Pacific Theater

Pacific Theater

The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress was Outdated When WWII Began

In the minds of many military enthusiasts, there was only one bomber in the United States inventory during World War II. Read more

Pacific Theater

The Japanese Surrender at Tokyo Bay

After six years of global destruction, suffering, and death, World War II was almost over in the Spring of 1945. Read more

Pacific Theater

Savage Fight for Hill 700 on Bougainville

The campaign to reduce the importance of the major Japanese base at Rabaul on the island of New Britain—begun more than a year earlier at Guadalcanal and Buna, New Guinea—was finally in its last stages by November 1943, as U.S. Read more

Pacific Theater

U.S. Navy’s First Attack Against the Japanese

On the night of November 11, 1940, an event occurred that would change naval warfare for all time. Read more

Pacific Theater

Controversial Allied Escort Carriers were Versatile Weapons

Ungainly, slow, and lacking armor, the escort carriers of the American and British navies were the versatile, unsung workhorses of the second half of World War II. Read more

Pacific Theater

Savage Struggle on the Kokoda Trail

The Japanese attacked the Australians near the remote village of Kokoda in New Guinea in the middle of the night on July 29, 1942. Read more

Pacific Theater

MacArthur’s Battle to Liberate Manila Amid Murder & Mayhem

By James M. Scott

On the early evening of March 11, 1942, General Douglas MacArthur, his wife Jean, and the couple’s four-year-old son Arthur walked out onto Corregidor’s north dock in preparation to escape the battered Philippine island. Read more

Pacific Theater

Bombing Burma’s Bridges

Thirty-five Boeing B-17C Flying Fortress bombers of the 7th Bomb Group happened to be on their way to Asia the morning the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Read more

Pacific Theater

Doolittle’s Raiders: The Men Who Shaped the Pearl Harbor Payback

By Nathan N. Prefer

In the months that led up to Doolittle’s raiders assembling to strike back at Tokyo, President Franklin D. Read more

Pacific Theater

Eleanor Roosevelt and Admiral Halsey

Prim, proper, and lacking any trace of braggadocio, the first lady of the United States, Eleanor Roosevelt, preferred placid pastimes and exchanging letters with close friends. Read more

Pacific Theater

What Made the B-25 Mitchell Bomber so Legendary

Little more than four months after the disastrous attack on Pearl Harbor, America went on the offensive against Japan with one of the boldest and best remembered bomber raids of World War II. Read more

Pacific Theater

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

“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

Pacific Theater

The Palawan Massacre: The Story from One of its Few Survivors

By Dick Camp, Col., USMC, Ret.

Superior Private Tomisaburo Sawa of the Imperial Japanese Army fixed the bayonet on his Type 99 Arisaka rifle and carefully checked to make sure the weapon was loaded. Read more

Pacific Theater

Why the U.S. Dropped the Atomic Bomb on Japan in WWII

How did we get to dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima? Who was responsible? Where and when did it begin? Read more

Pacific Theater

The Story of Ruby Boye, Australia’s Only Female Coastwatcher

For Australian coastwatcher Ruby Boye, an Allied agent stationed on the South Pacific island of Vanikoro, it started much like any other morning. Read more

Pacific Theater

The Makin Island Raid: What Really Happened to the Marines?

In August 1942, the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion conducted the Makin Island raid in the Central Pacific. The purpose of the raid was to destroy Japanese installations on the island, gather intelligence, and to test the raiding tactics of the U.S. Read more

Pacific Theater

Sinking Japanese Submarine I-1

Gordon Bridson was born in Wellington, New Zealand, in 1909, but shortly thereafter his family moved to Auckland, where he attended Auckland Grammar School. Read more

Pacific Theater

The Fight for Bougainville

The bloody fight for Guadalcanal, where the string of Japanese conquests in the Pacific had finally run its course, was a turning point of World War II. Read more

Pacific Theater

Jimmy Doolittle: The Warrior from Shangri-La

Shortly after the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt remarked that he would like to bomb the enemy homeland in revenge as soon as possible. Read more

Pacific Theater

Recording the Pearl Harbor Attack

Fort MacArthur in San Pedro, California was established by the U.S. Army in 1914 as a Coast Artillery installation to defend the harbors of Long Beach and Los Angeles. Read more