Naval Mobile Construction Battalion FORTY (NMCB 40), nicknamed Fighting FORTY, was a US Navy Seabee Battalion based out of Port Hueneme, California. Its primary mission was wartime contingency construction as well as peacetime construction and disaster relief.
History
WWII
On 6 November 1942 the battalion was commission at Camp Allen, Va. The battalion's first deployment was to Espiritu Santo to build Lion 1. Included on the project list was the construction of an airstrip . This project along with additional support facilities were completed in 1943. Los Negros was the next island X where 40 CB was attached to the U.S. Army's 1st Cavalry. The Seabees of 40 were assigned a portion of the defensive perimeter and came under fierce attack. That attack lead to the battalions nickname "Fighting Forty". After the attack 40 returned to rehabilitating the airstrip which they had in use within two days. Momote airfield became operational on 18 May 1944 and remains in use today. It became Hq for the 13th Air Force and had RAF elements from both New Zealand and Australia stationed there. General MacArthur put the battalion up for the Distinguished Unit Ribbon which the President gave them for their part in the battle. In 1944, FORTY returned home, regrouped and deployed again in late 1944. Port calls were made at Pearl Harbor, T.H., Eniwetok Island; and Tanapag, Saipan. In 1945, the week after Easter, the battalion sailed for Okinawa. There it immediately began the work of rebuilding the island's main supply routes. While doing that, the battalion had to fight Japanese forces and endure two major typhoons. At the end of World War II, 40 CB joined the ranks of the other CBs when it was decommissioned on 28 November 1945 for the post-war draw-down.
The 40th earned the Army's WWII equivalent of the Presidential unit citation on Los Negros Island while attached to the 1st Cavalry Division. Special mention was made of the bulldozers going into the teeth of the enemies positions on 2 March 1944. Ref. Battle Honors citation dated 5 July 1944 by order of G. C. Marshall and signed by James Alexander Ulio, Major General, Adjutant General.
Unbeknownst to the Battalion the seaplane base they created at Tanapag would survive the War and become a training facility for the CIA that would eventually include all of the island north of the Tanapag base.
Reactivation and Vietnam
In 1966 MCB FORTY was reactivated for deployment to Chu Lai, Vietnam. The first assignment was in support of advance base operations of the 3rd Marine Amphibious Force. FORTY built ammunition magazines and maintained main supply routes during that deployment. The battalion returned to Vietnam for two additional tours. In October 1967 it went back to Camp Shields in Chu Lai and to Camp Campbell in Phu Bai, December 1968. In 1968 the Navy changed Construction from MCBs to NMCBs. Seabee team 4001 - Lai Thieu, October 1967 – June 1968 Seabee team 4002 - Go Cong, March–August 1968 Seabee team 4004 - Xuan Loc, March–November 1970 Seabee team 4006 - Tan An, May 1971 – January 1972
1970s, Cold War
In the 1970s NMCB 40 was to play a key role in the "Cold War" as well as a continuing participation in the "hot war" of Vietnam. On 9 March 1971 the first units of NMCB 40 were deployed to the small British atoll island of Diego Garcia in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Their mission was to construct a high priority communications station and airfield "from scratch" in the same manner as the Seabees did in the island hopping days of World War II. All support was to be "over the beach." This key base was needed to counter a growing Soviet presence in the Indian Ocean, and was constructed under the watching eyes of Soviet warships. A communications station was in operation on 25 March, establishing for the first time worldwide US Navy communications, and an operational runway was completed on 15 July 1971 provided the first US airfield in the Indian Ocean, three days ahead of schedule, earning the personal praise of the Chief of Naval Operations Admiral E. R. Zumwalt, Jr., and the Navy E for "Best of Type." The construction of this remote base changed the balance of power in the Indian Ocean from the Soviet Union to the United States. NMCB Forty was the pioneer battalion for the beginning of what was to become the largest Seabee construction project in history. Seabee battalion deployments would go on for eleven more years, with detachments continuing to the present. NMCB Forty deployed back to the Diego Garcia in 1980.