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Action Adventure / For God and Country: a story of the 2nd Marine Division and the battle for Tarawa Atoll: 20-28 November, 1943 (Analysis)
Ryan’s advance continued along the coast. The next targets in front of them were three Type 41 pedestal-mounted 80-mm coastal guns. The huge swarm of men moved through the palm trees at a rapid pace taking shots from snipers and regulars on the beach. As they traveled they returned fire at the targets they could make out. They were making good progress, as little enemy resistance was being offered. As they approached the guns, shots rang from the beach. Machine gun fire was being sent in their direction and Vannover instructed his men to take cover behind the trees. The units ahead opened fire on the gun position. The fire-fight was becoming intense, as the defenders scrambled to save their guns. Vannover took his men onto the beach 50 yards down from the emplacements and they inched forward to get in better range to dislodge the defenders. They were not alone as other platoons again followed suit. In between them and the first 80mm gun position were the machine gun nests that hampered the Battalion’s advance. As they got closer they opened up on them catching them in a cross fire, as units in the dense palm trees opened fire on them as well. The small number of defenders were not enough to halt the American advance. Peter and his comrades steadily kept the heat up on the nests as the closer units tossed grenades onto the beach.The rapid fire of the guns kept Vannover’s men pinned down. While they exchanged gunfire, the forward units assaulted the coastal guns. The Sherman tanks were called up and lined their sights on the Japanese targets. Machine gun nest number one was hit by a blast from the hulks cannon and silenced. Vannover’s men next occupied that position. Lt. McPherson took a group of men and moved toward the trees firing his Springfield carbine as he went, while Vannover and the others dove into the decimated nest. Behind the cover it offered, they opened fire on the remaining one. Peter, in the group with Vannover, reloaded his M1 and continued to empty it at the defenders. With no heavy hand held weapons the task of dislodging the enemy troops was becoming tedious. Running out of grenades they faced a further stalemate. It was a standoff that the Japanese could not hope to win as the Sherman tank moved forward and got a bead on their position as well. The rounds from it’s cannon let the Japanese know they were in trouble and the remaining men soon evacuated the post. Vannover’s men let out a loud whoop as battle was beginning to prove them worthy.
*
In 1949 General Holland M. Smith of the U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.) admitted: “From the very beginning the decision of the Joint Chiefs to seize Tarawa was a mistake and from their initial mistake grew the terrible drama of errors, errors of omission rather than commission, resulting in these needless casualties.” In mid November the aged battleship USS Maryland, who underwent construction in 1916, was steaming to the north as flagship of Task Force 53 (TF 53), the Southern Attack Force. Two years earlier, the ship had been left a smoldering wreck in Battleship Row at Ford Island in Pearl Harbor. The only reason she hadn’t been sunk was because the battleship Oaklahoma took the brunt of the attack with three torpedoes in one minute and two more moments later. The Oaklahoma soon sank, and aft of the Maryland, the battleships West Virginia and Arizona burned. Now, the repaired and refitted Maryland arrived in the South Pacific for reentry into the war effort, even though she had been reported sunk by Radio Tokyo on five separate occasions preceding Pearl Harbor. Aboard the vessel, Rear Admiral Harry W. Hill commanded the task force. He was lean and quick as if still in the Naval Academy. He’d served on the Maryland before, now he was the commander of the entire armada that surrounded the flagship. At midnight Saturday, November 20, 1943, the Admiral ordered a 45 degree right turn, and the thirty eight ships of the attack force adopted a new course. The ships moved on in the darkness to avoid detection as they approached their enemy. However, as they moved billions of tiny sea creatures lit their miniature laterns in fear and from above the scene looked like arrows pointing to a target to a Japanese pilot in a Mitsubishi Zero-1 medium bomber. However, they were not spotted as no bombers or reconnaissance aircraft appeared, and the wake of the convoy was small as they were limited to under 14 knots because of the slow transport ships. The previous morning, a Japanese reconnaissance plane was shot down after it had been spotted by radar 60 miles west of the task force by a combat air patrol from the carrier Suwannee, but no one knew if the plane had radioed it’s headquarters or not. The escort destroyers made a submarine contact the night before and attacked it with depth charges. The craft disappeared from the sonar, however it is uncertain whether or not it was destroyed by the U.S. vessels. Aboard the transport ships, opinions of the Marines over what the landing on Tarawa would be like were divided. Some thought it would be like Guadalcanal, where the only casualty was a Marine who cut himself opening a coconut. Others thought it might be like Kiska, where the Army charged through the icy fog of Alaska to seize the remote island, and found that the defenders had slipped away in the murky darkness of night.
Betio island, pronounced (Bayshio) the Atoll’s only strategically significant target, had been bombed for days by B-24 Liberators of the Army’s
Seventh Air Force. Because of the long distance to the Gilbert islands, of which Tarawa Atoll was member, only 259 sorties had been made by land-based aircraft, including the Marshal islands as well in November 1943, compared to the 2,284 of carrier based aircraft. Their total number of bombs dropped was four times higher as well, although both groups did little significant damage. Every day a week preceding the landing on Betio, Liberators hit all surrounding airfields they could reach to prevent interference with the invasion and slow down the buildup of Japanese planes in the area.
Along with the convoy were two other battleships: The Tennessee and Colorado, both twenty or more years old, the cruisers Porland and Indianapolis, both ten years old, the Santa Fe, Birmingham, and Mobile, all new light cruisers, 21 destroyers, and five carriers. The carriers housed 134 planes in all.
Earlier Rear Admiral Howard F. Klingman, commanding the Gunfire Support Group that contained three battleships, three light and two heavy cruisers, and nine destoyers, had stated in a briefing, “It is not our intention to wreck the island. We do not intend to destroy it. Gentlemen, we will obliterate it!” A group of marines concluded they would take the island in eight hours, being that it was about one-third the size of New York’s Central Park. However, not everyone was as optimistic. Major General Julian Smith estimated that about two thirds of the Japanese defenders would be left after the bombardments. Colonel David Shoup, who would later command all ground forces on Betio, estimated that the number would be about eighty percent. Colonel Meritt A. “Red Mike” Edson, the Second Marine Division’s chief of staff opined, “We cannot count on heavy naval and air bombardment to kill all the Japs on Tarawa, or even a large portion of them. Neither can we count on taking Tarawa, small as is is, in a few hours.”
On the eve of the landing, Major Gen. Julian C. Smith, commander of the Second Marine Division, told his men from the flagship. ”We are the first American troops to attack a defended atoll. What we do here will set a standard for all future operations in the Central Pacific area.” The message concluded, “I know you are well trained and fit for the tasks assigned to you. You will quickly overrun the Japanese forces; you will decisively defeat and destroy the treacherous enemies of our country; your success will add new laurels to the glories of our Corps. Good luck and God bless you all.”
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YOU CHOOSE YOUR WORDS WISELY, IN DESCRIBING THE SCENERY. THEY PAINT A VERY VIVD PICTURE OF WHAT IS GOING ON AND DON’T LEAVE MUCH FOR THE READER TO IMAGINE. WHICH COULD BE A GOOD OR BAD THING DEPENDING ON HOW YOU LOOK AT IT. GOOD JOB, KEEP GOING.
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Very nice action sequences and detail. I liked how the story all came together and how it all worked well to reveal what war is like. I can see how you got this published, exquisite work.
I started to get engrossed in this quite easily, though the only thing that threw me a little, was relating back to facts in some areas only. I liked the facts, as it adds weight to the book, but I just had to reread them sometimes. Other than that, I could read this and actually make put images in my head due to the stats and factualality you have put in!
Great Work!!!! And well done on getting published!
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This was pretty solid. I didn’t know we fought with Sherman tanks against Japan. I learn somnething new everyday. Very good. Good luck selling it. I know it’s not easy. God bless! Todd Ewing
Certainly packed full of action. Read a little wooden for me, though and the lack of paragraghs was confusing. Overall good read, though.
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