Battle of the Gilbert Islands
| date | November 20th bis 24. November 1943 |
|---|---|
| place | Gilbert Islands , Pacific |
| output | American victory |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
|
Raymond A. Spruance (Tarawa) |
Keiji Shibazaki (Tarawa) |
| Troop strength | |
| 50,000 men, including 25,000 landing troops | 5,600 soldiers |
| losses | |
|
around 1,700 dead |
approx. 5,300 dead |
The Battle of the Gilbert Islands , also known as Operation Galvanic , was fought between the troops of Japan and the United States as part of the Pacific War . It lasted from November 20 to November 24, 1943 and ended with an American victory. The conquest of the Gilbert Islands was the first step in the Admiral Nimitz preferred tactic of so-called " Iceland hopping " ( island hopping ) over the small atolls of Micronesia . The battle actually consisted of two independent, but simultaneous amphibious landings on the two atolls Makin and Tarawa . While the fighting on Makin turned out to be less intense for the Americans, there was bitter fighting on Tarawa between around 4,800 Japanese defenders and 18,600 American marines , which resulted in high losses on both sides.
The Americans also chose the Abemama Atoll as a landing destination, as the large lagoon was predestined as a replenishment base for their Pacific fleet advancing towards Japan. Despite a very small Japanese crew of only 25 men, it took the marines three days to secure the atoll (→ Battle of Abemama ).
Leading up to the battle
The islands and archipelagos of the former British colony of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands form a chain of atolls, the highest peaks of which are mostly only a few meters above sea level . At the time of the battle, they were exactly between the important Japanese bases on the Marshall Islands and the Caroline Islands and the American bases in the south. Their conquest was therefore indispensable for the plan to gradually advance on Japan. The actual plan was to occupy Tarawa and Nauru , an island about 500 km west of the Gilbert Islands. An attack on the well-fortified Nauru base would have required more capacity than was available at the time, and so Nauru was given up in favor of Makin, on whose main island Butaritari there was a Japanese base for seaplanes .
The Japanese were aware of the strategic importance of the islands, among other things because of the success of an American attack on Makin by marines detached from two submarines on August 17, 1942. The Tarawa atoll with its military airfield on the westernmost island of Betio was expanded into a fortress: In September 1942, the flight personnel there was supplemented by a garrison of the 6th Yokosuka Marine Special Infantry ( 横須賀 第 6 特別 陸 戦 隊 , Yokosuka dai-6 tokubetsu rikusentai ), which was assigned to the 3rd Special Base Defense ( 第 3 特別 根 拠 地 隊 , dai- 3 tokubetsu konkyochitai ) became. In December, the expansion of the defense positions began. The actual defense plan included support from aircraft as well as warships and submarines from the Japanese bases of Rabaul in the Bismarck Archipelago and Truk on the Caroline Islands . The actual situation in November 1943 did not allow this, however, as all available forces were already tied up by the American operations in the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands .
So the entire burden of defense rested on the troops stationed there. These were on Tarawa: 1,122 men of the 3rd Special Base Defense , 1,497 men of the 7th Sasebo Special Marine Infantry ( 佐世保 第 7 特別 陸 戦 隊 , Sasebo dai-7 tokubetsu rikusentai ) - an elite unit -, 1,247 men of the 111th Engineer Unit ( 第 111 設 営隊 , dai-111 setsueitai ), 970 men (more than half of them Koreans) of the 4th Fleet Pioneer Detachment ( 第 4 艦隊 設 営 派遣 隊 , Dai-4 kantai setsuei hakentai ), and 30 men of the 755th Air Group ( 第 755航空 隊 基地 員 , dai-755 kōkūtai ).
Their defensive plan was to use obstacles on land and water to slow the attackers' landing craft as well as to guide them into narrow alleys to expose them to the concentrated fire of the defenders. The beaches themselves were mined and covered all around by around 500 machine gun nests, while the domestic defenses were designed more to offer protection from American bombing than to provide effective resistance from them.
The American fleet, which crossed the islands in November 1943, exceeded all standards of operations in the Pacific that had been customary up to that time: It comprised 17 aircraft carriers, 6 battleships, 8 heavy cruisers, 4 light cruisers, 66 destroyers and 36 transport ships, spread across several Associations distributed.
Three associations approached from the north: from Task Force (TF) 50, Task Groups 50.1 and 50.2 and Task Force 52 under Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner , which included the aircraft carriers USS Yorktown , USS Lexington , USS Enterprise , and USS Cowpens , USS Belleau Wood and USS Monterey belonged, and the battleships USS North Carolina , USS South Dakota , USS Massachusetts , USS Idaho , USS Mississippi , USS New Mexico and Turner's flagship , the USS Pennsylvania . Then there were the troop transports destined for the attack on Makin and of course an escort from various cruisers and destroyers .
From the south three other large units approached: From Task Force 50, Task Groups 50.3 and 50.4, consisting of the aircraft carriers USS Bunker Hill , USS Essex , USS Independence , USS Saratoga and USS Princeton , as well as TF 53, consisting of the Escort aircraft carriers USS Barnes , USS Suwanee , USS Chenango , USS Sangamon and USS Nassau , along with the troop carriers for the attack on Tarawa and the battleships USS Maryland , USS Tennessee and USS Colorado under Admiral Raymond A. Spruance , who is on his flagship, the Heavy Cruiser USS Indianapolis , included. With this contingent, an extraordinary firepower was raised, with the aim of conquering some islands whose total area did not even correspond to that of Hamburg.
The actual battle had already been preceded by a number of air strikes , firstly to weaken the enemy defenses and secondly to confuse the enemy about his own intentions by attacking the Gilbert and Marshall Islands.
Landing on Tarawa
At 5 a.m., the firefights between ship artillery and coastal guns began. Three quarters of an hour later, however, the ships stopped their fire as planned, so as not to hinder the impending air attack by dive bombers with the rising smoke of their shell impacts, or even to hit their own planes. The bombers arrived a little later than planned . Their crews found that many of the attacked positions had remained intact even after direct hits, a result of the long efforts of the Japanese to secure their positions with thick reinforced concrete walls and ceilings. After this attack, the island was completely covered in smoke and smoke and it had become almost impossible to target point targets like the smaller, well-fortified machine-gun positions of the Japanese.
The Americans soon noticed that the landing craft were beyond the schedule: a strong headwind made it difficult for them to catch up on the lost time and to reach the beach at the scheduled time of 8:30 a.m. The American leadership was forced to correct the estimated time of landing on the beach by 15 and then 30 minutes, which, however, still did not correspond to the realities.
When the ships stopped firing at 8:54 a.m. in order not to endanger the landing of their own troops, the hardest phase of the landing began for them. It would take more than 20 minutes before the first soldiers could step onto the beach. During this period, the slow-moving amphibious vehicles and landing craft remained almost entirely without fire support of their own and were under fire from the remaining Japanese machine guns and cannons. Furthermore, it was shown that at this point in time the coral reef typical of atolls was already protruding from the water in many places due to the ebb tide , which made landing difficult for the larger boats of the later attack waves. Some of the soldiers had to get out of the boats and wade the last 500 meters through waist-high water while they were under fire from the Japanese positions. Others were picked up by the returning amphibious vehicles of the first wave and carried ashore.
The result was a chaotic situation on the three stretches of beach - many groups were dispersed, joined forces with other trains, looking for their commanders. Others drowned deeper under the weight of their equipment. When they finally secured their first positions on land around 10:00 a.m., the Americans soon discovered that almost all radio equipment had been rendered unusable by enemy fire or penetrating salt water.
The Japanese troops on Tarawa, on the other hand, had suffered severe damage from the previous shelling and bombing. Almost all of the larger guns had been destroyed and their crews had died. On some stretches of beach, however, the American advance had almost come to a standstill. At section RED 1, the Japanese defenders were able to bitterly defend themselves against the GIs and cut them off from the rest of the landing forces.
The front lines continued to run in close proximity to the beach. The attempts by the Americans to advance in the direction of the interior of the island were all very slow and lossy. All supply lines between the ships and the positions on land were still under fire by the Japanese. By 11 a.m., the number of amphibious vehicles available had halved. By noon, most of the smoke from the island had cleared, so that reconnaissance flights could be undertaken. The American advance seemed to have stopped, there was no cover on the beaches, and in many places entire platoons of marines lay huddled behind palm trunks or in shell craters. Effective action against the Japanese resistance did not seem possible until it finally succeeded, with high losses, to land some tanks , which were then mainly used as mobile machine-gun positions and cover. So by evening the front line shifted almost to the middle of the island, where the runway of the Japanese airfield was also located.
During the night, the Japanese shifted some positions between the beach sections RED 2 and RED 3 in order to separate them from each other, which they also managed for some time the next day. But in the morning the landing troops from RED 1 made an advance towards the west of the island, which was also successful with strong artillery support, so that in the evening another troop was able to land at the beach section GREEN. Meanwhile, the fighting at RED 2 and RED 3 in the north continued with undiminished severity. By the evening there was only a small advance in the direction of the airfield.
On the evening of November 21, the situation was still open. The Americans had not managed to form a closed front line, there was a large gap between the north-western sections RED 1 and GREEN and the northern troops RED 2 and 3, and that Line between RED 2 and 3 was also anything but closed.
This was to change in the course of November 22, when the Americans managed to bring more troops, as well as artillery and tanks to the island. Despite heavy fire, the Americans were able to close their ranks and then move forward. The troops landed in the west of the island advanced south-east in order to incapacitate the enemy positions between the positions of RED 1 and RED 2. The Japanese found themselves increasingly cornered because they had only a few positions left in the center and the far east of the island. In the east in particular, the threat posed by American naval artillery was acute. That is why the Japanese tried to clear up the position of the American positions and to break the front line in several undertakings with only about 50 men each. These attacks were repulsed with artillery and machine gun fire.
In the early morning of November 23, there was a final counterattack by around 300 Japanese soldiers, which was also repulsed by combined land and ship artillery fire. This cost the lives of a large number of the attackers. Thus the organized resistance on Betio was broken. During the evacuation of the remaining positions and raids by dispersed Japanese troops, only minor skirmishes occurred during the following night.
The fighting on Tarawa had killed almost all of the 4,600 defenders; only 17 Japanese and 129 Korean workers, most of them wounded, surrendered to American forces. High losses were also reported on the American side. Almost 900 dead and 2,400 wounded were mourned.
Landing on Makin
The attack on the largest island in the Makin Atoll, Butaritari, was also preceded by preparatory bombing by the American fleet and aircraft. The plan was to make the landing on Makin exactly at the same time as on Tarawa, so that at 8:30 am the first landing troops (which consisted of soldiers from the US Army on Makin ) hit the western beach of the island (RED 1 and RED 2 ) would enter. The island's bombardment proved effective, with the landing forces faced less resistance from the Japanese defenders than from the natural terrain, which proved to be rocky and impassable. Especially the beach section RED 1 with its towering coral reef and the subsoil consisting of small boulders caused the soldiers to lag behind schedule.
However, this was the biggest problem, as there was almost no enemy resistance on the beach and there was actually not a single fallen victim to complain about on the RED 1 beach section. The landing of the heavier material proved to be exhausting, but the troops could manage it by clearing some streets on the beach. During the day, the landing forces were reinforced with tanks , artillery cannons and mortars . In the morning, part of the RED 1 contingent had made an advance north without such support to secure the swampy peninsula of Flink Point . Here, too, they encountered minimal resistance. Only a few, poorly aimed rifle shots were fired in the direction of the Americans.
The landing troops were also able to quickly expand their positions in the south: by 11 a.m., the troop had reached Rita Lake , a small pond about one kilometer in the interior of the island, and secured the south with the village there. Most of the Japanese positions on their maps had by then turned out to be dummies or abandoned. Only a few locals remained, who had been withheld from food by the Japanese for a few days. The Americans took care of their food and took them to a safe area in the north of the island for the duration of the fighting, where they remained under guard by the military police .
Further inland, however, the Americans met with serious resistance for the first time. The landing operation on the third stretch of beach in the center of the island (YELLOW) was also hit by Japanese machine guns, which resulted in some losses of soldiers and material. As on Tarawa, it soon became clear to the troops that the boats of the second and third waves could not get through the coral reef , which in places protruded almost half a meter from the water. The soldiers soon found themselves in a position to get out of the boats and wade the last 300 meters through the shallow water under enemy fire - a situation that hardly any of the infantrymen had expected after the reports of rapid, almost problem-free success of the previous landings in the west. Several machine gun positions in the vicinity of the island's berths and coastal artillery fired the landing GIs . Eventually, however, the men of the first wave who had already landed, supported by ships and airplanes, succeeded in eliminating a large part of these Japanese positions. By noon the Americans had finally penetrated across the Japanese barracks to the southern coast of the island and taken some prisoners, all of them Korean workers.
The plan was now to take the anti-tank barrier in the west by the troops of RED 1 and RED 2 attacking it from the west, and the troops from the beach section YELLOW advancing from the east. The advance from the east was repeatedly stopped by a large number of snipers . Finally, the order was issued to shoot all suspicious- looking trees in advance before it was even apparent that they were Japanese. American tanks also made their contribution. Towards the afternoon the YELLOW troop was about 400 meters from the anti-tank barrier, where they encountered some underground Japanese positions. In order to overcome this, the tactic of throwing a series of hand grenades into the entrance and, after they exploded , of killing any survivors with bayonets was finally resorted to (after direct fire from the tanks' cannons had also proven ineffective) .
The Americans also advanced steadily from the west with infantry and tanks and encountered only slight resistance, mainly from snipers, until they were finally met with heavy machine gun fire about 200 meters from the anti-tank barrier. Since the American troops were only a few hundred meters across from each other here, the use of heavier weapons was refrained from in order to avoid unnecessary losses through " friendly fire " and the machine gun position was finally conquered by a small squad in close combat.
Thus the west and the center of the island were almost entirely in American hands; only a small resistance position in the north of the anti-tank barrier remained until dark and in the east the troops from beach section YELLOW had encountered resistance in the rough terrain.
At nightfall, an order was issued prohibiting speaking so as not to give the enemy any clues as to their own position. So then several night attacks by the Japanese were thwarted, who sneaked in the direction of the Americans to use English sentences like “ Medics! Medics! Send a medic out here! “To lure the Americans out of reserve so that they would offer a target. These nocturnal attacks certainly had an effect on the psyche of the Americans, so that in the early morning several troops of GIs had to be dissuaded with great effort by their officers from taking completely empty groups of trees and bushes under heavy fire after a single soldier panicked the Had expressed conviction that there were Japanese in the area.
In the course of November 21st, however, the Americans, with the support of aircraft and naval artillery, succeeded in breaking the resistance in the east and advancing within sight of the eastern anti-tank barrier. Some machine gun positions and underground fortifications were again taken, as well as Japanese command and communication posts, which also contained some documents that helped to better assess the strength of Japanese troops in the area. During the night there were again some raids by dispersed Japanese, but this time the GIs knew what to do and built "early warning systems" consisting of taut wire and empty cans around their camps. Several attacks were repulsed using hand grenades.
Finally, on November 22nd, the Japanese resistance seemed to finally break: the eastern anti-tank barrier was first exposed to heavy fire from artillery and aircraft and finally taken with hardly any resistance. Only the narrow easternmost part of the island remained for the Japanese. The Americans were feeling optimistic.
But also on Butaritari the Japanese organized a final counterattack in which all remaining forces participated. During the night of November 23, the GIs were once again embroiled in heavy fighting. Under cover of darkness, the remaining, mostly drunk Japanese soldiers sneaked up to the American positions. They involved them in hand-to-hand combat, supported by their remaining machine guns and mortars, but were only able to inflict a few losses on the Americans. According to reports by American soldiers, scenes on the part of the Japanese troops were actually observed or, above all, overheard on this sake night , which gave the impression that the Japanese would rather succumb to alcohol poisoning than an American bullet. Finally, the next day, the rest of the island was taken with little resistance. At 10:30 am, the island was declared completely taken. Only 3 Japanese and 101 Koreans finally surrendered to the conquerors.
Lessons of battle
The relatively high losses on Tarawa made it clear to the Americans that amphibious operations of this magnitude required much more preparation by ship artillery. If the naval unit that was involved in the attack on the Gilbert Islands was also the largest assembled up to then, it pales in comparison to the later units that were involved, for example, in the attacks on the Marshall Islands and the Bismarck Archipelago . The equipment of the landing troops was also made waterproof to a greater extent for later operations , and the use of amphibious vehicles , which are more successful on the coral reefs, was expanded.
literature
such as
- Joseph H. Alexander: Utmost Savagery: The Three Days of Tarawa , Naval Institute Press 1995
- John Wukovitz: One Square Mile of Hell: The Battle for Tarawa , NAL Trade 2002, ISBN 0-451-22138-9
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Gordon L. Rottman: US Marine Corps World War II Order of Battle. Ground and Air Units in the Pacific War, 1939-1945 . Greenwood, 2002, ISBN 0-313-31906-5 , pp. 305 ( limited preview in Google Book Search - note: Korean prisoner numbers contain a typo of 139 instead of 129).
- ^ Samuel Eliot Morison : Aleutians, Gilberts and Marshalls. June 1942 – April 1944 . University of Illinois Press, 2002, ISBN 0-252-07037-2 , pp. 148 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
- ↑ Other sources speak of a total of 6,400 dead Americans, Japanese and Koreans.