Part 4
At this point, Julian Smith’s communications failed him again. At 1740, he received a faint message that Hermle had finally reached the pier and was under fire. Ten minutes later, Smith ordered Hermle to take command of all forces ashore. To his subsequent chagrin, Hermle never received this word. Nor did Smith know his message failed to get through. Hermle stayed at the pier, sending runners to Shoup (who unceremoniously told him to “get the hell out from under that pier!”) and trying with partial success to unscrew the two-way movement of casualties out to sea and supplies to shore.
[Illustration:
Marine Corps Historical Center Combat Art Collection
_“Tarawa, H-Hour, D-Day, Beach Red.” Detail from a painting in acrylic colors by Col Charles H. Waterhouse, USMCR._]
[Illustration: _This aerial photograph, taken at 1406 on D-Day, shows the long pier on the north side of the island which divided Red Beach Three, left, from Red Beach Two, where “a man could lift his hand and get it shot off” in the intense fire. Barbed wire entanglements are visible off both beaches. A grounded Japanese landing craft is tied to the west side of the pier. Faintly visible in the right foreground, a few Marines wade from a disabled LVT towards the pier’s limited safety and shelter._
Marine Corps Personal Papers ]
Throughout the long day Colonel Hall and his regimental staff had languished in their LCVPs adjacent to Hays’ LT 1/8 at the line of departure, “cramped, wet, hungry, tired and a large number ... seasick.” In late afternoon, Smith abruptly ordered Hall to land his remaining units on a new beach on the northeast tip of the island at 1745 and work west towards Shoup’s ragged lines. This was a tremendous risk. Smith’s overriding concern that evening was a Japanese counterattack from the eastern tail of the island against his left flank (Crowe and Ruud). Once he had been given the 6th Marines, Smith admitted he was “willing to sacrifice a battalion landing team” if it meant saving the landing force from being overrun during darkness.
[Illustration:
LtGen Julian C. Smith Collection
_Marines try to drag a wounded comrade to safety and medical treatment on D-Day._]
Fortunately, as it turned out, Hall never received this message from Smith. Later in the afternoon, a float plane reported to Smith that a unit was crossing the line of departure and heading for the left flank of Red Beach Two. Smith and Edson assumed it was Hall and Hays going in on the wrong beach. The fog of war: the movement reported was the beginning of Rixey’s artillerymen moving ashore. The 8th Marines spent the night in its boats, waiting for orders. Smith did not discover this fact until early the next morning.
[Illustration: _Col Michael P. Ryan, USMC, wears the Navy Cross awarded to him at Tarawa. Ryan, the junior major in the Division, was instrumental in securing the western end of Betio, thereby enabling the first substantial reinforcements to land intact._
Marine Corps Historical Collection ]
On Betio, Shoup was pleased to receive at 1415 an unexpected report from Major Ryan that several hundred Marines and a pair of tanks had penetrated 500 yards beyond Red Beach One on the western end of the island. This was by far the most successful progress of the day, and the news was doubly welcome because Shoup, fearing the worst, had assumed Schoettel’s companies and the other strays who had veered in that direction had been wiped out. Shoup, however, was unable to convey the news to Smith.
Ryan’s composite troops had indeed been successful on the western end. Learning quickly how best to operate with the medium tanks, the Marines carved out a substantial beachhead, overrunning many Japanese turrets and pillboxes. But aside from the tanks, Ryan’s men had nothing but infantry weapons. Critically, they had no flamethrowers or demolitions. Ryan had learned from earlier experience in the Solomons that “positions reduced only with grenades could come alive again.” By late afternoon, he decided to pull back his thin lines and consolidate. “I was convinced that without flamethrowers or explosives to clean them out we had to pull back ... to a perimeter that could be defended against counterattack by Japanese troops still hidden in the bunkers.”
The fundamental choice faced by most other Marines on Betio that day was whether to stay put along the beach or crawl over the seawall and carry the fight inland. For much of the day the fire coming across the top of those coconut logs was so intense it seemed “a man could lift his hand and get it shot off.” Late on D-Day, there were many too demoralized to advance. When Major Rathvon McC. Tompkins, bearing messages from General Hermle to Colonel Shoup, first arrived on Red Beach Two at the foot of the pier at dusk on D-Day, he was appalled at the sight of so many stragglers. Tompkins wondered why the Japanese “didn’t use mortars on the first night. People were lying on the beach so thick you couldn’t walk.”
Conditions were congested on Red Beach One, as well, but there was a difference. Major Crowe was everywhere, “as cool as ice box lettuce.” There were no stragglers. Crowe constantly fed small groups of Marines into the lines to reinforce his precarious hold on the left flank. Captain Hoffman of 3/8 was not displeased to find his unit suddenly integrated within Crowe’s 2/8. And Crowe certainly needed help as darkness began to fall. “There we were,” Hoffman recalled, “toes in the water, casualties everywhere, dead and wounded all around us. But finally a few Marines started inching forward, a yard here, a yard there.” It was enough. Hoffman was soon able to see well enough to call in naval gunfire support 50 yards ahead. His Marines dug in for the night.
West of Crowe’s lines, and just inland from Shoup’s command post, Captain William T. Bray’s Company B, 1/2, settled in for the expected counterattacks. The company had been scattered in Kyle’s bloody landing at mid-day. Bray reported to Kyle that he had men from 12 to 14 different units in his company, including several sailors who swam ashore from sinking boats. The men were well armed and no longer strangers to each other, and Kyle was reassured.
[Illustration:
U.S. Navy Combat Art Collection
_“The Hard Road to Triumph,” a sketch by Kerr Eby. The action shows Maj Crowe’s LT 2/8 trying to expand its beachhead near the contested Burns-Philp pier._]
Altogether, some 5,000 Marines had stormed the beaches of Betio on D-Day. Fifteen hundred of these were dead, wounded, or missing by nightfall. The survivors held less than a quarter of a square mile of sand and coral. Shoup later described the location of his beachhead lines the night of D-Day as “a stock market graph.” His Marines went to ground in the best fighting positions they could secure, whether in shellholes inland or along the splintered seawall. Despite the crazy-quilt defensive positions and scrambled units, the Marines’ fire discipline was superb. The troops seemed to share a certain grim confidence; they had faced the worst in getting ashore. They were quietly ready for any sudden _banzai_ charges in the dark.
Offshore, the level of confidence diminished. General Julian Smith on _Maryland_ was gravely concerned. “This was the crisis of the battle,” he recalled. “Three-fourths of the Island was in the enemy’s hands, and even allowing for his losses he should have had as many troops left as we had ashore.” A concerted Japanese counterattack, Smith believed, would have driven most of his forces into the sea. Smith and Hill reported up the chain of command to Turner, Spruance, and Nimitz: “Issue remains in doubt.” Spruance’s staff began drafting plans for emergency evacuation of the landing force.
The expected Japanese counterattack did not materialize. The principal dividend of all the bombardment turned out to be the destruction of Admiral Shibasaki’s wire communications. The Japanese commander could not muster his men to take the offensive. A few individuals infiltrated through the Marine lines to swim out to disabled tanks and LVTs in the lagoon, where they waited for the morning. Otherwise, all was quiet.
[Illustration: _Marines of Landing Teams 2/8 and 3/8 advance forward beyond the beach._
LtGen Julian C. Smith Collection ]
The main struggle throughout the night of D-Day was the attempt by Shoup and Hermle to advise Julian Smith of the best place to land the reserves on D+1. Smith was amazed to learn at 0200 that Hall and Hays were in fact not ashore but still afloat at the line of departure, awaiting orders. Again, he ordered Combat Team Eight (-) to land on the eastern tip of the island, this time at 0900 on D+1. Hermle finally caught a boat to one of the destroyers in the lagoon to relay Shoup’s request to the commanding general to land reinforcements on Red Beach Two. Smith altered Hall’s orders accordingly, but he ordered Hermle back to the flagship, miffed at his assistant for not getting ashore and taking command. But Hermle had done Smith a good service in relaying the advice from Shoup. As much as the 8th Marines were going to bleed in the morning’s assault, a landing on the eastern end of the island would have been an unmitigated catastrophe. Reconnaissance after the battle discovered those beaches to be the most intensely mined on the island.
[Illustration:
INTELLIGENCE MAP BITITU (BETIO) ISLAND TARAWA ATOLL, GILBERT ISLANDS SITUATION 1800 D-DAY
NOTE: LINES ARE GENERAL INDICATION ONLY. GAPS WERE COVERED BY SMALL GROUPS AND BY FIRE. SECONDARY LINES WERE ESTABLISHED WHERE POSSIBLE BEHIND FRONT LINES.
TAKEN FROM 2D MAR DIV SPECIAL ACTION REPORT ]
[Sidebar (page 10): LVT-2 and LVT(A)2 Amphibian Tractors
The LVT-2, popularly known as the Water Buffalo, was built to improve upon shortcomings in the design of the Marine Corps’ initial amphibian vehicle, the LVT-1. The new vehicle featured a redesigned suspension system with rubber-tired road wheels and torsion springs for improved stability and a smoother ride. The power train was standardized with that of the M3A1 Stuart light tank. This gave the LVT-2 greater power and reliability than its predecessor and, combined with new “W”-shaped treads, gave it greater propulsion on land and in the water. The new vehicle also could carry 1,500 pounds more cargo than the original LVT-1.
[Illustration:
Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 63646
_LVT-2 comes ashore on Green Beach on approximately D+2_]
The LVT-2 entered production in June 1942, but did not see combat until Tarawa in November 1943. The Marines used a combination of LVT-1s and LVT-2s in the assault on Betio. The 50 LVT-2s used at Tarawa were modified in Samoa just before the battle with 3/8-inch boiler plates installed around the cab for greater protection from small arms fire and shell fragments. Despite the loss of 30 of these vehicles to enemy fire at Tarawa, the improvised armor was considered promising and led to a call for truly armored LVTs.
The LVT(A)2 [“A” for armored] requested by the U.S. Army was a version which saw limited use with the Marine Corps. The LVT(A)2 had factory-installed armor plating on the hull and cab to resist heavy machine gun fire. The new version appeared identical to the LVT-2 with the exception of armored drivers’ hatches. With legitimate armor protection, the LVT(A)2 could function as an assault vehicle in the lead waves of a landing. The armored amphibian vehicle provided excellent service when it was introduced to Marine operations on New Britain.
More than 3,000 LVT-2s and LVT(A)2s were manufactured during World War II. These combat vehicles proved to be valuable assets to Marine Corps assault teams throughout the Pacific campaign, transporting thousands of troops and tons of equipment. The overall design, however, left some operational deficiencies. For one thing, the vehicles lacked a ramp. All troops and equipment had to be loaded and unloaded over the gunwales. This caused problems in normal field use and was particularly hazardous during an opposed landing. This factor would lead to the further development of amphibian tractors in the LVT family during the war.
_Compiled by Second Lieutenant Wesley L. Feight, USMC_ ]
[Sidebar (page 14): ‘The Singapore Guns’
The firing on Betio had barely subsided before apocryphal claims began to appear in print that the four eight-inch naval rifles used as coastal defense guns by the Japanese were the same ones captured from the British at the fall of Singapore. Many prominent historians unwittingly perpetuated this story, among them the highly respected Samuel Eliot Morison.
In 1977, however, British writer William H. Bartsch published the results of a recent visit to Tarawa in the quarterly magazine _After the Battle_. Bartsch personally examined each of the four guns and discovered markings indicating manufacture by Vickers, the British ordnance company. The Vickers company subsequently provided Bartsch records indicating the four guns were part of a consignment of 12 eight-inch, quick-firing guns which were sold in 1905 to the Japanese during their war with Russia. Further investigation by Bartsch at the Imperial War Museum produced the fact that there were no eight-inch guns captured by the Japanese at Singapore. In short, the guns at Tarawa came from a far more legitimate, and older, transaction with the British.
The eight-inch guns fired the opening rounds in the battle of Tarawa, but were not by themselves a factor in the contest. Earlier bombing raids may have damaged their fire control systems. Rapid counterbattery fire from American battleships took out the big guns in short order, although one of them maintained an intermittent, if inaccurate, fire throughout D+1. Colonel Shoup stated emphatically that the 2d Marine Division was fully aware of the presence of eight-inch guns on Betio as early as mid-August 1943. By contrast, the division intelligence annex to Shoup’s operation order, updated nine days before the landing, discounts external reports that the main guns were likely to be as large as eight-inch, insisting instead that “they are probably not more than 6-inch.” Prior knowledge notwithstanding, the fact remains that many American officers were unpleasantly surprised to experience major caliber near-misses bracketing the amphibious task force early on D-Day.
[Illustration: _Destruction of one of the four Japanese eight-inch Vickers guns on Betio was caused by naval gunfire and air strikes._
Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 63618 ] ]
[Sidebar (page 22): Sherman Medium Tanks at Tarawa
One company of M4-A2 Sherman medium tanks was assigned to the 2d Marine Division for Operation Galvanic from the I Marine Amphibious Corps. The 14 tanks deployed from Noumea in early November 1943, on board the new dock landing ship _Ashland_ (LSD 1), joining Task Force 53 enroute to the Gilberts. Each 34-ton, diesel-powered Sherman was operated by a crew of five and featured a gyro-stabilized 75mm gun and three machine guns. Regrettably, the Marines had no opportunity to operate with their new offensive assets until the chaos of D-Day at Betio.
[Illustration:
LtGen Julian C. Smith Collection
_M-4A2 Sherman tank (“Charlie”) of 3d Platoon, Company C, Medium Tanks, was disabled inland from Red Beach Three by mutually supporting Japanese antitank guns firing from well-dug in positions not too far from the beaches._]
The Shermans joined Wave 5 of the ship-to-shore assault. The tanks negotiated the gauntlet of Japanese fire without incident, but five were lost when they plunged into unseen shell craters in the turbid water. Ashore, the Marines’ lack of operating experience with medium tanks proved costly to the survivors. Local commanders simply ordered the vehicles inland to attack targets of opportunity unsupported. All but two were soon knocked out of action. Enterprising salvage crews worked throughout each night to cannibalize severely damaged vehicles in order to keep other tanks operational. Meanwhile, the Marines learned to employ the tanks within an integrated team of covering infantry and engineers. The Shermans then proved invaluable in Major Ryan’s seizure of Green Beach on D+1, the attacks of Major Jones and Major Crowe on D+2, and the final assault by Lieutenant Colonel McLeod on D+3. Early in the battle, Japanese 75mm antitank guns were deadly against the Shermans, but once these weapons were destroyed, the defenders could do little more than shoot out the periscopes with sniper fire.
Colonel Shoup’s opinion of the medium tanks was ambivalent. His disappointment in the squandered deployment and heavy losses among the Shermans on D-Day was tempered by subsequent admiration for their tactical role ashore. Time and again, Japanese emplacements of reinforced concrete, steel, and sand were reduced by direct fire from the tanks’ main guns, despite a “prohibitive ammunition expenditure.” Shoup also reported that “the so-called crushing effect of medium tanks, as a tactical measure, was practically negligible in this operation, and I believe no one should place any faith in eliminating fortifications by running over them with a tank.”
The Marines agreed that the advent of the Shermans rendered their light tanks obsolete. “Medium tanks are just as easy to get ashore, and they pack greater armor and firepower,” concluded one battalion commander. By the war’s end, the American ordnance industry had manufactured 48,064 Sherman tanks for employment by the U.S. Army and Marine Corps in all theaters of combat. ]
_D+1 at Betio,_
_21 November 1943_
The tactical situation on Betio remained precarious for much of the 2d day. Throughout the morning, the Marines paid dearly for every attempt to land reserves or advance their ragged beachheads.
The reef and beaches of Tarawa already looked like a charnel house. Lieutenant Lillibridge surveyed what he could see of the beach at first light and was appalled: “... a dreadful sight, bodies drifting slowly in the water just off the beach, junked amtracks.” The stench of dead bodies covered the embattled island like a cloud. The smell drifted out to the line of departure, a bad omen for the troops of 1st Battalion, 8th Marines, getting ready to start their run to the beach.
Colonel Shoup, making the most of faulty communications and imperfect knowledge of his scattered forces, ordered each landing team commander to attack: Kyle and Jordan to seize the south coast, Crowe and Ruud to reduce Japanese strongholds to their left and front, Ryan to seize all of Green Beach. Shoup’s predawn request to General Smith, relayed through Major Tompkins and General Hermle, specified the landing of Hays’ LT 1/8 on Red Beach Two “_close to the pier_.” That key component of Shoup’s request did not survive the tenuous communications route to Smith. The commanding general simply ordered Colonel Hall and Major Hays to land on Red Two at 0615. Hall and Hays, oblivious of the situation ashore, assumed 1/8 would be making a covered landing.
[Illustration:
U.S. Navy Combat Art Collection
_“The Wave Breaks on the Beach,” a sketch by Kerr Eby. The scene represents the unwelcome greeting received by LT 1/8 off Red Beach Two on the morning of D+1._]
The Marines of LT 1/8 had spent the past 18 hours embarked in LCVPs. During one of the endless circles that night, Chaplain W. Wyeth Willard passed Colonel Hall’s boat and yelled, “What are they saving us for, the Junior Prom?” The troops cheered when the boats finally turned for the beach.
Things quickly went awry. The dodging tides again failed to provide sufficient water for the boats to cross the reef. Hays’ men, surprised at the obstacle, began the 500-yard trek to shore, many of them dangerously far to the right flank, fully within the beaten zone of the multiple guns firing from the re-entrant strongpoint. “It was the worst possible place they could have picked,” said “Red Mike” Edson. Japanese gunners opened an unrelenting fire. Enfilade fire came from snipers who had infiltrated to the disabled LVTs offshore during the night. At least one machine gun opened up on the wading troops from the beached inter-island schooner _Niminoa_ at the reef’s edge. Hays’ men began to fall at every hand.
The Marines on the beach did everything they could to stop the slaughter. Shoup called for naval gunfire support. Two of Lieutenant Colonel Rixey’s 75mm pack howitzers (protected by a sand berm erected during the night by a Seabee bulldozer) began firing at the blockhouses at the Red 1/Red 2 border, 125 yards away, with delayed fuses and high explosive shells. A flight of F4F Wildcats attacked the hulk of the _Niminoa_ with bombs and machine guns. These measures helped, but for the large part the Japanese caught Hays’ lead waves in a withering crossfire.
[Illustration: _Readily disassembled and reassembled, the 75mm pack howitzers of 1st Battalion, 10th Marines, were ideal for Tarawa’s restrictive hydrography. The battalion manhandled its guns ashore under heavy fire late on D-Day. Thereafter, these Marines provided outstanding fire support at exceptionally short ranges to the infantry._
LtGen Julian C. Smith Collection ]
Correspondent Robert Sherrod watched the bloodbath in horror. “One boat blows up, then another. The survivors start swimming for shore, but machine gun bullets dot the water all around them.... This is worse, far worse than it was yesterday.” Within an hour, Sherrod could count “at least two hundred bodies which do not move at all on the dry flats.”
[Illustration:
LtGen Julian C. Smith Collection
_Navy medical personnel evacuate the wounded from the beachhead on D-Day. This was difficult because there were few places anywhere that Marines could walk upright. The shortage of stretchers compounded the problems of the landing force._]
First Lieutenant Dean Ladd was shot in the stomach shortly after jumping into the water from his boat. Recalling the strict orders to the troops not to stop for the wounded, Ladd expected to die on the spot. One of his riflemen, Private First Class T. F. Sullivan, ignored the orders and saved his lieutenant’s life. Ladd’s rifle platoon suffered 12 killed and 12 wounded during the ship-to-shore assault.
First Lieutenant Frank Plant, the battalion air liaison officer, accompanied Major Hays in the command LCVP. As the craft slammed into the reef, Plant recalled Hays shouting “Men, debark!” as he jumped into the water. The troops that followed were greeted by a murderous fire. Plant helped pull the wounded back into the boat, noting that “the water all around was colored purple with blood.” As Plant hurried to catch up with Major Hays, he was terrified at the sudden appearance of what he took to be Japanese fighters roaring right towards him. These were the Navy Wildcats aiming for the nearby _Niminoa_. The pilots were exuberant but inconsistent: one bomb hit the hulk squarely; others missed by 200 yards. An angry David Shoup came up on the radio: “Stop strafing! Bombing ship hitting own troops!”
At the end, it was the sheer courage of the survivors that got them ashore under such a hellish crossfire. Hays reported to Shoup at 0800 with about half his landing team. He had suffered more than 300 casualties; others were scattered all along the beach and the pier. Worse, the unit had lost all its flamethrowers, demolitions, and heavy weapons. Shoup directed Hays to attack westward, but both men knew that small arms and courage alone would not prevail against fortified positions.
Shoup tried not to let his discouragement show, but admitted in a message to General Smith “the situation does not look good ashore.”
The combined forces of Majors Crowe and Ruud on Red Beach Three were full of fight and had plenty of weapons. But their left flank was flush against three large Japanese bunkers, each mutually supporting, and seemingly unassailable. The stubby Burns-Philp commercial pier, slightly to the east of the main pier, became a bloody “no-man’s land” as the forces fought for its possession. Learning from the mistakes of D-Day, Crowe insured that his one surviving Sherman tank was always accompanied by infantry.
[Illustration: _Marines under fire along Red Beach Three near the Burns-Philp pier hug the ground as Navy planes continually pound the enemy strongpoints in front of them._