World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF THE PACIFIC: Researched at Tarawa

From Washington Admiral Ernest J. King signaled: "To all hands concerned with the Marshall Islands operation: Well and smartly done. Carry on."

Said Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner, commander of the expeditionary force: enemy resistance was much less than had been expected. For the Japs it was the darkest week of the war. "We must all keep ourselves cool," said Diet Member Ichiro Hirose.

The U.S. attack on the Marshall Islands had caused Navy tacticians many a sleepless night since the decision was made, last summer, to open the Central Pacific. After the expensive Tarawa assault on the Gilberts in November, the tacticians squirmed harder. If the Japs had been able to fortify Tarawa so strongly in a year and a half, what would the Marshalls be like after some 20 years of fortification?

As it turned out, the Navy had learned its lesson from the Gilberts, and learned it quickly and well. There seemed to be no repetition of mistakes. The key to the Marshalls was taken at dramatically low cost.

The Target. Navy tacticians, who may have revised their first plans after the Gilberts attack, did not choose to invade the strong bases nearest Pearl Harbor (Wotje, Maloelap), nor those nearest the Gilberts (Jaluit, Mili) on the south. Instead they slapped around the enemy's end and pounced into his backfield, all the way to Kwajalein, largest atoll of them all (and reportedly the chief supply station for the Marshalls group).

Kwajalein lies in the midst of the western Ralik (Sunset) group of the Marshalls like a string of beads carelessly cast upon a table. The deep lagoon surrounded by this string is 66 miles long, ten miles wide, big enough to hold all the world's shipping. The atoll itself consists of 92 bits of sand-covered coral, some big enough to be called islands.

Largest of these islands is also called Kwajalein. It is two and a half miles long, a third of a mile wide—about as big as Tarawa's Betio. Some 50 miles north along the beads lies Roi, 7/10 sq. mi.—just large enough for an airfield.

The Preparation. At Tarawa the Navy learned that 3,000 tons of bombs and shells (more weight—but not more explosive—than ever hit Berlin in a single raid) was not enough to knock out the Japs' coconut-log, steel and concrete fortifications. The Navy also learned that four hours of pounding is not enough.

The pounding of Kwajalein began two months before the attack. In 17 raids by Army and Navy bombers the atoll was plastered with heavy bombs. The actual bombardment from the sea began three days before DDay. Hour after hour battleships and cruisers poured in thousands of rounds of 6-to-16-in. explosives. Roi and adjacent Namur rattled under the weight of 5,000 tons of naval shells.

Whenever the warships took a breather, land-based Army and carrier-based Navy planes streaked in to drop bombs by the hundreds. There were plenty of 2,000-pounders; Tarawa had proved that Jap defenses could hold up under half-ton bombs.

Before the troops were ready to land, the three little islands had really had it: some 15,000 tons of bombs and shells—a total without precedent in history—had been hurled into the defenses.