abstract:Fire corals are colonial marine organisms that look rather like real coral. Technically they are not corals, since they are more closely related to jellyfish and other stinging anemones.
The Tarawa calamity was already a Pacific legend: how naval intelligence, relying on obsolete charts, had miscalculated the tides so flagrantly that the Marine troops in their landing vessels were forced to disembark on coral reefs and then wade ashore for hundreds of yards, exposed to killing fire from Japanese machine guns.