Part 4

Julian Smith knew little of these events, and he continued striving to piece together the tactical situation ashore. From observation reports from staff officers aloft in the float planes, he concluded that the situation in the early afternoon was desperate. Although elements of five infantry battalions were ashore, their toehold was at best precarious. As Smith later recalled, “the gap between Red 1 and Red 2 had not been closed and the left flank on Red 3 was by no means secure.”

Smith assumed that Shoup was still alive and functioning, but he could ill afford to gamble. For the next several hours the commanding general did his best to influence the action ashore from the flagship. Smith’s first step was the most critical. At 1331 he sent a radio message to General Holland Smith, reporting “situation in doubt” and requesting release of the 6th Marines to division control. In the meantime, having ordered his last remaining landing team (Hays’ 1/8) to the line of departure, Smith began reconstituting an emergency division reserve comprised of bits and pieces of the artillery, engineer, and service troop units.

General Smith at 1343 ordered General Hermle to proceed to the end of the pier, assess the situation and report back. Hermle and his small staff promptly debarked from _Monrovia_ (APA 31) and headed towards the smoking island, but the trip took four hours.

In the meantime, General Smith intercepted a 1458 message from Major Schoettel, still afloat seaward of the reef: “CP located on back of Red Beach 1. Situation as before. Have lost contact with assault elements.” Smith answered in no uncertain terms: “Direct you land at any cost, regain control your battalion and continue the attack.” Schoettel complied, reaching the beach around sunset. It would be well into the next day before he could work his way west and consolidate his scattered remnants.

At 1525, Julian Smith received Holland Smith’s authorization to take control of the 6th Marines. This was good news. Smith now had four battalion landing teams (including 1/8) available. The question then became where to feed them into the fight without getting them chewed to pieces like Ruud’s experience in trying to land 3/8.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[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.

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.

[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.

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.

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.