ARMORERS place a .50-caliber aircraft Browning machine gun M2A1 in the nose of a North American B-25 at the airfield on Betio Island as interested natives look on. This gun was considered one of the most reliable weapons of the war.
GILBERT ISLANDS
UNITED STATES COLORS FLYING OVER BETIO, 24 November 1943. The island was declared secure on 23 November; the remaining enemy forces were wiped out by the 28th. Betio, with the only airfield in Tarawa Atoll, together with captured Butaritari in Makin Atoll and other lesser islands, gave the Allies control of the entire Gilbert Islands archipelago. From these new bases an attack against the Marshall Islands was launched in 1944.
THE OFFENSIVE——1944
SECTION III
The Offensive——1944[3]
The battle of production and supply, designed to build a foundation to support unprecedented Allied air and naval power, was won during 1942 and 1943, while Japanese air and naval power greatly diminished. Hawaii, the most important naval base in the Pacific, had become a training center and staging area for U.S. troops as well as one of the many important supply bases. In 1944, the strategic offensive against Japan began.
[3] See Philip R. Crowl and Edmund G. Love, Seizure in the Gilberts and Marshalls; and Philip R. Crowl Campaign in the Marianas; Robert Ross Smith; The Approach to the Philippines; and M. Hamlin Cannon, Leyte: The Return to the Philippines, in the series U.S. ARMY IN WORLD WAR II.
Following the invasion of the Gilberts in late 1943, U.S. forces prepared for an assault in the western Marshalls, the principal objective being Kwajalein and Eniwetok Atolls. According to plans for the assault on the western Marshalls, a Marine division was to seize the northern half of the Kwajalein Atoll, principally the islands of Roi and Namur; Army ground forces units were to capture the southern half of the atoll, including the island of Kwajalein, and to occupy Majuro Island, one of the finest naval anchorages west of Pearl Harbor. Supporting naval and air bombardment and artillery fire (the artillery had been ferried ashore on the small nearby islands) were brought to bear on the selected landing beaches of Kwajalein and Roi Islands of Kwajalein Atoll. Unopposed landings were made on both islands on 1 February 1944, with slight resistance developing after advance was made inland. Six days after the main landings, all the islands of the Kwajalein Atoll were in U.S. hands and Majuro had been occupied. On 17 February landings were made on the islands of Eniwetok Atoll; resistance was wiped out five days later. A two-day strike against Truk, 16 and 17 February, was executed by a large carrier task force to screen the assault of the Eniwetok Atoll and to test strength of the Japanese base there.