Hello everyone, please give a warm welcome to our lovely new interns! Nejma, TJ, Vasilii, Will, and Fernando! Join the TimeGhost Army: bit.ly/WW2_222_PI
The movie "With the Marines at Tarawa" was so graphic that it required Roosevelt himself to approve releasing it. He did so because he wanted Americans to realize that this was not going to be a cake walk but a brutal fight to the end.
@@Warszawski_Modernizm The guilty did not talk either. and the ones who felt guilty those are more numerous than you might guess. talking to old timers from other battles, other wars, my Dad veteran of Walcharen Island. ((Infatuate?) on being told that "saving Private Ryan was very realistic in the beach assault And so he should go see the movie. " I saw enough of all that for real, why would I spend good money to put myself through it again?!!" ut hre nevevacttually told us what happened what he did i had to work it all out, logically, by guesswork and reading also Mr Helmsley a 1st world war Tommy who I used to visit as my good deed as it were, in his old peoples home in the early '80s "Never mind all that, tell me about your girlfriend You dont' have one ??? Then, son, what on earth are you doing spending your time talking to an old wreck like me?" and he also never actually said anything about it (crafty old b****r) two examples plus also most people don't want to hear it. And I admit they have a point. So yes - heroes villains,, cowards* rogues,, men of god and the godlees sinners and just plain blokes in an unbearable, impossible and deadly experience in their early twenties or late teen of course thet don't want to talk about it.
If you want a description of the brutality of island warfare, I recommend Eugene Sledge “With the Old Breed”, a memoir of a Marine who fought on Peleliu and Okinawa. Mr. Sledge pulls no punches. It’s not just brutal, it’s outright disgusting. Here’s one line on fighting for a hill in Okinawa,a hill covered in corpse parts from weeks of fighting: “If a Marine slipped and slid down the bottom of the muddy slope, he was apt to reach the bottom vomiting. I saw more than one man stand up and watch in horror as fat maggots spilled from his boots, pockets, dungarees and the like.”
A side note this week on November 23 1943 is that Australian Army Sergeant Thomas Derrick is awarded the Victoria Cross in New Guinea after volunteering to go out alone to tackle Japanese gun positions. He would destroy ten such positions with grenades that would allow the Australian advance to continue. However, Sergeant Derrick would not live to receive the medal as he would later die from wounds sustained in a later action in Borneo in May 1945.
As a retired Marine, this battle is prominent in our USMC history. The reason that the tides played havoc was a phenomenon known as a "Neap" tide, where the high and low tides had no difference. Also, the first wave had the new "alligator" tracked amphibious assault craft could get over the reefs, but the following waves had the flat bottom Higgins boats got hung up, causing the Marines to wade in 600 yards to shore. A single tank made it to shore and was crucial to the battle. All for a spit of land only 2/3 the size of Central Park. After the battle, when the SeeBees were building the crucial runway-the sole reason for the battle-they realized that the length needed extended into the new 2d Marine Division Cemetery. The operators of the bulldozers wept as they had to doze over the crosses. This is why they continue to find Marine remains on the island. H.M. Howlin Mad Smith got hate mail from Gold Star parents until he died in 1967. The Marines shared their hard earned Amphibious lessons with the Army in preparation for Normandy, but it was shrugged off in inter-service rivalry, responding that the Army knew exactly how to conduct amphibious operations.
Excellent comment on the battle and afterwards. It appears the Army could have really taken some of the Marines suggestion to heart at Normandy, specifically Omaha.
Actually, it wasn't Marines trying to share their experiences with the Army, it was other Army commanders transferred from the Pacific, which perhaps makes the negligence even more tragic. General Charles Corlett, former commander of the 7th Infantry Division, tried to persuade Eisenhower to make better use of LVTs for the invasion, but was dismissed on the basis that the operation was too far along and that LVTs hadn't been needed in Europe up to that point.
@@redaug4212 Overall that is the case though there were some Marines involved with the planning of Overlord, as well as earlier amphibious operations in Europe and the Mediterranean (Husky, Torch, ect).
Interesting fact, American actor Eddie Albert (probably best known for his starring role in "Green Acres") was a coxswain on one of the landing craft at Tarawa, and won a Bronze Star for rescuing 47 Marines while under machinegun fire.
Indy, quick note. When you say the “2nd Marines” that typically refers to the 2nd Marine Regimet. (7th Marines being the 7th regiment, etc). We refer to the divisions as “(numeric) marine division” to eleminate confusion, since both formation sizes are named/numbered similarly. Here at around 1:30 you’d say “2nd Marine Division” so us crayon eaters can know you mean the division and not the regiment 😂. Love the show.
5:35 Among those lost on USS Liscome Bay was Doris Miller, a black sailor who won a Navy Cross for his actions at Pearl Harbor while stationed aboard the battleship West Virginia. A Gerald Ford class carrier, CVN-81, is going to be named in his honor.
@@jamesdoyle5405 Naming carriers after presidents or other politicians is a recent trend, and one I've never particularly liked. John C. Stennis (CVN-74) is probably the worst such case.
From memory he was a cook, when everything was going horribly wrong he found an unmanned 0.50 and commenced fighting back. Much respect, and I hope he gets the carrier named after him.
@@Hypernefelos My favorite carrier name was the Essex Class Carrier "USS Shangri-La". The story of the naming is a cracker- after the Doolittle Raid, a mob of reporters were interviewing FDR. One reporter asked "where was the raid launched from?" "Where?" the POTUS replied- "Oh, we launched it from Shangri-La", the mythical land of the novel by James Hilton.
05:37 one of those KIA on USS Liscombe Bay will be Doris Miller, first African-American recipient of the Navy Cross for heroism at Pearl Harbor. Two US Navy ships (a frigate and a soon to be built aircraft carrier) will be subsequently named in his honor and his actions depicted in two Hollywood films.
I remember hearing that the footage of the Battle of Tarawa shown in American movie theaters caused quite a stir without it being censored. And that was thanks to Robert Sherrod personally persuading Roosevelt to let the footage air without being censored saying that it would be a disservice to those who fought n died in the battle.
One of the many things I love about this project is that it brings me closer to my late father. He was 11 when the war ended, and his older brother served with the Marines in the Pacific. As a result, he followed the war daily by listening to the radio and reading the newspaper. He remembered the strangest details, which must have seemed important at the time, like you might remember a single pitch in the middle of a long baseball season. Seeing the war play out week by week gives me a taste of what that was like, and I am eternally grateful to Time Ghost for this. Thank you. Not to lessen my gratitude in any way, but there is one important difference. In your reporting we are privy to far more intelligence than Dad was as a kid, something brought home in the discussion of the Tehran conference. Of course you have to report on it as you do, and anything else would have you firebombed in the comments. I do understand. But it makes me wonder just what was reported to people in the day, and what they thought of it all. For example, Chiang was present in the newreels and pictures that appeared in the papers. Did that signal to people that the war in China was very important? What did they really think of him? Or the effort in China? How much did they really know about Burma? You did give us a taste of just what I'm talking about by discussing the release of pictures from Tarawa of the dead Marines. That must have been a terrible shock, and its effect on the homefront could probably be a PhD thesis by itself. Thank you for mentioning details like this, it does make me wonder what it was like to live this war in real time. If only Dad was still with us, I would ask him. But I do have Time Ghost, and thank you again for this project. When you go on to the Korean War, please let me know how I can sponsor in the name of 1st Lt Curtis R Hare (USASC). Thank you again, so much.
Chiang was very well known in America. There had been a huge missionary push into China in the late nineteenth century and many of these efforts were American. For decades before www, American congregations in the US were regularly getting updates from the missionaries in China doing the lords work. This was how a lot of the news of Japanese atrocities got to America Henry luce, who owned time magazine, was a child of missionaries in China. He put Chiang on the front cover a couple times. For his part, Chiang kai shek was a Methodist. He was a devout believer, but he also knew that his Christianity played really well to US audiences so it was emphasized.
I remember the father of a childhood friend was a USMC rifleman at Tarawa where he was wounded. He was still alive and kicking five years ago when I saw him at his wife's funeral. Unlike most vets of that time, he would talk about his wartime experiences, I wish I remembered them better.
Forty years ago, my boss' boss was a Marine veteran of Guadalcanal, Betio, and Siapan. Because I was a vet and a history buff, he told me about each island. His BN got hung up on the reef. 1200 Marines exited the boats and waded 600 yards to shore. Only 600 made it out of the water alive. They had been issued new camouflaged coveralls that didn't breathe. Jack said that by 1000 hrs they all had to strip down to their skivvies and pistol belts because of the heat. He was pissed at the Navy because the Navy used direct fire instead of plunging fire. The direct fire hit the island and skipped past the island before exploding. Unfortunately, he died less than a year after he retired in 1985.
Robert Sherrod, an embedded reporter from Time magazine, was part of the first wave to hit the beaches on Betio. The unit he landed with sustained 60% casualties during the course of the battle. He later published a harrowing account of that fighting called Tarawa: The Story of a Battle. A few excerpts covering the landings and some of the first day's fighting: "We jumped into the little tractor boat and quickly settled on the deck. 'Oh, God, I'm scared,' said the little Marine, a telephone operator, who sat next to me forward in the boat. I gritted my teeth and tried to force a smile that would not come and tried to stop quivering all over (now I was shaking from fear). I said, in an effort to be reassuring, 'I'm scared, too.' I never made a more truthful statement in all my life. Now I knew, positively, that there were Japs, and evidently plenty of them, on the island. They were not dead. The bursts of shellfire all around us evidenced the fact that there was plenty of life in them!... After the first wave there apparently had not been any organized waves, those organized waves which hit the beach so beautifully in the last rehearsal. There had been only an occasional amphtrack which hit the beach, then turned around (if it wasn't knocked out) and went back for more men. There we were: a single boat, a little wavelet of our own, and we were already getting the hell shot out of us, with a thousand yards to go. I peered over the side of the amphtrack and saw another amphtrack three hundred yards to the left get a direct hit from what looked like a mortar shell. 'It's hell in there,' said the amphtrack boss, who was pretty wild-eyed himself. 'They've already knocked out a lot of amphtracks and there are a lot of wounded men lying on the beach. See that old hulk of a Jap freighter over there? I'll let you out about there, then go back to get some more men. You can wade in from there.' I looked. The rusty old ship was about two hundred yards beyond the pier. That meant some seven hundred yards of wading through the fire of machine guns whose bullets already were whistling over our heads. The fifteen of us - I think it was fifteen - scurried over the side of the amphtrack into the water that was neck-deep. We started wading. No sooner had we hit the water than the Jap machine guns really opened up on us. There must have been five or six of these machine guns concentrating their fire on us... It was painfully slow, wading in such deep water. And we had seven hundred yards to walk slowly into that machinegun fire, looming into larger targets as we rose onto higher ground. I was scared, as I had never been scared before. But my head was clear. I was extremely alert, as though my brain were dictating that I live these last minutes for all they were worth. I recalled that psychologists say fear in battle is a good thing; it stimulates the adrenalin glands and heavily loads the blood supply with oxygen. I do not know when it was that I realized I wasn't frightened any longer. I suppose it was when I looked around and saw the amphtrack scooting back for more Marines. Perhaps it was when I noticed that bullets were hitting six inches to the left or six inches to the right. I could have sworn that I could have reached out and touched a hundred bullets. I remember chuckling inside and saying aloud, 'You bastards, you certainly are lousy shots.' After wading through several centuries and some two hundred yards of shallowing water and deepening machinegun fire, I looked to the left and saw that we had passed the end of the pier. I didn't know whether any Jap snipers were still under the pier or not, but I knew we couldn't do any worse. I waved to the Marines on my immediate right and shouted, 'Let's head for the pier!' Seven of them came. The other seven Marines were far to the right. They followed a naval ensign straight into the beach - there was no Marine officer in our amphtrack. The ensign said later that he thought three of the seven had been killed in the water. The first three of us lay on the rocks panting, waiting for the other five to join us. They were laboring heavily to make it, and bullets from the machine guns on the beach were still splashing around them like raindrops in a water barrel. By this time we three were safely hidden from the beach by thick, upright, coconut-log stanchions of the pier. I watched these five men and wondered how on heaven or earth they managed to come so close to death, and yet live. Once I thought the last man, a short Marine, would not get under the pier. Twenty yards away, he fell and went under. But he was not hit. In a moment he was up again, struggling through the water, almost exhausted beyond further movement, but still carrying his heavy roll of telephone wire. When he had gone under I had asked myself whether I had the breath or courage to go after him. I was relieved when the necessity of answering that question was obviated by his arrival.
Thank you so much for sharing. Thanks to the person who wrote this, and thanks to the persons who went on these beaches. Hard pain felt here, as much as a written story can provide. And, oh lord, "a wavelet" must be such a frightening thing to be.
With respect to the landings on Tarawa, I once read a memoir written by one of the skippers of the landing craft. He said that some of the more experienced skippers figured out a trick to get their landing craft over the reef. They discovered that if they ran their landing craft at the reef at full speed, it would create quite a large bow wave. If they cut their engines just before they hit the reef, the wave they'd created would overtake the landing craft, lifting it up a bit. Then, if they revved their engines again, they could ride the wave over the reef and make it safely to the other side. Unfortunately, by the time they figured the trick out, most of the problems with the landings with respect to the reef had already happened, so it wasn't a huge benefit for the main landings. But still, credit's due to some clever skippers who knew their stuff.
First what is it with the ghost replies? This is a very nice comment, I thought that it would have gone somewhere like them just brute force ramming the coral. This is much more smart than that.
@@johnloman4164 The "ghost replies" are comments that YT's algos have decided you aren't allowed to read. Remember that the people who stifle free expression and communication never turn out to be the good guys in history.
The Pacific is absolutely huge. It didn't take much to evade the US fleets at this point in the war. Became a lot harder as Japan's defensive perimeter shrank and the US began churning out ships like cans of Spam.
@@mikhailiagacesa3406 just found out i was wrong, it was snlf in tarawa, but what I meant is that in most islands the defending japanese were from the army/navy
Not sure when that changed but the maps having topgraphic shading to indicate height is really awesome and improves my understanding of the terrain. Really great!
Also this week on November 20 1943, the second mission of the 2008 video game *Call of Duty: World at War: Final Fronts* , the *Betio Airfield level* under *Private Joe Miller* begins at Tarawa as part of the Battle of Tarawa. In this mission, you must capture the beach and destroy enemy artillery to aid the beach landings by placing charges in the enemy trenches.
I have a vivid memory of going round to my neighbour's house to play CoD (which my parents wouldn't get for me because I was 9), and we couldn't get past that level.
Interesting fact: Stalin's plane was escorted by a fighter squadron led by a Spanish pilot. He is José María Bravo, and was the top flying ace of the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. After the defeat of the Republicans in 1939, he was exiled in the Soviet Union and joined the VVS (Soviet Airforce), fighting during WW2. He was able to return to Spain in the 1970s (after Franco's death), and was given back an officer rank in the Spanish Army of the Air equivalent to the one he held on the Spanish Republican Airforce.
The Red army has learned how to fight the Wehrmacht. A lot of people said they won due to General Winter and sheer numbers but they fail to give credit to their ability to learn from previous mistakes.
In spite of themselves (Stalins purges), they staved off Germany with what they had (Moscow 1941) and then once they had established manufacturing based off Lend Lease supplies in 1942/3, they could out produce Germany. Final factor, Stalin learned to thrust his generals advice once he got commanders who could win. War made him a realist while it made Hitler a fantasist.
Well said. More is made of the overwhelming man power pool and the weather. Rather than the fact that they wore the German's down and ended up effectively out fighting them to win .👍👊
I wonder if the problems at Tarawa were exacerbated by the American scepticism shown the British offer to share the techniques and training of the COPPs (Combined Operations Pilotage Parties)? These were units established to properly survey landing sites for invasions, including those of Sicily and Normandy. The units were made up of members of the Royal Navy, Royal Marines, Corps of Royal Engineers and Special Boat Service. The Americans did copy the commandos and SOE early on but maybe the COPPs had to wait before their utility was proven. Other good ideas were rejected, too, remember - such as the use of the specialised tank units of the British 79th Division (Hobart's Funnies) during the Normandy landings.
Was so excited to hear you cover the battle of Tarawa. Read a book in high school called "Line of Departure: Tarawa" which made me respect the battle that took place on that 3 mile island. Truly the first trial by fire for a marine landing on the island hopping campaign.
The British avoided using the Greek Army in Exile for the Dodecanese because they were bargaining the Islands with Turkey, in order to get them in the war on the side of the Allies. The German victory in the Dodecanese and the diplomatic efforts of Von Papen, the German ambassador to Turkey, kept the Turks out of the war until February 1945. As a result, the Dodecanese (inhabited by Greeks who were the vast majority of the population) were given by Italy to Greece, in 1947 with the treaty of Paris. This was the last Greek territory that joined the Greek state since the revolution of independence of 1821 against the Ottoman Empire and defines the borders of Greece to this day.
That's partly true. Battles took place in Samos and Santorini, which were not Italian pre-1941, but the British remained hesitant about using Greek forces. The British priorities were that the Dodecanese would remain Italian, due to their policy of British-Italian rapprochement. If the rest islands would be liberated by the Greek armed forces (like Kastellorizo), that would create a fait accompli for the post-war settlement. The possibility of the Dodecanese given to Turkey as a bargain chip for entering the war with the Allies was unlikely, although discussions took place, because of the population proportion of the islands (according to the Italian census of 1936 in the Dodecanese: Greeks 85,96%, Muslims 5,63%)
I still have the map my Dad was given prior to the invasion (2nd Mar. Div.). It's very detailed. The Marines knew where every machine gun next, pill box and stuff were. The hard part was taking them given the unforeseen neap tide which stranded the landing craft on the beach, raking them with fire as they waded ashore. Fortunately my Dad's battallion came ashore on D+1
What a fascinating story to be able to tell! The evidence left behind shows the legacy of the War and how many places were so deeply affected...Thank you for your comment!
A small point; you said 2d Marines when 2d Marine Division (2MarDiv) is more accurate. The 2d Mar Div consisted of the 2d Marines, 6th Marines and the 8th Marines. These three units are regiments. Love your work thank you very much.
Hi Thomas, Could you explain why a division is split into three regiments? Do the regiments fight separately? If so, what's the benefit of using divisions as an organizational unit at all - why not just stick with regiments? I'm a civvie from Europe, and I've tried to look up the sizes and such on Wikipedia, but it just doesn't really click for me, haha. I hope you and yours are well, cheers from the Netherlands :)
In the Marine Corps and nearly the same in the Army infantry units organization works like this: 4 men make up a fire team, 3 fire teams and a squad leader make a squad, 3 squads a platoon sergeant and platoon leader usually a lieutenant make up a platoon. 3 platoons make up a company, 3 companies a battalion, 3 battalions a regiment, 3 regiments a division, 3 divisions a corps, 3 corps an army. Companies and above also have staff personnel, more staff the higher you go. Each Marine division includes a regiment of artillery. Modern warfare with less emphasis on rifle fire may change this organization but some form of organization will remain in the interest of command and control. A division will not always act as a single unit, units may be split off to handle small missions in disparate locations, command and control is maintained through commanding officers reporting to the CO of their next more senior unit.
Interesting to see how the USA will have reached Okinawa by spring1945 considering how they are in the Gilberts now. Sure they're going to skip some islands( island hopping you know), but this is still very impressive.
@@RJT80 Just to add on to R T's post to give an idea of the scale involved, there are 1,875 km between Guadalcanal and Tarawa. There are 5,556 km between Tarawa and Okinawa. 1,608.31 km seperates Berlin from Moscow.
@@AndrewMitchell123 that's why the strategy was not to capture all the islands but most of them and on hard ones like rabaul and truk was to encircle them and move one and bomb them constantly so they can be to much of a treat
@@AndrewMitchell123 That's why things are finally starting to move in the Pacific now. The planning and preparation the US did prior to and just after the start of the war (for them, in '41) is finally kicking in. The US Navy has the men and ships to support two massive thrusts towards the Japanese mainland.
I remember back in high school, reading accounts of some of the marines who landed at Tarawa, to say they were harrowing and tense would be an understatement...
This example aside, I do want to complement you and your team on the efforts you make to correctly pronounce the names of the places and people. As someone who was married to a Russian woman (may GOD keep her close) who grew up in Kislovodsk, I appreciate how you and Spartacus correctly pronounce many of the place names that most Americans would simply say, it's got too many consonants strung together to be able to say it! Just be glad the Brits were able to keep the Huns at bay, so you don't have to talk about battles taking place in Wales and having to pronounce those names correctly ...
Indy, I love your work, & I’m glad to see the beginning of the Central Pacific drive covered in this episode. Referring to a Marine Corps unit by a number, e.g. “2nd Marines”, refers to a regiment. The correct title would be 2nd Marine Division.
Perhaps one reason for the minimal use of the Royal Hellenic Navy and the Greek army in exile (with the notable exception of Ieros Lochos/Sacred Band) in the Dodecanese campaign was the british intentions of using the islands as a bait to lure Turkey in the war in the Allies side.
My father was in the 2nd Marine Div and I still have the map he was given prior to the invasion that shows where all the pill boxes and armaments were. They had done a good job of recon. The weather folk missed the coming of a "neap tide," an extra low tide due to moon placement. That's why the landing craft got stuck on reefs
How any navy officer can miss a neap tide is something I can't understand. It happens twice every month and everyone who has ever sailed in any kind of tidal water knows how to take them into account and how to read tidal tables.
14:30 almost perfect pronunciation of kuşadası😀theatres of war are expanding and your amazing work keeps up with it. I was wondering last year " how they are going to keep up with 3-4 fronts" and here i am just watching. Also I see you have new interns. Have fun
I presume they were interned, as Turkey was neutral. A German victory close to their territory deterred Turkey from joining the Allies, at least for the time being.
My father had survived 6 months on Guadalcanal and after recuperation and training in New Zealand landed on Betio Island. He was in a forward area and took a hit knocking out most of his upper teeth. It could have been enemy fire or "friendly" fire. He had to run back to the beach to get a boat to the hospital ship. After medical treatment at Pearl Harbor he returned to the U.S. and the recruit depot at San Diego. There he met and married a lady Marine who became my mother. Without the atomic bombs he probably would have been part of the invasion of Japan
Its crazy to think of how much the world might have changed had the Allies forced open the Burma Road and supplied the Chinese Nationalists better. Considering what happens in China in 1944, and then in the Chinese Civil War after the end of WWII, we could be looking at a radically different world today.
I think we can blame the Nationalists' own incompetence for that one. If they'd been better organized and more effective on the battlefield, the rest of the Allies might have felt it was worth it to conduct that campaign and fully support the Chinese against Japan. As it was, they felt the island-hopping campaign was a much better use of those same resources.
@@Raskolnikov70 it wasn't the nationalists who messed up the defense of Burma or who radically underestimated the Japanese in 1942. While Japan was crushing the Brits and Americans in Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaya, and the Dutch east indies, the Chinese won the third battle of Changsha. They had learned the hard way how to fight Japan despite being outclassed. Chinese forces would have killed to be as well equipped as British Indian forces in Malaya and the defense forces in the Philippines. You can see this sort of bias in this video. Indy quotes this author talking about the "vacillating" Chiang kai shek while never using those same words to describe the Americans or the British. Which is odd, because the rest of the video is Americans and British people putting forward several contradictory plans.
Thank you for the work you all do! Especially poignant were the closeup photos of the German soldiers. It's hard to imagine what they experienced. Also, the one of a tired looking Churchill and the sly Stalin just behind him, as well as the video with Chang, and Roosevelt and Churchill looking old and sickly. Many of these photos and videos were new to me. Thank you!
General Alexander Patch, commander of the Allied land forces on the island, messaged his superior, Admiral William F. Halsey on February 9, 1943, "Tokyo Express no longer has terminus on Guadalcanal.
In one documentary about the Tarawa landing, it said the US forces that clung to the beach to survive, expect counter attacks to come that night. This counter attack would have easily drove them into the sea. To the relief of all US troops on Tarawa, no counter attack took place place. It was later revealed that, because of the US heavy shelling of the island severed the main communication wire that ran from the command post to the rest of the Japanese emplacements. The commander did want carry out a nighttime counter attack, but with no ability to coordinate that attack, he decided to keep his defenses in place.
Seems odd, since they could have used runners or messengers in order to set something like that up. Maybe he felt he didn't have enough time to organize it?
It was interesting to hear the Andaman and Nicobar Islands mentioned. This is an issue in the geostrategic situation today. India is, at the present time, fortifying these islands. That would allow them to choke off all trade through the Indian Ocean for China. Talk about repeats.
Thanks for discussing the sinking of the USS Liscome Bay. My Grandmother’s uncle Gordon Ernest Brown, Seaman Second Class was one of the 600 sailors who perished that day. One day after his Nineteenth birthday.
I have watched so many episodes of this, plus the great war content and I am still impressed by the quality of this work I hope they don't cancel Overlord, it seems like it might work
The US will never give in to British pressure to postpone another invasion of Europe. It's not just their unwillingness to participate in helping them reconquer their colonial empires as Indy pointed out. Something that rarely gets mentioned anywhere is how unpopular the war is in the US. Many Americans take the side of the Germans over the Soviets and Brits, and many more than that feel they shouldn't be involved in any foreign wars whatsoever. There is still a strong isolationist streak among the US population and although the Pearl Harbor attacks allowed Roosevelt's government to whoop up the population and take over the economy and put it on a war footing, Americans aren't going to put up with it forever. The US has to win fast, bring the boys home and get the economy back to producing consumer goods as quickly as they can.
To me, the interesting point is how divergent American and British strategies are. The American method of war is to seek the decisive battle to win the war and go home. The British are more obtuse. The British go for the long game and are content to snipe at the enemy and use economics and blockade to wear down the Germans. They did this in WWI and again during the Napoleonic Wars. If you notice, British wars in the 19th century end in treaties than outright winning. This is what Churchill knows and Churchill fears that the American way of war, out right victory, relagates Britain to a second power not a first rate power.
I think the American foreign policy at the start of the war and the debt accumulated by lendlease more successfully managed to achieve those goals. Once they bankrupted us they seceded us, as the dominant world power. ! winner winner chicken dinner !😅
I think the American apprehension of being used to prop up Britain's colonial empire was entirely accurate. These were Churchills goals. These were the same fears America had in getting involved in both WW1 and WW2. No man was happier than Winston Churchill when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor - he knew that saved Britain (already a second -rate power) - and wanted to leverage the inevitable victory into growth of the empire. Later - already in the cold war - he would say he wanted to check Soviet expansion - a continuation of "The Great Game" perhaps - but even that assertion is smoke and mirrors - just ask Tito.
There was quite a bit of tug-of-war between the British and Americans on strategic goals and where resources should be allocated. Sometimes the British had the right of it (Operation Torch, no cross-channel invasion in 1943) and sometimes they didn't. The obsession with the Balkans at the expense of a cross-channel invasion was one place where the British were less clear-sighted than their American counterparts. The US was also rightly cautious about not committing troops and resources to schemes that had more to do with preserving colonial hegemony than achieving immediate war aims. US suspicion about British motives in that regard were quite often justified.
@12:17, that soldiers helmet looks like a bullet went through it! Great series, thanks a lot! BTW, Eddie Albert (Green Acres actor) was decorated for his actions at Tarawa. As much war is presented here it doesn't include all the air and sea battles going on as well. Man, that's a lot of killing going on.
_"Three Week wonders; that's what we called the new guys. That's all the training they got and it wasn't enough. They usually didn't last very long. No matter how much training you got or how strong you are, when you strap up and step on a battlefield for the first time, it changes you forever. Tarawa was just another strip of sand out in the middle of nowhere, but for many of us it would be the last thing we ever saw."_ - Corporal Thomas Conlin This week on November 20 1943, the Tarawa levels A to D, as well as the Tarawa (Prologue) level of the 2004 video game *Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault* begin as part of the Battle of Tarawa. In these levels as Private Thomas Conlin, you will need to secure the beachhead and clear the enemies from the pier first. Once secured, inland gun emplacements and enemy structures will need to be cleared. In the final level of the entire game (Tarawa D), you must hold the line and defeat the Japanese banzai charge.
I was doing an entire Medal of Honor series playthrough earlier in the year but stopped few levels into Pacific Assault. Solid game I just wasn't too fond of the shooting mechanics. I really loved Rising Sun and it's level design.
@@chrisvowell2890 That one was a bit of creative license on the part of the game devs. Basic training for Marines during this period was 7 weeks. That's also just the basic training. Replacements (the 2nd Marine Division had also fought in the Guadalcanal campaign) that hadn't been involved in prior fighting would have also had plenty of combat training while the division was in New Zealand, in the run up to Galvanic. The troops that hit the beaches on Tarawa, including the replacements, were well trained and prepared for the battle by the standards of the era and may as well have been super soldiers compared to the preparation given Russian mobiks before they get tossed into the fighting Ukraine. The latter get next to none.
"November 23rd, 1943, When the smoke had cleared, more than five thousand American and Japanese men had lost their lives on a beach not much wider than a few football fields. A Japanese admiral once said that we couldn't take Tarawa with a million men and hundred years. Well, the Marines did it in three days. And now its over. But of course, it ain't really over. The road to Tokyo is a long one and we're only halfway there. But sonvabitch, we're alive! Hopefully, we've earned a little rest, but tyranny doesn't sleep. And freedom? Well, its anything but free." - Corporal Thomas Conlin, Medal of Honor Pacific Assault.
Yeah, not the best time for the Allies... high casualties at Tarawa, high casualties in Italy, arguing in Cairo... even the Soviets seem bogged down. You almost wonder why they didn't just hold positions until the weather improved, but I guess giving the enemy that much time to dig in and build reinforcements is a bad idea.
On the 26th of November 1942 the German ship D/S Donau left Norway with 529 Jews for Auschwitz. Of those 9 survived the Holocaust. Yesterday August Petro Theodor Olsen Rathke, last surviving member of the Norwegian "Kompani Linge" commando-unit (belonging to the British Armed Forces) passed at age 96.
Eighth Army in Italy - Richard Doherty Mountains and Floods (20 -30 November 1943) Alexander had devised a three-phase strategy with Eighth Army opening army group operations. At first Eighth Army would get astride the Pescara-Pópoli road - Highway 5, the Via Valeria of Roman times - before advancing through Avezzano, thereby threatening the lines of communication of the German formations facing Fifth Army. Phase Two would see Fifth Army attack through the Liri and Sacco valleys to Frosinone, the best route for an armoured advance to Rome. Then a seaborne landing would be made south of Rome, directed on the Alban Hills. Alexander’s strategy was dictated by the state of Fifth Army, now exhausted and facing mountainous, muddy country and a foe that matched it division for division. The combined strength of both Allied armies was needed to drive the enemy from his positions. By striking first and threatening enemy lines of communication, Eighth Army would assist Fifth Army’s attack and give its commander time to reorganize. The German defences facing Eighth Army were about nine miles in depth. East of Italy’s spine was the Bernhardt Line with, north-west of the Sangro, the advanced Sangro Line, through which Eighth Army would have to punch to reach the Pescara-Pópoli road in the Pescara valley. To that road from the Sangro the crow need fly only 22 miles. But soldiers can seldom take the same route as their avian friends and especially not with German soldiers in their way. Conditions along the way were already bad: with winter setting in, low ground was either flooded or muddy, while the higher ground was receiving its first layer of snow. Roads and tracks had suffered from the weather and would suffer even more from Kesselring’s engineers if the defenders were forced to withdraw. And those defenders were now in strong, well-sited positions, determined to make Eighth Army pay for every piece of ground in the coin of warfare: soldiers’ blood. The Allies had already pierced the Viktor Line (from the Volturno estuary to Termoli), the Barbara Line (from Mondragone in the west to the vicinity of San Salvo) and Eighth Army now faced the advanced Sangro Line. Many enemy prisoners had boasted that the Allied armies would be smashed on the Winter Line. As if the existence of that line was not enough the Germans were forming an additional army, Fourteenth, in northern Italy under General Eberhard von Mackensen, to come into being on 21 November. Faced with the known quality of enemy positions, Montgomery was concerned about Eighth Army’s overall strength since many formations remained in Africa. Reaching the Pescara-Pópoli road was not going to be possible with four infantry divisions; Montgomery considered that he needed at least one more. Furthermore according to his Memoirs ‘[m]y troops were getting very tired and my formations had suffered considerable casualties since the landings at Reggio. In particular the officer situation in the infantry had become acute.’ Some reinforcements arrived as Eighth Army prepared to assault the Sangro defences. General Sir Bernard Freyberg’s 2nd New Zealand Division had begun landing in Italy during October and was now ready to resume its place in the line of battle. The division had been restructured to deploy an integral armoured brigade, 4th New Zealand Armoured Brigade, with two infantry brigades. This order of battle had been adopted by Freyberg to ensure that his division would always have its own armour. Following heavy losses in July 1942, the original 4th NZ Brigade had been taken out of the line and the division reinforced as necessary by brigades from other formations. It had also had 9th Armoured Brigade under command during Operations LIGHTFOOT and SUPERCHARGE, the final El Alamein battles. However, as Eighth Army prepared to attack along the Sangro, the New Zealand Division was reinforced by 19th Brigade from 8th Indian Division, providing it with three infantry and one armoured brigades. For the Sangro operation, Eighth Army deployed 690 guns, the majority from twenty-two field regiments, each with twenty-four 25-pounders, and the balance from seven medium regiments. In 4th Armoured Brigade and the Three Rivers Regiment, Montgomery could also deploy 186 Shermans with another thirty-seven tanks in workshops under repair or maintenance; the tanks of 4th NZ Armoured Brigade would reinforce that number. In the initial phase, Montgomery hoped to convince the Germans that his main effort would come from XIII Corps and be directed towards Avezzano. However, V Corps would be making the real effort before which a jumping-off line on the north bank of the Sangro would be seized. The deception plan required XIII Corps to advance towards the upper Sangro before V Corps’ attack began. In addition, XIII Corps was to make: "ostentatious troop movements, and to plant bogus dumps in its maintenance area to simulate far-reaching administrative support. A wireless deception scheme was contrived to make the enemy think that Army Tactical Headquarters and 8th Indian Division would arrive in [XIII Corps’] sector. Operations by 19 Indian Infantry Brigade were to screen 8th Indian Division’s actual eastward sidestep to Paglieta and the New Zealand Division’s arrival near Scerni. Wireless silence, patrolling of unimportant ground, dummies and camouflage all played their parts. A naval demonstration towards Pescara was arranged to foment the enemy’s known fears for his sea flank." Montgomery held his first planning conference on 14 November. Although he hoped that D-Day would be the night of the 19th/20th this depended on two dry days immediately beforehand. Nonetheless, XIII Corps was pushing towards Castèl di Sangro and Alfedena along the axis of Highway 17 by the 18th. The roads had suffered the very professional attentions of German engineers and, off-road, conditions were appalling, continuous rain creating thick, glutinous mud. From a base at Carovilli, 3rd Canadian Brigade advanced to Capracotta and San Pietro whence patrols probed across the Sangro. On 24 November the brigade launched an attack on Castèl di Sangro but a change in Montgomery’s plans led to cancellation. A similar attack, by 5th British Division on Alfedena, was also abandoned after the division reached Monte Civitalta, overlooking Alfedena, and began its attack on the 22nd. In addition to its fighting responsibilities, XIII Corps had assumed another duty: the Germans had implemented a scorched-earth policy that left many civilians homeless; by the end of November, about 4,000 were seeking shelter and food with an additional 500 refugees arriving daily. Both the corps’ medical and transport services were strained dealing with this humanitarian emergency. As part of the preliminaries to the main assault, 8th Indian Division, less 19th Brigade, side-stepped to Paglieta between 14 and 18 November, while the New Zealanders had their first action in Italy on the 17th when 19th Armoured Battalion and 3/8th Punjabis of 19th Indian Brigade captured Perano from elements of 64th Panzer Grenadier Regiment. On the following day, 19th Brigade took Archi and prepared to seize the high ground between the Sangro and Aventino rivers prior to a crossing by 2nd New Zealand Division. During the night of 22/23 November, the Punjabis and 1/5th Essex waded the swollen Sangro to attack San Angelo and Altino. Many casualties died of exposure as they could not be evacuated back across the Sangro for medical attention. 78th British Division (The Battleaxe Division) had also been involved in these preliminary operations as patrols from the division crossed the Sangro almost every night. With the Germans appearing most unusually quiescent, 78th British Division dominated the area between the river and the escarpment on the German side. But then nature took a hand and, from the 15th, the spates on the Sangro became an ally of the Germans. ‘No patrol when crossing the river knew when it would be able to return and the always deepening, greasy mud in the approaches to the river bedevilled the preparation of fords.’
And so the stage was set for Eighth Army’s main thrust. The weather refused to comply with Montgomery’s plan, however, and rain poured down on the 16th, frustrating those engineers who had been constructing fords and their approaches along the Sangro. This work was undone as torrents of water from the mountains rushed to the Adriatic. It thus became necessary to build bridges and D-Day was set, hopefully, for 24 November, although Montgomery now revised his plan, limiting his advance to Lanciano and announcing a pause for two or three days to allow the Sangro valley to be reorganized thoroughly for movement. Four bridges were to be built, two for wheeled vehicles and tracked carriers, one to take all types of wheeled vehicles and, in an emergency, tanks, and the fourth to carry tanks. Two bridges, No. 1 and H, the tank bridge, were completed during the night of 21/22 November, but work on No. 3 was delayed because traffic congestion held up vehicles carrying bridging equipment. Then the weather intervened again with heavy rain in the upper reaches of the Sangro on the 22nd, although the weather was fine in V Corps’ area. That night the river was in flood and the CCRE* of V Corps described the results: "Old Man Sangro, deciding that our task was not meeting with sufficient opposition, rose in all his wrath and came down in spate. Where the water gap was 100-150 feet it suddenly became 1,000 and [the bridges] were to be seen at daylight splendidly forlorn in the middle of a vast span of swiftly flowing water." How the engineers must have felt. The CCRE’s comments are a masterly example of the capacity of British officers to understate problems. Such was the flooding that no further bridging work could be undertaken until the 26th. Two DUKW companies of RASC - 156 and 385 Companies - ferried supplies to the bridgehead and brought back wounded; some DUKWs made the dangerous return sea passage from Vasto. Then, on 24 November, General Allfrey, the corps commander, issued final orders for what was now going to be a slower, limited operation.
My father got Dengi Fever in Fiji in 1941, so after he was Commissioned he went to New Caledonia in Ordinence, but not with the Brigades up into the Solomon Islands. Big Marquis Tents served as Hospitals and dad Organised the Ambulances from the Hospital Ships. When the Vietnam War came, he made sure that my brother and myself did not join the Army.
The thing is, because of Carlson's raid on Betio earlier in the year caused the Japanese to build up the defenses resulting in the extra Marine deaths. Also the 27th Division on Makin took too long to eliminate the Japanese resulting in an aircraft carrier sinking due a torpedo attack. This brings about the feud between Marine Gen Holland Smith and Army Gen. Ralph Smith, commander of the 27th Division.
It actually wasn't the 27th's fault that _Liscome Bay_ sunk. Task Group 52 was still conducting combat missions in the Gilbert Islands after Makin was secured on Nov 23. The real issue was a lapse in the destroyer screen that allowed an enemy submarine through. Regardless, Holland Smith sill laid the blame on the Army since he was infuriated that the 27th wasn't making faster progress despite facing less resistance than the Marines on Betio.
I went to read a description of cape st. George battle and it surprised me that IJN succeed in transporting army reinforcements into bougainville and withdraw navy aviaton personnel. They were intercepted by us navy while returning home and lost 3 destroyers that could ill afford to lose. Yet the last tokyo express mission was accomplished even it the hardest conditions.
My dad was a Marine Corps dive bomber pilot in the South Pacific. As dangerous as his job was (a lot of the guys he had trained with got shot down), he said it was nothing compared to what the USMC grunts had to endure on the ground. "I got to come back to the base after a mission, get a shower and a hot meal, a shot of hooch from the flight surgeon, and then a clean cot to sleep in. Those poor guys in the infantry spent weeks at a time eating cold food out of cans, enduring heat and bugs and mud, never being able to get clean -- it was hell for them," he told us.
If memory serves, Churchill's focus on Italy and the Balkans was based on his strategy to limit soviet influence in Europe after the war, by having the western allies advance northwards from eastern Italy and Yugoslavia. I can see why he thought it was a good idea but, like several of his ideas, was unlikely to work in the real world. As I understand it, this approach was further weakened by the allied landings in the south of France.
Its beyond my comprehension the mindset of the Japonese Soldiers during the war. You must be very,very Strong psychological to endure days and days under the ground,under a Relentless shelling from all kinds erasing any form of life on ground level. And after those Hellish days of that Relentless sound,still be able to come out with no supplies,lousy Weapons,knowing that they gonna die and still causing huge casualties to an Enemy 5 or 10 Times bigger than their own Units. Its Amazing what Determination, Resilience and Fighting Spirit can achive even in an obvious Lost cause/battle. The human Spirit is something Else.
Now it was late October. At evening those same banks of inert and freezing clouds which had first roused foreboding in the invader two autumns before returned to the battlefield. Each night the temperature fell below zero, to petrify the soft ridges of glutinous mud which bordered every road across the steppe. During the day a weak sun would thaw the surface, but with the shortening of its parabola and the increase in the hours of darkness, the ground turned hard as concrete. As the winter of 1943 approached, a feeling of gloom and despair permeated the German Army, a dull conviction that the war was lost-yet without sight of its end. They were still deep inside Russia. Unlike the winter of 1944-45, when they were aroused to heroic frenzy in the defence of their homeland, they found themselves slowly retreating across a bleak and hostile landscape, always outnumbered, perpetually short of fuel and ammunition, constantly having to exert themselves and their machinery beyond the danger point. And behind them lay bitter memories of what midwinter was like. - Alan Clark, Barbarossa
Parts and sections were built all along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, to be assembled in the Crescent City. I had two aunts who worked on them. Beaver County, PA.
This was the first time that an amphibious assault on a defended shoreline was attempted since Dieppe, the Marines studied how to, during the 30s which became the basis of all such operations today.
My uncle was diver doing some work there in the early 1970s cleaning up some wrecks that blocked boat traffic. He would always say he didn't understand how so many men could fight in such confined space and not all be dead. I became obsessed with that battle as an adult and have done everything but go there myself. Some of those Pacific battles were nasty grunt fights on a whole nother level.
There was a statement made about Iwo Jima, by one of the generals or admirals involved in that operation, that could have also been applied to Tarawa. It went somethig like, "Victory was never in doubt. What was is in doubt was whether the last Marine would die knocking out the last Japanese pillbox." Tarawa was a harbinger of battles to come, with the Japanese making extensive use of fortifications and conducting a masterful defense, while fighting to near total extinction. That size of the islands also restricted manuever and required frontal assaults against heavily fortified postions. It all resulted in combat that was extraordinarily savage, often at very close range and sometimes hand-to-hand, and casualty rates for the attacker that were also appalling. In some respects these battles mirror those of the Western Front in WW1, with similar conditions, aside from the tropical locales.
My Great Grandpa was at the battle of Tarawa in the Navy on a troop transport. He spoke about training for a long while in the pacific and then going to Pearl Harbor on the way there. His journal said the fighting was brutal. They would use the transports as hospitals. He said they had a hard time getting the smaller transports out safely to the beaches. He was also at Kwajalein, but that was it for his island hopping experience.
That's why there were FIVE separate landings on D-day. Even if a couple went awry, it was almost guaranteed that the others would have enough momentum to get a decent beach head from which to expand.
I DID IT! I FINALLY DID IT!!! I'M A TIMEGHOST ARMY MEMBER! MUAHAHAHAHA MAY HISTORY REIGN SUPREME!!! It's about damn time too. I can't ever repay all the free education you all have provided to me and the world. Glory to the TimeGhost Army! Excelsior!
I had an uncle that was on Tarawa. It was very bad and led to the creation and use of Underwater Demolition Teams by the US Navy. They would swim in and blow up the reefs at night. The invasion of the Balkans would not have served much of a tactical or strategic purpose. The biggest benefit would be to put American bombers much closer to Ploesti, Romania where a huge portion of the oil that kept the German war machine in operation was located.
I could see the US arguing that getting bombers closer to those oilfields at this point in the war wouldn't be worth the resources versus expending them to invade France. The Soviets were already within striking range of Romania by land; by the time an Allied invasion of the Balkans took place and they got airfields set up, the Red Army would already be in Ploesti.
@@tomhenry897 At that point, it was about winning the war. The Balkans had no real strategic value. The terrain favored the defender, The distance from any air base favored the defenders. The supply lines to the Balkans were longer and less secure than crossing the English Channel to France. Even if you staged supplies in North Africa that is farther than crossing the English Channel. There are a lot more reasons it was a bad idea.
Battle of Apamama/Abemama (21-25 November 1943): In addition to the main landings on Tarawa and Makin, a small American force (50 men from a Marine Recon company commanded by Captain James Jones) attacked the Apamama Atoll. The invasion nearly ends before it begins because their transport- the submarine USS Nautilus- is misidentified and attacked by the destroyer USS Ringgold while en route, and the sub was hit by a 5 inch shell that turned out to be a dud. The Nautilus arrives on the 20th of November, and the Marines land on Joe Island on the south end of the atoll, missing their intended landing site on John Island to the west. On the 21st the Marines crossed to John, and defeated a 3 man Japanese Patrol. On the 22nd they crossed to Orson Island at the north end of the Atoll, and discovered 23 Japanese soldiers manning a fortified position on Otto Island at the Atoll's east end. On the 23rd the Marines attempted to land on Otto, but were stymied by heavy Japanese fire. On the 24th Otto was shelled by the USS Nautilus, with the bombardment killing four Japanese soldiers. On the 25th, Captain Jones was informed by native islanders that the remaining 18 Japanese soldiers had committed suicide following the sccidental death of their commander (the officer had been waving his gun in the air while trying to rally his men with a fiery speech, and shot himself in the head). The northernmost and largest island of Apamama would subsequently be used to build a 7000 foot long airstrip.
I just realised all of Monty’s grand battle plans work perfectly, provided there’s no river in the way. Similarly Mark Clarke is fine, as long as there’s not a mountain involved.
There was a Lieutenant at Tarawa named Paul Hospodar who was in the first wave of landing craft. He said it was a nightmare. Like many in that wave, his landing craft ran aground on the coral still short of the beach. Some of the craft that did that then dropped their ramps thinking they were in position, and some of those marines then drowned. Paul survived by traversing along the shallow corral until he reached a small pier which he was able to use for cover until he got to the beach. He said that they had to dig in while taking fire from three directions and using the bodies of their own dead for cover, and like Indy said, they waited for over a day before the second wave came. While overall casualties were high at 20%, Paul's unit itself lost way more than 20% of theirs. Paul was promoted to Captain after that. Interesting side not: Decades later, Paul's son would be a world-class investigator, and assigned to a UN team investigating war crimes in Kosovo during the Serbo-Croat war of the 90's. Really interesting guy.
Another significant update. But what is going on in Crimea? I probably missed something but I don't think it's been mentioned for a couple episodes now. It just sits there, occupied by Axis forces, cut off from other Axis forces but is there nothing to report? Just curious.
Not much is happening. The Axis is still able to adequately support their forces there by air and sea from Romania, so it's not like they're truly cut off and running out of supplies like the 6th Army at Stalingrad. When the Soviets do finally attempt to take it, it won't be an easy fight.
SPOILER Post-war, a Soviet film "Tretiy Udar" ("The Third Blow") was released, depicting the Soviet recapture of Crimea in early 1944. The film presented a Turkish diplomat on the German side as a ridiculous opportunist - by 1948, when the film was released, Turkey was firmly in the US camp.
FDR made a very important decision to allow the photos of the battle at Tarawa to be released to the public. That decision set a precedent for the publication of many of the photos published of the Vietnam War, which you could say also influenced the home front in a very impactful way. Images of war are important, and must be seen.
Minor correction. There were no 8-inch gins at Singapore, the defences there were 6-inch, 9.2 inch and 15 inches. (with other minor units) . The guns on Tarawa were bought from the British in 1905, and there were a total of 4 at Tarawa not 25. Total coastal defence guns at that island seem to have been 14 not 25.
The scale of WW2 makes the Pacific fights seem small in comparison but that's also what makes some of them so terrifying. The amount of firepower and men packed into such small areas, often with no ways to effectively retreat or even make a fighting or tactical retreat meant they were really ugly fights. On Tarawa there was simply no way to advance without entering into interlocking fields of fire. It was such a condensed battlefield that Marines would often advance under fire from three sides for the first two days. There was no other choice. Supporting fires did little. You had to go in and clear them out. Really ugly stuff and it's amazing the Marines didn't lose more men.
I really enjoy your weekly reporting on the war but this week I do have a complaint. During your discussion about the bombing of Berlin all the video showed was US bombers and crew doing daylight bombing. At this time in the war the US was not able to attack Berlin as it was well out of escort fighter range. All the bombing of Berlin in November of 1943 was RAF night bombing.
Hello everyone, please give a warm welcome to our lovely new interns! Nejma, TJ, Vasilii, Will, and Fernando!
Join the TimeGhost Army: bit.ly/WW2_222_PI
Welcome new friends and interns of the TGA! May your experiences and work lead you to ever greater things!
Hi guys!
Howdy yall.
Hello!!! Welcome!!!
Hello there
The movie "With the Marines at Tarawa" was so graphic that it required Roosevelt himself to approve releasing it. He did so because he wanted Americans to realize that this was not going to be a cake walk but a brutal fight to the end.
My Great Grandpa was there and he kept his description short and to the point with how bloody and sad it was.
@@frenlyfren Real heroes never talked much about what they saw....
@@Warszawski_Modernizm The guilty did not talk either. and the ones who felt guilty those are more numerous than you might guess. talking to old timers from other battles, other wars, my Dad veteran of Walcharen Island. ((Infatuate?) on being told that "saving Private Ryan was very realistic in the beach assault And so he should go see the movie. " I saw enough of all that for real, why would I spend good money to put myself through it again?!!" ut hre nevevacttually told us what happened what he did i had to work it all out, logically, by guesswork and reading also Mr Helmsley a 1st world war Tommy who I used to visit as my good deed as it were, in his old peoples home in the early '80s "Never mind all that, tell me about your girlfriend You dont' have one ??? Then, son, what on earth are you doing spending your time talking to an old wreck like me?" and he also never actually said anything about it (crafty old b****r) two examples plus also most people don't want to hear it. And I admit they have a point.
So yes - heroes villains,, cowards* rogues,, men of god and the godlees sinners and just plain blokes in an unbearable, impossible and deadly experience in their early twenties or late teen of course thet don't want to talk about it.
If you want a description of the brutality of island warfare, I recommend Eugene Sledge “With the Old Breed”, a memoir of a Marine who fought on Peleliu and Okinawa. Mr. Sledge pulls no punches. It’s not just brutal, it’s outright disgusting. Here’s one line on fighting for a hill in Okinawa,a hill covered in corpse parts from weeks of fighting:
“If a Marine slipped and slid down the bottom of the muddy slope, he was apt to reach the bottom vomiting. I saw more than one man stand up and watch in horror as fat maggots spilled from his boots, pockets, dungarees and the like.”
Same for the movie about Midway.
He approved it because his son was in it. He served as an AA gunner on the island.
A side note this week on November 23 1943 is that Australian Army Sergeant Thomas Derrick is awarded the Victoria Cross in New Guinea after volunteering to go out alone to tackle Japanese gun positions. He would destroy ten such positions with grenades that would allow the Australian advance to continue. However, Sergeant Derrick would not live to receive the medal as he would later die from wounds sustained in a later action in Borneo in May 1945.
Derrick was Australian
A British Army Sergeant in New Guinea? I don't think so mate. 🇭🇲
If he was awarded the VC in March of 1944, and was kia in May of 1945, he certainly lived to see the award.
@@downunderrob Opps, sorry for the typo error there mate, not sure how that error got past me 😅. Have changed it now, thanks for highlighting it!
I wish Australia's contributions were better known around the world
As a retired Marine, this battle is prominent in our USMC history. The reason that the tides played havoc was a phenomenon known as a "Neap" tide, where the high and low tides had no difference. Also, the first wave had the new "alligator" tracked amphibious assault craft could get over the reefs, but the following waves had the flat bottom Higgins boats got hung up, causing the Marines to wade in 600 yards to shore. A single tank made it to shore and was crucial to the battle. All for a spit of land only 2/3 the size of Central Park. After the battle, when the SeeBees were building the crucial runway-the sole reason for the battle-they realized that the length needed extended into the new 2d Marine Division Cemetery. The operators of the bulldozers wept as they had to doze over the crosses. This is why they continue to find Marine remains on the island. H.M. Howlin Mad Smith got hate mail from Gold Star parents until he died in 1967. The Marines shared their hard earned Amphibious lessons with the Army in preparation for Normandy, but it was shrugged off in inter-service rivalry, responding that the Army knew exactly how to conduct amphibious operations.
Excellent comment on the battle and afterwards. It appears the Army could have really taken some of the Marines suggestion to heart at Normandy, specifically Omaha.
Actually, it wasn't Marines trying to share their experiences with the Army, it was other Army commanders transferred from the Pacific, which perhaps makes the negligence even more tragic. General Charles Corlett, former commander of the 7th Infantry Division, tried to persuade Eisenhower to make better use of LVTs for the invasion, but was dismissed on the basis that the operation was too far along and that LVTs hadn't been needed in Europe up to that point.
@@redaug4212 Overall that is the case though there were some Marines involved with the planning of Overlord, as well as earlier amphibious operations in Europe and the Mediterranean (Husky, Torch, ect).
Semper Fi, devil dog.
The British had precise Tide Tables which were offered to the USN, But through Pride, Refused them.
Interesting fact, American actor Eddie Albert (probably best known for his starring role in "Green Acres") was a coxswain on one of the landing craft at Tarawa, and won a Bronze Star for rescuing 47 Marines while under machinegun fire.
He did this while driving a boat with eight barrels of gasoline on the deck.
Albert got 2 landingcraft shot up and was wounded in the effort. He made multiple trips to shore.
I didn't know this. I'm glad for these videos because they allow input like this that I would never come by myself.
BTW....there is film footage of his efforts....
Indy, quick note. When you say the “2nd Marines” that typically refers to the 2nd Marine Regimet. (7th Marines being the 7th regiment, etc). We refer to the divisions as “(numeric) marine division” to eleminate confusion, since both formation sizes are named/numbered similarly. Here at around 1:30 you’d say “2nd Marine Division” so us crayon eaters can know you mean the division and not the regiment 😂.
Love the show.
Good point. If I had some MRE jalapeno cheese to give you to go along with those crayons I'd give it to you 🧀
5:35 Among those lost on USS Liscome Bay was Doris Miller, a black sailor who won a Navy Cross for his actions at Pearl Harbor while stationed aboard the battleship West Virginia. A Gerald Ford class carrier, CVN-81, is going to be named in his honor.
Nice to see a carrier not named for a politician but a genuine sailor and hero.
@@jamesdoyle5405 Naming carriers after presidents or other politicians is a recent trend, and one I've never particularly liked. John C. Stennis (CVN-74) is probably the worst such case.
@@Hypernefelos Your right, I served in Enterprise and Constellation. The trend started with Kennedy and yes Stennis and Vincent are an embarrassment.
From memory he was a cook, when everything was going horribly wrong he found an unmanned 0.50 and commenced fighting back. Much respect, and I hope he gets the carrier named after him.
@@Hypernefelos My favorite carrier name was the Essex Class Carrier "USS Shangri-La". The story of the naming is a cracker- after the Doolittle Raid, a mob of reporters were interviewing FDR. One reporter asked "where was the raid launched from?" "Where?" the POTUS replied- "Oh, we launched it from Shangri-La", the mythical land of the novel by James Hilton.
"When we watched our bullet-riddled flag rise above the jungles of Tarawa, not one of us Marines didn't have a lump in our throats."
-Robert Sherrod
Didn't Sherrod receive the Medal of Honor at Tarawa?
05:37 one of those KIA on USS Liscombe Bay will be Doris Miller, first African-American recipient of the Navy Cross for heroism at Pearl Harbor. Two US Navy ships (a frigate and a soon to be built aircraft carrier) will be subsequently named in his honor and his actions depicted in two Hollywood films.
The only semi-historically accurate about Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor. But probably the best part of that film. Rest In Peace, Hero.
I went to Doris Miller elementary. San Diego, CA. Late 80s and early 90s. I am aware of his deeds.
I remember hearing that the footage of the Battle of Tarawa shown in American movie theaters caused quite a stir without it being censored. And that was thanks to Robert Sherrod personally persuading Roosevelt to let the footage air without being censored saying that it would be a disservice to those who fought n died in the battle.
One of the many things I love about this project is that it brings me closer to my late father. He was 11 when the war ended, and his older brother served with the Marines in the Pacific. As a result, he followed the war daily by listening to the radio and reading the newspaper. He remembered the strangest details, which must have seemed important at the time, like you might remember a single pitch in the middle of a long baseball season.
Seeing the war play out week by week gives me a taste of what that was like, and I am eternally grateful to Time Ghost for this. Thank you.
Not to lessen my gratitude in any way, but there is one important difference. In your reporting we are privy to far more intelligence than Dad was as a kid, something brought home in the discussion of the Tehran conference. Of course you have to report on it as you do, and anything else would have you firebombed in the comments. I do understand. But it makes me wonder just what was reported to people in the day, and what they thought of it all.
For example, Chiang was present in the newreels and pictures that appeared in the papers. Did that signal to people that the war in China was very important? What did they really think of him? Or the effort in China? How much did they really know about Burma?
You did give us a taste of just what I'm talking about by discussing the release of pictures from Tarawa of the dead Marines. That must have been a terrible shock, and its effect on the homefront could probably be a PhD thesis by itself. Thank you for mentioning details like this, it does make me wonder what it was like to live this war in real time. If only Dad was still with us, I would ask him.
But I do have Time Ghost, and thank you again for this project. When you go on to the Korean War, please let me know how I can sponsor in the name of 1st Lt Curtis R Hare (USASC). Thank you again, so much.
Chiang was very well known in America.
There had been a huge missionary push into China in the late nineteenth century and many of these efforts were American.
For decades before www, American congregations in the US were regularly getting updates from the missionaries in China doing the lords work. This was how a lot of the news of Japanese atrocities got to America
Henry luce, who owned time magazine, was a child of missionaries in China. He put Chiang on the front cover a couple times.
For his part, Chiang kai shek was a Methodist. He was a devout believer, but he also knew that his Christianity played really well to US audiences so it was emphasized.
Suggested reading, "The Powers that Be" by David Halberstam.
A biography of Time, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and CBS from about 1920 to 1980.
”What about an attack of 2 million men?”
”Then.. our defence stands only 500 years.”
I remember the father of a childhood friend was a USMC rifleman at Tarawa where he was wounded. He was still alive and kicking five years ago when I saw him at his wife's funeral. Unlike most vets of that time, he would talk about his wartime experiences, I wish I remembered them better.
Forty years ago, my boss' boss was a Marine veteran of Guadalcanal, Betio, and Siapan. Because I was a vet and a history buff, he told me about each island. His BN got hung up on the reef. 1200 Marines exited the boats and waded 600 yards to shore. Only 600 made it out of the water alive. They had been issued new camouflaged coveralls that didn't breathe. Jack said that by 1000 hrs they all had to strip down to their skivvies and pistol belts because of the heat. He was pissed at the Navy because the Navy used direct fire instead of plunging fire. The direct fire hit the island and skipped past the island before exploding. Unfortunately, he died less than a year after he retired in 1985.
Robert Sherrod, an embedded reporter from Time magazine, was part of the first wave to hit the beaches on Betio. The unit he landed with sustained 60% casualties during the course of the battle. He later published a harrowing account of that fighting called Tarawa: The Story of a Battle.
A few excerpts covering the landings and some of the first day's fighting:
"We jumped into the little tractor boat and quickly settled on the deck. 'Oh, God, I'm scared,' said the little Marine, a telephone operator, who sat next to me forward in the boat. I gritted my teeth and tried to force a smile that would not come and tried to stop quivering all over (now I was shaking from fear). I said, in an effort to be reassuring, 'I'm scared, too.' I never made a more truthful statement in all my life.
Now I knew, positively, that there were Japs, and evidently plenty of them, on the island. They were not dead. The bursts of shellfire all around us evidenced the fact that there was plenty of life in them!... After the first wave there apparently had not been any organized waves, those organized waves which hit the beach so beautifully in the last rehearsal. There had been only an occasional amphtrack which hit the beach, then turned around (if it wasn't knocked out) and went back for more men. There we were: a single boat, a little wavelet of our own, and we were already getting the hell shot out of us, with a thousand yards to go. I peered over the side of the amphtrack and saw another amphtrack three hundred yards to the left get a direct hit from what looked like a mortar shell.
'It's hell in there,' said the amphtrack boss, who was pretty wild-eyed himself. 'They've already knocked out a lot of amphtracks and there are a lot of wounded men lying on the beach. See that old hulk of a Jap freighter over there? I'll let you out about there, then go back to get some more men. You can wade in from there.' I looked. The rusty old ship was about two hundred yards beyond the pier. That meant some seven hundred yards of wading through the fire of machine guns whose bullets already were whistling over our heads.
The fifteen of us - I think it was fifteen - scurried over the side of the amphtrack into the water that was neck-deep. We started wading.
No sooner had we hit the water than the Jap machine guns really opened up on us. There must have been five or six of these machine guns concentrating their fire on us... It was painfully slow, wading in such deep water. And we had seven hundred yards to walk slowly into that machinegun fire, looming into larger targets as we rose onto higher ground. I was scared, as I had never been scared before. But my head was clear. I was extremely alert, as though my brain were dictating that I live these last minutes for all they were worth. I recalled that psychologists say fear in battle is a good thing; it stimulates the adrenalin glands and heavily loads the blood supply with oxygen.
I do not know when it was that I realized I wasn't frightened any longer. I suppose it was when I looked around and saw the amphtrack scooting back for more Marines. Perhaps it was when I noticed that bullets were hitting six inches to the left or six inches to the right. I could have sworn that I could have reached out and touched a hundred bullets. I remember chuckling inside and saying aloud, 'You bastards, you certainly are lousy shots.'
After wading through several centuries and some two hundred yards of shallowing water and deepening machinegun fire, I looked to the left and saw that we had passed the end of the pier. I didn't know whether any Jap snipers were still under the pier or not, but I knew we couldn't do any worse. I waved to the Marines on my immediate right and shouted, 'Let's head for the pier!' Seven of them came. The other seven Marines were far to the right. They followed a naval ensign straight into the beach - there was no Marine officer in our amphtrack. The ensign said later that he thought three of the seven had been killed in the water.
The first three of us lay on the rocks panting, waiting for the other five to join us. They were laboring heavily to make it, and bullets from the machine guns on the beach were still splashing around them like raindrops in a water barrel. By this time we three were safely hidden from the beach by thick, upright, coconut-log stanchions of the pier. I watched these five men and wondered how on heaven or earth they managed to come so close to death, and yet live. Once I thought the last man, a short Marine, would not get under the pier. Twenty yards away, he fell and went under. But he was not hit. In a moment he was up again, struggling through the water, almost exhausted beyond further movement, but still carrying his heavy roll of telephone wire. When he had gone under I had asked myself whether I had the breath or courage to go after him. I was relieved when the necessity of answering that question was obviated by his arrival.
Not gonna lie i was relieved as well when i read the telephone operator made it.
Thank you so much for sharing. Thanks to the person who wrote this, and thanks to the persons who went on these beaches.
Hard pain felt here, as much as a written story can provide. And, oh lord, "a wavelet" must be such a frightening thing to be.
With respect to the landings on Tarawa, I once read a memoir written by one of the skippers of the landing craft. He said that some of the more experienced skippers figured out a trick to get their landing craft over the reef. They discovered that if they ran their landing craft at the reef at full speed, it would create quite a large bow wave. If they cut their engines just before they hit the reef, the wave they'd created would overtake the landing craft, lifting it up a bit. Then, if they revved their engines again, they could ride the wave over the reef and make it safely to the other side.
Unfortunately, by the time they figured the trick out, most of the problems with the landings with respect to the reef had already happened, so it wasn't a huge benefit for the main landings. But still, credit's due to some clever skippers who knew their stuff.
First what is it with the ghost replies? This is a very nice comment, I thought that it would have gone somewhere like them just brute force ramming the coral. This is much more smart than that.
@@johnloman4164 The "ghost replies" are comments that YT's algos have decided you aren't allowed to read.
Remember that the people who stifle free expression and communication never turn out to be the good guys in history.
The foresight of FDR on China returning as a major power and how Truman lost it
as a ally in the late 40s.
Japanese ability to reinforce islands in the middle of nowhere was astounding.
Yeah. The SNLF's were something else.
The Pacific is absolutely huge. It didn't take much to evade the US fleets at this point in the war. Became a lot harder as Japan's defensive perimeter shrank and the US began churning out ships like cans of Spam.
@@mikhailiagacesa3406they were regular army
@@maximilianodelrio Any Japanese historians want to take this one?
@@mikhailiagacesa3406 just found out i was wrong, it was snlf in tarawa, but what I meant is that in most islands the defending japanese were from the army/navy
Not sure when that changed but the maps having topgraphic shading to indicate height is really awesome and improves my understanding of the terrain. Really great!
Also this week on November 20 1943, the second mission of the 2008 video game *Call of Duty: World at War: Final Fronts* , the *Betio Airfield level* under *Private Joe Miller* begins at Tarawa as part of the Battle of Tarawa. In this mission, you must capture the beach and destroy enemy artillery to aid the beach landings by placing charges in the enemy trenches.
Yes, the ps2 game. Do you think the flares they used during Banzai helped or hurt their efforts?
Classic
I have a vivid memory of going round to my neighbour's house to play CoD (which my parents wouldn't get for me because I was 9), and we couldn't get past that level.
Beast
World at war: final fronts is so forgotten about. Always overshadowed by the PS3s version.
Interesting fact: Stalin's plane was escorted by a fighter squadron led by a Spanish pilot. He is José María Bravo, and was the top flying ace of the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. After the defeat of the Republicans in 1939, he was exiled in the Soviet Union and joined the VVS (Soviet Airforce), fighting during WW2. He was able to return to Spain in the 1970s (after Franco's death), and was given back an officer rank in the Spanish Army of the Air equivalent to the one he held on the Spanish Republican Airforce.
The Red army has learned how to fight the Wehrmacht. A lot of people said they won due to General Winter and sheer numbers but they fail to give credit to their ability to learn from previous mistakes.
In spite of themselves (Stalins purges), they staved off Germany with what they had (Moscow 1941) and then once they had established manufacturing based off Lend Lease supplies in 1942/3, they could out produce Germany. Final factor, Stalin learned to thrust his generals advice once he got commanders who could win. War made him a realist while it made Hitler a fantasist.
@@marks_sparks1 This ^
Well said. More is made of the overwhelming man power pool and the weather. Rather than the fact that they wore the German's down and ended up effectively out fighting them to win .👍👊
Furthermore, they got lots of US trucks to supply the logistics, and carry motorised infantry to support tanks.
All this, and Zhukov, too
"Effectiveness" not "Effectivity"
I wonder if the problems at Tarawa were exacerbated by the American scepticism shown the British offer to share the techniques and training of the COPPs (Combined Operations Pilotage Parties)? These were units established to properly survey landing sites for invasions, including those of Sicily and Normandy. The units were made up of members of the Royal Navy, Royal Marines, Corps of Royal Engineers and Special Boat Service. The Americans did copy the commandos and SOE early on but maybe the COPPs had to wait before their utility was proven. Other good ideas were rejected, too, remember - such as the use of the specialised tank units of the British 79th Division (Hobart's Funnies) during the Normandy landings.
Was so excited to hear you cover the battle of Tarawa. Read a book in high school called "Line of Departure: Tarawa" which made me respect the battle that took place on that 3 mile island. Truly the first trial by fire for a marine landing on the island hopping campaign.
The British avoided using the Greek Army in Exile for the Dodecanese because they were bargaining the Islands with Turkey, in order to get them in the war on the side of the Allies.
The German victory in the Dodecanese and the diplomatic efforts of Von Papen, the German ambassador to Turkey, kept the Turks out of the war until February 1945.
As a result, the Dodecanese (inhabited by Greeks who were the vast majority of the population) were given by Italy to Greece, in 1947 with the treaty of Paris.
This was the last Greek territory that joined the Greek state since the revolution of independence of 1821 against the Ottoman Empire and defines the borders of Greece to this day.
That's partly true. Battles took place in Samos and Santorini, which were not Italian pre-1941, but the British remained hesitant about using Greek forces. The British priorities were that the Dodecanese would remain Italian, due to their policy of British-Italian rapprochement. If the rest islands would be liberated by the Greek armed forces (like Kastellorizo), that would create a fait accompli for the post-war settlement. The possibility of the Dodecanese given to Turkey as a bargain chip for entering the war with the Allies was unlikely, although discussions took place, because of the population proportion of the islands (according to the Italian census of 1936 in the Dodecanese: Greeks 85,96%, Muslims 5,63%)
I still have the map my Dad was given prior to the invasion (2nd Mar. Div.). It's very detailed. The Marines knew where every machine gun next, pill box and stuff were. The hard part was taking them given the unforeseen neap tide which stranded the landing craft on the beach, raking them with fire as they waded ashore. Fortunately my Dad's battallion came ashore on D+1
I lived on Tarawa as a young boy (2-5) in the late 70s. I remember playing on the rusting remains of the landing craft.
What a fascinating story to be able to tell! The evidence left behind shows the legacy of the War and how many places were so deeply affected...Thank you for your comment!
@@WorldWarTwo thank you
A small point; you said 2d Marines when 2d Marine Division (2MarDiv) is more accurate. The 2d Mar Div consisted of the 2d Marines, 6th Marines and the 8th Marines. These three units are regiments. Love your work thank you very much.
Hi Thomas,
Could you explain why a division is split into three regiments?
Do the regiments fight separately?
If so, what's the benefit of using divisions as an organizational unit at all - why not just stick with regiments?
I'm a civvie from Europe, and I've tried to look up the sizes and such on Wikipedia, but it just doesn't really click for me, haha.
I hope you and yours are well, cheers from the Netherlands :)
In the Marine Corps and nearly the same in the Army infantry units organization works like this:
4 men make up a fire team, 3 fire teams and a squad leader make a squad, 3 squads a platoon sergeant and platoon leader usually a lieutenant make up a platoon. 3 platoons make up a company, 3 companies a battalion, 3 battalions a regiment, 3 regiments a division, 3 divisions a corps, 3 corps an army. Companies and above also have staff personnel, more staff the higher you go. Each Marine division includes a regiment of artillery. Modern warfare with less emphasis on rifle fire may change this organization but some form of organization will remain in the interest of command and control. A division will not always act as a single unit, units may be split off to handle small missions in disparate locations, command and control is maintained through commanding officers reporting to the CO of their next more senior unit.
It seems that you have a 48 star American Flag in the background which is...incredibly awesome touch there.
Thank you for your content, all I want to do is show it to my high school history teacher, he would be thrilled to discover your channel I am sure!
Interesting to see how the USA will have reached Okinawa by spring1945 considering how they are in the Gilberts now. Sure they're going to skip some islands( island hopping you know), but this is still very impressive.
The fights were small compared to Europe but the overall scale of the task in the Pacific is mind boggling. We'll never see anything like that again.
Hopefully.
@@RJT80 Just to add on to R T's post to give an idea of the scale involved, there are 1,875 km between Guadalcanal and Tarawa. There are 5,556 km between Tarawa and Okinawa.
1,608.31 km seperates Berlin from Moscow.
@@AndrewMitchell123 that's why the strategy was not to capture all the islands but most of them and on hard ones like rabaul and truk was to encircle them and move one and bomb them constantly so they can be to much of a treat
@@AndrewMitchell123 That's why things are finally starting to move in the Pacific now. The planning and preparation the US did prior to and just after the start of the war (for them, in '41) is finally kicking in. The US Navy has the men and ships to support two massive thrusts towards the Japanese mainland.
I remember back in high school, reading accounts of some of the marines who landed at Tarawa, to say they were harrowing and tense would be an understatement...
Hello Indy, I'm Italian: Pescara is pronounced like "Peskara".
Thank you for this awesome series!
This example aside, I do want to complement you and your team on the efforts you make to correctly pronounce the names of the places and people. As someone who was married to a Russian woman (may GOD keep her close) who grew up in Kislovodsk, I appreciate how you and Spartacus correctly pronounce many of the place names that most Americans would simply say, it's got too many consonants strung together to be able to say it!
Just be glad the Brits were able to keep the Huns at bay, so you don't have to talk about battles taking place in Wales and having to pronounce those names correctly ...
Indy, I love your work, & I’m glad to see the beginning of the Central Pacific drive covered in this episode. Referring to a Marine Corps unit by a number, e.g. “2nd Marines”, refers to a regiment. The correct title would be 2nd Marine Division.
Thanks.
Perhaps one reason for the minimal use of the Royal Hellenic Navy and the Greek army in exile (with the notable exception of Ieros Lochos/Sacred Band) in the Dodecanese campaign was the british intentions of using the islands as a bait to lure Turkey in the war in the Allies side.
My father was in the 2nd Marine Div and I still have the map he was given prior to the invasion that shows where all the pill boxes and armaments were. They had done a good job of recon. The weather folk missed the coming of a "neap tide," an extra low tide due to moon placement. That's why the landing craft got stuck on reefs
Thanks for the extra information!
We’re grateful to your father for his service!
How any navy officer can miss a neap tide is something I can't understand. It happens twice every month and everyone who has ever sailed in any kind of tidal water knows how to take them into account and how to read tidal tables.
14:30 almost perfect pronunciation of kuşadası😀theatres of war are expanding and your amazing work keeps up with it.
I was wondering last year " how they are going to keep up with 3-4 fronts" and here i am just watching.
Also I see you have new interns. Have fun
That level of commitment to accuracy is something I really love about this channel and respect Indy for.
I presume they were interned, as Turkey was neutral. A German victory close to their territory deterred Turkey from joining the Allies, at least for the time being.
it's crazy to think about how close we came as humanity to an utter, free-for-all mayhem in 1944-1946
My father had survived 6 months on Guadalcanal and after recuperation and training in New Zealand landed on Betio Island. He was in a forward area and took a hit knocking out most of his upper teeth. It could have been enemy fire or "friendly" fire. He had to run back to the beach to get a boat to the hospital ship. After medical treatment at Pearl Harbor he returned to the U.S. and the recruit depot at San Diego. There he met and married a lady Marine who became my mother. Without the atomic bombs he probably would have been part of the invasion of Japan
Its crazy to think of how much the world might have changed had the Allies forced open the Burma Road and supplied the Chinese Nationalists better. Considering what happens in China in 1944, and then in the Chinese Civil War after the end of WWII, we could be looking at a radically different world today.
I think we can blame the Nationalists' own incompetence for that one. If they'd been better organized and more effective on the battlefield, the rest of the Allies might have felt it was worth it to conduct that campaign and fully support the Chinese against Japan. As it was, they felt the island-hopping campaign was a much better use of those same resources.
@@Raskolnikov70 That's fair.
@@Raskolnikov70 it wasn't the nationalists who messed up the defense of Burma or who radically underestimated the Japanese in 1942.
While Japan was crushing the Brits and Americans in Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaya, and the Dutch east indies, the Chinese won the third battle of Changsha.
They had learned the hard way how to fight Japan despite being outclassed. Chinese forces would have killed to be as well equipped as British Indian forces in Malaya and the defense forces in the Philippines.
You can see this sort of bias in this video.
Indy quotes this author talking about the "vacillating" Chiang kai shek while never using those same words to describe the Americans or the British. Which is odd, because the rest of the video is Americans and British people putting forward several contradictory plans.
Dought that
The Nationalist were massively corrupt and Mao won the propaganda war
Nationalist attacked commmunists more then japs
Thank you for the work you all do! Especially poignant were the closeup photos of the German soldiers. It's hard to imagine what they experienced. Also, the one of a tired looking Churchill and the sly Stalin just behind him, as well as the video with Chang, and Roosevelt and Churchill looking old and sickly. Many of these photos and videos were new to me. Thank you!
General Alexander Patch, commander of the Allied land forces on the island, messaged his superior, Admiral William F. Halsey on February 9, 1943, "Tokyo Express no longer has terminus on Guadalcanal.
Great episode as usual. Interesting info on the Brits in the Dodecanese. I wasn't aware of any of these actions 'til now. Thanks for covering it.
In one documentary about the Tarawa landing, it said the US forces that clung to the beach to survive, expect counter attacks to come that night. This counter attack would have easily drove them into the sea. To the relief of all US troops on Tarawa, no counter attack took place place.
It was later revealed that, because of the US heavy shelling of the island severed the main communication wire that ran from the command post to the rest of the Japanese emplacements. The commander did want carry out a nighttime counter attack, but with no ability to coordinate that attack, he decided to keep his defenses in place.
Seems odd, since they could have used runners or messengers in order to set something like that up. Maybe he felt he didn't have enough time to organize it?
I had no idea what a pillbox is, and this is the first time I searched for it, after watching all other 221 episodies (and the specials).
"Feed your craving for such knowledge." lol! Yes, Indy, very well said!
It was interesting to hear the Andaman and Nicobar Islands mentioned. This is an issue in the geostrategic situation today. India is, at the present time, fortifying these islands. That would allow them to choke off all trade through the Indian Ocean for China. Talk about repeats.
Thanks for discussing the sinking of the USS Liscome Bay. My Grandmother’s uncle Gordon Ernest Brown, Seaman Second Class was one of the 600 sailors who perished that day. One day after his Nineteenth birthday.
And bloody Republicans think 19 year olds are too young to vote...
I have watched so many episodes of this, plus the great war content and I am still impressed by the quality of this work I hope they don't cancel Overlord, it seems like it might work
The US will never give in to British pressure to postpone another invasion of Europe. It's not just their unwillingness to participate in helping them reconquer their colonial empires as Indy pointed out. Something that rarely gets mentioned anywhere is how unpopular the war is in the US. Many Americans take the side of the Germans over the Soviets and Brits, and many more than that feel they shouldn't be involved in any foreign wars whatsoever. There is still a strong isolationist streak among the US population and although the Pearl Harbor attacks allowed Roosevelt's government to whoop up the population and take over the economy and put it on a war footing, Americans aren't going to put up with it forever.
The US has to win fast, bring the boys home and get the economy back to producing consumer goods as quickly as they can.
Churchill was always over focused on Greece and he always met disaster in Greece
I've been waiting for this one! Tarawa insane to me, so many men and deaths on such a tiny strip of land.
Medal of Honour Pacific Assault culminated in Tarawa, i wish there was a sequel
Weird how that never got a follow up. PA had so much potential
Loving the longer episode!! So much going on at this point of the war.
To me, the interesting point is how divergent American and British strategies are. The American method of war is to seek the decisive battle to win the war and go home. The British are more obtuse. The British go for the long game and are content to snipe at the enemy and use economics and blockade to wear down the Germans. They did this in WWI and again during the Napoleonic Wars. If you notice, British wars in the 19th century end in treaties than outright winning. This is what Churchill knows and Churchill fears that the American way of war, out right victory, relagates Britain to a second power not a first rate power.
Churchill also just doesn’t have the firepower to decisively win, whereas Americans and Soviets do
I think the American foreign policy at the start of the war and the debt accumulated by lendlease more successfully managed to achieve those goals. Once they bankrupted us they seceded us, as the dominant world power. ! winner winner chicken dinner !😅
I think the American apprehension of being used to prop up Britain's colonial empire was entirely accurate. These were Churchills goals. These were the same fears America had in getting involved in both WW1 and WW2.
No man was happier than Winston Churchill when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor - he knew that saved Britain (already a second -rate power) - and wanted to leverage the inevitable victory into growth of the empire.
Later - already in the cold war - he would say he wanted to check Soviet expansion - a continuation of "The Great Game" perhaps - but even that assertion is smoke and mirrors - just ask Tito.
There was quite a bit of tug-of-war between the British and Americans on strategic goals and where resources should be allocated. Sometimes the British had the right of it (Operation Torch, no cross-channel invasion in 1943) and sometimes they didn't.
The obsession with the Balkans at the expense of a cross-channel invasion was one place where the British were less clear-sighted than their American counterparts. The US was also rightly cautious about not committing troops and resources to schemes that had more to do with preserving colonial hegemony than achieving immediate war aims. US suspicion about British motives in that regard were quite often justified.
British was just stupid with a very loose and dumb way to rationalize it. Racism was literally a factor in their strategic planning
I am, to an extent, looking forward to your coverage of the battle of monte cassino as my granddad fought and was wounded there, luckily not mortally
@12:17, that soldiers helmet looks like a bullet went through it! Great series, thanks a lot! BTW, Eddie Albert (Green Acres actor) was decorated for his actions at Tarawa. As much war is presented here it doesn't include all the air and sea battles going on as well. Man, that's a lot of killing going on.
_"Three Week wonders; that's what we called the new guys. That's all the training they got and it wasn't enough. They usually didn't last very long. No matter how much training you got or how strong you are, when you strap up and step on a battlefield for the first time, it changes you forever. Tarawa was just another strip of sand out in the middle of nowhere, but for many of us it would be the last thing we ever saw."_ - Corporal Thomas Conlin
This week on November 20 1943, the Tarawa levels A to D, as well as the Tarawa (Prologue) level of the 2004 video game *Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault* begin as part of the Battle of Tarawa. In these levels as Private Thomas Conlin, you will need to secure the beachhead and clear the enemies from the pier first. Once secured, inland gun emplacements and enemy structures will need to be cleared. In the final level of the entire game (Tarawa D), you must hold the line and defeat the Japanese banzai charge.
I was doing an entire Medal of Honor series playthrough earlier in the year but stopped few levels into Pacific Assault. Solid game I just wasn't too fond of the shooting mechanics. I really loved Rising Sun and it's level design.
"Three Week wonders". And that's being replicated today by Russian conscripts in Ukraine"
@@chrisvowell2890 That one was a bit of creative license on the part of the game devs. Basic training for Marines during this period was 7 weeks. That's also just the basic training. Replacements (the 2nd Marine Division had also fought in the Guadalcanal campaign) that hadn't been involved in prior fighting would have also had plenty of combat training while the division was in New Zealand, in the run up to Galvanic.
The troops that hit the beaches on Tarawa, including the replacements, were well trained and prepared for the battle by the standards of the era and may as well have been super soldiers compared to the preparation given Russian mobiks before they get tossed into the fighting Ukraine. The latter get next to none.
"November 23rd, 1943,
When the smoke had cleared, more than five thousand American and Japanese men had lost their lives on a beach not much wider than a few football fields. A Japanese admiral once said that we couldn't take Tarawa with a million men and hundred years. Well, the Marines did it in three days. And now its over. But of course, it ain't really over. The road to Tokyo is a long one and we're only halfway there. But sonvabitch, we're alive! Hopefully, we've earned a little rest, but tyranny doesn't sleep. And freedom? Well, its anything but free."
- Corporal Thomas Conlin, Medal of Honor Pacific Assault.
Yeah, not the best time for the Allies... high casualties at Tarawa, high casualties in Italy, arguing in Cairo... even the Soviets seem bogged down. You almost wonder why they didn't just hold positions until the weather improved, but I guess giving the enemy that much time to dig in and build reinforcements is a bad idea.
Remember that every day that the war goes on means more civilian deaths.
Those victories were costly, but they were still victories.
On the 26th of November 1942 the German ship D/S Donau left Norway with 529 Jews for Auschwitz. Of those 9 survived the Holocaust.
Yesterday August Petro Theodor Olsen Rathke, last surviving member of the Norwegian "Kompani Linge" commando-unit (belonging to the British Armed Forces) passed at age 96.
Eighth Army in Italy - Richard Doherty
Mountains and Floods (20 -30 November 1943)
Alexander had devised a three-phase strategy with Eighth Army opening army group operations. At first Eighth Army would get astride the Pescara-Pópoli road - Highway 5, the Via Valeria of Roman times - before advancing through Avezzano, thereby threatening the lines of communication of the German formations facing Fifth Army. Phase Two would see Fifth Army attack through the Liri and Sacco valleys to Frosinone, the best route for an armoured advance to Rome. Then a seaborne landing would be made south of Rome, directed on the Alban Hills. Alexander’s strategy was dictated by the state of Fifth Army, now exhausted and facing mountainous, muddy country and a foe that matched it division for division. The combined strength of both Allied armies was needed to drive the enemy from his positions. By striking first and threatening enemy lines of communication, Eighth Army would assist Fifth Army’s attack and give its commander time to reorganize.
The German defences facing Eighth Army were about nine miles in depth. East of Italy’s spine was the Bernhardt Line with, north-west of the Sangro, the advanced Sangro Line, through which Eighth Army would have to punch to reach the Pescara-Pópoli road in the Pescara valley. To that road from the Sangro the crow need fly only 22 miles. But soldiers can seldom take the same route as their avian friends and especially not with German soldiers in their way. Conditions along the way were already bad: with winter setting in, low ground was either flooded or muddy, while the higher ground was receiving its first layer of snow. Roads and tracks had suffered from the weather and would suffer even more from Kesselring’s engineers if the defenders were forced to withdraw. And those defenders were now in strong, well-sited positions, determined to make Eighth Army pay for every piece of ground in the coin of warfare: soldiers’ blood.
The Allies had already pierced the Viktor Line (from the Volturno estuary to Termoli), the Barbara Line (from Mondragone in the west to the vicinity of San Salvo) and Eighth Army now faced the advanced Sangro Line. Many enemy prisoners had boasted that the Allied armies would be smashed on the Winter Line. As if the existence of that line was not enough the Germans were forming an additional army, Fourteenth, in northern Italy under General Eberhard von Mackensen, to come into being on 21 November. Faced with the known quality of enemy positions, Montgomery was concerned about Eighth Army’s overall strength since many formations remained in Africa. Reaching the Pescara-Pópoli road was not going to be possible with four infantry divisions; Montgomery considered that he needed at least one more. Furthermore according to his Memoirs ‘[m]y troops were getting very tired and my formations had suffered considerable casualties since the landings at Reggio. In particular the officer situation in the infantry had become acute.’ Some reinforcements arrived as Eighth Army prepared to assault the Sangro defences. General Sir Bernard Freyberg’s 2nd New Zealand Division had begun landing in Italy during October and was now ready to resume its place in the line of battle. The division had been restructured to deploy an integral armoured brigade, 4th New Zealand Armoured Brigade, with two infantry brigades. This order of battle had been adopted by Freyberg to ensure that his division would always have its own armour. Following heavy losses in July 1942, the original 4th NZ Brigade had been taken out of the line and the division reinforced as necessary by brigades from other formations. It had also had 9th Armoured Brigade under command during Operations LIGHTFOOT and SUPERCHARGE, the final El Alamein battles. However, as Eighth Army prepared to attack along the Sangro, the New Zealand Division was reinforced by 19th Brigade from 8th Indian Division, providing it with three infantry and one armoured brigades.
For the Sangro operation, Eighth Army deployed 690 guns, the majority from twenty-two field regiments, each with twenty-four 25-pounders, and the balance from seven medium regiments. In 4th Armoured Brigade and the Three Rivers Regiment, Montgomery could also deploy 186 Shermans with another thirty-seven tanks in workshops under repair or maintenance; the tanks of 4th NZ Armoured Brigade would reinforce that number. In the initial phase, Montgomery hoped to convince the Germans that his main effort would come from XIII Corps and be directed towards Avezzano. However, V Corps would be making the real effort before which a jumping-off line on the north bank of the Sangro would be seized. The deception plan required XIII Corps to advance towards the upper Sangro before V Corps’ attack began. In addition, XIII Corps was to make:
"ostentatious troop movements, and to plant bogus dumps in its maintenance area to simulate far-reaching administrative support. A wireless deception scheme was contrived to make the enemy think that Army Tactical Headquarters and 8th Indian Division would arrive in [XIII Corps’] sector. Operations by 19 Indian Infantry Brigade were to screen 8th Indian Division’s actual eastward sidestep to Paglieta and the New Zealand Division’s arrival near Scerni. Wireless silence, patrolling of unimportant ground, dummies and camouflage all played their parts. A naval demonstration towards Pescara was arranged to foment the enemy’s known fears for his sea flank."
Montgomery held his first planning conference on 14 November. Although he hoped that D-Day would be the night of the 19th/20th this depended on two dry days immediately beforehand. Nonetheless, XIII Corps was pushing towards Castèl di Sangro and Alfedena along the axis of Highway 17 by the 18th. The roads had suffered the very professional attentions of German engineers and, off-road, conditions were appalling, continuous rain creating thick, glutinous mud. From a base at Carovilli, 3rd Canadian Brigade advanced to Capracotta and San Pietro whence patrols probed across the Sangro. On 24 November the brigade launched an attack on Castèl di Sangro but a change in Montgomery’s plans led to cancellation. A similar attack, by 5th British Division on Alfedena, was also abandoned after the division reached Monte Civitalta, overlooking Alfedena, and began its attack on the 22nd. In addition to its fighting responsibilities, XIII Corps had assumed another duty: the Germans had implemented a scorched-earth policy that left many civilians homeless; by the end of November, about 4,000 were seeking shelter and food with an additional 500 refugees arriving daily. Both the corps’ medical and transport services were strained dealing with this humanitarian emergency.
As part of the preliminaries to the main assault, 8th Indian Division, less 19th Brigade, side-stepped to Paglieta between 14 and 18 November, while the New Zealanders had their first action in Italy on the 17th when 19th Armoured Battalion and 3/8th Punjabis of 19th Indian Brigade captured Perano from elements of 64th Panzer Grenadier Regiment. On the following day, 19th Brigade took Archi and prepared to seize the high ground between the Sangro and Aventino rivers prior to a crossing by 2nd New Zealand Division. During the night of 22/23 November, the Punjabis and 1/5th Essex waded the swollen Sangro to attack San Angelo and Altino. Many casualties died of exposure as they could not be evacuated back across the Sangro for medical attention.
78th British Division (The Battleaxe Division) had also been involved in these preliminary operations as patrols from the division crossed the Sangro almost every night. With the Germans appearing most unusually quiescent, 78th British Division dominated the area between the river and the escarpment on the German side. But then nature took a hand and, from the 15th, the spates on the Sangro became an ally of the Germans. ‘No patrol when crossing the river knew when it would be able to return and the always deepening, greasy mud in the approaches to the river bedevilled the preparation of fords.’
And so the stage was set for Eighth Army’s main thrust. The weather refused to comply with Montgomery’s plan, however, and rain poured down on the 16th, frustrating those engineers who had been constructing fords and their approaches along the Sangro. This work was undone as torrents of water from the mountains rushed to the Adriatic. It thus became necessary to build bridges and D-Day was set, hopefully, for 24 November, although Montgomery now revised his plan, limiting his advance to Lanciano and announcing a pause for two or three days to allow the Sangro valley to be reorganized thoroughly for movement.
Four bridges were to be built, two for wheeled vehicles and tracked carriers, one to take all types of wheeled vehicles and, in an emergency, tanks, and the fourth to carry tanks. Two bridges, No. 1 and H, the tank bridge, were completed during the night of 21/22 November, but work on No. 3 was delayed because traffic congestion held up vehicles carrying bridging equipment. Then the weather intervened again with heavy rain in the upper reaches of the Sangro on the 22nd, although the weather was fine in V Corps’ area. That night the river was in flood and the CCRE* of V Corps described the results:
"Old Man Sangro, deciding that our task was not meeting with sufficient opposition, rose in all his wrath and came down in spate. Where the water gap was 100-150 feet it suddenly became 1,000 and [the bridges] were to be seen at daylight splendidly forlorn in the middle of a vast span of swiftly flowing water."
How the engineers must have felt. The CCRE’s comments are a masterly example of the capacity of British officers to understate problems. Such was the flooding that no further bridging work could be undertaken until the 26th. Two DUKW companies of RASC - 156 and 385 Companies - ferried supplies to the bridgehead and brought back wounded; some DUKWs made the dangerous return sea passage from Vasto. Then, on 24 November, General Allfrey, the corps commander, issued final orders for what was now going to be a slower, limited operation.
Excellent video! Also, that desk lamp is amazing!
Bedankt
Lots of good info this week. Appreciate the time and effort by Indie and the crew.
Yay! Saturday morning cartoons!!!
Kinda why I still watch this channel. lol.
My father got Dengi Fever in Fiji in 1941, so after he was Commissioned he went to New Caledonia in Ordinence, but not with the Brigades up into the Solomon Islands. Big Marquis Tents served as Hospitals and dad Organised the Ambulances from the Hospital Ships. When the Vietnam War came, he made sure that my brother and myself did not join the Army.
The thing is, because of Carlson's raid on Betio earlier in the year caused the Japanese to build up the defenses resulting in the extra Marine deaths. Also the 27th Division on Makin took too long to eliminate the Japanese resulting in an aircraft carrier sinking due a torpedo attack. This brings about the feud between Marine Gen Holland Smith and Army Gen. Ralph Smith, commander of the 27th Division.
It actually wasn't the 27th's fault that _Liscome Bay_ sunk. Task Group 52 was still conducting combat missions in the Gilbert Islands after Makin was secured on Nov 23. The real issue was a lapse in the destroyer screen that allowed an enemy submarine through. Regardless, Holland Smith sill laid the blame on the Army since he was infuriated that the 27th wasn't making faster progress despite facing less resistance than the Marines on Betio.
I went to read a description of cape st. George battle and it surprised me that IJN succeed in transporting army reinforcements into bougainville and withdraw navy aviaton personnel.
They were intercepted by us navy while returning home and lost 3 destroyers that could ill afford to lose.
Yet the last tokyo express mission was accomplished even it the hardest conditions.
My mom’s older brother died on his 20th birthday during the invasion of Tarawa. James F Rice 2nd Marines.
My dad was a Marine Corps dive bomber pilot in the South Pacific. As dangerous as his job was (a lot of the guys he had trained with got shot down), he said it was nothing compared to what the USMC grunts had to endure on the ground. "I got to come back to the base after a mission, get a shower and a hot meal, a shot of hooch from the flight surgeon, and then a clean cot to sleep in. Those poor guys in the infantry spent weeks at a time eating cold food out of cans, enduring heat and bugs and mud, never being able to get clean -- it was hell for them," he told us.
If memory serves, Churchill's focus on Italy and the Balkans was based on his strategy to limit soviet influence in Europe after the war, by having the western allies advance northwards from eastern Italy and Yugoslavia. I can see why he thought it was a good idea but, like several of his ideas, was unlikely to work in the real world. As I understand it, this approach was further weakened by the allied landings in the south of France.
Hi Indy
Another thrilling week.
Everywhere axis losing but huge loss for allies.
Finally allies managed to defeat axis slowly.
Thanks for the episode.
Tarawa, the battle that they cheered about in jarhead before branding that guy
"they might not be the allies anymore" i dont have the heart to tell him about whats coming
Its beyond my comprehension the mindset of the Japonese Soldiers during the war.
You must be very,very Strong psychological to endure days and days under the ground,under a Relentless shelling from all kinds erasing any form of life on ground level.
And after those Hellish days of that Relentless sound,still be able to come out with no supplies,lousy Weapons,knowing that they gonna die and still causing huge casualties to an Enemy 5 or 10 Times bigger than their own Units.
Its Amazing what Determination, Resilience and Fighting Spirit can achive even in an obvious Lost cause/battle.
The human Spirit is something Else.
Now it was late October. At evening those same banks of inert and freezing
clouds which had first roused foreboding in the invader two autumns before
returned to the battlefield. Each night the temperature fell below zero, to petrify
the soft ridges of glutinous mud which bordered every road across the steppe.
During the day a weak sun would thaw the surface, but with the shortening of its
parabola and the increase in the hours of darkness, the ground turned hard as
concrete.
As the winter of 1943 approached, a feeling of gloom and despair permeated
the German Army, a dull conviction that the war was lost-yet without sight of
its end. They were still deep inside Russia. Unlike the winter of 1944-45, when
they were aroused to heroic frenzy in the defence of their homeland, they found
themselves slowly retreating across a bleak and hostile landscape, always
outnumbered, perpetually short of fuel and ammunition, constantly having to
exert themselves and their machinery beyond the danger point. And behind them
lay bitter memories of what midwinter was like. - Alan Clark, Barbarossa
Cheers from New Orleans boys! Home of the Higgins Boat!
Where y'at?
Naw-lins
Cheers!!
Parts and sections were built all along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, to be assembled in the Crescent City. I had two aunts who worked on them. Beaver County, PA.
Are you going to talk about Inönü and Turkey in the Second Cairo conference on the Dec 10 episode?
This was the first time that an amphibious assault on a defended shoreline was attempted since Dieppe, the Marines studied how to, during the 30s which became the basis of all such operations today.
My uncle was diver doing some work there in the early 1970s cleaning up some wrecks that blocked boat traffic. He would always say he didn't understand how so many men could fight in such confined space and not all be dead. I became obsessed with that battle as an adult and have done everything but go there myself. Some of those Pacific battles were nasty grunt fights on a whole nother level.
There was a statement made about Iwo Jima, by one of the generals or admirals involved in that operation, that could have also been applied to Tarawa. It went somethig like, "Victory was never in doubt. What was is in doubt was whether the last Marine would die knocking out the last Japanese pillbox."
Tarawa was a harbinger of battles to come, with the Japanese making extensive use of fortifications and conducting a masterful defense, while fighting to near total extinction. That size of the islands also restricted manuever and required frontal assaults against heavily fortified postions. It all resulted in combat that was extraordinarily savage, often at very close range and sometimes hand-to-hand, and casualty rates for the attacker that were also appalling. In some respects these battles mirror those of the Western Front in WW1, with similar conditions, aside from the tropical locales.
They studied the Gallipoli landings in the 30s...
My Great Grandpa was at the battle of Tarawa in the Navy on a troop transport. He spoke about training for a long while in the pacific and then going to Pearl Harbor on the way there. His journal said the fighting was brutal. They would use the transports as hospitals. He said they had a hard time getting the smaller transports out safely to the beaches. He was also at Kwajalein, but that was it for his island hopping experience.
they repeated the same mistake when the US air force missed the German positions on Omaha beach. Consequently the landing was nearly a disaster.
That had a lot to do with their DD armour floundering and not arriving on the beach where it was so desperately needed as well..
That's why there were FIVE separate landings on D-day. Even if a couple went awry, it was almost guaranteed that the others would have enough momentum to get a decent beach head from which to expand.
It`s not mad to make any effort to remember that things can go insainly wrong and every effort to prevent a repeat performance must be taken.
I DID IT! I FINALLY DID IT!!! I'M A TIMEGHOST ARMY MEMBER! MUAHAHAHAHA MAY HISTORY REIGN SUPREME!!!
It's about damn time too. I can't ever repay all the free education you all have provided to me and the world. Glory to the TimeGhost Army! Excelsior!
Welcome to the troops - very glad to have you!
I had an uncle that was on Tarawa. It was very bad and led to the creation and use of Underwater Demolition Teams by the US Navy. They would swim in and blow up the reefs at night.
The invasion of the Balkans would not have served much of a tactical or strategic purpose. The biggest benefit would be to put American bombers much closer to Ploesti, Romania where a huge portion of the oil that kept the German war machine in operation was located.
The UDT's and their mission goals were set up and started before the US was even in the war.
I could see the US arguing that getting bombers closer to those oilfields at this point in the war wouldn't be worth the resources versus expending them to invade France. The Soviets were already within striking range of Romania by land; by the time an Allied invasion of the Balkans took place and they got airfields set up, the Red Army would already be in Ploesti.
We gave the Balkans to the Soviets why. Spill American blood when have to give it away
@@tomhenry897 At that point, it was about winning the war. The Balkans had no real strategic value. The terrain favored the defender, The distance from any air base favored the defenders. The supply lines to the Balkans were longer and less secure than crossing the English Channel to France. Even if you staged supplies in North Africa that is farther than crossing the English Channel.
There are a lot more reasons it was a bad idea.
My imitation of Winston Churchill is very much the same as my Gregory Peck - "Brrrrbrrrbrrrrbaaahhh....", like the noises of a house settling.
Battle of Apamama/Abemama (21-25 November 1943): In addition to the main landings on Tarawa and Makin, a small American force (50 men from a Marine Recon company commanded by Captain James Jones) attacked the Apamama Atoll. The invasion nearly ends before it begins because their transport- the submarine USS Nautilus- is misidentified and attacked by the destroyer USS Ringgold while en route, and the sub was hit by a 5 inch shell that turned out to be a dud. The Nautilus arrives on the 20th of November, and the Marines land on Joe Island on the south end of the atoll, missing their intended landing site on John Island to the west. On the 21st the Marines crossed to John, and defeated a 3 man Japanese Patrol. On the 22nd they crossed to Orson Island at the north end of the Atoll, and discovered 23 Japanese soldiers manning a fortified position on Otto Island at the Atoll's east end. On the 23rd the Marines attempted to land on Otto, but were stymied by heavy Japanese fire. On the 24th Otto was shelled by the USS Nautilus, with the bombardment killing four Japanese soldiers. On the 25th, Captain Jones was informed by native islanders that the remaining 18 Japanese soldiers had committed suicide following the sccidental death of their commander (the officer had been waving his gun in the air while trying to rally his men with a fiery speech, and shot himself in the head). The northernmost and largest island of Apamama would subsequently be used to build a 7000 foot long airstrip.
I just realised all of Monty’s grand battle plans work perfectly, provided there’s no river in the way. Similarly Mark Clarke is fine, as long as there’s not a mountain involved.
Excellent and Outstanding Report!!!
There was a Lieutenant at Tarawa named Paul Hospodar who was in the first wave of landing craft. He said it was a nightmare. Like many in that wave, his landing craft ran aground on the coral still short of the beach. Some of the craft that did that then dropped their ramps thinking they were in position, and some of those marines then drowned. Paul survived by traversing along the shallow corral until he reached a small pier which he was able to use for cover until he got to the beach. He said that they had to dig in while taking fire from three directions and using the bodies of their own dead for cover, and like Indy said, they waited for over a day before the second wave came. While overall casualties were high at 20%, Paul's unit itself lost way more than 20% of theirs. Paul was promoted to Captain after that.
Interesting side not: Decades later, Paul's son would be a world-class investigator, and assigned to a UN team investigating war crimes in Kosovo during the Serbo-Croat war of the 90's. Really interesting guy.
Is that Brusilov as in WW1 General Brusilov?
Yes, the name is the same, but apparently a coincidence - the town was not named after the general.
Also this week in 1943... A guy named Bill ate a bag of potato chips.
Probably.
Nah, he only thought he ate a whole bag, his squad mate George was sneaking some whenever he looked away....
Another significant update. But what is going on in Crimea? I probably missed something but I don't think it's been mentioned for a couple episodes now. It just sits there, occupied by Axis forces, cut off from other Axis forces but is there nothing to report? Just curious.
They don't start moving into the Crimean peninsula until the new year.
Not much is happening. The Axis is still able to adequately support their forces there by air and sea from Romania, so it's not like they're truly cut off and running out of supplies like the 6th Army at Stalingrad. When the Soviets do finally attempt to take it, it won't be an easy fight.
SPOILER
Post-war, a Soviet film "Tretiy Udar" ("The Third Blow") was released, depicting the Soviet recapture of Crimea in early 1944. The film presented a Turkish diplomat on the German side as a ridiculous opportunist - by 1948, when the film was released, Turkey was firmly in the US camp.
Is it not yet so cold that there is still so much mud
FDR made a very important decision to allow the photos of the battle at Tarawa to be released to the public.
That decision set a precedent for the publication of many of the photos published of the Vietnam War, which you could say also influenced the home front in a very impactful way. Images of war are important, and must be seen.
Best show on TH-cam.
Minor correction. There were no 8-inch gins at Singapore, the defences there were 6-inch, 9.2 inch and 15 inches. (with other minor units) . The guns on Tarawa were bought from the British in 1905, and there were a total of 4 at Tarawa not 25. Total coastal defence guns at that island seem to have been 14 not 25.
Excellent as usual - many thanks to Indy and the team!!!
I knew he had researched his pronunciation of Tarawa. But I have always heard it pronounced as Tear-Awa
The scale of WW2 makes the Pacific fights seem small in comparison but that's also what makes some of them so terrifying. The amount of firepower and men packed into such small areas, often with no ways to effectively retreat or even make a fighting or tactical retreat meant they were really ugly fights. On Tarawa there was simply no way to advance without entering into interlocking fields of fire. It was such a condensed battlefield that Marines would often advance under fire from three sides for the first two days. There was no other choice. Supporting fires did little. You had to go in and clear them out. Really ugly stuff and it's amazing the Marines didn't lose more men.
I really enjoy your weekly reporting on the war but this week I do have a complaint. During your discussion about the bombing of Berlin all the video showed was US bombers and crew doing daylight bombing. At this time in the war the US was not able to attack Berlin as it was well out of escort fighter range. All the bombing of Berlin in November of 1943 was RAF night bombing.
That is true. Perhaps there was no illustrative film for the nighttime bombing.