Nimitz at War by Symonds Craig L.;

Author:Symonds, Craig L.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Published: 2022-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Map 10: The Central Pacific Drive, November 1943—February 1944

The planning went on literally around the clock. “We all worked seven days a week,” a staffer recalled. “There were a lot of people in the Headquarters 24 hours a day—and it included the Admiral.” Spruance and Turner also worked eighteen-hour days. Holland Smith was at headquarters less often, though when he was there he was sometimes a discordant note. With round wire-rim glasses and a graying brush mustache, Smith’s physiognomy suggested that he was perpetually ready for a fight, and not just with the Japanese. Thin-skinned and confrontational, even his own staff grew weary of his complaints about “never having enough of everything.” He grew especially quarrelsome when he thought someone was trying to usurp his authority. After learning that the Galvanic plan called for him to remain behind at Pearl Harbor, he charged off to Spruance’s headquarters to demand that the orders be changed. His place was with his men, he insisted. He protested again when he saw that Turner was to exercise tactical command during the landings and asserted that “command of the landing force is a function of the Corps Commander”—that is, himself. Again the orders were changed. Still suspicious, he concluded that the Navy leadership—a group that certainly included Nimitz—was making “a determined effort to cut me down to size and show the fountainhead of authority.” Like Towers, Holland Smith would have to be handled with patience and tolerance.4

One of Smith’s concerns was how his Marines were to get ashore at Tarawa. The landing craft designated to carry them from the transports to the beach were officially dubbed Landing Craft, Vehicle and Personnel (LCVPs), though they were universally known as Higgins boats after their designer, Andrew Jackson Higgins. With their drop-front bow, they were a vast improvement over the surfboats the Marines had used on Guadalcanal, yet Smith worried about them anyway. Betio had a coral shelf that extended a quarter mile or more out from its shoreline (see chapter 16). Even at high tide there was only about four feet of water over that shelf, and because the Higgins boats drew three feet fully loaded, the margin for error was small. Nimitz stipulated that the landing must take place at high tide, but Smith was not satisfied. Instead of the Higgins boats, he wanted the Marines carried to the beach in tracked landing vessels commonly called amphtracks, amtracks, or alligators—or, in the Navy’s acronym-laden lexicon, LVTs (Landing Vehicle, Tracked). Essentially amphibious tractors, LVTs could crawl over the coral no matter how shallow the water was. Turner did not think they were necessary, but Smith insisted. In his post-war memoir, he claimed that he told Turner that if he didn’t get them he would refuse to carry out the landing. The problem was that there were only about a hundred LVTs in the theater, only seventy-five of which were operational. Fifty more of an improved type called water buffaloes (LVT-2) arrived in October just in time to take part.

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