Luzon
Today’s Navy SEALs (for Sea, Air, and Land special warfare experts) have a history shrouded in secrecy. Commissioned in 1962, they are the most elite shore-area Special Forces in the world, concentrating on very select and often-clandestine intelligence gathering and precision strike missions. Read more
Luzon
General George S. Patton, Jr., once said, “An army is like a piece of cooked spaghetti. You can’t push it, you have to pull it after you.” Read more
Luzon
No foreign army in the 5,000-year history of Japan had ever successfully conquered Japanese territory. In late 1944, American war planners were about to challenge that statistic on the tiny Pacific island of Iwo Jima. Read more
Luzon
Henry Muller had an important job. He was the intelligence officer of the 11th Airborne Division, known in military parlance as the G-2. Read more
Luzon
“Finally at Corregidor there was only a little crowd of American soldiers and Filipino soldiers and American nurses at the beaches, with nothing at their backs but the waters of the Pacific, and the flag came down. Read more
Luzon
While the surprise Japanese attacks against U.S. military bases in the Hawaiian Islands on December 7, 1941, are certainly the best-known aspect of the opening of hostilities between the two aLess well known today were the Japanese attacks on Clark Field and Iba Field on the opening day of hostilities in the Philippines. Read more
Luzon
On October 20, 1944, General Douglas MacArthur redeemed his personal pledge to the people of the Philippines. Read more
Luzon
On August 7, 1942, Petty Officer 1st Class Saburo Sakai was piloting his Mitsubishi A6M2 “Zero” fighter in the skies over Sealark Channel in the Solomon Islands. Read more
Luzon
It sent Japanese warships to the bottom of the ocean. It pulverized fortifications on Japan’s home islands. Read more
Luzon
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
Luzon
Lieutenant Colonel William Edwin Dyess, a U.S. Army Air Corps pilot and squadron commander, was considered a hero by men who served under him in the Philippines and who felt they owed their own lives to Ed’s sacrifice. Read more
Luzon
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
Luzon
General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Allied Commander Southwest Pacific Area, kept his promise to return to the Philippine Islands when his Sixth Army under the command of Lt. Read more
Luzon
Most Americans were surprised by the Japanese attack on pearl Harbor, but the military had known that war with Japan was inevitable. Read more
Luzon
Lieutenant John Bulkeley knew something was in the wind when General Douglas MacArthur invited him for an informal lunch at his headquarters on Topside, the highest elevation on the island fortress of Corregidor. Read more
Luzon
On January 9, 1945, after almost three years, General Douglas MacArthur and the United States Army returned to the Philippine island of Luzon, landing at Lingayen Gulf on the northwest coast. Read more
Luzon
Just before dawn, the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise turned into the wind to launch her planes. Nervous and excited pilots roared into the darkness of the vast Pacific toward the unsuspecting Japanese. Read more
Luzon
The mighty invasion armada for the main thrust at Luzon in the Philippine Islands was being assembled on December 28, 1944. Read more
Luzon
Angelo J. “Red” Mantini was hardly an angel growing up in the small coal-mining towns of western Pennsylvania in the 1930s. Read more
Luzon
If there is a group of men whose mention evokes thoughts of heroism, it is those who were surrendered to the Japanese on Bataan and subsequently became part of the “Death March” up that peninsula in the Philippines to POW camps in central Luzon. Read more
