Bascially, this all goes away with about 60 minutes of work with Apache and a connector, assuming, based on what you've posted before, one site/domain name, and a relatively simple Tomcat Context/webapp configuration.

Frankly, you are asking (begging?) for trouble if you are going to run Tomcat on port 80 (it has to run as root unlike Apache) to serve a site where public availability is such a priority. All due respect to Tomcat and the efforts of the dev team (I do feel Tomcat rocks), but that's like a deer running around in deer season with a bullseye painted on it's fur.

If you told me: "Design a solution that will be used by a company to get as much public exposure as possible, with public exposure being top priority and by the way it has to be secure and we don't want any trouble from crackers" the FIRST thing I would do would be install Apache. Bar none. THEN I would consider which engine to use for dynamic resolution, out of all the alternatives available, Tomcat only being one of them.

You've got a classic trade-off situation going. Tomcat Stand-alone is easy and convenient to use as a web server (port 80), but doing so has its drawbacks. Adding Apache as a "head" for Tomcat is less easy and not as convenient (drawbacks) but it also has its advantages (solves your 302 issue). The only person who can make the call is you.

John