Although U.S. Marines had broken the back of the Japanese on Guadalcanal in furious combat between August 1942 and February 1943, much hard fighting remained to be endured on jungle-choked islands to the north. Between late 1942 and the end of 1943, the Marines on the ground and in the air took part in a series of battles and campaigns in the central and northern Solomon Islands, all part of the effort to reach and neutralize the Japanese regional air, naval and supply base at Rabaul, at t...

On the morning of Saturday, November 20, 1943, the U.S. 2d Marine Division undertook the first modern amphibious assault against a well-defended beachhead. The objective was tiny Betio Island in Tarawa Atoll. The result was an classic story of tragedy and near defeat turned around into an epic of victory and indomitable human spirit.Built around the updated text of their 76 Hours: The Invasion of Tarawa, Hammel and Lane now reveal the graphic horror of warfare at its worst with the present...

"An authoritative look at an event that has taken on a legendary status . . . [an] essential history for those wanting the truth behind the legend" ( Publishers Weekly).Joe Rosenthal's "Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima" photo is one of the best-known images of US war history—and a powerful symbol of patriotism. But the story of how the flag got there, and even the identity of the soldiers in the photo, has been muddied by history. Here, military historian Eric...

The American mid-1944 campaign in the Mariana Islands was an important strategic step that placed Tokyo and the rest of Japan’s industrial heartland within range of the new U.S. Army Air Forces B-29 very-long-range bombers. Once the islands were secured and the airfields were built, the army air forces in the Pacific could do to Japanese industry what their counterparts in Europe had been doing to German industry since mid-1943.Even though these important objectives in the Marianas ...

Even in as bloody and bluntly violent a war as Americans encountered in the Pacific, Iwo Jima, the ultimate expression of death and mayhem, stands out. It was in a class by itself, a meatgrinder smashed by a blunt instrument at exceedingly high cost. Relying upon a purely attritional strategy of “defend and die,” Iwo's Japanese commander oversaw the construction of thousands of concrete bunkers, pillboxes, blockhouses, and other fighting positions as well as multistory underground command ...

The six-month Guadalcanal campaign was the longest and most complicated operation U.S. Marines faced in the Pacific War. In July 1942, when it was discovered that the Japanese were building a bomber base on the island, the 1st Marine Division was the only Allied force available to respond to the threat. Although the airfield was seized without a fight after the Marines landed on August 7,1942, a Japanese naval attack the following night drove off the supporting U.S. Navy forces before the ...

The American mid-1944 campaign in the Mariana Islands was an important strategic step that placed Tokyo and the rest of Japan’s industrial heartland within range of the new U.S. Army Air Forces B-29 very-long-range bombers. Once the islands were secured and the airfields were built, the new Twentieth Air Force could do to Japanese industry what its strategic counterparts in Europe had been doing to German industry since mid-1943.Even though these important objectives in the Marianas...

By early 1944 the Americans’ westward drive across the Pacific required airfields in the Marshall Islands, at Kwajalein and Eniwetok atolls. In late January, the 4th Marine Division and U.S. Army troops wrenched control of Kwajalein Atoll in three days of heavy fighting. Then, beginning February 18, the reinforced independent 22d Marine Regiment landed on three islands in Eniwetok Atoll. The three newly rebuilt former Japanese airfields at Kwajalein and Eniwetok would support operations in...

Conceived as a visual record rather than a definitive history, The Steel Wedge is a substantial photographic archive—246 photos, many never before published—focused on the coming of age of U.S. Marine Corps tanks, tank destroyers, and armored amphibian tractors through the Pacific island-hopping campaign from earliest pre-war development to Okinawa in 1945.A slice of the Marine Corps experience in the Pacific Theater during World War II, The Steel Wedge employs explanatory captions...

CARRIER CLASHThe Invasion of Guadalcanal &the Battle of the Eastern SolomonsAugust 1942Eric HammelThe Battle of the Eastern Solomons was historys third carrier clash. A collision of U.S. Navy and Imperial Navy carriers in the wake of the invasion of Guadalcanalwhose airfield the United States desperately needed and the Japanese desperately wanted backthe battle was waged at sea and over Guadalcanals besieged Marine-held Lunga Perimeter on August 24, 1942. Based upon the first half of Eric Ha...

AMBUSH VALLEYI Corps, Vietnam, 1967the Story of a Marine Infantry Battalion's Battle for SurvivalEric HammelIn the summer of 1967, the Marines in I Corps, South Vietnams northernmost military region, were doing eveything they could to lighten the pressure on the besieged Con Thien Combat Base.Still fresh after months of relatively light action around Khe Sanh, the 3d Battalion, 26th Marines, was sent to the Con Thien region to secure the combat basess endangered main supply route. On Septembe...

CARRIER STRIKEThe Battle of the Santa Cruz IslandsOctober 1942By Eric HammelThe Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, a strategic naval action in the bitter Guadalcanal Campaign, was historys fourth carrier-versus-carrier naval battle. Though technically a Japanese victory, the battle proved to be the Empire of Japans last serious attempt to win the Pacific War by means of an all-out carrier confrontation. Only one other carrier battle occurred in the Pacific War, in June 1944, in the Philippine ...