Battle of Makin

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Battle of Makin

American troops of the 2d Battalion, 165th Infantry, struggle to shore on Yellow Beach on Butaritari Island

Date	20 November 1943 – 24 November 1943
Location	Makin Atoll, Gilbert Islands
Result	American victory

Combatants

United States

Japan

Commanders

Richmond K. Turner
Ralph C. Smith

Seizo Ishikawa

Strength

6,470

400 troops, 400 labourers

Casualties

66 killed, 185 wounded

700 killed, 3 Japanese captured, 101 Korean labourers captured

Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign
Makin Raid – Tarawa – Makin – Kwajalein – Truk – Eniwetok

The Battle of Makin was a battle of the Pacific campaign of World War II, fought from 20 November to 24 November 1943 on Makin Atoll in the Gilbert Islands.

The end of the Aleutian Islands campaign and progress in the Solomon Islands, combined with increasing supplies of men and materials, gave the United States Navy the resources to carry out an invasion of the central Pacific in late 1943. Admiral Chester Nimitz had argued for this invasion earlier in 1943 but the resources were not available to carry it out at the same time as Operation Cartwheel, the envelopment of Rabaul in the Bismarck Islands. The plan was to approach the Japanese home islands by "leap-frogging": establishing naval and air bases in one group of islands to support the attack on the next. The Gilbert Islands were the first step in this chain.

On 10 December 1941, three days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, 300 troops, plus laborers of the so-called Gilberts Invasion Special Landing Force had arrived off Makin Attol and occupied without resistance. Lying east of the Marshall islands, Makin would make an excellent seaplane base, extending Japanese air patrols closer to Howland Island, Baker Island, Tuvalu and Phoenix and Ellice Islands, all held by the Allies and protecting the eastern flank of the Japanese perimeter from an Allied attack.

There had been a previous US attack on Makin. On 17 August 1942, 211 marines of the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion under command of Colonel Evans Carlson and James Roosevelt were landed on Makin from two submarines, Nautilus (SS-168) and Argonaut (SS-166). The Japanese garrison only poses 43 men under the command of a warrant officer. The Raiders killed 83 Japanese soldiers and destroyed installations for the loss of 21 killed (mostly by air attack) and 9 captured. The prisoners were taken to Kwajalein Atoll and beheaded. The raid was intended by the Americans to confuse the Japanese about US intentions in the Pacific. However, it had the effect of alerting the Japanese to the strategic importance of the Gilbert Islands and led to their reinforcement and fortification.

After Carlson's raid, the Japanese reinforced the Gilberts, which had been left lightly guarded. Makin was garrisoned with a single company of the 5th Special Base Force (700 or 800 men) on August 1942 and work on both the seaplane base and coastal defenses of the atoll was resumed in earnest. By July 1943, the seaplane base on Makin was completed and ready to accommodate Kawanishi H8K "Emily" flying boat bomber, Nakajima A6M2-N "Rufe" hydrofighter and Aichi E13A "Jake" Recon-hydroplane. Its defenses were also completed, although they were not as extensive as on Tarawa Atoll—the main Japanese Navy air base in the Gilberts. The Chitose and 653rd Air Corps were detached and deployed here. While the Japanese were building up their defenses in the Gilberts, American forces were making plans to retake the islands.

In June 1943, the Joint Chiefs of Staff directed Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet (CINCPAC), to submit a plan to occupy the Marshall Islands. Initially both Nimitz and Admiral Ernest J. King the Chief of Naval Operations, wanted to attack right into heart of the Japanese outer defense perimeter, but any plan for assaulting the Marshall directly from Pearl Harbor would have required more troops and transports than the Pacific Fleet had at the time. Considering these drawbacks, and the U.S. forces lack of experience, Admirals King and Nimitz, decide to take the Marshalls in a step-by-step operation via the Ellice and Gilbert Islands. The Gilberts lay within 200 miles of the Southern Marshalls and were well within range of United States Army Air Forces B-24 aircraft based in the Ellice Islands, which could provide bombing support and long range reconnaissance for operations in the Gilberts. with a those of advantages in mind, on 20 July 1943, the joint Chiefs of Staff decided to capture the Tarawa and Abemama, atolls, in Gilberts, plus nearby Nauru Island. The operation was codenamed "Galvanic".

On 4 September 1943, the U.S. 5th Fleet's amphibious troops were designated the V Amphibious Corps and placed under Major General Holland M. Smith, U.S. Marine Corps. The V Amphibious Corps had the only two divisions, the 2nd Marine Division, based in New Zealand and the U.S. Army's 27th Infantry Division based in Hawaii. The 27th Infantry Division had been a New York National Guard unit before being called into federal service in October 1940. it was transferred to Hawaii and remained there for 1½ years before being chosen by Lt. Gen. Robert C. Richardson, the U.S. Army Commanding General in Central Pacific, to take part in the Gilbert Islands invasion. The 27th Division had 16,000 men in three regiments—the 105th, 106th and 165th Infantry Regiments, plus the 105th Field Artillery Battalion, and the 193rd Tank Battalion, under the command of Major General Ralph Smith, a veteran of World War I, who had assumed command in November 1942. He was one of the most highly respected officers in the U. S. Army at the time. In April 1943, the 27th Infantry Division had begun preparing for amphibious operations.

While the men trained, planning for the landing operation continuing. planning for the 27th Infantry Division's role on "Operation Galvanic" (the Army portion was codenamed "Kourbash"), began in early August 1943, with the Nauru Island in the western Gilberts as the original objective. In September 1943, however, the 27th's target changed. Analysis of the trouble involved in capturing Nauru at the same time as Tarawa and Abemama, plus Holland Smith's doubts about the green 27th Infantry Division's ability to take the heavily defended island, caused Admiral Nimitz to shift the 27th's target from Nauru to Makin, in the Northeast Gilberts. The 27th Infantry Division staff learned the change of target on 28 September 1943, scrapped the original Nauru plan and began planning to capture Makin.

Heavy aircraft losses and the disabling of four heavy cruisers in the Solomons meant that the original Japanese plan of a strike at the American invasion fleet by forces based at Truk in the nearby Caroline Islands (South Pacific Mandate) was scrapped. The garrisons at Tarawa and Makin were left to their fate.

The invasion fleet, Task Force 52 (TF 52) commanded by Rear Admiral Richmond K. Turner left Pearl Harbor on 10 November 1943. The landing force consisted of units of the U.S. 27th Infantry Division commanded by Major General Ralph C. Smith.

On the eve of invasion, the Japanese garrison on Makin Atoll's main island, Butaritari, consisted of 798 men: 284 troops of the 3rd Special Base Force (Makin Detachment), 100 aviation land personnel, 276 men of the 4th Fleet Construction Unit and Makin Tank Detachment of 3rd Special Base Force (3 Type 95 Ha-Go Light Tanks), all commanded by Lt.j.g. Seizo Ishikawa. Most of aviation or Japanese and Korean labor units had little or no combat training and were not assigned weapons or a battle station, and the number of trained combat troops on Makin was no more than 300 soldiers.

Butaritari's land defenses were centered around the lagoon shore, near the seaplane base in the central part of island. There were two tank barrier systems: The west tank barrier extended from the lagoon two-thirds of the way across Butaritari, was 12 to 13 feet wide and 15 feet deep, and was protected by one anti-tank gun in a concrete pillbox, six machine gun positions, and 50 rifle pits. The east tank barrier, 14 feet wide and 6 feet in depth, stretched from the lagoon across two-thirds of island and bent westward with log antitank barricades at each end. it was protected by a double apron of barbed wire and an intrincate system of gun enplacements and rifle pits.

A serie of strongpoints was established along Butaritari's ocean side, with 8-inch coastal defenses guns, three 37 mm anti-tank gun positions, 10 machine gun emplacements and 85 rifle pits. The Japanese expected the invasion to come on the ocean side of Butaritari, following the example of Carlson's raid in 1942, and established their defenses two miles from where the raid had taken place. Without aircraft, ships, or hope of reinforcement or relief, the outnumbered and outgunned defenders could only hope to delay the coming American attack for as long as possibly.

Air operations against Makin began on 13 November, with USAAF B-24 bombers of the Seventh Air Force from Ellice. Grumman FM-1 "Wildcat" fighters escorted Douglas SBD "Dauntless" dive bombers and Grumman TBF "Avengers" from escort carriers USS Liscome Bay, Coral Sea and Corregidor; following by 8-inch support guns from fire support ship Minneapolis (CA-36) and other war vessels and troops began to go ashore at two beaches at 08:30 on 20 November.

Largely as a result of the earlier U.S. Marine raid on Makin, the Japanese had garrisoned Butaritari as a seaplane base with a total strength of about 800 men by the time of the 27th Division landings. The actual combat strength was considerably less, however, since most of the troops were construction workers from Korea or ground crews assigned to service the seaplanes. Japanese combat troops numbered only about 300, and their prepared defenses were minimal. The defensive perimeter around the seaplane base on Butaritari Island consisted mainly of dual-purpose 8-cm. guns and a few machine guns. The island also boasted two tank-barrier systems, one on each side of the seaplane base around King's Wharf. Although not particularly formidable, these barriers stretched across the narrow island.

The initial landings on RED Beach went pretty much according to plan with the assault troops moving rapidly inland after an uneventful trip on the ocean side of the island. Their progress off the beach was slowed only by an occasional sniper and the need to negotiate their way around the debris and water-filled craters left by the air and naval bombardment. The troops on YELLOW Beach, however, experienced a rather different reception.

As the landing craft approached YELLOW Beach from the lagoon, they began to receive small-arms and machine-gun fire from the island's defenders. The assault troops were also surprised to learn that even though they were approaching the beach at high tide as planned, a miscalculation of the depth of the lagoon caused their small boats to go aground, forcing them to cover the final 250 yards to the beach in waist-deep water. Although equipment and weapons were lost or water-soaked, only three men were killed approaching the beach, mainly because the defenders had elected to make their final stand not at the waterline, but farther inland along the tank barriers.

The invasion plan was conceived in the hope of luring the enemy into committing most of its forces to oppose the first landings on RED Beach and thereby allow the troops landing on YELLOW Beach to attack from the rear. The enemy, however, did not respond to the attack on RED Beach and withdrew from YELLOW Beach with only harassing fires, leaving the troops of the 27th Division no choice but to knock out the fortified strongpoints one by one. Two days of determined fighting reduced enemy resistance to the point that the issue was no longer in doubt. After clearing the entire atoll, the 27th Division commander, Maj. Gen. Ralph C. Smith, reported on 23 November, "Makin taken." In the end the most difficult problem in capturing Makin, as one might have expected, was coordinating the actions of the two separate landing forces, a problem made more difficult because the defenders did not respond as had been anticipated.

The complete occupation of Makin took four days and actually cost more in naval casualties than in ground troops. Despite its great superiority in men and weapons, the 27th Division had considerable difficulty subduing the island's small defensive force. One Japanese Ha-Go tank was destroyed in combat and two tanks placed in revetments were abandoned without being used in combat.

As compared to an estimated 395 killed in action, American combat casualties numbered 218 (66 killed and 152 wounded), a ratio of 6 to 1. But when the American losses incurred during the sinking of the escort carrier Liscome Bay on 24 December by a Japanese submarine are included, the loss balance tips toward the other side. Counting the 642 sailors who went down with the carrier, American casualties exceeded the strength of the entire Japanese garrison on Makin.