Aboard one of the many troop transports plowing the long sea furrows to Tarawa, and later in the hell of Betio, was TIME Correspondent Robert Sherrod. His story: Ship life was dull. The men of the ...

Rear Adm. Harry Hill, who command the task force attacking Tarawa, called Betio "a little Gibraltar" and said "only the Marines could have made such a landing." Four Marines were awarded the Medal ...

In November 1943, Marine Corps Sgt. Robert F. Van Heck, 25, of Chicago, was part of a force that tried to secure the small island of Betio in the Tarawa Atoll of the Japanese-held Gilbert Islands ...

In November 1943, Marine Corps Sgt. Robert F. Van Heck, 25, of Chicago, was part of a force that tried to secure the small island of Betio in the Tarawa Atoll of the Japanese-held Gilbert Islands ...

Home after landing with the Marines on Tarawa in the bloodiest battle U.S. soldiers ever fought, TIME Correspondent Robert Sherrod wrote an office memo: When I came back from Australia in August ...

The Tarawa-class LHAs and Wasp-class LHDs provide the Marine Corps with a means of ship-to-shore movement by helicopter in addition to movement by landing craft. Three LHAs -- which have extensive ...

Tarawa was the most strongly defended island in the Pacific which the Japanese boasted that a million Americans couldn’t take the island in one hundred years. On Tarawa the Marines faced their ...