The 70 years to Abbottabad

A key component of the US raid on Abbottabad had its origins in a military operation over 70 years ago in the island of Tarawa, which Japan had occupied during World War II. This was one of the first American offensives in the Pacific region, and possibly the toughest. Of the 35,000 US marines who landed in Tarawa on 20 November 1942, over 6,000 died in just the three days of fighting it took to claim the island. One of the major reasons was that the assaulting units had no knowledge of underwater corals and obstacles, where hundreds of marines perished without firing a single shot.

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