Tarawa.....November 20, 1943

At least someone thinks it's "excellent", thanks for telling us.

 

It's been my impression that most US pre-war plans took for granted that the Gilberts would still be in British hands is true, but for most of the interwar period that meant that they would neutral. The Orange war plans were mainly for a conflict just between the US and Japan. There was also a Plan Red for war with the British Empire, which was updated as late as 1934-35, and even a Plan Red-Orange for fighting the Anglo-Japanese alliance which existed from 1902 to 1924. It was only in the late 1930s that some of the new series of Rainbow plans began envisioning Britain (or France) as an ally. Of course over the last few years before Pearl Harbor it became evident that we would in all likelihood be fighting together.

 

Good stuff there Carronade. This will give me some new areas to read up on and explore! I have read up on Orange but not the others.

 

Gotta hand it to those combat photogs...running into battle with the first waves, armed with nothing more than a camera and some film canisters. :S! Great short movie, but still seems very heavily censored for what occurred on Tarawa. That beach was a hellish meat-grinder, the film made it look like our guys waded ashore and then just sat and waited (at 6:30ish, there's a shot with a bunch of guys laying on the beach, and you see someone waking around like its just another Sunday stroll....Chesty Puller?). Kinda surprised to see footage containing dead bodies...was this the first time the media was authorized to show US dead? I thought that was at Pelilu...wouldn't be the first time I'd been wrong.

 

Sorry dude, Chesty served in the 7th Marines and 1st Marines, neither of which were at Tarawa.

 

Yes it does Lou.

For anyone interested I highly recommend Alexander's "Utmost Savagery" as probably the best history of the battle. Very readable and corrects many misconceptions. Robert Sherrod's "Tarawa: The Story of a Battle" (1944), is also very good if you're looking for a "you are there" perspective. He made the landings as a correspondant with Time and Life, embedded with the Marines. He is a very good writer and very descriptive.

 

Bumping up this post to the brave men of Tarawa.

 

I just want to thank EVERYONE for their input...learnt HEAPS! Its discussions like this that really gets stories out...

 

Another link:

Hoffman, Lessons of Galvanic

The Legacy And Lessons Of Tarawa | Marine Corps Gazette

And another: The Amphibians Came to Conquer:

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/ACTC/actc-18.html

 

Report of Lt Col P.H. Rixey and Major W.H. Best: Artillery at Tarawa (Originally published November 1944).

The First Battalion, Tenth Marines, equipped with 75-mm pack howitzers and attached to the Second Marines, Second Marine Division, as direct support artillery for that combat team, landed on Betio beach, close behind their brothers-in-arms on that memorable morning, November 20, 1943. Under extremely adverse conditions they effectively accomplished the mission assigned.
Though landed on call under battalion control, firing batteries were embarked on separate transports with normal infantry landing teams of the Second Marines. Headquarters and Service Battery was divided between two ships with one complete Fire Direction Center team on each. The Battalion Commander, Bn-3, Communication Officer, and Bn-2 embarked on the Combat Team command ship.

Artillery at Tarawa | Marine Corps Gazette

 

Good links Chutes but I think the best read is this article Tarawa: The Ultimate Opposed Landing | Marine Corps Gazette. Got to it while reading the other links you posted. Gazette has good stuff, I've been a continuous subscriber to it and Leatherneck since I joined the "crotch" back in '77. The articles author is a retired Marine Corps Colonel that took over from BGen. Simmons when he died as the Marine Corps, "Historian Laureate".

 

Colonel Alexander certainly knows of what he speaks, his book on The Utmost Savagery: Three Days of Tarawa of which I have an autographed copy (gloat) is one the best. I think he brings an understanding of the assault phase and it's difficulties to bear that only a career AAV Officer can put across.


I've been a member of the MCA and subscribed first to LN and then to both LN and MG since 85.

 

I am in the middle of reading Col. Alexander's book, and came to this thread looking to see if one topic had been covered, but in reading through it I didn't see it so let me ask the question.

Col. Alexander states that Edson's plan called for 6,268 combat troops, which would give a 1.66 to 1 edge over the Japanese garrison, though he says conventional wisdom would have been at least 3 to 1, so we would have needed roughly 11,000 men to have the supposedly needed superiority. And again maybe I missed this part, but how precise was our intelligence as to the strength of the garrison? I'm sorry if I missed things that I should have picked up on, but the read is so exciting that I am going through it fast for my first reading and not really highlighting/flagging for going back to re-reference as I typically do I will do that the next time through.

If we would have had an assault force of 11,000 men (or whatever the 3:1 ratio would have come to based on the intelligence estimates) with the dearth of amtracs, would we have taken Betio with less overall casualties due to the superior numbers, or would the marines simply have stacked up in the lagoon for slaughter? Or would they also have attempted to land men on more heavily defended southern beaches, the eastern tip etc in this case, thus spreading out the Japanese defenders somewhat, but again wading into the more heavily mined etc areas? Or would we simply have maintained a much larger reserve that wouldn't get ashore because of the relative shortness of the battle and the steadily declining number of serviceable amtracs?

I'm a little confused by the whole scenario, perhaps I didn't read it clearly enough or perhaps Col. Alexander will clear this up later in the book, but who made the final decision that they would have to go with this invasion if they had only half of what was the conventional wisdom for the needed superiority of troops? It seems like this was all the men that were available, but if the 11,000 were available, would Edson have seen need for that many? Or was it possibly that the island was so small that no Senior officer could comprehend that it could possibly take that many men to take such a small island, regardless of the defenses? I know there are numerous references in both this and "One Square Mile..." that many of the senior officers were overconfident in the success of the pre-invasion bombardment, did this play into this as well?


I see this thread has been somewhat shall we say contentious, so let me stress that I mean absolutely no disrespect to any Marine officer or enlisted man with these questions, I am not placing blame etc, I am simply asking what seems to me to be a logical series of questions that might be answered with the benefit of hindsight that the men making the decisions obviously did not have access to.

 

Hey Dash, I'd say that from your questions you've asked, that you have a pretty darned good understanding of the battle. To answer the intell question, their estimates of the Japanese strength were extremely accurate. IIRC, one of the ways they estimated the number of Japanese personnel was by counting latrines. The Japanese were very strict in following the book on these type things. Regulations call for x number of latrines per y number soldiers, multiply x by y and voila! If you,ve seen the recon photos the latrines were built out over the water and were easy to spot.

 

Info like this is why I wish I had more time to ask questions on this site than I do, I always learn such cool info when I do.

It's pretty amazing that something as seemingly innocuous as your latrines could be used for military intel against you. I suppose this is an example of armies that have their combatants trained under absolute dogmatic conditions leading to easy pickings by an intelligent and observant opponent.

Thanks a lot.