Which battle saw the highest percentage of American casualties in WWII?
A. Iwo Jima
B. Tarawa
C. Peleliu
D. Guadalcanal
I looked and looked but I can’t find it.
It’s a little tricky coming up with casualty rates for Pacific campaigns. Here’s why:
–do you include Naval casualties (from subs, air strikes, and kamikaze)? If so, that ups the casualties for Guadalcanal (and then Okinawa as well)
–do you include disease? There were marines and soldiers who got malaria (or other diseases) at Guadalcanal or the New Guinea campaign.
–additionally, if you include POWs than the fall of Bataan and Corregidor would have the highest casualty rates (nearly 100%) for the US.
Additionally, what do you use to calculate the casualty percentage. For instance, the 3rd Marine Division never deployed at Iwo Jima, they stayed on their ships. If you add their numbers to the fighting force size, it reduces the "casualty rate."
That said, the general agreement is that Peleliu had the highest casualty rate of any of our "island hoping" offensives. We sent 28, 584 troops ashore (combined Army and Marines) with 9,804 casualties.
As for the others, Guadalcanal had 7,104 total casualties (60,000 troops ashore), Saipan had 13,311 casualties (71,000 ashore), Tarawa had 3,296 casualties (35,000 ashore) and Iwo Jima had 26,010 casualties (110,000 ashore).
A few other notable casualty rates:
–the highest casualty rates for doctors and corpsmen in the Pacific were at Iwo, nearly double that of Saipan and Tarawa. That was due to a combination of the nature of the fight with almost no front-lines plus Japanese intentionally targeting them. Initial casualty rates for US troops landing on Iwo for the first day were "only" 8% which was half that of first day casualty rates on Saipan and Tarawa. But that’s because of the Japanese strategy on Iwo–to concede the beaches and let the Marines get ashore.
And for what it’s worth, I believe the highest unit casualty rate in the Pacific (once we went on the offensive) was sustained by the 32nd Infantry Division in New Guinea. They had over 100% casualties (possible because some men were wounded, after hospitalization returned to service and wounded again or acquired malaria).
Agility Man | Feb 05, 2009
thumbs up agility man….
EFW | Feb 06, 2009
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