Download or read book Bitter Peleliu written by Joseph Wheelan and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-10-13 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The hard-hitting history of the Pacific War's 'forgotten battle' of Peleliu – a story of intelligence failings and impossible bravery. In late 1944, as a precursor to the invasion of the Philippines, U.S. military analysts decided to seize the small island of Peleliu to ensure that the Japanese airfield there could not threaten the invasion forces. This important new book explores the dramatic story of this 'forgotten' battle and the campaign's strategic failings. Bitter Peleliu reveals how U.S. intelligence officers failed to detect the complex network of caves, tunnels, and pillboxes hidden inside the island's coral ridges. More importantly, they did not discern – nor could they before it happened – that the defense of Peleliu would represent a tectonic shift in Japanese strategy. No more contested enemy landings at the water's edge, no more wild banzai attacks. Now, invaders would be raked on the beaches by mortar and artillery fire. Then, as the enemy penetrated deeper into the Japanese defensive systems, he would find himself on ground carefully prepared for the purpose of killing as many Americans as possible. For the battle-hardened 1st Marine Division Peleliu was a hornets' nest like no other. Yet thanks to pre-invasion over-confidence on the part of commanders, 30 of the 36 news correspondents accredited for the campaign had left prior to D-Day. Bitter Peleliu reveals the full horror of this 74-day battle, a battle that thanks to the reduced media presence has never garnered the type of attention it deserves. Pacific War historian Joseph Wheelan dissects the American intelligence and strategic failings, analyses the shift in Japanese tactics, and recreates the Marines' horrific experiences on the worst of the Pacific battlegrounds. This book is a brilliant, compelling read on a forgotten battle.

Download or read book Bitter Peleliu written by Joseph Wheelan and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-10-13 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The hard-hitting history of the Pacific War's 'forgotten battle' of Peleliu – a story of intelligence failings and impossible bravery. In late 1944, as a precursor to the invasion of the Philippines, U.S. military analysts decided to seize the small island of Peleliu to ensure that the Japanese airfield there could not threaten the invasion forces. This important new book explores the dramatic story of this 'forgotten' battle and the campaign's strategic failings. Bitter Peleliu reveals how U.S. intelligence officers failed to detect the complex network of caves, tunnels, and pillboxes hidden inside the island's coral ridges. More importantly, they did not discern – nor could they before it happened – that the defense of Peleliu would represent a tectonic shift in Japanese strategy. No more contested enemy landings at the water's edge, no more wild banzai attacks. Now, invaders would be raked on the beaches by mortar and artillery fire. Then, as the enemy penetrated deeper into the Japanese defensive systems, he would find himself on ground carefully prepared for the purpose of killing as many Americans as possible. For the battle-hardened 1st Marine Division Peleliu was a hornets' nest like no other. Yet thanks to pre-invasion over-confidence on the part of commanders, 30 of the 36 news correspondents accredited for the campaign had left prior to D-Day. Bitter Peleliu reveals the full horror of this 74-day battle, a battle that thanks to the reduced media presence has never garnered the type of attention it deserves. Pacific War historian Joseph Wheelan dissects the American intelligence and strategic failings, analyses the shift in Japanese tactics, and recreates the Marines' horrific experiences on the worst of the Pacific battlegrounds. This book is a brilliant, compelling read on a forgotten battle.

Download or read book Peleliu written by Bill D. Ross and published by Random House (NY). This book was released on 1991 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Last Man Standing written by Dick Camp and published by Zenith Press. This book was released on 2010-11-10 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the bloodiest battles in Marine Corps history, Operation Stalemate, as Peleliu was called, was overshadowed by the Normandy landings. It was also, in time, judged by most historians to have been unnecessary; though it had been conceived to protect MacArthur’s flank in the Philippines, the U.S. fleet’s carrier raids had eliminated Japanese airpower, rendering Peleliu irrelevant. Nevertheless, the horrifying number of casualties sustained there (71% in one battalion) foreshadowed for the rest of the war: rather than fight to the death on the beach, the Japanese would now defend in depth and bleed the Americans white. Drawing extensively on personal interviews, the Marine Corps History Division’s vast oral history and photographic collection, and many never-before-published sources, this book gives us a new and harrowing vision of what really happened at Peleliu--and what it meant. Working closely with two of the 1st Regiment’s battalion commanders--Ray Davis and Russ Honsowetz--Marine Corps veteran and military historian Dick Camp recreates the battle as it was experienced by the men and their officers. Soldiers who survived the terrible slaughter recall the brutality of combat against an implacable foe; they describe the legendary “Chesty” Puller, leading his decimated regiment against enemy fortifications; they tell of Davis, wounded but refusing evacuation while his men were under fire; and of a division commander who rejects Army reinforcements. Most of all, their richly detailed, deeply moving story is one of desperate combat in the face of almost certain failure, of valor among comrades joined against impossible odds.

Download or read book The Assault on Peleliu written by Frank O. Hough and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-08-05 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Assault on Peleliu, first published in 1950, is a detailed recounting of the U.S. Marines' fierce battle for Peleliu, part of the Palau Islands in the south Pacific. Facing approx. 11,000 hardened, entrenched Japanese troops, the 1st Marine Division began landing operations on September 15, 1944. What followed were more than two months of bloody fighting resulting in heavy casualties before the island was declared secure in late November. Included are more than 90 photographs and maps.

Download or read book Multivocal Archaeologies of the Pacific War 1941 45 written by Ben Raffield and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-07-21 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume draws together the ground-breaking work of researchers and archaeological practitioners, working in multiple countries, to explore and understand the material and cultural impacts of the Pacific War. The combat taking place in the Pacific region during the years 1941–45 was characterized by a brutality and violence unmatched in any other theatre of the Second World War. Described by indigenous Micronesians as a ‘typhoon,’ the war was an unstoppable force that rolled across the islanders’ homes, leaving only a trail of destruction in its wake, with physical, psychological, and cultural impacts that continue to resonate today. This difficult period is examined in a variety of ways through chapters that include targeted studies of archaeological sites, wider surveys of battlefield landscapes, and the ways in which we commemorate the experiences and legacies of both combatants and civilian populations. The translation of important research by Okinawan, Japanese, and Russian archaeologists brings into focus regions that have previously been neglected in Anglophone literature, and enriches this comprehensive exploration of the archaeology of the Pacific War. This book will be of interest to archaeological practitioners, students, and members of the general public working in conflict studies or with an interest in the material culture, history, and legacies of the Pacific War.

Download or read book Brotherhood of Heroes written by Bill Sloan and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2005 with total page 599 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This riveting read is the gut-wrenching but ultimately triumphant story of the Marines' most ferocious--yet largely forgotten--Pacific battle of World War II. of photos. 3 maps.

Download or read book Bloody Beaches written by Gordon D. Gayle and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1996 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Twenty Two on Peleliu written by George Peto and published by Casemate. This book was released on 2017-07-19 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A memoir of a tough childhood—and tough combat—by an “adventurous, lively, outspoken, opinionated” WWII Marine veteran (Columbus Dispatch). On September 15, 1944, the US First Marine Division landed on a small island in the Central Pacific called Peleliu as a prelude to the liberation of the Philippines. Among the first wave of Marines that hit the beach that day was twenty-two-year-old George Peto. Growing up on an Ohio farm, George always preferred being outdoors and exploring. This made school a challenge, but his hunting, fishing, and trapping skills helped put food on his family’s table. As a poor teenager living in a rough area, he got into regular brawls, and he found holding down a job hard because of his wanderlust. After working out west with the CCC, he decided that joining the Marines offered him the opportunity for adventure, plus three square meals a day—so he and his brother joined the Corps in 1941, just a few months before Pearl Harbor. Following boot camp and training, he was initially assigned to various guard units until he was shipped out to the Pacific and assigned to the 1st Marines. His first combat experience was the landing at Finschhaven, followed by Cape Gloucester. Then as a Forward Observer, he went ashore in one of the lead amtracs at Peleliu and saw fierce fighting for a week before the regiment was relieved due to massive casualties. Six months later, his division became the immediate reserve for the initial landing on Okinawa. They encountered no resistance when they came ashore, but would go on to fight on Okinawa for over six months. This is the wild and remarkable story of an “Old Breed” Marine—his youth in the Great Depression, his training and combat in the Pacific, and his life after the war, told in his own words.

Download or read book One Square Mile of Hell written by John Wukovits and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-10-04 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For Dutton Caliber's American War Heroes series, the riveting true account of the Battle of Tarawa, an epic World War II clash in which the U.S. Marines fought the Japanese nearly to the last man. In November 1943, the men of the 2d Marine Division were instructed to clear out Japanese resistance on the Pacific island of Betio, a speck at the end of the Tarawa Atoll. When the Marines landed, the Japanese poured out of their underground bunkers—and launched one of the most brutal and bloody battles of World War II. For three straight days, attackers and defenders fought over every square inch of sand in a battle with no defined frontlines, and where there was no possibility of retreat—because there was nowhere to retreat to. It was a struggle that would leave both sides stunned and exhausted, and prove both the fighting mettle of the Americans and the fanatical devotion of the Japanese. Drawn from new sources, including participants’ letters and diaries and exclusive firsthand interviews with survivors, One Square Mile of Hell is the true story of a battle between two determined foes, neither of whom would ever look at the other in the same way again.

Download or read book Bloody Okinawa written by Joseph Wheelan and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A stirring narrative of World War II's final major battle—the Pacific war's largest, bloodiest, most savagely fought campaign—the last of its kind. On Easter Sunday, April 1, 1945, more than 184,000 US troops began landing on the only Japanese home soil invaded during the Pacific war. Just 350 miles from mainland Japan, Okinawa was to serve as a forward base for Japan's invasion in the fall of 1945. Nearly 140,000 Japanese and auxiliary soldiers fought with suicidal tenacity from hollowed-out, fortified hills and ridges. Under constant fire and in the rain and mud, the Americans battered the defenders with artillery, aerial bombing, naval gunfire, and every infantry tool. Waves of Japanese kamikaze and conventional warplanes sank 36 warships, damaged 368 others, and killed nearly 5,000 US seamen. When the slugfest ended after 82 days, more than 125,000 enemy soldiers lay dead—along with 7,500 US ground troops. Tragically, more than 100,000 Okinawa civilians perished while trapped between the armies. The brutal campaign persuaded US leaders to drop the atomic bomb instead of invading Japan. Utilizing accounts by US combatants and Japanese sources, author Joseph Wheelan endows this riveting story of the war's last great battle with a compelling human dimension.

Download or read book The Devil s Anvil written by James H. Hallas and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 1994-02-28 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On September 15, 1944, General William Rupertus and the 16,000 Marines of the U.S. 1st Marine Division moved confidently toward Peleliu, an obscure speck of coral island 500 miles east of the Philippines. Though he knew a tough fight awaited him, Rupertus anticipated a quick two-day crush to victory, strengthening Gen. Douglas MacArthur's flank in his drive on the Philippines. Instead, as The Devil's Anvil reveals, American forces struggled desperately for more than two months against 10,000 deeply entrenched Japanese soldiers who had spent six months preparing for the battle. By the time the weary Americans could claim a victory, the fight had become one of the war's most costly successes. Even more tragic, Peleliu was later deemed a more or less unnecessary seizure. For those who survived, Peleliu remains a bitter, emotionally exhausting chapter of their lives. In The Devil's Anvil, Hallas reports on the personal combat experience of scores of officers and enlisted men who were at Peleliu. These men describe the heartbreaking loss of friends, the pain of wounds, and the heat, dirt, and exhaustion of a fight that never seemed to end.

Download or read book Peleliu 1944 written by Jim Moran and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-01-20 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Equalling Tarawa, Iwo Jima and Okinawa in scale and ferocity, the battle for Peleliu has long been regarded as the Pacific War's “forgotten battle”, and perhaps one that should never have been fought. A massive carrier-based attack some weeks before the invasion destroyed all aircraft and shipping in the area and virtually isolated the Japanese garrison. 1st Marine Division commander, General Rupertus, made extravagant claims that the capture of Peleliu would “only take three days – maybe two.” But the Japanese fought a bloody battle of attrition from prepared positions an in a struggle of unprecedented savagery a whole Marine Division was bled white.

Download or read book Tennozan written by George Feifer and published by Houghton Mifflin. This book was released on 1992 with total page 680 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tennozan offers a remarkable account of the battle of Okinawa, the largest land-sea-air engagement in history. It examines the disastrous collision of three disparate cultures--American, Japanese, and Okinawan--and provides the context for understanding the decision to drop the atomic bomb. 41 photographs.

Download or read book Borodino 1812 written by Philip Haythornthwaite and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-09-20 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A highly illustrated account of the battle of Borodino, the most crucial action in Napoleon's 1812 campaign in Russia. The battle of Borodino was one of the greatest encounters in European history, and one of the largest and most sanguinary in the Napoleonic Wars. Following the breakdown of relations between Russia and France, Napoleon assembled a vast Grande Armée drawn from the many states within the French sphere of influence. They crossed the river Neimen and entered Russian territory in June 1812 with the aim of inflicting a sharp defeat on the Tsar's forces and bringing the Russians back into line. In a bloody battle of head-on attacks and desperate counter-attacks in the village of Borodino on 7 September 1812, both sides lost about a third of their men, with the Russians forced to withdraw and abandon Moscow to the French. However, the Grande Armée was harassed by Russian troops all the way back and was destroyed by the retreat. The greatest army Napoleon had ever commanded was reduced to a shadow of frozen, starving fugitives. This title covers the events of Napoleon's disastrous Russian campaign of 1812 in its entirety, with the set-piece battle of Borodino proving the focal point of the book.

Download or read book Saipan written by James H. Hallas and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-05-01 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the Battle of Saipan has it all. Marines at war: on Pacific beaches, in hellish volcanic landscapes in places like Purple Heart Ridge, Death Valley, and Hell’s Pocket, under a commander known as “Howlin’ Mad.” Naval combat: carriers battling carriers from afar, fighters downing Japanese aircraft, submarines sinking carriers. Marine-army rivalry. Fanatical Japanese defense and resistance. A turning point of the Pacific War. James Hallas reconstructs the full panorama of Saipan in a way that no recent chronicler of the battle has done. In its comprehensiveness, attention to detail, scope of research, and ultimate focus on the men who fought and won the battle on the beaches and at and above the sea, it rivals Richard Frank’s modern classic Guadalcanal. This is the definitive military history of the Battle of Saipan.

Download or read book Crucible of Hell written by Saul David and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the award-winning historian, Saul David, the riveting narrative of the heroic US troops, bonded by the brotherhood and sacrifice of war, who overcame enormous casualties to pull off the toughest invasion of WWII's Pacific Theater -- and the Japanese forces who fought with tragic desperation to stop them. With Allied forces sweeping across Europe and into Germany in the spring of 1945, one enormous challenge threatened to derail America's audacious drive to win the world back from the Nazis: Japan, the empire that had extended its reach southward across the Pacific and was renowned for the fanaticism and brutality of its fighters, who refused to surrender, even when faced with insurmountable odds. Taking down Japan would require an unrelenting attack to break its national spirit, and launching such an attack on the island empire meant building an operations base just off its shores on the island of Okinawa. The amphibious operation to capture Okinawa was the largest of the Pacific War and the greatest air-land-sea battle in history, mobilizing 183,000 troops from Seattle, Leyte in the Philippines, and ports around the world. The campaign lasted for 83 blood-soaked days, as the fighting plumbed depths of savagery. One veteran, struggling to make sense of what he had witnessed, referred to the fighting as the "crucible of Hell." Okinawan civilians died in the tens of thousands: some were mistaken for soldiers by American troops; but as the US Marines spearheading the invasion drove further onto the island and Japanese defeat seemed inevitable, many more civilians took their own lives, some even murdering their own families. In just under three months, the world had changed irrevocably: President Franklin D. Roosevelt died; the war in Europe ended; America's appetite for an invasion of Japan had waned, spurring President Truman to use other means -- ultimately atomic bombs -- to end the war; and more than 250,000 servicemen and civilians on or near the island of Okinawa had lost their lives. Drawing on archival research in the US, Japan, and the UK, and the original accounts of those who survived, Crucible of Hell tells the vivid, heart-rending story of the battle that changed not just the course of WWII, but the course of war, forever.