In his analysis of Marine amphibious operations in the Central Pacific, Col. Joseph H. Alexander referred to that first “storm landing” at Tarawa atoll as a “vital proving ground” for the operations to come.

An operation so complex, with so many working parts, and all of it coming together for the first time, foreordained that the bloody lessons learned at Tarawa would be, as RADM Richmond Kelly Turner later wrote, “goddamned painful.”

Tarawa’s strategic importance may not seem apparent to many today. Viewed from the perspective of 1943, to the Japanese, its possession threatened American gains in the South Pacific; to the US, its seizure would be “the final link in the denial of the South Pacific to Japan.”

Two roads lay into the eastern stretch of the Japanese-controlled Central Pacific: Rabaul-Truk-Marshalls or an advance through the Gilberts to the Marshalls. The cost of seizing the great Japanese bases at Rabaul and Truk was too terrible to contemplate.

Seizure of the Gilberts would shorten the logistics line from Pearl Harbor to Australia, provide bases to support reconnaissance and bombing strikes against the Marshall Islands, and “crack open” the door to the Japanese-held Carolines, enabling carrier strikes on Truk.

That the operation was “necessary,” does not ameliorate its great cost or absolve the many mistakes that were made. Estimates concerning the tides, the height of water over the reefs, the failures of both the naval and air bombardments to neutralize enemy defenses...

...as well as a too-complicated landing plan that required a degree of coordination and luck that even a veteran force would find daunting, all became the subject of intense post-battle debate.

#WWII #Tarawa

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