Tag Archives: 41st Infantry Division

Gipper’s SECDEF Getting his Springfield on

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Via the Camp Roberts Historical Museum:

Arlin Weinberger, a supporter of our museum and member of our Chancellery, visited us recently and donated these photos of her father, taken during his training at Camp Roberts as our nation was entering World War 2. Her father, Caspar Willard Weinberger, went on to become Secretary of Defense under President Reagan, serving from Jan. 1981 to Nov. 1987.

Weinberger at the time of the below images was a 2nd LT, fresh from Fort Benning, with the 186th Infantry Regiment, a National Guard unit that went on to become one of the famed “Jungleers” of the 41st Infantry Division in the grueling push from New Guinea to the Philippines.

As noted in Weinberger’s DOD bio:

He entered the U.S. Army as a private in 1941, was commissioned, and served in the Pacific theater. At the end of the war he was a captain on General Douglas MacArthur’s intelligence staff. Early in life he developed an interest in politics and history and, during the war years, a special admiration for Winston Churchill, whom he would later cite as an important influence.

Hitting Aitape

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U.S. soldiers on the beaches of Aitape, New Guinea, April 22, 1944, on this day 76 years ago, reminding us that it wasn’t just the Devils who island-hopped across the Pacific.

U.S. soldiers on the beaches of Aitape, New Guinea, April 22, 1944 163rd Infantry rgt 41st Division note M1 Carbine US Signal Corps picture 191965

US Signal Corps Photo 191965 via NARA

The soldiers are likely of the Montana National Guard’s 163rd Infantry Regiment, 41st Infantry Division (“Sunsetters”). Note their early M1 Carbines, which had only entered regular production in May 1942, less than two years previously.

The 41st’s other two Regimental Combat Teams, the 162nd, and 186th, were making landings at Humbolt Bay on the same day, leaving the Montanans to take the airfields at Aitape-Tadji alone, dubbed Operation Persecution, and push back units of the Japanese 18th Army.

National Archives (NARA) Still Picture Identifier: 26-nm-3-2. Memorandum for the Armed Forces. Subject: Home Front Production.

The 163rd moved rapidly and secured the beach then moved inland, replaced by the follow-on 32nd Infantry Div two weeks later, only to move on to the hell that was Biak.

Formed during the Great War and inducted into federal service 16 September 1940 at Billings for their Second World War, the 163rd fought throughout Papua/New Guinea and the Philippines, earning a Presidential Unit Citation. They ended the war on occupation duty in Honshu.

Today they form the MNG’s 163rd Cavalry Regiment and celebrated their 100th anniversary in 2017.