Tanks in Hell: A Marine Corps Tank Company on Tarawa

Winner of THE GENERAL WALLACE M. GREENE, JR. AWARD for outstanding nonfiction
In May 1943 a self-described “really young, green, ignorant lieutenant” assumed command of a new Marine Corps company. His even younger enlisted Marines were learning to use an untested weapon, the M4A2 “Sherman” medium tank. His sole combat veteran was the company bugler, who had salvaged his dress cap and battered horn from a sinking aircraft carrier. Just six months later the company would be thrown into one of the ghastliest battles of World War II.
On 20 November 1943 the Second Marine Division launched the first amphibious assault of the Pacific War, directly into the teeth of powerful Japanese defenses on Tarawa. In that blood-soaked invasion, a single company of Sherman tanks, of which only two survived, played a pivotal role in turning the tide from looming disaster to legendary victory. In this unique study Oscar Gilbert and Romain Cansiere use official documents, memoirs, interviews with veterans, as well as personal and aerial photographs to follow Charlie Company from its formation, and trace the movement, action—and loss—of individual tanks in this horrific four-day struggle.
The authors have used official documents and interviews with veterans to follow the company from training through the brutal 76-hour struggle for Tarawa. Survivor accounts and air photo analysis document the movements –and destruction – of the company’s individual tanks. It is a story of escapes from drowning tanks, and even more harrowing escapes from tanks knocked out behind Japanese lines. It is a story of men doing whatever needed to be done, from burying the dead to hand-carrying heavy cannon ammunition forward under fire. It is the story of how the two surviving tanks and their crews expanded a perilously thin beachhead, and cleared the way for critical reinforcements to come ashore. But most of all it is a story of how a few unsung Marines helped turn near disaster into epic victory.
Table of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PREFACE Romain Cansiere
PREFACE Ed Gilbert
FOREWORD Edward L. Bale, Jr., Colonel, USMC (Ret)
1 A NEW DOCTRINE FOR A NEW WAR
2 SALAD DAYS—FORMATION AND TRAINING
3 THE TANKS OF CHARLIE COMPANY
4 THE CLOTHES ON THEIR BACKS—CLOTHING AND EQUIPMENT
5 OBJECTIVE: CODE NAME HELEN
6 DAY ONE—THE REEF
7 DAY ONE—INLAND
8 DAY TWO—SECURING THE BEACHHEAD
9 DAY THREE—SWEEPING THE ISLAND
10 DAY FOUR—THE FINAL CARNAGE
11 AFTERMATH
EPILOGUE: The Legacy of Tarawa
LATER LIFE
APPENDIX A: Charlie Company Chronology
APPENDIX B: Tank Company Organization and Equipment
APPENDIX C: Inside the M4A2 Tank
APPENDIX D: Charlie Company Personnel at Tarawa
APPENDIX E: Historical Research and Photographic Analysis
NOTES
REFERENCES CITED