One guy I worked with flew the spotter plane directing guns onto Tarawa. He said that after about 10 minutes you couldn't even see the island. The Iwo Jima guys all said one thing: there were so many people crammed on that island that every time the Japaneseicon fired a weapon, it hit somebody. What a lot of people fail to realize was that the attacking force going into Iwo Jima had trained for months, many months, to take that one island. When the took off, they had everything they needed in the way of weapons, supplies, medical care and food in one powerful task force. Once they left Australiaicon, they didn't stop for anything, even when a Marine fell off the ship.