Despite this encouraging little victory, it was still nip and tuck on the central front of the Pusan Perimeter. With the U. S. 2d Infantry Division and 5th RCT now in line, the Eighth Army strategy of trading space for time had resulted in whittling down the enemy’s material superiority. But the invaders still held the material advantage, and there were signs that they would soon launch an all-out effort to smash through to Pusan. _The Marine Amphibious Mission_ General Shepherd, after being informed as to the Tokyo conferences, accompanied General Smith on the morning of 24 August to a meeting with Admirals Sherman, Radford, Joy, and Doyle. It was generally agreed that not enough weight had been given to amphibious considerations in the final decision to attack at Inchon. Navy opinion held that one more attempt should be made to propose another landing point with fewer hydrographic objections. The area south of Inchon had been investigated by Navy UDT and Marine amphibious scouts of the Reconnaissance Company, 1st Marine Division, who had sailed to the Far East with the Brigade. As a preliminary, this group had embarked on the USS _Horace A. Bass_ (APD-124) and gone ashore undetected to stage several raids during the period 12–16 August on the enemy’s main line of communications along the west coast. Three tunnels and two railway bridges were destroyed without the loss of a man.[73] [73] CTF 90 _Opn O 13-50_, in PacFlt _Interim Rpt No. 1_, XV:Able, 6. Next the raiders successfully carried out a survey and reconnaissance of available landing beaches during the period 22–25 August in the Posung-Myon area. Their findings impressed General Shepherd so much that before his departure from Tokyo he called on CinCFE to make a last plea for reconsideration of the landing area. General MacArthur, however, remained firm in his preference for Inchon.[74] [74] O. P. Smith, _Chronicle_, 24 Aug 50. The meeting of the admirals and Marine generals on the 24th broke up with a general agreement that the decision as to Inchon on 15 September must be accepted as the basis for final planning. That same afternoon General Smith instructed his planning group to begin work on a scheme of maneuver. Modern amphibious tactics were in their infancy during World War I when an appalling object lesson seemed to have been left by the Allied disaster at Gallipoli in 1915–16. Brilliant in strategic conception, this major amphibious operation might have knocked Turkey out of the war and opened the unlocked back door of Austria and Germany. Unfortunately, the execution fell short; and the failure was too often charged to amphibious warfare itself rather than a wholesale violation of its basic principles.