Evans Carlson

Evans Carlson & America’s First Special Operations Team

By Duane Schultz

Major Evans Carlson stood on a rickety platform built from wooden crates, the kind their rations came in. Read more

Evans Carlson

The Makin Island Raid: What Really Happened to the Marines?

By Peter McQuarrie

In August 1942, the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion conducted the Makin Island raid in the Central Pacific. The purpose of the raid was to destroy Japanese installations on the island, gather intelligence, and to test the raiding tactics of the U.S. Read more

Evans Carlson

Battle of Makin: Amphibious Assault on the Gilbert Islands

By Patrick J. Chaisson

Makin should have been a pushover. On November 20, 1943, a force of 3,500 highly trained American soldiers invaded this Central Pacific atoll located 2,000 miles southwest of Hawaii in the Gilbert Islands. Read more

Evans Carlson

Submarine Special Missions in the Pacific

By Steven Trent Smith

Sunsets over Manila Bay are nothing less than spectacular. Once  the sun dips below the horizon there is a lingering illumination known as “blue hour” as the sky gradually shifts from pale azure to deep indigo before fading completely into the black tropical night. Read more

Evans Carlson

Carlson’s Long Patrol: Marine Raiders at Guadalcanal

By Christopher Miskimon

On the morning of November 6, 1942, a force of 267 Marines took its first steps into the jungle from a landing point at Aola Bay, roughly 30 miles east of the American perimeter on Guadalcanal. Read more

Evans Carlson

Princess Ecaterina Caradja: Angel of Ploesti

By Duane Schultz

Lieutenant Richard Britt, navigator aboard a Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber named Chattanooga Choo Choo, woke up to find himself trapped in the wreckage. Read more

Evans Carlson

Creating the OSS: FDR’s Network of Personal Spies

By Peter Kross

One of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s longtime interests was the hidden world of espionage. In the months before the United States entered World War II, the commander-in-chief was dabbling in the covert world of intelligence-gathering, using a number of trusted personal friends as his own private eyes and ears around the globe. Read more

Evans Carlson

Evans Carlson Forms Carlson’s Raiders

By Michael D. Hull

One of America’s earliest heroes in World War II was the tall, soft-spoken son of a Connecticut Congregational minister who distinguished himself in some of the fiercest fighting in the South Pacific. Read more