Japanese battleship Yamato

Lifting the Japanese Military

By John W. Whitman

Japanese military successes in 1941 and 1942 shocked the West. Behind those successes lay a logistics effort not often appreciated, that of shipping. Read more

Japanese battleship Yamato

Hell’s Own Cesspool: Okinawa in WWII

By John Walker

On Easter morning, April 1, 1945, the Pacific island of Okinawa trembled beneath an earthshaking bombardment from American combat aircraft overhead and ships steaming offshore in preparation for an amphibious landing of unprecedented magnitude. Read more

Japanese battleship Yamato

The Largest Kamikaze: The Battleship Yamato At Okinawa

By Nathan N. Prefer

It was the largest warship ever built up to that time. It carried larger guns than any warship before it. Read more

Japanese battleship Yamato

USS Sealion: the Only American Submarine to Sink an Enemy Battleship

By Chace V. Howland

“Thornton! Go let the captain know he’s needed in the conning tower.” Nineteen-year-old Quartermaster Third Class Ed Thornton from Three Notch, Alabama, scurried to the conning tower hatch and slid down the ladder into the control room. Read more

Japanese battleship Yamato

Sinking the Bismarck Myth

By Mark Carlson

In 1960 Twentieth Century Fox released the film Sink the Bismarck! Based on C.S. Forrester’s bestselling book The Last Nine Days of the Bismarck, the documentary-style film tells a gripping and reasonably factual account of the most famous sea chase in history. Read more

Japanese battleship Yamato

How Pearl Harbor Happened

By Richard G. Higgins

Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, strike leader for Operation Hawaii and 20-year veteran of the Imperial Japanese Navy (Kaigun), strapped himself into the observer’s seat as his Nakajima B5N2 “Kate” torpedo bomber, piloted by Lieutenant Mitsuo Matsuzaki, and lifted off from the carrier Akagi on the black morning of December 7, 1941. Read more

Japanese battleship Yamato

An Ace in a day: Ted Crosby’s Air War in the Pacific

By Eric Niderost

Lieutenant (j.g.) John “Ted” Crosby banked his Grumman F6F-5 Hellcat around, observing the life-and-death drama that was unfolding below him. Read more

Japanese battleship Yamato

Famous Navy Ships: The Triumph of the USS Batfish

By Robert Barr Smith

She was a sleek, efficient, deadly killer, a home to six officers and 60 enlisted men, and a holy terror to the enemy. Read more

Japanese battleship Yamato

Final Conflict on Okinawa

By Dr. Carl H. Marcoux

Although neither side was aware of it at the time, the battle for Okinawa would be the last major battle of World War II. Read more

Japanese battleship Yamato

Clash at Surigao Strait: The Last Battle Line

By David Lippman

In the distance, they could see the jagged flashes of lightning, an incoming squall in the dark. Just before the rain arrived, so did St. Read more

Japanese battleship Yamato

Action off Santa Cruz: Last Stand of the USS Hornet

By David Alan Johnson

During the early morning hours of October 26, 1942, several hours before the sun came up, Admiral William F. Read more

Japanese battleship Yamato

Japanese Battleship Yamato Makes Its Final Stand

Dy Gerald Astor

In the late afternoon of April 6, 1945, five days after American GIs and leathernecks scrambled onto an Okinawa beach a scant 500 miles from Japan, two U.S. Read more