Talk:Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign

Untitled
Article is very short and weak.Agre22 (talk) 00:00, 8 August 2008 (UTC)agre22

MooperVeltresleex's Checklist
Checklist for B-Class Article Grading: Your Pal, MooperVeltresleex 01:03, 20 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Background- Geography
 * Gilberts- Plan
 * Gilberts- Commanders
 * Gilberts- Troops
 * Gilberts- Bombardment
 * Gilberts- Tarawa
 * Gilberts- Makin
 * Aftermath- Causalities
 * Complete "See also"/"Further reading"/"External Links"
 * Complete Infobox
 * Infobox- References?
 * Manual-of-Style-ize

Confused paragraph

"The Marshalls, by contrast, were a much easier landing. The Americans used the lessons learned at Tarawa by outnumbering the enemy defenders nearly 6 to 1 with heavier firepower after the islands took nearly a month of heavy air and naval bombardment.[6] In the Marshalls, the Americans lost men, suffered wounded, and missing, while the Japanese lost men and had captured."

This paragraph makes little sense. Anyone have any idea what it means?

Edit: Also, the following sentence seems to provide little value to the article, "The invasion of the Marshalls was delayed for about a month due to logistical problems." It does not relate to the information in the paragraph proceeding it, and is not related to any information following it in the same paragraph it heads. Although what the impact of the delay had upon the invasion might be an interesting subsection in this article, this sentence might easily be deleted, unless or until someone would write up a subheading regarding the months delay with details.

TDurden1937 (talk) 21:50, 25 July 2016 (UTC)TDurden1937

To answer your question, I was going to fill in the blanks with the casualties before anyone noticed. That probably wasn't the best idea! Sorry! ;) Thanks! Your Pal, MooperVeltresleex 19:14, 30 July 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by MooperVeltresleex (talk • contribs)

Kavalein
"Of the entire force of about 8,000 Japanese guarding Majuro and Kwajalein, only 51 survived, and 253 were taken prisoner."

The math is failing me. How does this paragraph make sense? Asgrrr (talk) 18:42, 30 January 2018 (UTC)


 * I was about to comment on the same thing. Maybe 51 Japanese escaped the island? It's not clear, and doesn't look like any contributing editors have noticed in the 2 1/2 years since the above comment was posted. Boneyard90 (talk) 07:18, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

I just bodged in a link to the Battle of Tarawa, but problem remains
I just bodged in a link to the Battle of Tarawa, which was strangely missing, but I'm not actually sure my edit establishes the intended timeline.

When the Americans landed, in the Battle of Tarawa fought on 20–23 November 1943, nearly 5,000 Imperial Japanese Navy Land Forces, among them 3,000 Special Naval Landing Forces, and 1,247 construction laborers were stationed on Tarawa; the Makin Islands, in contrast, were only held by a total of 798 combat troops, including some 100 isolated Japanese aviation personnel. A detachment of soldiers from Tarawa island also occupied the island of Abemama in September 1942, and though initially numbering about 300, by the time the Americans invaded the island in November 1943, most of them had been evacuated back to Tarawa, leaving only 25 Special Naval Landing Forces behind to defend the island.

Someone with a historical clue needs to proof this. &mdash; MaxEnt 20:20, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

What Allied commanders "knew"
The article contains the claim: Allied commanders knew that an eventual surrender of Japan would require penetration of these islands. flagged with why in Revision as of 15:36, 24 February 2021 by MaxEnt. My best guess as to how the Allied commanders "knew" this is that the claim alludes to the various iterations of the US Navy's War Plan Orange, in which a "leapfrog" campaign to conquer the Marshalls and Carolines was anticipated as early as 1911. The USN dropped its War Plan Orange in 1939, replacing it with iterations of the Rainbow Five plans. However, the island-hopping strategy in the central Pacific generally followed what the USN had been planning for decades (with adjustments due to the unforeseen ascendance of the aircraft carrier and submarine relegating the battleship to mainly supporting roles - i.e. there was no decisive Mahanian clash of big-gun fleets to decide naval supremacy in the Pacific as war planners had long expected). Since I have no idea of what Allied commanders "knew," only what they had been planning to do since long before the war, I'm not sure how to edit the article. A difference of opinion existed between USN leadership and the US Army's Douglas MacArthur who favored an alternate southwestern approach to Japan by re-taking New Guinea, the Philippines, and Formosa (also partially implemented in Operation Cartwheel and the Philippines campaign (1944–1945)). Presumably that could have worked, given enough resources, so the "penetration of these islands" might not have strictly been "required" to compel Japan's surrender. &mdash; Teratornis (talk) 08:37, 24 July 2021 (UTC)