Word: crafts
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Tensely the task ships waited for word. One hour after the takeoff it came: "Enemy taken by surprise." Kwajalein's roomy lagoon (80 miles long, 20 miles at the widest) was full of shipping: sampans, inter-island craft, seagoing merchantmen, tankers, warships. Said a U.S. pilot: "It was a dive bomber's paradise, and we turned it into a Japanese hell." The score after ten minutes of concentrated attack: two light cruisers, one oiler, three cargo transports sunk; one troop transport, three cargo transports damaged; grounded planes and shore installations hard...
...lessons of Tarawa were written into bills authorizing more landing craft, which were rushed through Congress last week. The Navy's landing-craft program now totals 80,000, from the huge (450 ft.) dock ships to rubber rafts. Marines were especially glad to see that there were some "Alligators" on the program...
These armed LVTs (Landing Vehicles, Tracked) proved themselves in the reef-guarded Gilberts. Other landing craft were halted by the coral rings around the islands. The Alligators (originally developed by Donald Roebling for hurricane rescue work in Florida swamps) kept going, climbed over the barriers, crawled up on the beaches, ranged inland. Their tanklike, clanking steel treads worked...
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...
...swift tide. When he finally did reach another boat and hauled himself into it, he found only dead marines there. He stayed with the dead all night. Next morning he was close to being shot for a Jap: during the night the enemy had swum to disabled landing craft and were using them as machine-gun nests. Not until Tarawa's third day did Bundy finally get ashore...