They had made the mistake of coming in on low tide.
Next, they heard a roar in the air and saw dozens of torpedo bombers, dive bombers, and fighters called in to stage another attack, which drew no discernible resistance from the ground.Īs the Higgens landing craft made their way in, they came to an abrupt halt on a reef. There was so much rapid firepower from the ships that it looked to some like a machine-gun burst.Īfter the marines witnessed the hail of fire, many concluded that little could be left of the enemy. Marines gathered on the decks to watch the fireworks along the shoreline. The following salvos were so powerful that they caused explosions that lit up the sky. Just after 5 a.m., the first shot at the Betio coast was fired from the American ships. The islet was a tough Japanese fortification of pillboxes, bunkers, and Barbed Wire protecting an airfield, occupied by the main concentration of their forces, numbering 4,700 soldiers and construction workers. battleships and destroyers staged a major artillery assault on the Tarawa islet of Betio, which was about three miles long and a half mile across. Marines also tried to avoid Japanese sniper fire by disembarking from assault boats farther from shore, and some drowned in the deeper water from the weight of their ammunition belts. planning, a battle in which marines waded endlessly to shore - at low tide - over razor-sharp coral under withering firepower. The Battle of Tarawa was partly a product of poor U.S. push through the central Pacific to the Philippine Islands. Tarawa`s military significance lay in its strategic position as the entrance of the U.S. Marines of the Second Division after a bloody 76-hour battle. The islet group of Tarawa, about 2,400 miles southwest of Hawaii, was held by the Japanese from 1941 to 1943 during World War II, and it fell to U.S.
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