Word: betio
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Dates: during 1943-1943
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...Betio, they learned again...
...feet of sand, the redoubts defied aerial reconnaissance, survived everything but direct hits with heavy shells or bombs. Often a 2,000-lb. bomb, striking within a few feet of a pillbox and digging a 15-ft. hole, merely threw more sand on top of the Jap fortifications. Surveying Betio's defenses after the battle, Marine Major General Holland ("Howlin' Mad") Smith, chunky, bespectacled commander of amphibious operations, said: "It looks beyond the realm of human possibility that this place could have been taken...
Lesson in Landing. Tarawa had shown up other deficiencies: costly had been the failure of Higgins boats and other landing craft to get over Betio's reef (TIME, Dec. 6). The Navy blamed this on a sudden strong wind that lowered the water. For the next atoll, they might be prepared with improved boats or amphibious machines adapted from the "Alligator" tractor that can crawl over a sharp coral shelf...
Lesson in Learning. From Betio, TIME Correspondent Robert Sherrod cabled...
...Five correspondents went in at Betio with the first waves of assault battalions. They were United Pressman Richard Johnston, Associated Pressman William Hippie, Don Senick of Fox Movietone News, A.P. Cameraman Frank Filan and I. All saw men killed beside them in landing boats or on the beach. Senick alone suffered injury; a Jap bullet hit a tree under which he was sitting and dropped...