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Tarawa did turn out to be a "productive proving ground" for the amphibious doctrine. In fact every subsequent move in the drive across the central pacific was to be made with the mistakes of Tarawa in mind. The lessons learned and adjustments made to the doctrine helped take the Marshalls twice as fast with half the casualties. The practical lessons of amphibious warfare [at Tarawa] provided for adjustments and improvements in all six parts of the doctrine. But what must be recognized and remembered about Tarawa was that it was the individual marine, his courage, bravery and training which bought the victory and time for adjustment which sold the doctrine. The doctrine may have been sound, and the correct method to seize an enemy base, island or hostile shore, but it was in disarray and failing on Tarawa. It took the Marines to catch and save it from failure; Marines who relied on traditional bedrock foundations of the Corps. Edwin Hoyt put it best, "without the heroism of the Marines at Tarawa, the entire course of the Central Pacific might have changed." Tarawa should not stand as the proof of amphibious doctrine, but as the symbol of raw courage and Marine tradition.

Professor Dirk A. Ballendorf

"the high state of training and discipline of the individual Marine, his morale, and his confidence and determination to continue the attack even though those about him became casualties."

My Uncle was wounded on Iwo Jima and in my research, it looked as if they trained for almost a year or more to attack that particular island.......was one of the lessons of tarawa to spend more time on training or was a year the standard procedure?

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.