit precisely:

"How was it possible that 53 Modoc men, aided (or encumbered?) by twice as many women and children, withstood a siege through the dead of winter, routed 300 U.S. troops engaged in the first major assault, withdrew undetected after repulsing a second assault of 650 troops supported by mortars and howitzers, and then only a few days later staged a successful ambush and inflicted 25 fatalities upon a patrol composed of 59 enlisted men and 6 officers?"

The key, as so often in warfare, especially irregular or guerrilla warfare, was intimate knowledge of the terrain.

The Modoc had it.

The U.S. Army did not.And the terrain in what would become known as the "Lava Beds" was as challenging as any in military history.Let's listen to Waters (1981) again:

"The main defense positions used by the Modocs, however, are the deep natural cracks and crevasses along the top of the turndown edges of the plateau, and similar fissures along the tops of high schollendomes which ring three sides of the Stronghold. Note that they form a sinuous line along the entire northwest margin of the plateau, and that they curve into a natural U-shaped ambush line which bars access to the Stronghold from the nearest point of the lakeshore. The floors of these natural defense trenches were cleared of loose debris so that the defenders could pass rapidly along them. Short radial routes by which one can walk to various parts of the trench system from the central Stronghold without encountering difficult crevasses were well known to the Modoc defenders.

Beyond this natural trench system lay scattered Modoc outposts - high isolated overlooks with unimpaired views of the surrounding country. Most such outposts are located in the central cracks of the highest schollendomes, and were further camouflaged by piling loose fretworks of rock through which a sniper's rifle could be extended unobserved. No doubt additional Modoc outposts within the area of the map have gone unrecognized during our mapping (see the description of Modoc Fortifications on the map).

The unigue value of the stronghold chosen by the Modocs was its proximity to the shoreline of Tule Lake. A constant supply of water, and of some food from wocus root, waterfowl, fish, and fresh-water clams was thus assured. Also its location denied communication for an enemy using the easily traversible route along the lake shore. Moreover, the Modocs were well aware of an easy escape route to the south over the flat surfaces of scattered remnants of the lava plateau, whereas one unfamiliar with that terrain would flounder painfully and slowly across the heavily fissured and schollendomed country that surrounds these plateau remnants.

Still another unusual topographic feature, a small and deep collapse basin, bounded on three sides by the steep and heavily crevassed sides of three large schollendomes, and on the fourth (east) side by the steep and deeply fissured turndown flap of the plateau formed a natural corral, (t)hus (ensuring) an adequate supply of beef was available throughout the winter."

Short of engineered defenses, Kintpuash and the Modoc had occupied an outstanding natural fortress.

And they would soon show the U.S. Army just how good their defenses were.The commander of the 21st Infantry, LTC Wheaton, had arrived to take command of the overall field force on 21 DEC 1872. He was concerned about shortages of small arms ammunition and the failure of the 4th U.S. Artillery to march order their howitzers. He did order some combat patrols, which exchanged fire with the Modoc defenders but do not appear to have been particularly aggressive in pursuing their reconnaissance very close to the Stronghold itself.

LTC Wheaton had thoughts of a Cannae-like double envelopment of the pesky savages. He wrote

"The day before the fight I shall move up with the Troops on the west side to a point 3 miles from the Modoc stronghold...at day light next day we will skirmish into the lava beds and close on the Modoc Cave or fortification...while the Troops on the east side, close...simultaneously."

Of the overall chances of success he had no doubt; "a more enthusiastic jolly set of Regulars and Volunteers I never had the pleasure to command." he wrote to GEN Canby, and in the 19th Century version of "bring it on" he vaunted that were the Modoc to try and "make good their boast to whip a thousand soldiers, all will be satisfied."The artillery arrived in the first week of January, and LTC Wheaton fixed on 17 JAN for the decisive attack.

The overall plan was to simply overwhelm the dusky savages, what in classical military terms would have been called a coup de main performed by the assault force with MAJ Green in direct command. This "western" force consisted of:

MAJ Mason's battalion (-) of the 21st U.S. Infantry - about 65 infantrymen
Company B, 2d Lt. H. D. W. Moore
Company C, Capt. G. H. Burton
Detachment, Company F, 1st Sgt. John McNamara

GEN Ross's Oregon Volunteer Militia - about 60 in all
Company A, Capt. H. Kelly
Company B, Capt. Oliver Applegate

Troop F, 1st U.S. Cavalry, CPT David Perry - probably 40-50 dismounted cavalry

California Volunteers, CPT John O. Fairchild - 24 irregular infantry

Mountain Howitzer Section, A Battery, 4th U.S. Artillery, 2LT W. H. Miller

Along the east side of the Stronghold CPT Bernard of the 1st. U.S. Cavalry was in overall command of a blocking force consisting of;

1st U.S. Cavalry - about 60-80 dismounted cavalry
Troop B, CPT Jackson
Troop G, (normally Bernard's but now led by his XO, 1LT Kyle)

Klamath Scouts - about 20 irregular infantryHere we come across the likely cause of the discrepancy in numbers; Wheaton's figure of 400+ includes every swinging richard in his command; ladi-dadee-and-every-goddamn-body that was breathing and drawing federal rations. Camp guards, sick calls, slackers and shirkers...Wheaton was just counting every pair of boots and dividing by two.

Green was looking solely at the guys who turned up on the evening of 16 JAN with a rifle; just the actual fighters, in other words.

Which means that as much as 25% of the assault force was lost before the group crossed the LD.

And things were just getting started.The Engagement: The movement to contact began on Thursday morning 16 JAN. The footsoldiers marched directly east across country towards their objective, while the trains including the artillery moved along the Tule Lake shore - longer but passable for wheeled vehicles. The march column arrived at Wheaton/Green's objective rally point just northwest of the Stronghold in early afternoon, though the vehicles didn't link up until after the early nightfall. The troopers probably ate, and some may have tried to get some sleep. Sergeants should have performed whatever their precombat inspections and precombat checks.

Modern U.S. Army doctrine would make this halt the time for a final leader's reconnaissance of the objective, to ensure that conditions had not changed since the original plans and, if they have, to issue an update or change ("FRAGO") to the plan of attack. Not only does this not have been performed, but there does not appear to have been any real attempt to even scout the Modoc positions prior to nightfall on 16 JAN.

During the night both U.S. forces moved.

From the west F/1 CAV moved out and secured the route to the Lava Beds objective in the early morning of 17 JAN. The rest of the command moved eastwards at about 0630.

It was on the east side that things started to come unstuck.CPT Bernard's element had a 15-16 mile march through increasingly bad country; rough, hummocky ground barbed with jagged basalt outcrops, so he started earlier, before darkness on 16 JAN. CPT Bernard also seems to have been one of those officers who believes that his commission grants him powers denied ordinary men - in this case, intimate knowledge of ground that he had never seen. One of his subordinates later wrote that Bernard "relied on his own judgement [rather] than upon the man employed as guide." He was wrong, and his error resulted in the entire force approaching within effective range of the Stronghold in march order, in daylight.

The Modoc, who must have heard the noise of the troops' approach well before they sighted them, opened fire and then pursued Bernard's men as they withdrew to a large basalt kopje the soldiers called "Hospital Rock" for the night. The Modoc withdrew, but the eastern force had been badly shaken.

Sometime early on 17 JAN the eastern force shook out into skirmish order and again headed west to attack the Modoc.

I can't pretend to do a better job of describing the actual engagement than is contained here in Thompson (1971) and I refer you to the link if you want the complete details of the engagement. What I want to do is present a brief outline of the action and then discuss the tactical issues they present.

So, in short, the U.S. forces began converging probably some time not long after the late morning sunrise, about 7:00 o'clock or so. The day was cold, and the entire field was smothered in the thick fog that is still common in the lowlying portions of inland California and southern Oregon in the winter.Thompson (1971) says that the first defensive fires were encountered at 11 a.m.; this is still extremely late in the morning - January days at 41 degrees north are damn short - and this accords with the U.S. accounts that relate that the advance was extremely slow because of the rough ground and fog.

All the survivor's accounts describe the Modoc fire as persistent and gallingly accurate; many of the regulars sought cover but the poor visibility made their return fire ineffective.

Perhaps the single worst failing of Wheaton's attack was the inattention he paid to his artillery. The howitzers were the only means he had of effectively attacking dug-in defenders behind rock walls.But he also had no effective way of controlling his fires; pre-telephone indirect fire still had to be adjusted by an observer stationed with the cannon, and the gunners could not see their own troops, much less the Modoc. Concerned with the possibility of a blue-on-blue the gunners ceased fire after the initial three rounds used to signal the start of the advance-to-contact.

Without the artillery to keep the Modoc heads down and "shoot them onto" the objective the infantry and foot cavalry found themselves in a bad way.

Between 11 and 1 p.m. the western force edged slowly forward, taking losses from firers they could neither see nor hit, until they encountered a "a very deep chasm, beyond which no advance could be made without great sacrifice of life." (Thompson, 1971) and what progress they had made ended.The eastern force had a shorter, but equally miserable, experience under Modoc fire. With the two cavalry companies in extended order they crept forward until the Modoc chose to open the dance. The troopers rushed forward to assault their ambushers but were halted by another of the ubiquitous "chasms", fell back to east of their start line and went to ground, immediately piling up the numerous loose basalt rocks into improvised fighting positions.By 2 or 3 p.m. the U.S. advance was stymied everywhere. MAJ Green made contact with his east-side commander Bernard by the simple expedient of shouting across the south shore of Tule Lake. LTC Wheaton and Green had agreed that rather than doing their Cannae around the south side of the Modoc position that the two elements would be best united along the north side, along the lake shore.

The Oregon Volunteers had had enough by then. The U.S. regulars were scathing; "...the Oregon Volunteers had learned that the Indians would fight and would not run at the approach of the soldiers..." said LT Boyle of the 21st U.S. Infantry "...they were not as anxious to shoot Modocs as they were in the morning." But the Volunteers hadn't come all the way from the settled lands of the Oregon Territory to be shot down by filthy savages wandering about in the fog.

Fuck this for a game of soldiers, said the Volunteers, and sat tight.The regular infantry and cavalry, and the California volunteers tried to move eastwards across the lakeshore, and found that the open strand made a truly awful place to try moving within range of enemy riflemen.

"It was at this point our greatest number of casualties occurred," reported LT Perry of the 21st Infantry. Much of C/21 and the California militia ended up pinned on the lakeshore until nightfall. Only a handful of the western force managed to link up with Bernard's troops, not including either LTC Wheaton or MAJ Green.

By 5:00 o'clock the day must have been rapidly darkening. LTC Wheaton acknowledged that the entire plan had failed and since the fog had lifted his signal detachment was able to flag-signal the order to retreat to the troops still engaged. As many of both elements that could withdrew - C/21 Infantry and the California Volunteers were pinned on the Tule Lake shore until darkness and then completed their move across to the eastern side.Darkness found both sides back where they started, except for the nine dead white men, six of whom were still lost somewhere between the rock spines on the frozen ground they had died for, who had been alive that morning.

A total of 28 other soldiers had been injured; three died of their wounds.

None of the Modoc had been so much as nicked.The Outcome: Decisive Modoc tactical victory.

The Impact, and The Elements of Tactical Failure: The immediate effects of the defeat of First Stronghold were predictable to anyone who has studied the "Indian Wars"; the surviving whites were enraged that a gang of filthy savages had had the temerity to kill white men who were doing nothing more than trying to drive them off their lands, dispossess, impoverish, and humiliate them.

The "Modoc War" would continue another five months. In April an attempt at a negotiated peace erupted in horror; Kintpuash, Schonchin John, Hooker Jim and five other Modoc were involved in the deliberate murder of GEN Canby at a parlay. Further enraged by this treachery a second, larger attack on the Stronghold was attempted in April - it also failed.

But time, and numbers, and a successful siege forced the Modoc to flee south where, eventually, the U.S. Army would win the Battle of Dry Lake in June, 1873. The loss of the mojo that the Modoc had believed they had held until then was decisive.

The band splintered; our murderous boy Hooker Jim defected to the enemy and helped hunt down Kintpuash. Jim testified against his chief at his "trial"; “I have been a friend of Captain Jack," he said, "but I don’t know what he got mad at me for.”

The unfortunate Kintpuash was hanged alongside his lieutenants Schonchin John, Black Jim and Boston Charley in October, 1873.LTC Wheaton was relieved soon after the debacle of First Stronghold. An editorial in "The Army and Navy Journal" claimed that "Time will fully vindicate General WHEATON in every particular, and those who have cried 'blunder, blunder,' when there was no blunder, will realize the fact of having done a brave officer a cruel injustice."

But has it, really?

Obviously for one force engaged to lose the other is likely to win. And certainly many well-planned and executed tactical elements contributed to the Modoc victory, including;

1. Intimate knowledge of, and expert use of, the difficult terrain of the Stronghold,
2. Good use of the principle of "interior lines" to use the terrain to shift their very small force to meet the most dangerous U.S. courses of action,
3. Effective individual fire-and-movement techniques, and accurate marksmanship, and
4. Integration of political and military leadership.But even with these skillful tactics the U.S. Army had overwhelming advantages over the Modoc in manpower and the technologic advantage of artillery. In order to be so badly beaten LTC Wheaton and his subordinate officers had to make some tactical errors, some fairly serious.

These included;

1. Failure to adequately prepare for the engagement. This included long-term intelligence and planning including familiarizing themselves with the terrain and weather of the Tulelake Basin and the tactical and technical abilities of their enemies the Modoc.

The long-term preparation failures may also have included individual and team training, although the U.S. Army in 1873 was typically poorly trained on the individual level. But certainly the assault force was very poorly trained as a unit, as evinced by the sorry performance of the Oregon Volunteers on 17 JAN.

2. Wheaton's assault plan was poor; it depended on a coordinated attack between two widely separated elements that could not communicate with one another and were liable to defeat in detail - had the Modoc been stronger they could easily have held off one force and overwhelmed the other, as the tribal forces would do three years later along the bluffs overlooking the Greasy Grass. His double-envelopment plan also precluded the employment of the artillery, potentially his most effective weapon. His final maneuver - attempting to join the two elements along the lakeshore - was a disaster, exposing his western element to devastating fires without a real hope of success.

4. The immediate tactical failures of Wheaton or his subordinates on 17 JAN include:
- failure to adequately recon the battlefield, including the routes of the approach marches. The eastern force debacle of 16 JAN may not have contributed significantly to the next day's failure. But it didn't help.
- failure to prepare contingency plans in case of an unexpected or exceptionally dangerous enemy action (such as the attempted annhilation of one of the attack forces as discussed above),
- failure to place effective suppressive fire on the Modoc shooters, an artifact of the initial recon failure to identify the Modoc firing positions.
- failure to use mass and dispersion effectively; the U.S. force was too spread out to form an effective assault force and even for individual troopers to support each other; Thompson (1971) says of that after the eastern element was initially repulsed it formed a defense that "...began about 100 yards from the lake and ran toward the south "about one mile and a half long." If this distance is accurate it means that each of Bernard's troopers was responsible for 80 feet of front." Eighty feet was a lot of ground for a man to secure with nothing but a a rifled carbine in a dense fog.
- failure to execute the assault with sufficient violence of action; this is, I feel, the truly critical failure. As bad as the conditions were, had the U.S. troopers been willing to move forward aggressively the probability is quite high that enough living troops would have gotten into the Modoc trenches to clear a section. Once secured the U.S. force could have either moved into the interior of the Stronghold to threaten the women and children, or moved along the trench-line to clear the Modoc fighters from the positions.

But commanding a force of paid soldiers fighting for an immensely rich, technologically complex, politically integrated nation means you can fuck up epically and still win the war.

Being a tiny, poor, politically fragmented and technologically deficient one means you can't lose. Ever.

The Modoc had a last, cold winter and spring to live as an independent people.

In the autumn of 1873 a total of 39 men, 64 women, and 60 children were loaded into boxcars and transported to the Quapaw Agency in the Indian Territory.Thirty-six years later the Territory had become the State of Oklahoma and the Modoc were offered a return to the Upper Klamath Reservation. Twenty-nine people did so and their grandchildren and great-grandchildren are part of the confederation formed around their old enemies the Klamaths, living in the inland lake country their ancestors fought for so effectively.For the number of enemies it defeated the U.S. government has never fought a war, before or since, that was more expensive in lives and treasure than the Modoc War.Touchline Tattles: Tule Lake was diked and drained in the early years of the Twentieth Century. By 1965 the shoreline that had been the deadly killing zone of 1873 was the edge of a farmed field. Today the area is "managed" as a national wildlife refuge and the lake has never returned; a tiny area of open slough is all that remains. Kintpuash and his people would stare uncomprehendingly at the vast fields of winter wheat and haygrass that grow where the waters of their lake once shattered the cold moon into a thousand glittering shards of light.GEN Canby lies under stone in Crown Hill Cemetery in his wife's home of Indiana. The newspaper account of his funeral noted that while the occasion was generally reserved "more than once, expressions of hatred toward the Modoc" marred the silence.

The town of Canby, Oregon is named for him.

The site of the Stronghold, and the Modoc War itself, is largely unvisited today. It is a National Monument, The Lava Beds, but is far east of the main roads that carry travelers along the settled lands of the West in an agricultural basin that is loved only by its rural residents. However the Tule Lake basin is still lonely and beautiful, the black basalt and gray-green sage of the Stronghold still cold and high and clean, much as it was in Kintpuash's day.

If you are traveling that way it is well worth the time to seek out.

In April, 1942, the War Relocation Authority began construction of a "Relocation Center" about 10 miles northeast of the Stronghold, along what had been the east shore of Tule Lake where Hooker Jim led his bloody ride seventy years ago.This Tulelake prison "maximum security segregation center" housed some 18,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry by April of 1944 guarded by almost a brigade of military police including six tanks. It was the destination for almost all the "disloyals" - Issei and Nisei who had flunked the written test for WW2. During the war Tulelake was the most explosive of all the WRA prisons, known for its riots and prisoner strikes.The last Tulelake internee was released in March, 1946, seven months after VJ-Day.

The town of Newell, California, today occupies the site of Tulelake.The Modoc Tribe has opened an casino called "The Stables" in Miami, Oklahoma. The website touts its slots and blackjack tables, as well as the "Clubhouse" Restaurant "known throughout the area for upscale American cuisine".

After he died most of the body of Kintpuash was buried at Klamath Agency.

However, his head was severed at Fort Klamath and sent on to the U.S. Army Medical Museum in Washington, D.C. where it was reduced to a skull and remained for over twenty years.In the Seventies some of his grandkids found out that the skull had been sent over to the Smithsonian.

The last bit of Kintpuash above ground was returned to the Klamath Reservation in 1984, along with the skulls of the other three men hanged with him that day in 1873; Boston Charley, Black Jim and John Schonchin (and the bits of a Modoc woman found dead in the Lava Beds who had been lying around the Smithsonian as well) and reunited with the bones under the soil that the Ice Ages had formed in the Klamath basin not long before the ancestral Modoc arrived in their new land.

His Wiki entry notes that "The "Captain Jack Substation", a Western Area Power Administration (WAPA) electrical substation named in Kintpuash's honor...is located near the northern end of Path 66, a high-power electric transmission line."The sleepless hum of the substation is all of Kintpuash that remains to look out over the sagebrush, the tule fogs, and the cold empty lakebed where the Modoc once lived and died.