OverviewThe Alamo Scouts were estab

OverviewThe Alamo Scouts were established in World War II as the US Sixth Army’s special reconnaissance unit in the Southwest Pacific. The Sixth Army formed the unit to fill a capability gap that left the commander dangerously under-informed about the enemy. The Alamo Scouts’ mission was to provide intelligence about the enemy and conduct tactical reconnaissance in advance of Sixth Army landing operations. They performed that and other operations from their first mission in February 1944 until the unit disbanded in September 1945. The unit never had more than 140 personnel assigned to it at one time, but they conducted 108 missions, killed over 500 Japanese, took approximately 60 enemy prisoners yet never lost a man.1 The Alamo Scouts enabled large-scale combat operations by providing critical intelligence and conducting special operations within enemy-held areas.