Pacific Theater

Pacific Theater

P-40 Fighter Pilot: Fighting for His Life

The four Curtiss P-40 Warhawks plummeted 10,000 feet over NewGuinea’s coastline to ambush their quarry. Flight leader 1st Lt. Read more

Pacific Theater

Night Battleship Action Off Guadalcanal

Rear Admiral Willis Augustus Lee has been called, among other things, “one of the best brains in the Navy.” Read more

Pacific Theater

The M29 Weasel: The WWII Track Vehicle Never Used as Intended

The M29 Weasel was a machine conceived by a bizarre British chemist obsessed with ice for a unit that did not exist and a mission that never occurred. Read more

Pacific Theater

Ordnance: The Piper L-4 “Eyes in the Sky”

Despite being caught up in the tide of isolationism prevalent duringthe interval between the world wars, the United States Army was lucky enough to have Congressional funding for the further development and expansion of its fledgling air arm, known initially in 1926 as the Army Air Corps and in 1941 renamed the Army Air Forces. Read more

Pacific Theater

Great Raid on Cabanatuan

On January 30, 1945, a group of U.S. Army Rangers, Alamo Scouts, and Filipino guerrillas set out on a daring nighttime raid on Cabanatuan POW camp in the Philippines.   Read more

Pacific Theater

Profiles: ROTC Success

More than 16 million Americans served in the U.S. military during World War II, but as fluid as the situation was in the Pacific, and considering the priority given to the European Theater, it is difficult to obtain an accurate count of how many served in the Pacific at any one time during World War II. Read more

Pacific Theater

The Soviet Invasion of Manchuria led to Japan’s Greatest Defeat

By Nathan N. Prefer

To the Soviet military, it is known as the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation. Although it had no official name to the Japanese, it has become known in the West as Operation August Storm.  Read more

Pacific Theater

Pearl Harbor Attack Cover-up

BACKSTORY: Although for the past 75 years history has had little to say about “Bally’s Project,” an effort to falsify State Department records to remove evidence of gross miscalculations prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor—the author recently discovered a small file of documents in the Frank A. Read more

Pacific Theater

The U.S. Navy’s Seabees: Bulldozing a Road to Victory

By Glenn Barnett

As war clouds gathered over the vast Pacific Ocean in the late 1930s, the United States belatedly began to think of protecting the nation’s possessions of far-flung islands and atolls. Read more

Pacific Theater

USS Nevada’s Run to the Sea

During the dark daysof December 1941, when it seemed as if American and British bases were falling like dominoes across the Pacific, two incidents during the Japanese attack on the naval base at Pearl Harbor gave American morale a much needed boost. Read more

Pacific Theater

Dumbos, Black Cats, and Coastwatchers during World War II

Even after the Battle of Midway in June 1942, the Japanese were still in a commanding position in the western Pacific. Read more

Pacific Theater

World War II British Submarine Operations in the Pacific

By Arnold Blumberg

During World War II, after the Royal Navy’s traumatic departure from the Pacific Ocean in early 1942, the 4th Submarine Flotilla and its depot ship, the HMS Adamant, operated with the Eastern Fleet based at Trincomalee––a large, natural harbor located on the coast of Sri Lanka in the heart of the Indian Ocean. Read more

Pacific Theater

Ordnance: Boeing B-29 Superfortress Game Changer

The Boeing B-29 Superfortress was a game changer. First rolling off the assembly line as a production aircraft in July 1943, the Superfortress was the answer to America’s need for a high-level long-range strategic bomber. Read more

Pacific Theater

Firestorm at Hollandia

By April 1944, American and Australian troops were moving westward along the northern edge of New Guinea, reclaiming territory taken by the Japanese in early 1942. Read more

Pacific Theater

Rescue Plane Down

“Awe c’mon, Mom,” Cecil Petty told his emotional mother before leaving Homer, Illinois, in February 1941. “Who knows, I might be a hero.” Read more

Pacific Theater

Putting the Cork in the Bottle at Los Negros

General Douglas MacArthur gripped the rail of the light cruiser USS Phoenix as the warship bombarded shore positions on the Japanese-held island of Los Negros. Read more

Pacific Theater

Soldiers: A Forgotten Hero

He led the American drive up the New Guinea coast, took his troops ashore on Leyte and Luzon in the Philippines, and was designated by the Allied supreme commander in the Pacific, General Douglas MacArthur, to lead the planned invasion of Japan itself. Read more

Pacific Theater

Army Nurses Corps: Angels In Olive Drab

Of the many groups that fought in World War II and have been largely forgotten in the history of that great conflict, none are more neglected than the women who served and died doing their duty alongside the men of the United States Army. Read more

Pacific Theater

Flight Out of Hell: The Harrowing Bombing Mission to Kavieng

In the predawn darkness of Dobodura, New Guinea, 2nd Lt. William J. Smith of the U.S. Army Air Corps was roughly awakened by a noncom announcing that it was time to get dressed and get to the mess tent for breakfast. Read more

Pacific Theater

The Forgotten Fleet

British naval operations in the Far East in World War II started badly and went downhill from there. Read more