Okinawa
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
Okinawa
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
Okinawa
The very nature of war means that some participants will be killed and others will be wounded, and some estimate the deaths in WWII to be around 85 million. Read more
Okinawa
Close to the northern end of the island of Tokashiki, the largest member of a tiny group of islands called Kerama Retto, located 15 miles west of Okinawa and hardly 400 miles from the Japanese home islands, Corporal Alexander Roberts and the rest of the 306th Regimental Combat Team rested for the night beneath the starry skies of the northern Pacific. Read more
Okinawa
Noted chronicler of the Pacific Theater Eric Hammel recently spent three years sorting, scanning, cleaning, selecting, and captioning United States Marine Corps World War II photos for six pictorial books. Read more
Okinawa
American General George S. Patton, Jr., and German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel both demonstrated the masterful employment of armored forces in many World War II military campaigns. Read more
Okinawa
By Chris McGowan
Atop 550-foot Suribachi Yama, the volcano at the southwest tip of Iwo Jima, Marines of the 2nd Battalion, 28th Regiment, 5th Division, hoist the Stars and Stripes, signaling the capture of this key position. Read more
Okinawa
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
Okinawa
“One of the greatest heroes in American history never fired a bullet.” That is the tagline of Director Mel Gibson’s 2016 film, Hacksaw Ridge. Read more
Okinawa
In the last days of March 1945, a soldier named Carl Getzel sat on a hill outside the city of Aschaffenburg and watched as it was slowly destroyed. Read more
Okinawa
Ernest Taylor Pyle was born August 3, 1900, in Dana, Indiana. He came from a farm family. Read more
Okinawa
The most successful and popular patriotic show of World War II and one of the most unique productions in the history of entertainment was Irving Berlin’s This Is the Army, which originally began as a Broadway musical. Read more
Okinawa
April 1, 1945, was Easter Sunday and April Fool’s Day. It was also the day the U.S. Army and Marine Corps launched Operation Iceberg, their massive amphibious assault on the Japanese island of Okinawa. Read more
Okinawa
Eighty miles off the coast of New Jersey and 280 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean lies the forward section of a World War II destroyer, where it came to rest more than 60 years ago. Read more
Okinawa
The American war in the Pacific proved to be largely a maritime endeavor. Fighting consisted of widespread naval battles between the two major opponents followed by American invasions of Japanese-held island bases. Read more
Okinawa
Warfare History Network sat down with Terry Benedict, one of the Producers of the new Mel Gibson film Hacksaw Ridge to ask some questions about the film and its subject, Desmond Doss. Read more
Okinawa
He was a seagoing J.E.B. Stuart who hid beneath weather fronts to make his attacks, and he fought more naval engagements than John Paul Jones and David Farragut combined. Read more
Okinawa
General of the Army George C. Marshall called it America’s greatest contribution to modern warfare. General Dwight D. Read more
Okinawa
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
Okinawa
Gene Verge was born in Pasadena, California, in 1918. As a young man in 1941 he faced the probability of being drafted. Read more
