Post by newsJust watched a History Channel episode about Guam and while I can think
of many reasons it might be impractical, I'm wondering why the month
long bombardment so obviously gave the clue as to where the landings
would be...I mean they could have bombarded the other side of the island
and it might have taken enough Japanese from the west side to make a
small difference
The tactic you are recommending here was used successfully on Okinawa.
Deception is such an obvious tactic (sounds like a paradox doesn't it?)
that it's extremely unlikely that no one considered it. It may be that,
as WJ Hopwood suggests, deception was thought not to be useful on Guam,
or as Tim Watkins suggests, there was another strategy (close-in naval
support) that was expected to be more effective.
Both the American and the Japanese tactics evolved over the course of
the war, becoming more sophisticated as they incorporated lessons
learned from previous battles. Still, in the final analysis, Japanese
resistance was so incredibly stubborn that it was hard to win by
brilliant tactics. It usually boiled down to, first, saturating their
positions with explosives and incendiaries, then assaulting their
positions and blowing them up, burning them, or shooting them at close
range.
There were many other do or die struggles in Europe, on all fronts, but
I doubt if any were more ferocious than the battles on the Pacific
islands. I also doubt that any other armed force enjoying even half the
material superiority of the Americans over the Japanese, suffered
anything like the heavy casualties that the Marines suffered.
Alan