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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

”What about an attack of 2 million men?” ”Then.. our defence stands only 500 years.”

Japanese ability to reinforce islands in the middle of nowhere was astounding.

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.

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.

The foresight of FDR on China returning as a major power and how Truman lost it as a ally in the late 40s.

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

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.

Hello Indy, I'm Italian: Pescara is pronounced like "Peskara". Thank you for this awesome series!

It seems that you have a 48 star American Flag in the background which is...incredibly awesome touch there.

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.

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

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!

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

it's crazy to think about how close we came as humanity to an utter, free-for-all mayhem in 1944-1946

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.

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...

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.

Medal of Honour Pacific Assault culminated in Tarawa, i wish there was a sequel

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

Churchill was always over focused on Greece and he always met disaster in Greece

Loving the longer episode!! So much going on at this point of the war.

Lots of good info this week. Appreciate the time and effort by Indie and the crew.

"Effectiveness" not "Effectivity"

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 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

"Feed your craving for such knowledge." lol! Yes, Indy, very well said!

Excellent and Outstanding Report!!!

@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.

I've been waiting for this one! Tarawa insane to me, so many men and deaths on such a tiny strip of land.

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).

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.

Yay! Saturday morning cartoons!!!

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.

Excellent video! Also, that desk lamp is amazing!

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.

"they might not be the allies anymore" i dont have the heart to tell him about whats coming

Bedankt

Is it not yet so cold that there is still so much mud

I’ve been a subscriber and supporter of this channel for a long time, but it never shows up in the daily feed. I may not be the only one missing episodes.

they repeated the same mistake when the US air force missed the German positions on Omaha beach. Consequently the landing was nearly a disaster.

Tarawa, the battle that they cheered about in jarhead before branding that guy

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.

I knew he had researched his pronunciation of Tarawa. But I have always heard it pronounced as Tear-Awa

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.’

Interesting episode!!!! Love the content!!!

Are you going to talk about Inönü and Turkey in the Second Cairo conference on the Dec 10 episode?

Cheers from New Orleans boys! Home of the Higgins Boat!

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.

My imitation of Winston Churchill is very much the same as my Gregory Peck - "Brrrrbrrrbrrrrbaaahhh....", like the noises of a house settling.

always so well done...

Best show on KZfaq.

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.

Also this week in 1943... A guy named Bill ate a bag of potato chips. Probably.

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.

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.

Great job indy... detailed and informative narrative of this Great 🌎 World conflict!..👏👏👏

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.

thanks

Excellent as usual - many thanks to Indy and the team!!!

Nice video

Is that Brusilov as in WW1 General Brusilov?

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.

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 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.

Just a thing for italian cities and names: if the c is followed by an a, o or u it's hard like k, if it's i or e it's soft like in English

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.

_"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.

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.

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.

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

what was the advantage for the Japanese to send light tanks to Tarawa, instead of just guns?

My uncle was part of the 2nd Marine Division invasion of Tarawa. He made it through.

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.