Off the Mariana Islands, Central Pacific • June 12, 1944 On this date in 1944 in the Marianas, U.S. carrier aircraft began attacking Japanese defenses on Saipan, Tinian, and Guam in preparation for the 3‑week battle for the archipelago’s administrative center, Saipan. Eight hundred U.S. warships carrying 162,000 fighting men were set to smash into the…
Pentagon, Washington, D.C. • May 31, 1945 On this date in 1945 a special group met in the Pentagon to search for an alternative to dropping the atomic bomb on Japan. The group had been called into existence by the new American president, Harry S. Truman. Neither Truman nor anyone else in the room knew…
Clark Field, Philippines • May 29, 1945 On this date in 1945 3 test versions of the B‑32 4‑engine Dominators made their first combat appearance in World War II. Leaving Clark Field 60 miles/97 kilometers north of the Philippine capital of Manila, the Dominators targeted a Japanese supply depot less than a flight hour away. Four more B‑32 field…
Hashirajima Anchoring Area, Hiroshima Bay, Japan • May 27, 1942 A little over 4 months after Japan devastated the U.S. Pacific Fleet riding at peaceful anchor at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Japanese Shōwa Emperor Hirohito and his Army and Navy staff officers received a rude calling card from Lt. Col. James “Jimmy” Doolittle and 79 other airmen of…
With Rear Adm. Fletcher’s Task Force 17 • May 7, 1942 In the 6 months following Japan’s December 7, 1941, attack on U.S. naval and air facilities at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the Japanese had the advantage of dominant air and naval power in the Pacific Ocean region. During these months the Japanese military looked to expand…
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….
Aboard the USS Hornet • April 18, 1942 The Doolittle Raid—a top-secret U.S. retaliatory airstrike following the surprise Japanese bombing of American naval and air bases at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, 19 weeks earlier—was the country’s first joint action with the U.S. Army Air Forces and the U.S. Navy. The groundbreaking mission shipped 16 North American B‑25B Mitchell…
Rabaul, New Britain Island, Papua New Guinea • April 13, 1943 On this date in 1943 the headquarters of Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto on Rabaul, the important Japanese garrison on New Britain Island in the Bismarck Archipelago, sent a coded military radio signal to various Japanese commands in the Western South Pacific. The message listed the dates…
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 Admiral Spruance’s Flagship USS Indianapolis • April 1, 1945 For weeks the largest Allied fleet since Operation Overlord 10 months earlier—nearly 1,500 U.S. and British vessels—fired 2.3 million shells onto Okinawa, the largest island in the Ryukyu archipelago and a little more than 300 miles/483 kilometers from Kyūshū and Shikoku, the southernmost Japanese Home Islands. (Tokyo was 550 miles/855 kilometers away.)…