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By Root 1531 0

took heavily defended Pacific islands shocked Japan’s high command. Japan confronted an enemy doing the impossible, and doing it very well. The Japanese commander at Tarawa had stated that, “A million men could not take this island in a thousand years” (or something close to that), but the US Marine Second Division took it in three days. To be fair, the Japanese commander never heard of Amtracs (boats with tank treads). If he had known his confidence might have ebbed.

Tarawa

We will use Tarawa as an example of Pacific island assaults. For adequate reconnaissance of the Marshall Islands, the next target, Tarawa’s airfield was necessary. Weeks before the US Marines landed on Tarawa long-range B-24 Liberator bombers cratered the island and its runways. This bombing effectively ended air threats to the US Navy.

The Japanese possessed a critical terrain advantage—a coral reef surrounded the island about eight hundred yards from the beach that could stop the Higgins[296] boats. To overcome this defensive advantage the marines decided to employ tracked landing vehicles (LVT-1: Landing Vehicle Tracked), which could climb over the reef and continue to the shore. The marines discovered one hundred new LVT-2s in San Diego that were larger, faster, and carried a heaver payload than the LVT-1s. An all-out effort was undertaken to get these boats to Tarawa before the landing. They made it in the early morning hours on the day of the invasion. One hundred twenty-five LVTs assaulted Tarawa of which ninety were lost (72% casualty rate), but without them the invasion would have failed.

The Japanese planned a fleet counterattack (Hei Operation 3) once they determined the US Navy’s next objective, but the Japanese high command was guessing where the blow would fall. They failed to envision the United States mounting two simultaneous offensives, one already underway in the South Pacific, and another through the Central Pacific. To prepare for the expected offensive, Admiral Koga, Japan’s chief of naval operations since Yamamoto’s death, concluded the Central Pacific activity was a feint, and moved 173 carrier aircraft and several cruisers to Rabaul in the South Pacific. On November 5 and 11, US Carriers launched two large raids on Rabaul, shooting down about 100 Japanese aircraft and damaging several cruisers. The loss of so many carrier pilots ended all counterattack plans. At the time, no American knew the impact of these raids, but they were critical to the success of the Gilbert’s (Tarawa) operation.

Figure 65 Betio (Tarawa) Map

A surfeit of errors plagued the Tarawa assault. Some of the important failings were: the naval command ships were too far away and unable to receive needed information or see the action; the fleet’s big guns were fired at a low angle and failed to demolish enemy pill boxes or bunkers which required plunging fire to destroy; marine radios were not waterproof causing nearly all to fail; and there was insufficient firepower at the squad level (flamethrowers and machine guns). A lot more went wrong, but this list is a sample of the problems.

The first two waves in Amtracs got ashore with acceptable losses; however, the low tide stopped the Higgins boats at the reef. The marines who were stuck at the reef had to either wait there under scalding enemy fire for an Amtrac to take them in, or attempt to wade ashore in chest deep water while receiving fearsome enemy fire. The Japanese 75mm dual-gun anti-boat cannons, along with the heavy 13mm machine guns, fired accurately and with devastating effects on the LVTs and the Higgins boats. Marine unit cohesion disappeared as men struggled ashore separated from their squads or companies without officers, radios, heavy weapons, or the ability to communicate with other units. Small packets of men under continuous fire huddled against a log seawall that was sticking up along the landing beaches a few feet from the ocean. LVTs burned all along the beach, splintered Higgins boats wallowed at the reef, and Japanese gunners scythed men down trying to wade ashore from the reef.