Dimitri’s Reviews > Utmost Savagery: The Three Days of Tarawa > Status Update

& 120mm cannon... there was much cross-weapon training for all infantry: among others Pioneer units (also from Navy) who "fought as hard as Germans" as well as naval heavy gunners & tankers. ...So yes, the Navy provided MOST of the hard eggs in the Gilberts basket to stop the Pacific perimeter from shrinking.

The Marines were up against their counterparts, the so-named "rikusentai" but few veterans of Wake Island & the Solomons campaign could warn'em about this high quality Imperial naval infantry. The original units were disbanded upon depletion, but their successors were consequently veteran-heavy. The defensive doctrine shift in 41-43 meant heavier firepower instead of riflemen mobility, with WWIesque 70mm howitser...

"Under the precept of amphibious doctrine, the naval strike force commander retains full responsibility for the assault until the landing force commander [ 2nd Marine division] is securely established ashore".
Under the precept of Japanese doctrine, the army was the egg for the proverbial omelette. A week of pin-down attrition by the (reinforced) Tarawa Garrison was to be followed by a 1905 style naval stroke.

The Air War distinguished the South Pacific from the Central Pacific. In the South, land-based air support was always used & large land masses could be struck at undefended points. In Central, you brought your own carrier planes & entire logistics in a "sea-going Blitzkrieg" as Nimitz named it. Nobody did it better than Spruance, of Midway fame.

A 700m long pier splitting the lagoon had been designated the first target, since machine guns could spray all passing boats on both sides. Marine snipers & engineers nibbled away at it with everything in their arsenal, from flamethrowers to knives, chewing down one improvised blockade after anothern , yet they couldn't swallow the whole thing.

It was small comfort to the first wave that they picked the north side of the island, the landing site least expected by the Japanese & incompletely defended.
Like a German 88mm Flak could cook a Sherman, their 75mm AA could brew up an LVT.
Crumbles made it ashore; a mix of infantry, the Shermans in their Pacific debut & radio operators linked to the naval guns offshore.

The Big Problem at Tarawa was the 4 ft draft necessary to carry the various landing craft over the corral reef. Only the Landing Vehicle, Tracked (LVT's) could make truly amphibious shuttle runs, but there were not nearly enough to go around, forcing most Marines to go hundreds of yards like wading ducks, visible as slow-moving dots from an observation airplane.

Betio Island was an obvious target of sorts; the airfield threatened the Anzac/Pearl Harbour lines or could conversely umbrella the Marshalls to support the next American hop. Still with no less than 8 Jap-garrisonned islands identified by submarine periscope, where to attack a hydraesque defence on interior lines? How to attack a coral atol exactly? This type of amphibious target was virgin territory.

The overall Pacific strategy of island-hopping is only straightforward in hindsight. The Germany First principle implied that amphibious vessels - there were never enough to go around in WWI of the crucial types such as the behemoth "Landing Ship, Tank" - were perpetually earmarked for a return to the invasion of Europe [Alexander does not specify if the physical transfer ever occured before cancellation of the plan]

"the crude strip itself was unremarkable but whoever controlled that facility could influence the sealanes to the South Pacific & to the Northwest the approaches to the Marshall Islands."

Why the Gilberts? Central Pacific Campaign was a reboot of Plan Orange: through the Marshalls&Carolines to Formosa&Japan. But the Marshall's were a blank spot on the map & too remote for an photoreconaissance return trip by air.