kamikaze
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
kamikaze
By early 1944, the Luftwaffe was only a shadow of what it had been at the beginning of the war. Read more
kamikaze
It was the largest warship ever built up to that time. It carried larger guns than any warship before it. Read more
kamikaze
The nation of Japan was hopeless before the invading force. They were outnumbered, and the enemy was about to land on the shores of the Imperial Home Islands. Read more
kamikaze
The deliberate crashing into enemy targets by Japanese aviators did not begin at the Battle of Santa Cruz Islands. Read more
kamikaze
As one island or island group in the Pacific was fought over by American and Japanese forces, it became clear that Japan’s days as a combatant in World War II were numbered. Read more
kamikaze
Two warships have been named in honor of Seaman Bartlett Laffey, a Civil War Medal of Honor recipient. Read more
kamikaze
I am of Polish, Irish, and American Indian descent and grew up in the small (population 3,800) northern Illinois town of Geneva. Read more
kamikaze
At exactly three o’clock in the afternoon on February 25, 1944, a crowd gathered at the Boston Navy Yard for the commissioning ceremony of the USS O’Brien (DD725), a destroyer of the Sumner class. Read more
kamikaze
Special Sea Attack Force (SSAF) was an ordinary-sounding name for the pitifully tiny remnant of what was once the mighty Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN). Read more
kamikaze
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
kamikaze
On August 15, 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army bombed Nanking, the capital of China. These raids were unrelenting until December 13, when Japanese troops entered the conquered city. Read more
kamikaze
“There’s no greater feeling in the world than seeing Old Glory in a winning position.” Twenty-one-year-old U.S. Navy Ensign Joseph Bale watched the American flag raising on Iwo Jima’s Mount Suribachi from aboard the attack transport USS Dickens County Texas. Read more
kamikaze
During the more than half a century since the end of World War II, there has been much speculation about what would have happened if President Harry Truman had not dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the invasion of Japan had actually taken place. Read more
kamikaze
From an altitude of 30,000 feet, the swift Japanese reconnaissance aircraft flew high over Saipan and Tinian, photographing the brisk and extensive engineering effort under way on the American airfields far below. Read more
kamikaze
Rarely in the history of warfare had one nation absorbed such numbing losses in so rapid a time as did the United States in the Pacific War’s first five months. Read more
kamikaze
Thanks to the rather far-fetched mid-1970s TV series Black Sheep Squadron, the bent-wing image of the Chance-Vought F4U Corsair is no doubt one of the most vivid of the World War II fighters in the minds of most Americans. Read more
kamikaze
More than 60 years ago, in April 1945, the war in Europe was winding down to its inevitable conclusion. Read more
kamikaze
In October 1944, Army nurse Lieutenant Frances Slanger of the 45th Field Hospital somewhere in Europe wrote a letter to Stars and Stripes, the Army newspaper, to express her admiration of the American soldier. Read more
kamikaze
It was Colonel Hiromishi Yahara who designed and implemented the jiykusen, or the yard-by-yard battle of attrition that cost the American forces so many casualties in the three-month battle, and he was the highest ranking officer to survive the battle and make it back to Tokyo. Read more
