World War II: At the battle of Makin the USS Liscome Bay is torpedoed near Tarawa and sinks, killing 650 men.

The Battle of Makin was an engagement of the Pacific campaign of World War II, fought from 20 to 24 November 1943 on Makin Atoll in the Gilbert Islands.

USS Liscome Bay (ACV/CVE-56) was the second of fifty Casablanca-class escort carriers built to serve the United States Navy during World War II. Launched in April 1943 and commissioned the following August, she was named for Liscome Bay in Dall Island in the Alexander Archipelago of Alaska. On 24 November 1943, her munitions were catastrophically detonated by a torpedo attack by the Japanese submarine I-175 while she was acting as the flagship of Carrier Division 24, which was supporting operations on Makin. She quickly sank with the loss of 702 officers and sailors. Her loss is the deadliest sinking of a carrier in the history of the United States Navy.

Tarawa is an atoll and the capital of the Republic of Kiribati, in the Micronesia region of the central Pacific Ocean. It comprises North Tarawa, which has 6,629 inhabitants and much in common with other more remote islands of the Gilbert group, and South Tarawa, which has 56,388 inhabitants as of 2015, half of the country's total population. The atoll was the site of the Battle of Tarawa during World War II.