Download or read book Tactical Defeat Or Strategic Victory written by U S Army Command and General Staff Coll and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2015-12-14 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Given the constrained environment the US Armed Forces operate in would it be possible or even strategically feasible to relieve a cutoff force. This book investigates this scenario by using the historical example of Wake Island. Wake Island is an insignificant strip of coral located in the central Pacific. However, it gained strategic significance during prewar planning. From its location, Wake Island could dominate the sea-lanes through the central Pacific. After the beginning of hostilities in 1941, the Japanese attacked Wake Island by air for three days before attempting an amphibious assault on 11 December. Miraculously, the defenders repulsed the Japanese. The only time during the Pacific War that an invasion attempt was defeated. Humiliated by the defeat, the Japanese returned on 23 December with a larger force. The defenders, again, put up a stubborn defense but eventually were overwhelmed. After the defenders defeated the Japanese on 11 December, the Navy's senior leaders were forced to decide on the fate of the men on Wake Island. In the final analysis it was determined that the strategic loss of any of three aircraft earners operating in the Pacific outweighed the tactical gain of relieving the beleaguered island.

Download or read book Tactical Defeat Or Strategic Victory written by and published by . This book was released on 2015-05-16 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Given the constrained environment the US Armed Forces operate in would it be possible or even strategically feasible to relieve a cutoff force. This study investigates this scenario by using the historical example of Wake Island. Wake Island is an insignificant strip of coral located in the central Pacific. However, it gained strategic significance during prewar planning. From its location, Wake Island could dominate the sea-lanes through the central Pacific. After the beginning of hostilities in 1941, the Japanese attacked Wake Island by air for three days before attempting an amphibious assault on 11 December. Miraculously, the defenders repulsed the Japanese. The only time during the Pacific War that an invasion attempt was defeated. Humiliated by the defeat, the Japanese returned on 23 December with a larger force. The defenders, again, put up a stubborn defense but eventually were overwhelmed. After the defenders defeated the Japanese on 11 December, the Navy's senior leaders were forced to decide on the fate of the men on Wake Island. In the final analysis it was determined that the strategic loss of any of three aircraft earners operating in the Pacific outweighed the tactical gain of relieving the beleaguered island.

Download or read book Tactical Defeat Or Strategic Victory The Battle Of Wake Island 8 23 December 1941 written by Major Marlyn. R. Pierce and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2015-11-06 with total page 109 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Given the constrained environment the US Armed Forces operate in would it be possible or even strategically feasible to relieve a cut-off force. This study investigates this scenario by using the historical example of Wake Island. Wake Island is an insignificant strip of coral located in the central Pacific. However, it gained strategic significance during pre-war planning. From its location, Wake Island could dominate the sea-lanes through the central Pacific. After the beginning of hostilities in 1941, the Japanese attacked Wake Island by air for three days before attempting an amphibious assault on 11 December. Miraculously, the defenders repulsed the Japanese. The only time during the Pacific War that an invasion attempt was defeated. Humiliated by the defeat, the Japanese returned on 23 December with a larger force. The defenders, again, put up a stubborn defense but eventually were overwhelmed. After the defenders defeated the Japanese on 11 December, the Navy’s senior leaders were forced to decide on the fate of the men on Wake Island. In the final analysis it was determined that the strategic loss of any of three aircraft carriers operating in the Pacific outweighed the tactical gain of relieving the beleaguered island.

Download or read book Tactical Defeat Or Strategic Victory The Battle of Wake Island 8 23 December 1941 written by Marlyn Pierce and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Given the constrained environment the U.S. Armed Forces operate in would it be possible or even strategically feasible to relieve a cutoff force. This study investigates this scenario by using the historical example of Wake Island. Wake Island is an insignificant strip of coral located in the central Pacific. However, it gained strategic significance during prewar planning. From its location, Wake Island could dominate the sea-lanes through the central Pacific. After the beginning of hostilities in 1941, the Japanese attacked Wake Island by air for three days before attempting an amphibious assault on 11 December. Miraculously, the defenders repulsed the Japanese. The only time during the Pacific War that an invasion attempt was defeated. Humiliated by the defeat, the Japanese returned on 23 December with a larger force. The defenders, again, put up a stubborn defense but eventually were overwhelmed. After the defenders defeated the Japanese on 11 December, the Navy's senior leaders were forced to decide on the fate of the men on Wake Island. In the final analysis it was determined that the strategic loss of any of three aircraft carriers operating in the Pacific outweighed the tactical gain of relieving the beleaguered island.

Download or read book Tactical Defeat Or Strategic Victory The Battle of Wake Island 8 23 December 1941 written by and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Given the constrained environment the U.S. Armed Forces operate in would it be possible or even strategically feasible to relieve a cutoff force. This study investigates this scenario by using the historical example of Wake Island. Wake Island is an insignificant strip of coral located in the central Pacific. However, it gained strategic significance during prewar planning. From its location, Wake Island could dominate the sea-lanes through the central Pacific. After the beginning of hostilities in 1941, the Japanese attacked Wake Island by air for three days before attempting an amphibious assault on 11 December. Miraculously, the defenders repulsed the Japanese. The only time during the Pacific War that an invasion attempt was defeated. Humiliated by the defeat, the Japanese returned on 23 December with a larger force. The defenders, again, put up a stubborn defense but eventually were overwhelmed. After the defenders defeated the Japanese on 11 December, the Navy's senior leaders were forced to decide on the fate of the men on Wake Island. In the final analysis it was determined that the strategic loss of any of three aircraft carriers operating in the Pacific outweighed the tactical gain of relieving the beleaguered island.

Download or read book Victory in Defeat written by Gregory Urwin and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2010-11-15 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Told here for the first time in vivid detail is the story of the defenders of Wake Island following their surrender to the Japanese on December 23, 1941. The highly regarded military historian Gregory Urwin spent decades researching what happened and now offers a revealing look at the U.S. Marines, sailors, soldiers, and civilian volunteers in captivity. In addition to exhaustive archival research, he interviewed dozens of POWs and even some of their Japanese captors. He also had access to diaries secretly kept by the prisoners. This information has allowed Urwin to provide a nuanced look at the Japanese guards and how the Americans survived three-and-a-half years in captivity and emerged with a much lower death rate than most other Allies captured in the Pacific. In part, Urwin says, the answer lies in the Wake Islanders’ establishment of life-saving communities that kept their dignity intact. Their mutual-help networks encouraged those who faltered under the physical and psychological torture, including what is today called water boarding. The book notes that the Japanese camp official responsible for that war crime was sentenced to life imprisonment by an American military tribunal. Most spent the war at a camp just outside Shanghai, one of the few places where Japanese authorities permitted the Red Cross to aid prisoners of war. The author also calls attention to the generosity of civilians in Shanghai, including Swiss diplomats and the American and British residents of the fabled International Settlement, who provided food and clothing to the prisoners. In addition, some of the guards proved to be less vicious than those stationed at other POW camps and occasionally went out of their way to aid the men. As the first historical work to fully explore the captivity of Wake Island’s defenders, the book offers information not found in other World War II historie

Download or read book Facing Fearful Odds written by Gregory J. W. Urwin and published by Bison Books. This book was released on 1997 with total page 792 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although Wake finally fell on 23 December 1941, its garrison made the Japanese pay an embarrassingly high price for a tiny coral outpost.

Download or read book A Magnificent Fight written by Robert Cressman and published by US Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author examines the defense plans prepared before the war and how grim necessity compelled the modification of those plans. The central part of the work recounts how the Wake garrison survived nearly daily bombings and repulsed the first Japanese attempt to take the atoll. This small band of defenders consisted of marines from an understrength defense battalion and a composite aviation unit equipped with a dwindling number of fighter planes, augmented by sailors and civilian volunteers.

Download or read book The Battle of Wake Island written by Charles River Charles River Editors and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-02-03 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes accounts of the fighting by soldiers on both sides *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading All Americans are familiar with the "day that will live in infamy." At 9:30 a.m. on Sunday, December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor, the advanced base of the United States Navy's Pacific Fleet, was ablaze. It had been smashed by aircraft launched by the carriers of the Imperial Japanese Navy. All eight battleships had been sunk or badly damaged, 350 aircraft had been knocked out, and over 2,000 Americans lay dead. Indelible images of the USS Arizona exploding and the USS Oklahoma capsizing and floating upside down have been ingrained in the American conscience ever since. In less than an hour and a half the Japanese had almost wiped out America's entire naval presence in the Pacific, but one of the aspects of the war most forgotten is that the Japanese simultaneously launched concerted attacks against American targets elsewhere in the Pacific that the same day, including one against the strategically located Wake Island. Claimed for the United States in 1841 by the cheerful, narrow-faced Lieutenant Charles Wilkes aboard the USS Vincennes, Wake Island (actually three separate portions known as Wake, Peale, and Wilkes Islands) remained essentially useless until the technology and politics of the 20th century suddenly rendered it more important. Given the possibility of war with Japan in the near future, the United States Navy began researching and developing the island for use as a forward airbase in 1940. Located between Hawaii and Japan, with the nearest inhabited land over 600 miles away, Wake appeared as a key strategic asset for America. Its status as U.S. territory made it possible for the Navy to construct a base there without antagonizing the Japanese, and desalination technology enabled maintaining a permanent human presence on the island. Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, CINCPAC in 1941, prepared a long commentary on Wake which included the assessment: "The strategic importance of Wake is increasingly evident, as one inquires into means by which the Pacific Fleet may carry on offensive operations to the westward. [...] As an operating patrol plane base, it could prove highly valuable to us in observing the Marshalls, or in covering advance of our forces toward the Saipan-Honshu line. In the hands of the Japanese, it would be a serious obstacle to surprise raids." (Heinl, 1947, 1). The Japanese, of course, also recognized the strategic value of Wake and planned to deny it to the United States. Since their war plan involved a surprise attack, with the declaration of war following the start of hostilities, they anticipated seizing Wake Island with minimal resistance from the contractors and U.S. Marines there. The Japanese might perhaps have viewed the Americans on Wake in the same way Shakespeare's Duke of Orleans dismissed the English in Henry V, Act III, Scene 7: "You may as well say, that's a valiant flea that dare eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion." As it turned out, the Japanese would require multiple invasion attempts and a few weeks to take the island against dogged American resistance, and it would cost them over 1,000 casualties by the time the fighting was finished. The Battle of Wake Island: The History of the Japanese Invasion Launched in Conjunction with the Attack on Pearl Harbor chronicles one of the initial Japanese campaigns in the Pacific. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the battle like never before.

Download or read book The Story of Wake Island written by James P. S. Devereux and published by . This book was released on 2018-10-04 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The courageous conduct of the officers and men who defended Wake Island will not be forgotten so long as gallantry and heroism are respected and honored." Citation of the President "Excellent" The New York Times On 8th December 1941, just hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, thirty-six Japanese bombers attacked Wake Island and destroyed eight of its twelve aircraft. Two more raid shortly followed, further reducing the defensive possibilities for the men who were left to defend this small area of American soil in the center of the Pacific Ocean. Major James P. S. Devereux was the Commanding Officer of the 1st Marine Defense Battalion who faced Japanese onslaught. The first Japanese landing attempt on the morning of 11th December was repelled by a ferocious defense put forward by Devereux and his men. Yet although the Japanese had withdrawn without landing, they continued to bombard the island by air and sea, and there was little hope of resupply for the Americans. For fifteen days the American troops suffered endless bombardments until the second major Japanese offensive was launched on 23rd December. Against overwhelming forces the Marines and other troops that were stationed on the island fought valiantly, but after forty-nine men had lost their lives in the fight, the remaining American men and civilians were captured by the Japanese. James P. S. Deveraux's remarkable book The Story of Wake Island takes the reader to the heart of the action from the point of view of the commanding officer. It is a brilliant account of this tragic event that demonstrated the fighting spirit of the American soldier even in the face of unbeatable odds. "His special vantage point enriches his commentary not only on the ill-fated military operation but also on the state (and spirit) of the prewar preparations to defend the island." John J. Sbrega, The War Against Japan, 1941-1945 James P. S. Devereaux was a United States Marine Corps general, Navy Cross recipient, and Republican congressman. After the ferocious fifteen-day battle of Wake Island Devereux was interned for nearly four years in Japanese prison camps. His book The Story of Wake Island was first published in 1947 and he passed away in 1988.

Download or read book Strategy and Command written by Louis Morton and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2015-07-11 with total page 792 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the United States, full involvement in World War II began and ended in the Pacific Ocean. Although the accepted grand strategy of the war was the defeat of Germany first, the sweep of Japanese victory in the weeks and months after Pearl Harbor impelled the United States to move as rapidly as it could to stem the enemy tide of conquest in the Pacific. Shocked as they were by the initial attack, the American people were also united in their determination to defeat Japan, and the Pacific war became peculiarly their own affair. In this great theater it was the United States that ran the war, and had the determining voice in answering questions of strategy and command as they arose. The natural environment made the prosecution of war in the Pacific of necessity an interservice effort, and any real account of it must, as this work does, take into full account the views and actions of the Navy as well as those of the Army and its Air Forces. These are the factors-a predominantly American theater of war covering nearly one-third the globe, and a joint conduct of war by land, sea, and air on the largest scale in American history-that make this volume on the Pacific war of particular significance today. It is the capstone of the eleven volumes published or being published in the Army's World War II series that deal with military operations in the Pacific area, and it is one that should command wide attention from the thoughtful public as well as the military reader in these days of global tension.

Download or read book Given Up for Dead written by Bill Sloan and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2008-01-29 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping narrative of unprecedented valor and personal courage, here is the story of the first American battle of World War II: the battle for Wake Island. Based on firsthand accounts from long-lost survivors who have emerged to tell about it, this stirring tale of the “Alamo of the Pacific” will reverberate for generations to come. On December 8, 1941, just five hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Japanese planes attacked a remote U.S. outpost in the westernmost reaches of the Pacific. It was the beginning of an incredible sixteen-day fight for Wake Island, a tiny but strategically valuable dot in the ocean. Unprepared for the stunning assault, the small battalion was dangerously outnumbered and outgunned. But they compensated with a surplus of bravery and perseverance, waging an extraordinary battle against all odds. When it was over, a few hundred American Marines, sailors, and soldiers, along with a small army of heroic civilian laborers, had repulsed enemy forces several thousand strong––but it was still not enough. Among the Marines was twenty-year-old PFC Wiley Sloman. By Christmas Day, he lay semiconscious in the sand, struck by enemy fire. Another day would pass before he was found—stripped of his rifle and his uniform. Shocked to realize he hadn’t awakened to victory, Sloman wondered: Had he been given up for dead—and had the Marines simply given up? In this riveting account, veteran journalist Bill Sloan re-creates this history-making battle, the crushing surrender, and the stories of the uncommonly gutsy men who fought it. From the civilians who served as gunmen, medics, and even preachers, to the daily grind of life on an isolated island—literally at the ends of the earth—to the agony of POW camps, here we meet our heroes and confront the enemy face-to-face, bayonet to bayonet.

Download or read book Staff Ride Handbook for the Attack on Pearl Harbor 7 December 1941 written by Jeffrey J. Gudmens and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2005 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Navy Department Communiques 1 624 written by United States. Navy Department. Office of Public Relations and published by . This book was released on 1943 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Decision to Withdraw to Bataan written by Louis G. Morton and published by . This book was released on 1960 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Opening Moves written by Henry I. Shaw (Jr.) and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Eastern Mandates written by Burton Wright III and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on 1993 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: CMH 72-23. Provides one in a series of 40 illustrated brochures that describe the campaigns in which U.S. Army troops participated during the war. Each brochure describes the strategic setting, traces the operations of the major American units involved, and analyzes the impact of the campaign on future operations. Other Related Publications: United States Army and World War 2: European, Mediterranean, Middle East Theaters of Operations (CD-ROM) is available here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-029-00376-7 Tunisia: The Army Campaigns of World War II -Print Paperback Pamphlet format -is available here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-029-00261-2 World War II resources collection can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/catalog/us-military-history/battles-wars/world-war-ii Other publications produced by the US Army, Center of Military History (CMH) can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/agency/1061