Naval Landing Operation

coordinated actions by the navy, ground and airborne forces, and aviation to transport and land naval landing parties and see that they fulfill their combat missions in the interests of achieving operational or operational-strategic goals.

The principal missions of the naval landing operation are to strike an enemy maritime grouping in the flank and rear for the purpose of surrounding and wiping it out and to capture islands, naval bases, major ports, coastal airfields, and important sectors of the enemy coast. The naval landing operation includes assembling and loading landing forces, weapons, combat equipment, and materiel on the landing ships and transports; overcoming enemy resistance during the sea crossing to the landing region; breaking through the enemy antilanding defense from the sea and putting the landing forces on shore; and the waging of combat actions by the forces of the landing party until the missions defined in the plan of operation are completed.

As a form of naval combat activity the naval landing operation originated in World War I (1914–18). It was most used and developed in World War II (1939–45), during which more than 600 landings were made in the Pacific Ocean and Mediterranean Sea theaters, including several on a strategic scale. During the Great Patriotic War (1941–5) the Soviet Navy, together with the other armed services, landed more than 100 landing parties and carried out major landing operations such as the Kerch’-Feodosiia operation of 1941–42, the Novorossiisk and Kerch’-EI’tigen operations in 1943, the Moonsund operation in 1944, and the Kuril operation in 1945. During the postwar period naval landing operations were conducted by the US Navy during the aggression against Korea (1951) and in Vietnam (1964) and by an Anglo-French fleet during the aggression against Egypt (1956).