THE BATTLE FOR TARAWA - A Validation of the U.S. Marines

history.acusd.edu ^ | Unknown | Unknown

[SAMWolf]

"Gentlemen, when my Marines land on that beach, the only armor they will have is the shirts on their backs."

Great quote,aomagrat. It always comes down the guy with the rifle and bayonet, that gets the Peace Treaty signed.

[SAMWolf]

I'm not sure, but I know that Tarawa did have an effect on training procedures, not sure about the length of time.

[SAMWolf]

Yes, those drawings are official artwork from a Naval History website.

In the "Sands of Iwo Jima" the first big battle scene is Tarawa.

[VOA]

bump

[SAMWolf]

"Sprawled bodies on beach tarawa, testifying to ferocity of the stuggle for this stretch of sand." November 1943.

A Marine platoon advances at Tarawa.

Marines on the beach at Tarawa.

[WhiskeyPapa]

was one of the lessons of tarawa to spend more time on training or was a year the standard procedure?

Based on what happened at Tarawa the Navy built the same sort of bunkers the Japs used and figured out the best way to wreck them. Seems like the problem at Tarawa was that they used a lot of armor piercing rounds fired at flat trajectories. The sand absorbed the kinetic energy of the rounds and the Japs were largely unaffected. Only direct hits of course were destroying the bunkers.

The Navy did learn how to wreck the bunkers and by Iwo Jima you see the Japs yielding the beaches to the Marines without contesting them with direct fire. They planned to fight inland.

A big thing the Japs did on all the islands was to use indirect (mortars and artillery) fire instead of direct fire to kill Marines. Marine arty that landed immediately went to work on counter-battery fire to suppress the Jap arty.

The U.S.S. Tennessee developed a technique where the anti-aircraft guns (the 40 MMs) led the assault waves of Marines up to the beach, shifting fire deeper and deeper inland as the LVT's (landing vehicle, tracked) approached the beach. There was no way the Japs could withstand that.

Semper Fidelis

Walt

[johnny7]

The Marines called the atoll “Helen”. Charts of tides dating back to the 1800s.

Hawkins went in on the first wave. The man was fearless... so was Shoup, who became Marine Corps Commander.

The 2nd Marines fought the Jap Marines and many Marine companies suffered 75% casualties.

The Higgins boats couldn't make it over the reef in low-tide and the 8th waded in from hundreds of yards.

Sherrod went in early and his writing is accurate.

[DeBug=int13]

 

 

I have a close relation who was in that battle and he relates that it was all-around nasty - land, sea and air.

 

The Japs liked to do their air attacks very early in the morning or the fading light of dusk, to where they couldn't be easily seen to be tracked and shot at (unless you had some sort of secondary radar), but they could still see the Americans, particularly if they were ships underway at sea. All around bomb, strafe and torpedo free-for-alls.

 

At night, Jap boats and ships would try to slip into formation with the American armada and cause trouble, especially during awkward moments like air attacks. Some had large spotlights mounted onboard and would turn them on and aim them at American ships to try to help the Jap pilots out with target acquisition. I don't think the spotlight idea was a very good one. I was told that one Jap freighter with such equipment lasted less than a minute after having the poor judgement of closing in with and lighting up a South Dakota-class battleship. They got three 16-inch HE shells all at once from the aft turret for that stunt. Explosion, blinding flash, no more Jap freighter - there one moment, de-materialized the next. Due to the haste in snuffing the freighter, onboard the battleship there were a number of busted eardrums, clothes blown off some, an aft 40mm AA twin mount and a Kingfisher seaplane trashed (the Kingfisher pilot wasn't very happy with that) - but no major injury or loss of life.

 

There was the usual sub threat - accented when the escort carrier Liscombe Bay got nailed at around 0500 hours right in front of everybody right there in the armada. I was told there was a huge blast, a blinding flash and it sank within seconds. Anybody who was looking at it at the time it blew had their night-watching abilities messed up for a while.

 

 

The Japs were striving to drive off the American fleet support with all their antics so the Marines on-shore would be stranded to die on the vine at the mercy of the enemy, but we were too strong - we had to be - and it's darn good that we were.

 

 

[NormsRevenge]

Thanks for the post.

Tarawa

6th Marines Division

Semper Fi

[SAMWolf]

Thanks for the links.

[WhiskeyPapa]

One of the interesting things about the Japs that I read recently concerned their scout planes. You always hear about Jap fanaticism and there was lots of that of course.

But once the Japs learned about radar, their scout planes got VERY leery of searching for our task forces, even in 1942. They kept to low altitudes and as great a distance as possible from our ships, even if they contacted them. In contrast our PBY's could fly pretty much at high altitude and get a good view of their patrol area. This was an important factor in the big carrier battles of 1942.

Walt

[tet68]

Semper Fi Marines!

Am glad someone posted this, I have been reading Richard Wheelers book this last week and was going to put together
a post but my computer began acting up and so was offline
for a couple of days.

The heroism of the Marines at Tarawa stands as an example to us all.

As one sergeant stated, when told of the outcry in the states
over the casualty figures, " If the Marines can stand the dying, you'd think the public could stand to read about it."

Semper Fi My Brothers.

tet68

[NormsRevenge]

Here ya go, Okinawa, the Rock

Battle of Okinawa

[Chemist_Geek]

The battle for Tarawa just overwhelms you. How could those men do all that? Every American should know the story.

Hear, hear, but we will not see that coming from the left-wing academics infesting America's elementary and secondary schools, nor our colleges and universities. Instead, we'll get "discussions" of the "poor, downtrodden Japanese, who if we had only felt more for we could have had peace."

Snort. These people are useful idiot Chamberlains at best, and willing turncoat traitors at worst.

Every free person, especially Americans, should take the time to tell their children tonight about the battle. Let it not be forgotten.

[Chemist_Geek]

The Japs were striving to drive off the American fleet support with all their antics so the Marines on-shore would be stranded to die on the vine at the mercy of the enemy, but we were too strong - we had to be - and it's darn good that we were.

United States Pacific Fleet as of 26 March 2002:
- Only six aircraft carriers (CVN, CV)
- Only 21 Amphibious ships (LHD, LHA, LSD, LST)
- Only 1,434 aircraft, USN and USMC, airplanes and helicopters
- Only 55,583 Marines.

I am worried about our strength.

[NormsRevenge]

Here's a good write-up on battle Okinawa Battle

[WhiskeyPapa]

In the "Sands of Iwo Jima" the first big battle scene is Tarawa.

I was at the 3rd Mardiv reunion in 1990 (although I was never in 3rd Mardiv) and there were some vets there from the Third Tank Battalion at Iwo, I think it was. Their Sherman tanks were heavily shelled by Jap 120MM mortars. The Sherman had an escape hatch in the very bottom of the floor. Somehow this escape hatch allowed some shrapnel from this very heavy shelling into the tank, or itself generated some shrapnel. The assistant driver was wounded as he sat inside the tank. According to one of the vets, he said, "Oh my God! I'm shot in the ass, how can I go home now!?"

Walt

[tarawa]

This was one of the first major opposed landings in WWII. The training and lead-up time for later landings would have been shortened, due to now we knew more about what to give priority to in training, and more about what really did not need to be considered. When training for a landing at Tarawa, we would probably have trained for a lot of unnecessary eventualities, due to we really had no idea what to expect.

[WhiskeyPapa]

You probably know that the amphibian tractors were never designed for beach assault. They were designed strictly for adminstrative runs from ship to shore -- a cargo carrier. Some of the ones at Tarawa had some field fitted armor, but this was just another thing that the Marines did for mission accomplishment no matter what. Second MarDiv was just an awesome unit to take that island.

Semper Fidelis

Walt