Jisaburo Ozawa

Battle of Sibuyan Sea

By John Wukovits

In warfare, desperate times call for desperate measures, and in the fall of 1944 the empire of Japan found itself in precisely that predicament. Read more

Jisaburo Ozawa

The Battle of Leyte Gulf: Oldendorf’s Textbook “Crossing the T”

By Donald J. Roberts II & Lawrence C. Schneider

In 1944, following the American victories in the South Pacific of operational commanders General Douglas MacArthur in western New Guinea and Admiral Chester Nimitz in the Marianas, American planners considered the next offensive against Japan’s empire. Read more

Jisaburo Ozawa

Sen Toku: Japan’s Underwater Aircraft Carriers

By Steven D. Lutz

As soon as Colonel James Doolittle’s  B-25 raid struck Japan in April 1942, Japan sought to wreak revenge on the United States, but by 1944 devastating aerial bombings on Japan by the Americans had become all too regular. Read more

Jisaburo Ozawa

Tragic Surrender

By Mark Simmons

On Saturday, December 6, 1941, a Royal Australian Air Force Lockheed Hudson bomber on a reconnaissance mission from Khota Bahru on the west coast of Malaya was flying northwest over the China Sea toward the Gulf of Thailand. Read more

Jisaburo Ozawa

Japan’s Underwater Aircraft Carriers

By Phil Zimmer

Lieutenant Commander Stephen L. Johnson had a problem on his hands; a very large problem. His Balao-class submarine, the Segundo, had just picked up a large radar contact on the surface about 100 miles off Honshu, one of Japan’s home islands, heading south toward Tokyo.  Read more

Jisaburo Ozawa

Battle of the Philippine Sea & The ‘Great Marianas Turkey Shoot’

By John Wukovits

Lieutenant Tom Bronn glanced anxiously at the fuel gauge on his Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bomber. He had been aloft for almost four hours, engaged in a hectic combination of trying to locate Japanese ships he knew to be in the Philippine Sea, diving down to unleash his four bombs at a carrier as dusk enveloped his aircraft, and then embarking on a desperate search for his own carrier, the USS Lexington, in the darkness. Read more

Jisaburo Ozawa

The Indian Ocean Raid: Disaster for the Royal Navy

By David H. Lippman

“So this is the Eastern Fleet,” ran Vice Admiral Sir James Fownes Somerville’s signal. “Never mind. Many a good tune is played on an old fiddle.” Read more

Jisaburo Ozawa

Sinking the Shokaku

By Johnd Domagalski

On the morning of June 13, 1944, the brilliant new aircraft carrier Taiho weighed anchor and slowly moved out of Tawi-Tawi anchorage in the Sulu archipelago in the southwestern Philippines. Read more

Jisaburo Ozawa

The Pacific War: Bull Halsey & Raymond Spruance

By Michael Haskew

On the eve of the turning point of World War II in the South Pacific, the U.S. Navy’s most experienced aircraft carrier commander, Admiral William F. Read more