Combat· Banana Wars
Battle of Ocotal
The first action of the Sandino campaign and the debut of organized dive bombing in war.
Before dawn on 16 July 1927, Sandino's rebels, several hundred strong, slipped into the town of Ocotal and fell upon its small garrison, Captain Hatfield's force of some forty Marines and forty-eight Nicaraguan guardsmen. The defenders beat back the first rushes and held the central buildings through the night and into the next day. In the afternoon a flight of five Marine DeHavillands under Major Ross Rowell appeared and, in a tactic new to warfare, nosed over into diving bombing runs on the massed rebels, scattering them; the bodies of fifty-six were recovered and about twice that number wounded. The Marine loss was surprisingly light, one killed and five wounded. Ocotal proved the dive-bombing method that would shape naval aviation for decades, and it opened the long Sandino war.
Podcast episodes on Banana Wars
Record no. 6