Marines were forced to abandon their landing crafts and wade through chest-deep water amidst enemy fire. Seventh Fleet © 2020 A&E Television Networks, LLC. Of the roughly 12,000 2nd Marine Division Marines on Tarawa, 3,166 officers and men became casualties.The Battle of Tarawa would be the first of many amphibious landings made by the United States Marine Corps during World War 2. (As part of Operation Galvanic, the U.S. would also send a smaller force t… Naval and air bombardments were planned for the next morning with the goal of weakening Japan’s defenses and clearing the way for 18,000 U.S. Marines to seize the island. Despite massing the largest invasion fleet to date, the Americans suffered heavy casualties during and after landing on November 20. These landing crafts, armed with machine guns and carrying 20 troops each, were able to crawl over shallow reefs and other barriers.The highly coordinated U.S. battle plan at Betio relied on the precise timing of several key elements to succeed, but almost from the beginning there were problems. A further 2,188 (102 officers and 2,086 men) men were wounded. The Japanese runway divided the island into a north and southern half.The initial invasion commenced at 0900 local time a tad later than expected and saw a number of Marines stuck on the reef approximately 500 yards off-shore. The Battle of Tarawa was fought November 20-23, 1943, during World War II (1939-1945) and saw American forces launch their first offensive into the central Pacific. The Marines moved inland, blasting surviving enemy emplacements with grenades, demolition packs and flamethrowers.On day three of the battle, November 22, the Marines fought on, destroying several Japanese pillboxes and fortifications. These color photographs capture life after the bloodbath in which American troops are relaxing and enjoying. Both sides prepared extensively for the fighting on Tarawa though the Americans did so from a position of ignorance.Tarawa is an atoll made up of fifteen small islands in the shape of a triangle, their total land area only twelve square miles. The Japanese sought to converge three naval forces on Leyte Gulf, and successfully diverted the U.S. Third Fleet with a decoy. On April 1, 1945—Easter Sunday—the Navy’s Fifth Fleet and more than 180,000 U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps troops descended on the Pacific island of Okinawa The Battle of Midway was an epic clash between the U.S. Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy that played out six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. By the end of the first day, 5,000 Marines had landed at Betio while at least another 1,500 had perished in the process.On the morning of November 21, the second day of fighting, unexpectedly low tides continued to plague the U.S. assault. Measuring around two miles long and a half-mile wide, the island of Betio was crisscrossed with defenses: 100 pillboxes (dug-in concrete bunkers), seawalls, an extensive trench system for defensive movements and an airstrip were supported by coastal guns, antiaircraft guns, heavy and light machine guns and light tanks. During the 76 hour battle from November 20-23, 1943, on that small Pacific Island, about 1,700 U.S. personnel were killed, and another 2,100 were wounded. These were heavily defended and would require land-based bombers for the Americans to have a shot at victory.

In order to start an attack on these islands, however, the road to invasion had to start far to the east at Tarawa.The invasion force for the Battle of Tarawa consisted of 17 aircraft carriers (6 CVs, 6 CVLs, and 6 CVEs), 12 battleships, 8 heavy and four light cruisers, 66 destroyers, and 36 transport vessels.

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