Washington, D.C. • February 16, 1942 In the wake of the December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on U.S. naval and army bases at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, President Franklin D. Roosevelt settled on the U.S. Marine Corps as the home for a new commando-type force in the mold of British special operations forces to take the…
Ulithi Atoll, Western Pacific • February 10, 1945 On this date in 1945 Task Force 58 under Vice Adm. Marc “Pete” Mitscher, assigned to U.S. Adm. Raymond Spruance’s Fifth Fleet, steamed out of its anchorage at Ulithi Atoll in the Caroline Islands, 1,700 miles/2,736 kilometers south of the main Japanese island of Honshū. Except for the Coral Sea…
Saipan Island, Northern Marianas • January 7, 1945 In early October 1944, nearly 3 years into the Pacific War, the U.S. high command decided that, after securing the Philippine island of Leyte (done before the end of December), Gen. Douglas MacArthur was to liberate neighboring Luzon Island, while Fleet Adm. Chester Nimitz, from his station in…
SWPA HQ, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia • April 26, 1943 By January 1943, as the 6-month campaign for Guadalcanal in the Southwest Pacific Solomon Islands was winding down (the Japanese abandoned the island on February 7), it became clear that the Allies lacked sufficient resources to swiftly dislodge the Japanese from heavily fortified Rabaul, 650 miles/1,046 kilometers to the west….
Washington, D.C. • April 3, 1945 On this date in 1945 the Roosevelt administration appointed Gen. Douglas MacArthur Commander-in-Chief U.S. Army Forces Pacific (AFPAC), responsible for all Army and Army Air Forces units in the Pacific Theater excepting Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay’s Twentieth Air Force based in the Marianas. At the same time Adm. Chester…
Aboard USS Shangri-La • July 28, 1945 In December 1941 the Imperial Japanese Navy had the second most powerful navy in the Pacific Theater in World War II and the third largest navy in the world after the U.S. and Royal navies. During the first years of the war the Japanese Combined Fleet (Rengō Kantai), the IJN’s…
Henderson Field, Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands · November 12, 1942 On this date in 1942 in the South Pacific, U.S. and Japanese fleets began the four-day Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, often at point-blank range and under the cover of darkness. Variously referred to as the Third and Fourth Battles of Savo Island, the Battle of the…
Aboard the USS Shangri-La · July 28, 1945 The Imperial Japanese Navy had the second most powerful navy in the Pacific Theater in World War II and the third largest navy in the world after the U.S. and Royal navies. During the first years of the war the Japanese Combined Fleet, the IJN’s main ocean-going component,…
Washington, D.C. · April 3, 1945 On this date in 1945 the Roosevelt administration appointed Gen. Douglas MacArthur Commander-in-Chief U.S. Army Forces Pacific (AFPAC), responsible for all Army and Army Air Forces units in the Pacific Theater excepting Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay’s Twentieth Air Force based in the Marianas. At the same time Adm. Chester…
Saipan Island, Northern Marianas · January 7, 1945 In early October 1944 the U.S. high command decided that, after securing the Philippine island of Leyte (done before the end of December), Gen. Douglas MacArthur was to liberate neighboring Luzon Island, while Fleet Adm. Chester Nimitz, from his station in the Central Pacific, would attack the…