The landings on Betio were the Americans' third amphibious operation of the Pacific War, after Guadalcanal Island and Cape Torokina on Bougainville Island, but the first in which the Japanese vigorously resisted the landings on the beaches, pinning the Marines down with machine-gun and mortar fire. Worse, American planners at Pearl Harbor had grievously misjudged the timing of high tide at Betio, leaving the landing craft stranded on the shallow coral reefs where the Marines were slaughtered.
The island was declared secure after three days. Given the small size of Betio (0.59 sq. mi.), planners had expected it to take one.
The ships and troops of Operations Galvanic (landings on Tarawa Atoll) and Kourbash (landings on Makin Atoll) were under direct operational command of Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner aboard old battleshipPennsylvania.
Both Admiral Turner and General Holland Smith sailed with the Northern Attack Force even though it was obvious that Tarawa would be the scene of the main ground action. If the Japanese mounted a counterattack, it was most likely to come from the Marshalls since the closest Japanese bases to the Gilberts were located there. Nimitz and Spruance wanted the two highest-ranking officers to sail with the forces that would be the first to encounter any such enemy response. Unbeknownst to the Americans, the Japanese had stripped almost all their naval and air assets from the Marshalls in an attempt to resist the Allied effort in the Central Solomons. Thus, no counterattack materialized.
Clark, George B. (2006). The Six Marine Divisions in the Pacific: Every Campaign of World War II. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Co. ISBN978-0-7864-2769-7.
Morison, Samuel Eliot (1951). Aleutians, Gilberts and Marshalls: June 1942 April 1944. History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. Vol. VII. Boston: Little, Brown and Co. ISBN978-0-31658-307-7.
Notes
^Generated so much ill-will between the services that he was eventually reassigned stateside.
^Also commander of landed troops; awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his extraordinary leadership during the chaos of the initial assault.