Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands · March 14, 1945 On this date in 1945 the U.S. flag was raised over the 10‑sq‑mile island of Iwo Jima in a formal flag-raising ceremony. The battle for the barren Japanese-held island lying some 760 miles southeast of Tokyo was the most bitterly contested of the war. Its capture was a…
U-852 in Mid-Atlantic Ocean · March 13, 1944 On this date in 1944 German U‑boat 852, skippered by 28‑year‑old Heinz-Wilhelm Eck, torpedoed the British-chartered Greek freighter SS Peleus as it steamed from Freetown, Sierra Leone, to Buenos Aires, Argentina. After the Peleus sank, U‑852 patrolled the large debris field for five hours. Crew members used…
Aboard the USS Pollack in Pacific Ocean · March 11, 1942 On this date in 1942 the USS Pollack made the first submarine attack using only its deck guns. Its targets were two Japanese fishing boats. During 1942 U.S. submarines reported 34 gun attacks on sampans and trawlers. The number of attacks increased to 64 in…
Tokyo, Japan · March 9, 1945 Apart from Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle’s April 1942 raid on the Japanese capital, Tokyo, early air raids on Japan focused on military and industrial targets with disappointing results. So U.S. Army Air Forces Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay, a veteran of the horrific air campaign over Nazi Germany, filled each…
Batavia (Jakarta), Dutch East Indies · March 8, 1942 The mineral- and oil-rich Dutch East Indies (today’s Indonesia) was Japan’s next colonial target in the Pacific Theater—this after Allied resistance had collapsed in Singapore (February 15, 1942) and all but did so in the Philippines with Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s forces holed up on the rocky, jungle-covered Bataan…
Central Burma · March 4, 1945 The British Fourteenth Army was a multinational force that took part in the Burma Campaign (January 1942 to July 1945). Units were drawn from the British Army and the Indian Army, with significant contributions from Ghurkha and West and East African regiments. The Fourteenth Army has often been referred…
Tokyo, Japan · February 24, 1945 The first appearance over Japan in June 1944 of the massive four-engine B‑29 bomber—with its service ceiling of 33,000 ft, an operational range of over 3,200 nautical miles, and a maximum takeoff weight of 133,500 lb—meant that the enemy’s home islands were squarely in the crosshairs of the war’s deadliest delivery system….
Santa Barbara, California · February 23, 1942 Japanese submarines initiated the first shore bombardments of the war with an attack on the U.S. Navy base at Johnston Island in the Pacific in mid-December 1941, just days after Japanese carrier-based planes had destroyed, in their surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, one half of the United…
Hsinking (Changchun), Manchukuo · February 18, 1932 The Meiji Restoration of Imperial rule in 1868 resulted in the downfall of Japan’s powerful military commanders, the shoguns, and the Japanese samurai warrior class. Partly as a concession to the samurai, the Japanese government embarked on an aggressive foreign policy in Manchuria in northeastern China and on the…
Task Force 58 Off Truk (Chuuk), Central Pacific · February 17, 1944 Chuuk Lagoon, known up to 1990 as Truk Lagoon, is a sheltered body of water in the Central Pacific north of New Guinea. Consisting of eleven major islands, Chuuk is part of the larger Caroline Islands group. Truk was part of the Spanish…