Questions about WW2

A couple of things that I’ve always wondered about World War Two…

(1) Did any combat units of the United States Marine Corps ever fight enemy forces in Europe in WW2?

(2) Did any U.S.Navy fighter units see action against any Luftwaffe fighter or bomber units in Europe in WW2?

  1. Yes, but comparatively few Marines fought in Europe. See here.

  2. There were carriers in the Atlantic, but I haven’t found anything yet to indicate that they engaged the Luftwaffe. Only one carrier was lost in the Atlantic, the USS Block Island (CVE-21). Its duties included hunting U-boats and ferrying USAAF planes to Europe. I found a few other mentions of carriers in the Atlantic, mostly escort carriers, but they seem to have operated mostly as U-boat hunters and ferries, and mostly to the south of the European theater. It’s entirely possible that Navy fighters engaged German naval aircraft, although it seems that most of those were operated by the Kriegsmarine and not the Luftwaffe.

(1)From here
http://www.usmc.mil/history.nsf/Table+of+Contents/77f992b2acb682eb852564d70059c642?OpenDocument&ExpandSection=5

(2) US Navy aircraft, flying off of Escort Carriers (i.e. Baby Flattops) defended convoys of cargo ships & troop transports from land based Nazi & Fascist Italian aircraft quite often in WW2.

There were some episodes of Marines training the Army divisions that carried out the several amphibious landings in Europe, but generally not much. In accounts that I’ve read of the war a common theme seems to be that there was always quite a bit of friciton between those two branches of the military, and the Marines seemed to frequently resent it whenever they were part of an operation where someone from the Army was supreme commander.