Well done, Ed. Having been there, let me add my two bits to your thinking. The placement of artillery on the adjacent island would have accomplished little if anything. The indirect fire from the 75mm pack howitzers plunging into the fortified positions would merely have thrown up sand. The eventual emplacement contributed nothing to the effort. It did make certain artillery officers feel better.
Ed. Bale.

As to Holland Smith, I had occasions to discuss many aspects of the various operations while I was the Inspector-Instructor of the USMC Reserve in San Diego. When he traveled on government aircraft, authorized by the CMC, I was tasked to provide him transportation from his residence to Miramar and return. His view was the over optimism of the Navy brass relative to the capabilities of naval gunfire was a large contributor to the death of so many. He waxed back and forth regarding the need to seize the Gilbert Island area.

People need to understand that after the initial landings on Normandy victory in Europe came from the factories and the people in the US. The battlefields of Europe were simply flooded with equipment. Germany could not outproduce the US.
Ed. Bale