Download or read book Early Pacific Raids 1942 written by Brian Lane Herder and published by Osprey Publishing. This book was released on 2023-06-20 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating exploration of how between February 1 and March 10, 1942, three small US task forces launched several unexpected raids across the Japanese defensive perimeter in the Central and South Pacific. After the devastating Japanese blows of December 1941, the Allies found themselves reeling with defeat everywhere in the Pacific. Although stripped of his battleships and outnumbered 10:3 in carriers, the US Navy commander-in-chief Admiral Ernest J. King decided to hit back at Japan's rapidly expanding Pacific empire immediately, in an effort to keep the Japanese off-balance. On February 1, 1942, Vice Admiral Bill Halsey led the US Pacific Fleet carriers on their first raid, using high-speed hit-and-run tactics to strike at the Japanese, at a time when most of the Japanese carrier fleet was in the Indian Ocean. Halsey's aggressive commitment inspired its American participants to invent the mythical “Haul Ass With Halsey” club. The last of the 1942 US carrier raids in March 1942 would form a defining moment in the Pacific War, prior to a new phase of high-seas battles between the opposing fleets. This superbly illustrated book documents for the first time in a single volume this little-known but important World War II naval campaign. The fabulous illustrations, including maps and colour artworks, bring to life the US air and naval raids on the Japanese bases in the Marshall and Gilbert Islands, Rabaul, Wake Island, Marcus Island, and Lae and Salamaua in northern New Guinea.

Download or read book Early Raids in the Pacific Ocean February 1 to March 10 1942 written by Office of Naval Intelligence United States Navy and published by . This book was released on 2012-12-27 with total page 74 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a Combat Narrative....it includes a Forward by Admiral King and conclusions by Admiral Nimitz.It starts with the The Raid on the Marshall and Gilbert Islands and continues.Reader please understand that the included maps and charts may appear blurry and hard to read as they are over 70 years old.

Download or read book Early U S Navy Carrier Raids February April 1942 written by David Lee Russell and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2019-10-16 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:  After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, America's fast carrier task forces, with their aircraft squadrons and powerful support warships, went on the offensive. Under orders from Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King, the newly appointed Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, as the Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet, took the fight to the Japanese, using island raids to slow their advance in the Pacific. Beginning in February 1942, a series of task force raids led by the carriers USS Enterprise, USS Yorktown, USS Lexington and USS Hornet were launched, beginning in the Marshall Islands and Gilbert Islands. An attempted raid on Rabaul was followed by successful attacks on Wake Island and Marcus Island. The Lae-Salamaua Raid countered Japanese invasions on New Guinea. The most dramatic was the unorthodox Tokyo (Doolittle) Raid, where 16 carrier-launched B-25 medium bombers demonstrated that the Japanese mainland was open to U.S. air attacks. The raids had a limited effect on halting the Japanese advance but kept the enemy away from Hawaii, the U.S. West coast and the Panama Canal, and kept open lines of communications to Australia.

Download or read book Early Pacific Raids 1942 written by Brian Lane Herder and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-06-22 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating exploration of how between February 1 and March 10, 1942, three small US task forces launched several unexpected raids across the Japanese defensive perimeter in the Central and South Pacific. After the devastating Japanese blows of December 1941, the Allies found themselves reeling with defeat everywhere in the Pacific. Although stripped of his battleships and outnumbered 10:3 in carriers, the US Navy commander-in-chief Admiral Ernest J. King decided to hit back at Japan's rapidly expanding Pacific empire immediately, in an effort to keep the Japanese off-balance. On February 1, 1942, Vice Admiral Bill Halsey led the US Pacific Fleet carriers on their first raid, using high-speed hit-and-run tactics to strike at the Japanese, at a time when most of the Japanese carrier fleet was in the Indian Ocean. Halsey's aggressive commitment inspired its American participants to invent the mythical “Haul Ass With Halsey” club. The last of the 1942 US carrier raids in March 1942 would form a defining moment in the Pacific War, prior to a new phase of high-seas battles between the opposing fleets. This superbly illustrated book documents for the first time in a single volume this little-known but important World War II naval campaign. The fabulous illustrations, including maps and colour artworks, bring to life the US air and naval raids on the Japanese bases in the Marshall and Gilbert Islands, Rabaul, Wake Island, Marcus Island, and Lae and Salamaua in northern New Guinea.

Download or read book Fortress Rabaul written by Bruce Gamble and published by Zenith Press. This book was released on 2013-09-09 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For most of World War II, the mention of Japan's island stronghold sent shudders through thousands of Allied airmen. Some called it “Fortress Rabaul,” an apt name for the headquarters of the Imperial Japanese forces in the Southwest Pacific. Author Bruce Gamble chronicles Rabaul’s crucial role in Japanese operations in the Southwest Pacific. Millions of square feet of housing and storage facilities supported a hundred thousand soldiers and naval personnel. Simpson Harbor and the airfields were the focus of hundreds of missions by American air forces. Winner of the "Gold Medal" (Military Writers Society of America) and "Editor's Choice Award" (Stone & Stone Second World War Books), Fortress Rabaul details a critical and, until now, little understood chapter in the history of World War II.

Download or read book Darwin 1942 written by Bob Alford and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-02-23 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the devastating raids on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, lightning advances by Japanese forces throughout the Pacific and the Far East, and a desperate battle by the Allied command in the Dutch East Indies, it became evident that an attack on Australia was more a matter of 'when' and not 'if'. On 19 February, just eleven weeks after the attacks on Pearl Harbor and two weeks after the fall of Singapore, the same Japanese battle group that had attacked Hawaii was ordered to attack the ill-prepared and under-defended Australian port of Darwin. Publishing 75 years after this little-known yet devastating attack, this fully illustrated study details what happened on that dramatic day in 1942 with the help of contemporary photographs, maps, and profiles of the commanders and machines involved in the assault.

Download or read book Pacific Crucible War at Sea in the Pacific 1941 1942 Vol 1 The Pacific War Trilogy written by Ian W. Toll and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-11-14 with total page 732 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Northern California Book Award for Nonfiction "Both a serious work of history…and a marvelously readable dramatic narrative." —San Francisco Chronicle On the first Sunday in December 1941, an armada of Japanese warplanes appeared suddenly over Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and devastated the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Six months later, in a sea fight north of the tiny atoll of Midway, four Japanese aircraft carriers were sent into the abyss, a blow that destroyed the offensive power of their fleet. Pacific Crucible—through a dramatic narrative relying predominantly on primary sources and eyewitness accounts of heroism and sacrifice from both navies—tells the epic tale of these first searing months of the Pacific war, when the U.S. Navy shook off the worst defeat in American military history to seize the strategic initiative.

Download or read book The War Begins written by David Lee Russell and published by . This book was released on 2014-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The War Begins reveals in detail the events of the early carrier raids by the U.S. Pacific Fleet against the Japanese in the first half of 1942 in the Pacific War. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, carrier airpower would take on the supreme offensive role against Japanese forces in the first phase of the war. America's fast carrier task forces, with their aircraft squadrons and powerful support warships, took on the challenge, but the Pacific Fleet carrier force had a total of three carriers in the Pacific on 7 December 1941. Adm. William F. Halsey's Task Force 8, positioned on the Enterprise, and Rear Adm. Frank Jack Fletcher's Task Force 17, on the Yorktown, executed the first raid on Japanese positions on 1 February 1942, with attacks on the Marshall and Gilbert Islands. Raids on Rabaul, Wake Island, and Marcus Island followed. The most daring carrier raid was the unorthodox Doolittle Raid on Japan itself, on 18 April, when sixteen U.S. Army B-25 medium bombers launched from the Hornet. Though the carrier raids had limited material effect on Japan's continuing advance in the Pacific, they yielded valuable operational experience for U.S. carrier forces, kept open the lines of communications to Australia, and boosted morale. The raid on Tokyo inspired the elaborate Japanese plan to occupy Midway Island in June, resulting in a major carrier battle and the U.S. Navy's greatest victory.

Download or read book The Most Dangerous Moment of the War written by John Clancy and published by Casemate. This book was released on 2015-11-19 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A well-detailed account of the [World War II] raid, which badly stung the Royal Navy but which the Japanese failed to exploit to a strategic advantage” (Seapower). In early April 1942, a little-known episode of World War II took place. Said by Sir Winston Churchill to be “the most dangerous moment of the war,” the Japanese made their only major offensive westwards into the Indian Ocean. As historian Sir Arthur Bryant said, “A Japanese naval victory in April 1942 would have given Japan total control of the Indian Ocean, isolated the Middle East and brought down the Churchill government.” Having crippled the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese turned their sights on the British Eastern Fleet based at Ceylon. Occupation of Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, would not only provide the Japanese a springboard into India but also control of the essential convoy routes to Europe and the Western Desert. And aside from the British Eastern Fleet, the Indian Ocean lay undefended. In April 1942, a Japanese fleet led by six aircraft carriers, four battleships, and thirty other ships sailed into the Bay of Bengal. In the ferocious battles that followed, the British lost a carrier, two heavy cruisers, and many other ships; however, the Japanese eventually turned back, never to sail against India again. John Clancy, whose father survived the sinking of HMS Cornwall during the battle, “masterfully combines the strategic overview, the tactical decision making and many personal experiences to bring this episode of the war to life” (WWII Today). “Absolutely enthralling.” —Books Monthly “Well researched . . . a balanced view of men acting under the stress of war during a critical time.” —WWII History

Download or read book The Official Chronology of the U S Navy in World War II written by Robert J Cressman and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2016-10-15 with total page 867 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ten years after the close of World War II, the U.S. Navy published a chronology of its operations in the war. Long out of print, the work focused on what were then defined as critical and decisive events. It ignored a multitude of combat actions as well as the loss or damage of many types of U.S. ships and craft—particularly auxiliaries, amphibious ships, and district craft—and entirely omitted the U.S. submarine campaign against Japanese shipping, This greatly expanded and updated study, now available in paperback with an index, goes far beyond the original work, drawing on information from more than forty additional years of historical research and writing. Massive, but well organized, it addresses operational aspects of the U.S. Navy’s war in every theater.

Download or read book The First South Pacific Campaign written by John B Lundstrom and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2014-04-15 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On May 7 and 8, 1942, fast carrier task forces from the United States and Imperial Japanese met in combat for the first time in the Battle of the Coral Sea. A strategic victory for the U.S. despite the loss of the carrier Lexington, the battle blunted the Japanese drive on Port Moresby, a valuable Allied air base on the island of New Guinea. Lundstrom offers a detailed analysis of the fundamental strategies employed by Japan and the U.S. in the South Pacific from January to June 1942, the efforts of Adm. Ernest J. King to reinforce the area in spite of Roosevelt’s Europe First grand strategy and Adm.Chester Nimitz's aggressive plans to fight in the Coral Sea. Now in paperback, The First Pacific Campaign provides a superb overview of the crucial first six months of the naval war in the South Pacific.

Download or read book Pearl Harbor 1941 written by Carl Smith and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-10-20 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: December 7, 1941 was one of the single most decisive days of World War II the day that brought the USA into the fight. Six Japanese aircraft carriers disgorged their full complements in two waves on the superior US Pacific Fleet as it lay slumbering in Pearl Harbor. Depending on opposing viewpoints, the attack was either a brilliant maneuver of audacious strategy, or a piece of unparalleled villainy and deception by a supposedly friendly power. This revised edition, containing the latest research on the events of December 7, 1941, reveals several previously unknown aspects of the attack and dispels key myths that have been built up around the fateful day a day, Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared, that would "live in infamy".

Download or read book History of United States Naval Operations in World War II written by Samuel Eliot Morison and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book deals with the "incidents" that really began the war in the Pacific and the internal conflicts within Japan.

Download or read book The Doolittle Raid 1942 written by Clayton K. S. Chun and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-09-20 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In early 1942, the strategic situation was bleak for the United States. She had been in continual retreat since Pearl Harbor, surrendering major areas such as the Philippines, and was preparing for the worst in Hawaii and on the West Coast. The Japanese, on the other hand, had secured a well-defended perimeter, and was set for further expansion. Something needed to happen quickly and be of considerable impact-and the combined-arms, April 1942 Doolittle Raid on Japan was a way to achieve this. This book examines the planning, execution, and aftermath of this innovative, daring and risky attack, which would show that the Japanese navy and air forces were anything but invincible.

Download or read book The Doolittle Raid 1942 written by Clayton K. S. Chun and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-09-20 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In early 1942, the strategic situation was bleak for the United States. She had been in continual retreat since Pearl Harbor, surrendering major areas such as the Philippines, and was preparing for the worst in Hawaii and on the West Coast. The Japanese, on the other hand, had secured a well-defended perimeter, and was set for further expansion. Something needed to happen quickly and be of considerable impact-and the combined-arms, April 1942 Doolittle Raid on Japan was a way to achieve this. This book examines the planning, execution, and aftermath of this innovative, daring and risky attack, which would show that the Japanese navy and air forces were anything but invincible.

Download or read book Lost in the Pacific 1942 Not a Drop to Drink Lost 1 written by Tod Olson and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2016-10-25 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: LOST IN THE PACIFIC is the first book in a new narrative nonfiction series that tells the true story of a band of World War II soldiers who became stranded at sea and had to fight for survival. World War II, October 21, 1942. A B-17 bomber drones high over the Pacific Ocean, sending a desperate SOS into the air. The crew is carrying America's greatest living war hero on a secret mission deep into the battle zone. But the plane is lost, burning through its final gallons of fuel.At 1:30 p.m., there is only one choice left: an emergency landing at sea. If the crew survives the impact, they will be left stranded without food or water hundreds of miles from civilization. Eight men. Three inflatable rafts. Sixty-eight million square miles of ocean. What will it take to make it back alive?

Download or read book The Doolittle Raid written by John Grehan and published by Air World. This book was released on 2020-03-30 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On 1 April 1942, less than four months after the world had been stunned by the attack upon Pearl Harbor, sixteen US aircraft took to the skies to exact retribution. Their objective was not merely to attack Japan, but to bomb its capital. The people of Tokyo, who had been told that their city was ‘invulnerable’ from the air, would be bombed and strafed – and the shock waves from the raid would extend far beyond the explosions of the bombs. The raid had first been suggested in January 1942 as the US was still reeling from Japan’s preemptive strike against the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. The Americans were determined to fight back and fight back as quickly as possible. The 17th Bomb Group (Medium) was chosen to provide the volunteers who would crew the sixteen specially modified North American B-25 bombers. As it was not possible to reach Tokyo from any US land bases, the bombers would have to fly from aircraft carriers, but it was impossible for such large aircraft to land on a carrier; the men had to volunteer for a one-way ticket. Led by Lieutenant Colonel ‘Jimmy’ Doolittle, the seventy-one officers and 130 enlisted men embarked on the USS Hornet which was shielded by a large naval task force. However, the ships were spotted by a Japanese ship. The decision was therefore made to take-off before word of the task force’s approach reached Tokyo, even though the carrier was 170 miles further away from Japan than planned and in the knowledge that the B-25s would not have enough fuel to reach their intended landing places in China. The raid was successful, and the Japanese were savagely jolted out of their complacency. Fifteen of the aircraft crash-landed in, or their crews baled-out over, China; the sixteenth managed to reach the Soviet Union. Only three men were killed on the raid, with a further eight being taken prisoner by the Japanese, three of whom were executed and one died of disease. The full story of this remarkable operation, of the men and machines involved, is explored through this fascinating collection of images.