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August 25, 1939

Germany invaded Poland

This sparked the WWII

Source: https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/invasion-poland-september-1939

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September 2, 1945

this is where the official signing of surrender documents by Japan took place

This led to the end of WWII

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/world-war-ii-key-dates#:~:text=World%20War%20II%20ended%20on,of%20surrender%20documents%20by%20Japan.

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December 7, 1941

Japan attacks Pearl Harbor to weaken Americas fleet and hopes to send America into peace negotiations

This was important because it got America into WW2

https://www.britannica.com/event/Pearl-Harbor-attack

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July 1940 - September 1940

The Royal Air Force were able to defended Britain against the Luftwaffe's attempts to gain air advantages

resulting in preventing a German invasion.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Britain-European-history-1940

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Battle of Britain, during World War II, the successful defense of Great Britain against unremitting and destructive air raids conducted by the German air force (Luftwaffe) from July through September 1940, after the fall of France. Victory for the Luftwaffe in the air battle would have exposed Great Britain to invasion by the German army, which was then in control of the ports of France only a few miles away across the English Channel. In the event, the battle was won by the Royal Air Force (RAF) Fighter Command, whose victory not only blocked the possibility of invasion but also created the conditions for Great Britain's survival, for the extension of the war, and for the eventual defeat of Nazi Germany.

Shortly after the withdrawal of British forces from the European continent in the Dunkirk evacuation (late May-early June 1940), Germany's armoured forces completed their blitzkrieg invasion of France. The French government collapsed on June 16 and was replaced by a regime that immediately sued for peace. This left the British suddenly alone in their "island home" as the last bastion against "the menace of tyranny," in the words of their prime minister, Winston Churchill. Speaking before Parliament on June 18, Churchill announced:

What General [Maxime] Weygand [commander of the Allied armies in France] called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin....Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour."

On the German side, no plans had been made for an invasion of Britain before the Germans launched their offensive against France, nor were any made even when the collapse of France was assured. German leader Adolf Hitler evidently counted on the British government's agreeing to a compromise peace on the favourable terms he was prepared to offer, and so he had no desire to press the conflict to a decisive conclusion. The German army was given to understand that the war was over; leave was granted, and the Luftwaffe was shifted to other quarters. Even when Churchill's determination to continue the war was made manifest, Hitler still clung to the belief that it was merely a bluff, feeling that Britain must recognize "her militarily hopeless situation." That hope of his was slow to fade. It was not until July 2 that Hitler even ordered a consideration of the problem of invading England, and he still seemed to doubt its necessity when at last, on July 16, he ordered preparations to begin for such an invasion, christened Operation Sea Lion. Hitler stipulated that the expedition be ready by mid-August.

The German army was in no way prepared for such an undertaking. The staff had not contemplated it, the troops had been given no training for landing operations, and nothing had been done to build landing craft for the purpose. All that could be attempted was a hurried effort to collect shipping, bring barges from Germany and the Netherlands, and give the troops some practice in embarkation and disembarkation. The German generals were very apprehensive of the risks that their forces would run in crossing the sea, and the German admirals were even more frightened about what would happen when the Royal Navy appeared on the scene. They had no confidence in their own power to stop the enemy, and they insisted that the responsibility for doing so be placed on the Luftwaffe. Air Marshal Hermann Göring expressed confidence that his planes could check British naval interference and also drive the RAF out of the sky. So it was agreed that Göring would try his preliminary air offensive, which did not commit the other services to anything definite, while the time for the invasion attempt would be postponed to mid-September.

Beginning with bomber attacks against shipping on July 10 and continuing into early August, a rising stream of air attacks was delivered against British convoys and ports. Then, on August 13, the main offensive-called Adlerangriff ("Eagle Attack") by Hitler-was unleashed, initially against air bases but also against aircraft factories and against radar stations in southeastern England. Although targets and tactics were changed in different phases, the underlying object was always to wear down Britain's air defense, and indeed the effort severely strained the limited resources of Fighter Command, under Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding. The British disposed slightly more than 600 frontline fighters to defend the country. The Germans meanwhile made available about 1,300 bombers and dive-bombers and about 900 single-engine and 300 twin-engine fighters. These were based in an arc around England from Norway to the Cherbourg peninsula in northern coastal France. For the defense of Britain, Fighter Command was divided into four groups, of which the most hard-pressed during the Battle of Britain were Number 11 Group, defending southeastern England and London and headquartered at Uxbridge, Middlesex; and Number 12 Group, defending the Midlands and Wales and headquartered at Watnall, Nottinghamshire. The other two groups were Number 10, defending southwestern England, and Number 13, defending northern England and all of Scotland. Each group was divided into sectors, which received reports from group headquarters about approaching Luftwaffe formations and mobilized squadrons of planes from numerous airfields to fight them off. The British radar early warning system, called Chain Home, was the most advanced and the most operationally adapted system in the world. Even while suffering from frequent attacks by the Luftwaffe, it largely prevented German bomber formations from exploiting the element of surprise. To fight off the bombers, Fighter Command employed squadrons of durable and heavily armed Hawker Hurricanes, preferring to save the faster and more agile Supermarine Spitfire -unsurpassed as an interceptor by any fighter in any other air force-for use against the bombers' fighter escorts.

The British thus found themselves fighting with the unexpected advantage of superior equipment. German bombers (mostly lightly armed twin-engine planes such as the Heinkel He 111 and Junkers Ju 88) lacked the bomb load capacity to strike permanently devastating blows, and they also proved, in daylight, to be easily vulnerable to the British fighters. The Germans' once-feared Junkers Ju 87 " Stuka" dive-bomber was even more vulnerable to being shot down, and their premier fighter-the Messerschmitt Bf 109-could provide only brief long-range cover for the bombers, since it was operating at the limit of its flying range. By late August the Luftwaffe had lost more than 600 aircraft and the RAF only 260. Nevertheless, Fighter Command was losing badly needed fighters and experienced pilots at too great a rate to be sustained. Number 11 Group in particular was in a fight for its life-and, by extension, for Britain's life as well. Acknowledging that the country's fate hung on the sacrifice of its airmen, Churchill declared before Parliament on August 20, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

In addition to technology, Britain had the advantage of fighting against an enemy that had no systematic or consistent plan of action. At the beginning of September, the Germans dropped some bombs, apparently by accident, on civilian areas in London, and the British retaliated by unexpectedly launching a bombing raid on Berlin. This so infuriated Hitler that he ordered the Luftwaffe to shift its attacks from Fighter Command installations to London and other cities. Beginning on September 7, London was attacked on 57 consecutive nights. The bombing of London, Coventry, Liverpool, and other cities went on for several months, but it had the immediate benefit for the RAF of relieving the pressure on Number 11 Group and also bringing more German bomber formations into the sectors of the formidable Number 12 Group.

By mid-September, Fighter Command had demonstrated that the Luftwaffe could not gain air ascendancy over Britain. British fighters were shooting down German bombers faster than German industry could produce them. To avoid the deadly RAF fighters, the Luftwaffe shifted almost entirely to night raids on Britain's industrial centres. The " Blitz," as the night raids came to be called, was to cause many deaths and great hardship for the civilian population, but it contributed little to the main purpose of the air offensive-to dominate the skies in advance of an invasion of England. On September 3 the date of invasion had been deferred to September 21, and then on September 19 Hitler ordered the shipping gathered for Operation Sea Lion to be dispersed. On October 12 he announced that the operation was off for the winter, and long before the arrival of spring he decided to turn eastward against Russia. Plans for an invasion were definitively discarded; the campaign against Britain henceforth became purely a blockade of its sea approaches, conducted mainly by submarines and only supplemented by the Luftwaffe.

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Battle of Britain | History, Importance, & Facts

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Battle of Britain, during World War II, the successful defense of Great Britain against unremitting and destructive air raids conducted by the German air force from July through September 1940, after the fall of France. Learn more about the Battle of Britain in this article.

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June 6, 1944

They planned to take over Europe

It was the biggest amphibious battle in world

https://www.britannica.com/event/Normandy-Invasion

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also called:

Operation Overlord or D-Day

(Show more)

date:

June 6, 1944 - July 9, 1944

(Show more)

Hitler's Reich, east and west

In midsummer 1943, a year before the Anglo-American invasion of Normandy that would lead to the liberation of western Europe, Adolf Hitler's Wehrmacht ("Armed Forces") still occupied all the territory it had gained in the blitzkrieg campaigns of 1939-41 and most of its Russian conquests of 1941-42. It also retained its foothold on the coast of North Africa, acquired when it had gone to the aid of its Italian ally in 1941. The Russian counteroffensives at the Battle of Stalingrad and the Battle of Kursk had pushed back the perimeter of Hitler's Europe in the east. Yet he or his allies still controlled the whole of mainland Europe, except for neutral Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, and Sweden. The Nazi war economy, though overshadowed by the growing power of America's, outmatched both that of Britain and that of the Soviet Union except in the key areas of tank and aircraft production. Without direct intervention by the western Allies on the Continent-an intervention that would centre on the commitment of a large American army-Hitler could count on prolonging his military dominance for years to come.

The second front

Since 1942 Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had been pressing his allies, U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, to mount a second front in the west. It was impossible in the circumstances. America's army was still forming, while the landing craft necessary to bring such an army across the English Channel had not yet been built. Nevertheless, Britain had begun to prepare theoretical plans for a return to the continental mainland soon after the retreat from Dunkirk, France, in 1940, and the Americans, immediately after Hitler declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941, had started to frame their own timetable. Less inhibited than the British by perceived technical difficulties, the Americans pressed from the start for an early invasion-desirably in 1943, perhaps even in 1942. To that end George C. Marshall, Roosevelt's chief of staff, appointed a protégé, Dwight D. Eisenhower, to the U.S. Army's war plans division in December 1941 and commissioned him to design an operational scheme for Allied victory.

Swiftly convincing himself that the priority of "Germany first" agreed to by Roosevelt and Churchill in the Atlantic Charter was correct, Eisenhower framed proposals for a 1943 invasion (Operation Roundup) and another for 1942 (Operation Sledgehammer) in the event of a Russian collapse or a sudden weakening of Germany's position. Both plans were presented to the British in London in April 1942, and Roundup was adopted. The British, nevertheless, reserved objective doubts, and at subsequent Anglo-American conferences-in Washington in June, in London in July-they first quashed all thought of Sledgehammer and then succeeded in persuading the Americans to agree to a North African landing as the principal operation of 1942. Operation Torch, as the landing in North Africa was to be code-named, effectively postponed Roundup again, while subsequent operations in Sicily and the Italian mainland delayed preparations for the cross-Channel invasion through 1943 as well. The postponements were a principal cause of concern at inter-Allied conferences at Washington (code-named Trident, May 1943), Quebec (Quadrant, August 1943), Cairo (Sextant, November 1943), and Tehrān (Eureka, November-December 1943). At the last gathering, Roosevelt and Stalin combined against Churchill to insist on the adoption of May 1944 as an unalterable date for the invasion. In return, Stalin agreed to mount a simultaneous offensive in eastern Europe and to join in the war against Japan once Germany had been defeated.

Operation Overlord

The decision taken at Tehrān was a final indication of American determination to stage the cross-Channel invasion; it was also a defeat for Alan Brooke, Churchill's chief of staff and the principal opponent of premature action. Yet despite Brooke's procrastination, the British had in fact been proceeding with structural plans, coordinated by Lieut. Gen. Frederick Morgan, who had been appointed COSSAC (chief of staff to the supreme Allied commander [designate]) at the Anglo-American Casablanca Conference in January 1943. His staff's first plan for Operation Overlord (as the invasion was henceforth to be known) was for a landing in Normandy between Caen and the Cotentin Peninsula in a strength of three divisions, with two brigades to be air-dropped. Another 11 divisions were to be landed within the first two weeks through two artificial harbours that would be towed across the Channel. Once a foothold had been established, a force of a hundred divisions, the majority shipped directly from the United States, were to be assembled in France for a final assault on Germany. In January 1944 Eisenhower became supreme Allied commander, and the COSSAC staff was redesignated SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force).

Fortress Europe

Hitler had long been aware that the Anglo-American allies would eventually mount a cross-Channel invasion, but, as long as they dissipated their forces in the Mediterranean and as long as the campaign in the east demanded the commitment of all available German forces, he downplayed the threat. By November 1943, however, he accepted that it could be ignored no longer, and in his Directive Number 51 he announced that France would be reinforced. To oversee defensive preparations, Hitler appointed Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, former commander of the Afrika Korps, as inspector of coastal defenses and then as commander of Army Group B, occupying the threatened Channel coast. As army group commander, Rommel officially reported to the longer-serving Commander in Chief West Gerd von Rundstedt, though the entire structure was locked into a rigid chain of command that deferred many operational decisions to the Führer himself.

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Normandy Invasion | Definition, Map, Photos, Casualties, & Facts

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The Normandy Invasion was the Allied invasion of western Europe during World War II. It was launched on June 6, 1944 (D-Day), with the simultaneous landing of U.S., British, and Canadian forces on five separate beachheads in Normandy, France. The success of the landings would play a key role in the defeat of the Nazi's Third Reich.

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April 1, 1945

The U.S. invaded Japanese forces in Okinawa,

This battle was one of the bloodiest in the Pacific War, killing the commanding generals on both sides.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Battle-of-Okinawa

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Battle of Okinawa, (April 1-June 21, 1945), World War II battle fought between U.S. and Japanese forces on Okinawa, the largest of the Ryukyu Islands. Okinawa is located just 350 miles (563 km) south of Kyushu, and its capture was regarded as a vital precursor to a ground invasion of the Japanese home islands. Dubbed "the Typhoon of Steel" for its ferocity, the battle was one of the bloodiest in the Pacific War, claiming the lives of more than 12,000 Americans and 100,000 Japanese, including the commanding generals on both sides. In addition, at least 100,000 civilians were either killed in combat or were ordered to commit suicide by the Japanese military.

Planning and preliminary operations

As the campaign on Iwo Jima was drawing to a close in March 1945, U.S. commanders marshalled strong army, air, and naval forces in preparation for Operation Iceberg, the invasion of Okinawa. The island, which is about 60 miles (roughly 100 km) long and no more than 20 miles (32 km) across at its widest point, had been thoroughly fortified by a Japanese garrison of some 100,000 men under the command of Lieut. Gen. Ushijima Mitsuru. Acknowledging that the battle for Okinawa would very likely replicate the brutal losses of Iwo Jima on a much greater scale, American planners hoped to overwhelm the Japanese with a massive preliminary bombardment and the largest amphibious landing conducted by the U.S. during the Pacific War.

The air and sea attacks that preceded the invasion had begun as early as October 1944, and Allied air operations carried out in March 1945 by carrier Task Force 58 under Rear Adm. Marc Mitscher destroyed hundreds of Japanese planes. While these losses reduced the Japanese defenders' ability to challenge the Americans in the skies over Okinawa, the Japanese retained sufficient air power to stage devastating suicide attacks on Allied naval units. On March 26 a preliminary landing was made on the Kerama Islands, about 15 miles (24 km) to the west, where some 350 small boats had been assembled for suicide attacks on the landing force. Another preparatory landing was made on Keise, a collection of coral islets just 11 miles (18 km) southwest of the main invasion beaches. From Keise, American 155-mm Long Tom artillery batteries could provide fire support across most of southern Okinawa.

Invasion

Over the final days of March, American underwater demolition teams and minesweepers cleared obstacles from the landing beaches. Under the overall leadership of theatre commander Adm. Chester Nimitz, Fifth Fleet commander Adm. Raymond Spruance would oversee the landings and U.S. ground troops would be commanded by Lieut. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr. The invasion was launched on April 1, 1945, when a contingent of U.S. ground troops landed at Hagushi, on the west coast of central Okinawa. Before nightfall, some 50,000 men of the U.S. 10th Army, under the command of Buckner, had gone ashore and established a beachhead about 5 miles (8 km) long.

The Japanese response to the beach landings was deceptively muted, and by April 4, U.S. Army troops and Marines had cut the island in two. The first major Japanese counterattack came on April 6-7 in the form of suicidal raids by more than 350 kamikaze planes and the battleship Yamato. The Japanese had hoped that Yamato might finish off the Allied fleet after it had been weakened by the wave of kamikazes, but, with no air cover, the largest battleship ever constructed was easy prey for Mitscher's carrier-based planes. The sinking of the Yamato on April 7 conclusively signaled the end of the "all-big-gun" battleship era of naval warfare. Altogether more effective were Japan's aerial suicide weapons. Baka, essentially a piloted cruise missile, made its debut at Okinawa. Baka claimed its first victim, the destroyer USS Abele, in the seas off Okinawa on April 12.

Elements of the 10th Army drove cautiously to the north and had pacified the entire northern two-thirds of the island by April 22. During this period, U.S. forces suffered perhaps their highest profile casualty of the battle when journalist Ernie Pyle was killed in combat. Pyle, whose coverage of the European conflict had made him one of the most beloved war correspondents of World War II, had accompanied the 77th Infantry Division in an assault on Ie, an island just west of Okinawa. On April 18, while traveling to a forward command post, Pyle was mortally wounded by Japanese machine-gun fire.

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Battle of Okinawa | Map, Combatants, Facts, Casualties, & Outcome

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Battle of Okinawa (April 1-June 21, 1945), World War II battle fought between U.S. and Japanese forces on Okinawa, the largest of the Ryukyu Islands. The capture of Okinawa was seen as a precursor to an invasion of the Japanese home islands. Learn more about the significance of the Battle of Okinawa in this article.

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Midway Atoll, United States Minor Outlying Islands

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June 3, 1942

This was a battle fought mainly with aircraft

The Battle of Midway stopped future Japanese invasion in the pacific

https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Midway

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Examine how the U.S. Navy defeated Japan's fleet to check Japanese expansion in the Battle of Midway Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. See all videos for this article

Battle of Midway, (June 3-6, 1942), World War II naval battle, fought almost entirely with aircraft, in which the United States destroyed Japan's first-line carrier strength and most of its best trained naval pilots. Together with the Battle of Guadalcanal, the Battle of Midway ended the threat of further Japanese invasion in the Pacific.

Context

The Midway Islands were claimed for the United States on July 5, 1859, by Capt. N.C. Brooks. The coral atoll-consisting of Eastern Island and the larger Sand Island to the west-has a total land area of just 2.4 square miles (6.2 square km). Midway was formally annexed by the U.S. in 1867, and the same year a coal depot was established for transpacific steamers, but it was never used. For many years thereafter only slight attention was paid to Midway. In 1903 Pres. Theodore Roosevelt placed Midway under the administration of the U.S. Navy Department, and the atoll became a connecting point for the submarine cable being laid between Hawaii and the Philippines. It was not until the advent of air transportation that the real significance of Midway was appreciated. By 1935 the islands had become a regular stopover point for transpacific flights.

It was World War II which conclusively demonstrated the strategic importance of Midway. In 1940 the U.S. Navy began work on a major air and submarine base there. By the following year Eastern Island would boast three runways, while on Sand Island a seaplane hangar was built for a squadron of PBY Catalina flying boats. Sand Island was also home to Midway's defensive garrison as well as its power plant and radio facilities. Japan recognized that control of the atoll would be critical for its plans in the central Pacific. If the islands could be seized by Japan, then the American military presence in Hawaii, just 1,100 miles (1,770 km) to the southeast, could be seriously threatened. Furthermore, the supply lines between the United States and Australia could be severed, thereby crippling the Allied war effort and opening the southwest Pacific to conquest.

So prominent was Midway in Japanese war planning that it was included in the opening offensive of the Pacific War on December 7-8, 1941. Roughly 12 hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese destroyers Sazanami and Ushio bombarded the power plant and seaplane hangar on Sand Island. Lieut. George Cannon, despite being seriously wounded by a Japanese shell, remained at his post to direct one of the island's defensive batteries. The Japanese ships were forced to retire, and Cannon, who died of his wounds, would be the first U.S. Marine to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor during World War II.

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Clash of carriers

Disposition of forces

Despite a strategic setback at the Battle of the Coral Sea (May 4-8, 1942), the Japanese had continued with plans to seize the Midway Islands and bases in the Aleutians. Seeking a naval showdown with the numerically inferior U.S. Pacific Fleet, Adm. Yamamoto Isoroku sent out the bulk of the Kidō Butai ("Mobile Force"), a massive carrier battle group under the command of Vice Adm. Nagumo Chuichi. The 4 heavy aircraft carriers Akagi, Hiryu, Kaga, and Soryu were supplemented by 2 light aircraft carriers, 2 seaplane carriers, 7 battleships, 15 cruisers, 42 destroyers, 10 submarines, and various support and escort vessels. Their orders were to engage and destroy the American fleet and invade Midway.

U.S. intelligence had divined Japanese intentions after breaking the Japanese JN25 naval code, and the Americans had time to prepare their defense. Adm. Chester Nimitz, commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, could not muster a single battleship, however, and just two of his heavy carriers-the Hornet and the Enterprise-were combat ready. To further complicate matters, his most senior carrier commander, Vice Adm. William "Bull" Halsey, had been incapacitated by a serious bout of neurodermatitis and would miss the battle entirely. A third carrier, the Yorktown, had been so seriously damaged at the Battle of the Coral Sea that the Japanese believed it sunk, and it spent nearly two weeks limping back to Pearl Harbor. An initial damage assessment estimated that it would take three months to return the ship to service. Nimitz told repair crews that they had three days. Miraculously, after less than 72 hours in dry dock, the Yorktown steamed out of Pearl Harbor on the morning of May 30. It would join the rest of Nimitz's fleet, which included the Hornet, the Enterprise, 8 cruisers, and 18 destroyers at a rendezvous point optimistically code-named "Point Luck," 350 miles (560 km) northeast of Midway. There they awaited the advance of Yamamoto's armada. Whereas the Japanese had no land-based air support, the Americans could commit about 115 land-based Navy, Marine Corps, and Army Air Forces planes from Midway and Hawaii. The American fleet also included some 19 submarines.

June 3

The battle began at 9:04 am on June 3, 1942, when an American reconnaissance plane sighted lead elements of the invasion fleet some 500 miles (800 km) west of Midway and was fired upon by Japanese deck gunners. A second surface contact was made at 9:25 am, approximately 700 miles (1,100 km) west of Midway, with an American pilot reporting that he had located the "main body" of the Japanese fleet. In reality, these vessels represented only a small portion of the landing and occupation force.

Discover the significant events of June 4, 1942, during the Battle of Midway Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc/Kenny Chmielewski

At 12:30 pm a flight of U.S. Army Air Forces Boeing B-17 bombers was dispatched from Midway. In the late afternoon they struck ineffectually at part of the Japanese invasion force, which was by now about 220 miles (350 km) southwest of the U.S. fleet. American strategic bombers would demonstrate limited usefulness against moving naval targets at Midway and elsewhere in the Pacific, but they proved to be excellent reconnaissance platforms. Their high operational ceiling and long range meant that they could loiter for extended periods at altitudes unreachable by Japanese antiaircraft fire, while their onboard armament presented a formidable defense against carrier-based fighters.

About 9:15 pm, before the B-17s had returned, a quartet of Consolidated PBY Catalina seaplanes was launched from Midway. This group intercepted a Japanese surface force about 1:15 am in the early hours of June 4 and carried out a torpedo attack and strafing run. One of the Catalinas scored a hit on the Japanese tanker Akebono Maru; this would prove to be the only successful torpedo attack launched by an American aircraft during the entire battle. As the Catalinas made their way back to Midway, they were notified by radio that the islands were under attack by Japanese aircraft.

June 4

The attack on Midway

About 5:45 am on June 4, a Catalina pilot excitedly radioed the uncoded message, "Many planes heading Midway, bearing 320, distance 150." Within minutes, two of the Japanese carriers were sighted, and by 6:00 am virtually all of Midway's planes were airborne and on combat patrol. Just after 6:15 am more than two dozen Marine fighters-a mixture of Brewster F2A Buffaloes and Grumman F4F Wildcats-sighted and engaged the first wave of Japanese planes about 30 miles (48 km) from Midway. Formations of Japanese Aichi D3A "Val" dive-bombers and Nakajima B5N "Kate" torpedo bombers were escorted by squadrons of Mitsubishi A6M " Zero " fighters. The American pilots were outnumbered roughly 4-to-1. Moreover, the Zero was demonstrably superior to both the Buffalo and the Wildcat. Despite the mismatch, the Marines lightly bloodied the attackers but paid an enormous cost, losing more than half their number in the process.

About 6:30 am, with the island's fighter screen largely neutralized, the aerial bombardment of Midway began. The Japanese attack lasted about half an hour and caused extensive damage to structures on both Eastern and Sand islands. Midway's runways were largely unharmed, however, possibly because the Japanese were planning to use them themselves once the invasion had been completed. Between the aerial engagement and Midway's antiaircraft defenses, the Japanese lost fewer than 10 planes in their attack on the island.

Midway attacks and Nagumo's decision

While Midway was absorbing the full force of the Japanese assault, land-based planes from Midway were converging on the Japanese fleet. Just after 7:00 am a quartet of U.S. Army Air Forces Martin B-26 Marauders began a torpedo attack run on the Akagi, Nagumo's flagship. They were closely followed by six U.S. Navy Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bombers. Most of the American planes were shot down in the attempt, and none scored hits, a fact that owed much to the dismal performance of U.S. Mark 13 torpedoes. The Imperial Japanese Navy, conversely, fielded aerial and surface torpedoes of outstanding quality, and the Japanese would retain the technological advantage in this area until the end of the war.

About this time Nagumo made a fateful decision. Midway's aircraft were obviously still active, and an after-action report from the Hiryu's air commander, Lieut. Joichi Tomonaga, indicated that a second attack on Midway would be necessary to suitably pacify the island ahead of the planned amphibious assault. In addition, Nagumo's scout planes had detected no trace of an American naval presence nearby. This was hardly the fault of the pilots, as the search area was an expanse of ocean larger than the entire United Kingdom and visibility was sharply reduced by cloud cover in some areas. At 7:15 am, believing that he retained the element of surprise and that the American fleet was no closer than Hawaii, Nagumo ordered that the fueled and ready planes on the Kaga and the Akagi were to have their torpedoes replaced with bombs. The situation changed abruptly at 7:28 am, when one of Nagumo's scouts reported sighting "10 enemy surface ships" but gave no indication of the makeup of this force. Now, faced with the possibility of American carriers in the area, Nagumo brought the rearming effort to halt. At 7:45 am he ordered those planes which had not yet had their torpedoes replaced to prepare for an attack on American naval units. The flight and hangar decks of the Japanese carriers were now covered with fueled and armed aircraft as well as unsecured ordnance.

Nearly an hour after the initial American strike at the Japanese carrier force, a second wave of Midway-based planes launched their attack. At 7:55 am a squadron of 16 U.S. Marine Corps Douglas SBD Dauntless dive-bombers targeted the Soryu, scoring no hits and losing half their number to antiaircraft fire and Japanese fighters. Roughly 15 minutes later U.S. Army Air Forces B-17s carried out a high-level bombing of the carrier force to little effect but suffered no losses themselves. At approximately 8:20 am the last of Midway's planes, a squadron of 11 U.S. Marine Corps Vought SB2U Vindicator dive-bombers, targeted the Japanese battleship Haruna. Most of these planes were intercepted by the Japanese fighter screen, however, and the bombing runs that they did manage to carry out were not on target. Until this moment, the Battle of Midway was an unqualified Japanese victory.

Battle of Midway: Japanese aircraft carrier U.S. Air Force

As the Vindicators were being chased away, Nagumo finally received confirmation that the American naval force did, indeed, include a carrier. This news could not have come at a worse time. The planes from the attack on Midway were returning and low on fuel, and the fighters of Nagumo's combat air patrol were also in need of refueling and rearmament. If he chose to launch his ready aircraft for an attack on the imminent threat, he risked losing scores of skilled aviators as their planes splashed into the Pacific. Nagumo had also spent the previous 90 minutes demonstrating the futility of attempting uncoordinated attacks on a well-defended carrier battle group without fighter escort. Rather than risk the same outcome, Nagumo made a decision that would determine the course of the Pacific War. He would clear his flight decks and recover his planes before launching a concerted attack on the American fleet.

Attack by the American carriers

The American carriers were divided into two groups: Task Force 16, which included the Enterprise and the Hornet, under Halsey's replacement, Rear Adm. Raymond Spruance, and Task Force 17, which included the Yorktown, under Rear Adm. Frank Jack Fletcher. Due to his seniority in rank, Fletcher would have overall tactical command, but he granted Spruance significant operational latitude. This was fortunate, as Spruance was arguably the finest American naval commander of the war.

The flight of the Devastators

As the attack on Midway was unfolding, Fletcher and Spruance were monitoring signals traffic in an effort to determine the strength and position of the Japanese fleet. Just after 6:00 am, Midway radioed that two carriers had been sighted, and the American admirals acted immediately. Spruance's Task Force 16 was about 10 miles (16 km) southwest of Fletcher and Task Force 17, placing it closer to the Japanese fleet. Fletcher ordered Spruance to sail southwest and engage the enemy. Fletcher, who had scouts in the air, would recover his planes and hold the Yorktown in reserve against the threat of additional Japanese carriers. Hoping to catch the Japanese carriers before they could prepare a second attack on Midway, Spruance gambled by launching his planes at 7:00 am from a distance that all but guaranteed that many of his aircraft would not have enough fuel to return.

While the American carrier planes were attempting to close on the Japanese fleet, they were given no additional guidance on its whereabouts. The lack of communication between Midway and the carriers and between the carriers and their own planes would mean that the American strike force would arrive piecemeal if it arrived at all. Dozens of planes were forced to return to the Hornet, land at Midway, or ditch at sea without ever having located the Japanese. At 8:38 am, having recovered his scouts and believing that his fleet had been discovered by the Japanese, Fletcher began launching planes from the Yorktown.

About 9:20 am, 15 Douglas TBD Devastator torpedo bombers from the Hornet became the first American carrier planes to strike at the Japanese. The attack of Torpedo Squadron 8 on the Soryu was an unmitigated disaster. Every one of the Devastators was shot down, and the squadron's sole survivor, pilot Ensign George Gay, would spend the next 30 hours floating in the Pacific as the battle raged around him. At 10:20 am torpedo squadrons from the Enterprise and Yorktown struck with similar results. Of the 41 Devastators launched at Midway, only six made it back to their carriers, and not a single one carried out a successful torpedo attack.

The Dauntlesses turn the tide

The Yorktown's Devastators were unique in that they were the only torpedo squadron to enter the battle with a fighter escort. A half-dozen Grumman F4F Wildcats from the Yorktown accompanied the slow-moving Devastators, and the Japanese combat air patrol responded immediately. They dropped down to near sea level to intercept the American fighters, unwittingly clearing the way for a new threat.

Battle of Midway U.S. Navy/National Archives/Naval Historical Center(Digital Photo Number: 80-G-17054)

Low on fuel and lacking any additional information about the whereabouts of the Japanese fleet, Lieut. Comdr. Wade McClusky was scanning the Pacific for any trace of the enemy. The Enterprise's air group commander had arrived at the estimated point of interception at 9:20 am, but Nagumo had changed course while they were en route. McClusky then made what Nimitz would later characterize as "one of the most important decisions of the battle." Rather than returning to the Enterprise with his squadron of Douglas SBD Dauntless dive-bombers, McClusky continued his search to the northwest, eventually spotting the Japanese destroyer Arashi as it hastened to catch up with the rest of the fleet. The Dauntlesses spotted the Kaga and the Akagi about 10:00 am and moved into attack position.

Diving out of the sun, the Enterprise's Dauntlesses struck at 10:22 am just as the torpedo attack was concluding, and quickly scored multiple devastating bomb hits on both the Kaga and the Akagi. Almost simultaneously, 17 Dauntlesses that had accompanied the Yorktown torpedo attack group dove on the Soryu. Within minutes the three Japanese carriers were in flames, and the momentum in the Pacific had shifted. Although the dive-bombers did not emerge unscathed-the Enterprise lost more than a dozen Dauntlesses-they had inflicted enormous damage on the Kidō Butai. As fires raged out of control, Nagumo was forced to abandon the Akagi, and he transferred his flag to the light cruiser Nagara.

The Hiryu strikes back

About 10:50 am, as the other three Japanese carriers burned, Rear Adm. Tamon Yamaguchi, commander of the battle group which included the Soryu and the Hiryu, ordered a hastily assembled attack force into the air. For the next half hour, until Nagumo had reestablished his flagship, Yamaguchi would serve as the effective commander of what remained of the Japanese fleet. The Hiryu's planes followed the American strike force back to the Yorktown, and, just after noon, they carried out a dive-bombing attack that left the American carrier dead in the water. Although the American fighter screen and antiaircraft defenses had exacted a punishing toll on the Japanese, three bomb hits had seriously-but not fatally-damaged the Yorktown. While repair teams worked to patch the flight deck and restore operation to the ship's boilers, Fletcher transferred his flag to the cruiser Astoria.

Battle of Midway 2rd Class William G. Roy-U.S. Navy/NARA

An hour of frenzied work brought most of the Yorktown's boilers back online, and by 2:30 pm the ship was underway. Within minutes, however, a second wave of planes from the Hiryu pounced on the carrier. A pair of torpedo hits brought the Yorktown to a stop for a second time, and the ship began to list dangerously. At 2:55 pm the Yorktown 's captain, Capt. Elliott Buckmaster, gave the order to abandon ship.

Spruance in command

By this time, however, American scouts had located the Hiryu, and a mixed force of Dauntlesses from the Enterprise and the Yorktown took to the skies at 3:30 pm. They were soon joined by additional dive-bombers from the Hornet. The American bombers would travel without escort, as all available fighters were tasked with maintaining a combat air patrol over the fleet. Just before 4:00 pm Fletcher, recognizing that Task Force 17 had ceased to be a functional carrier battle group and not wishing to waste precious time by transferring his flag to the Enterprise, turned over operational control of the fleet to Spruance.

The first wave of American bombers descended on the Hiryu about 5:00 pm and quickly reduced the Japanese carrier to a flaming wreck. At least four American bombs struck the Hiryu, and the Hornet's Dauntlesses, arriving a half hour later, turned their attention to other ships in the Hiryu 's battle group. This attack caused no significant damage to the remaining Japanese ships nor did a subsequent high-altitude strike by B-17s from Midway and Hawaii.

After recovering his planes, Spruance opted to sail Task Force 16 east, away from the day's action, rather than west in pursuit of the remnants of the Kidō Butai. History would prove this to be an exceptionally prudent course, as the Japanese navy excelled at night engagements, and their surface fleet, even accounting for the loss of four carriers, remained a significant threat. Retiring to the east also kept the American ships within range of Midway's land-based aircraft. The destroyer Hughes from Task Force 17 was tasked with guarding the crippled Yorktown overnight. That evening the Kaga and the Soryu both sank.

June 5-6

On June 5 the Yorktown was taken under tow and a salvage operation was begun. The Akagi and the Hiryu, both of which had managed to remain afloat through the night, were scuttled. Yamaguchi opted to go down with his flagship, and he was accompanied by the Hiryu's captain, Rear Adm. Tomeo Kaku. While such a decision was entirely in keeping with the Japanese honour code ( Bushidō) it deprived the Japanese navy of a highly esteemed flag officer as well as one of its most senior naval aviators.

Battle of Midway National Archives, Washington, D.C.

On the afternoon of June 5 Spruance dispatched nearly 60 bombers in an attempt to catch the retiring Japanese surface force, but the Americans succeeded in locating just one ship, the destroyer Tanikaze. The Tanikaze had been tasked with ensuring that the Hiryu actually sunk, and despite being the target of multiple attacks, it managed to escape largely unscathed and rejoin the Japanese fleet. Spruance renewed the pursuit the following day, and Dauntlesses from the Hornet and the Enterprise found a group of stragglers from the main Japanese fleet. With no fighter escort to protect them, the Japanese ships were easy prey for the dive-bombers. The cruiser Mikuma was sunk, and the cruiser Mogami as well as the destroyers Asashio and Arashio were seriously damaged.

Meanwhile, repair crews were working feverishly to save the Yorktown. The destroyer Hammann had tied up to the carrier early on the morning of June 6, and other ships joined a growing protective ring. Scores of men worked throughout the day to fight fires and bring flooding under control, and good progress was being made when, at 1:35 pm, lookouts spotted the wakes of incoming torpedoes. The Japanese submarine I-168 had approached the salvage operation undetected, and explosions soon rocked both the Hammann and the Yorktown. Almost immediately the order was given to abandon the Hammann, which sank within minutes. Some of the remaining destroyers launched a depth charges attack against the I-168, but the submarine escaped. The Yorktown, for all the damage it had sustained, somehow remained afloat but listing, and the salvage crew had hoped to resume work the following day. However, in the early morning hours of June 7, the Yorktown 's list increased, and about 5:00 am the carrier slipped beneath the waves "with all her battle flags flying."

Casualties and significance

The material losses suffered by Japan at Midway were catastrophic. Four carriers, a heavy cruiser, and more than 320 planes were sent to the bottom of the Pacific. Approximately 3,000 Japanese sailors and airmen were killed, and, because the Japanese fleet left the action area in relative haste, there was little opportunity to recover survivors who might have gone into the water. The victory cost the United States one carrier and a destroyer, as well as nearly 150 aircraft-more than two-thirds of which were carrier-based. American personnel losses were relatively light; 317 sailors, airmen, and Marines from the Midway garrison were killed.

In the days following the engagement, U.S. Navy patrols in the area around Midway recovered several survivors, including nearly three dozen crewmen from the engineering department of the Hiryu. Interrogation of these prisoners of war would provide the Americans with vital intelligence about Japanese naval capabilities. On June 21, more than two weeks after the battle, an American Catalina flying boat spotted the two-man crew of one of the Enterprise 's Devastators some 360 miles (roughly 580 km) north of Midway. They would be the last survivors of Midway to be recovered from the Pacific.

The official U.S. Navy combat narrative of the battle characterized Midway as "a victory of intelligence," and this was certainly the case. From the breaking of the Japanese JN25 naval code to the execution of a clever scheme to confirm that Midway was to be the target of the Japanese attack, American cryptanalysts played an outsize role at Midway. Intelligence alone did not win the battle, however. Both Fletcher and Spruance employed sound carrier tactics, and Fletcher's decision to cede operational control to Spruance late on June 4 ensured that the American command structure would not be disrupted at a key point of the battle.

The Battle of Midway brought the Pacific naval forces of Japan and the United States to approximate parity and marked a turning point of the military struggle between the two countries. It was also the most decisive naval defeat suffered by Japan since 1592, when Korean admiral Yi Sun-shin destroyed Toyotomi Hideyoshi's invasion fleet. For the Allies it was a great strategic victory: the Japanese were prompted to cancel their plans to invade New Caledonia, Fiji, and Samoa and lost all but the last vestiges of their earlier strategic initiative.
Michael Ray

date

June 3, 1942 - June 6, 1942

location

participants

context

key people

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Battle of Midway | Significance & Outcome

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Battle of Midway (June 3-6, 1942), World War II naval battle, fought almost entirely with aircraft, in which the United States destroyed Japan's first-line carrier strength and most of its best trained naval pilots. The American victory effectively ended Japan's ability to prosecute an offensive war in the Pacific.

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April 20, 1945 - May 2, 1945

This battle was important because it was one of the final battles of World War 2

The Soviet Union would battle the allies outside of Berlin, after many casualties Berlin would fall and would lead to Hitler committing suicide in a bunker in the center of the city

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Battle-of-Berlin

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Iwo Jima, Iōjima, Ogasawara, Tokyo, Japan

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February 19,

The United States ambush Iwo Jima as part of its Pacific Campaign against Japan.

The battle was one of the bloodiest in the history of the U.S. Marine Corps

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Battle-of-Iwo-Jima

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Battle of Iwo Jima, (February 19-March 16, 1945), World War II conflict between the United States and the Empire of Japan. The United States mounted an amphibious invasion of the island of Iwo Jima as part of its Pacific campaign against Japan. A costly victory for the United States, the battle was one of the bloodiest in the history of the U.S. Marine Corps and was cited as proof of the Japanese military's willingness to fight to the last man.

Context

Shortly after its attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Japan gained control over much of Southeast Asia and the central Pacific. The Japanese sphere of control extended west to Burma ( Myanmar), south to the Dutch East Indies (now Malaysia) and New Guinea, and east to Wake Island. However, the United States assumed command of Allied forces in the Pacific theatre and mounted a counteroffensive that incorporated a strategic combination of land, air, and naval assaults.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCOS)-Adm. Ernest King, Adm. William Leahy, Gen. George Marshall, and Gen. Henry ("Hap") Arnold-was created in 1942 to provide a body of high command to direct U.S. operations during the war. Each member was a four-star officer from the U.S. Army, Navy, and Army Air Forces (AAF). The Marine Corps was not represented in this body during World War II. Convention dictated that a single officer should command all armed forces in the Pacific, but the JCOS could not agree on any one person to do so. At King's urging, the body chose to bifurcate the theatre and gave Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur and Adm. Chester Nimitz command over one half each. Even then, however, there was contention over how to make progress toward the Japanese homeland. MacArthur wanted to retake the Philippines en route to Tokyo, while Nimitz wanted an "island-hopping" approach that focused on small strategic gains throughout the Central Pacific. In 1944 the JCOS agreed on a two-pronged plan that combined both strategies. By October of that year, MacArthur had landed on Filipino soil, and Nimitz had seized the Mariana Islands, severely crippling Japanese naval and air power along the way.

Arnold was of the opinion that the Bonin Islands could be useful for conducting B-29 Superfortress air raids on Tokyo. He was convinced that Iwo Jima (now Iō-tō) in particular, being halfway between the Mariana Islands and the Japanese capital, would place his fighters in range of the city so that they could support bombing operations in the region. Arnold had to rely on the Navy to take these islands for him, however. At the JCOS's direction, Nimitz initially intended to take Formosa ( Taiwan) rather than Iwo Jima, but recommendations from his subordinate admirals prompted him to propose that he seize Iwo Jima and Okinawa instead. The JCOS approved the plan, and in October 1944 Nimitz began preparations for an Iwo Jima invasion, later known as Operation Detachment.

Battle

Iwo Jima is located about 760 miles (1,220 km) from Tokyo. It is a small island covering an area of about 8 square miles (20 square km) and spanning about 5 miles (8 km) in length. A volcanic island, Iwo Jima is dotted with hundreds of caves and is covered with volcanic sand and ash. At the southwest tip of the island is Mount Suribachi, a largely dormant volcano that provides a sweeping view of most of the island. Two beaches flank the northwest and southeast parts of the western sector. At the time of the U.S. invasion, there were two airfields in the middle of the island, Motoyama 1 and 2. A third airfield to the north was unfinished.

In May 1944 Japanese Prime Minister Tōjō Hideki had sent seasoned Lieut. Gen. Kuribayashi Tadamichi to organize the defense of Iwo Jima. Despite the apparent futility of resistance, Kuribayashi resolved to make the United States bleed for its victory. He began by ordering the construction of a tunnel network beneath the island to provide both protection and a means to circumvent enemy lines. He then had his troops erect hundreds of pillboxes, blockhouses, and gun sites for aboveground coverage, many of which were so well constructed that only a direct hit from a battleship could cause serious damage. However, rather than heavily defending the coastline, he planned to keep his soldiers in caves and tunnels until the Americans advanced far enough inland to be decimated by coordinated infantry and artillery fire. Finally, in a break from traditional Japanese defensive strategy, Kuribayashi gave his men strict orders to abandon the often-suicidal banzai charges and instead kill 10 Americans each from their hideouts. By the time U.S. forces initiated their assault, Kuribayashi's Iwo Jima garrison had grown to an estimated 21,000 soldiers.

Nimitz created a U.S. Joint Expeditionary Force of Navy and Marines to carry out Operation Detachment. At its disposal was an armada of 11 warships that were intended to soften up Japanese defenses with sustained bombardment. Maj. Gen. Harry Schmidt took charge of Marine operations. He fielded the largely veteran 3rd, 4th, and 5th Marine divisions, totaling some 70,000 troops. U.S. intelligence had reported only 13,000 Japanese defenders and excellent beach terrain for landing, so planners chose to have the Marines land on the southeastern beach in seven sections (listed southwest to northeast): Green, Red 1, Red 2, Yellow 1, Yellow 2, Blue 1, and Blue 2. The 28th Regiment at Green would plow across the 0.5-mile (0.8-km) stretch to the other side of the island to cut off and eventually take Mount Suribachi. The 27th Regiment at Red 1 and 2 would head northward past Motoyama 1, which would be taken by the 23rd Regiment at Yellow 1 and 2. The 25th Regiment at Blue 1 and 2 would head east to secure the right flank. Schmidt was prepared for Japanese banzai attacks and expected the swarm of bodies to expedite the invasion process, anticipating total control of the island in no more than four days.

Before landing his Marines on the beaches, Schmidt had requested that the Navy bombard the island for 10 consecutive days. His request was denied, however, and he was granted a mere three days on account of Nimitz's tight schedule ahead of the Okinawa invasion. The brief period of shelling was blighted by poor weather, and, when compounded with the island's well-protected defenses, the bombardment did little to soften up the Japanese. About 9:00 am on February 19, 1945, Marines began to land on the beach in intervals. They were surprised to encounter embankments of volcanic ash towering some 15 feet (4.6 meters) high. What was supposed to be an easy and methodical landing process quickly became congested, and Kuribayashi maximized the confusion by directing his troops and artillery to fire on the U.S. soldiers.

Schmidt sent in U.S. Naval Construction Battalion units (Seabees) with bulldozers to clear some of the ash, and by the end of that day the 28th Regiment had successfully isolated Suribachi from the rest of the island. On February 21 Kuribayashi executed a kamikaze attack on U.S. Navy vessels, badly damaging several ships. U.S. Marines continued to press forward on land, though, and on February 23 they secured Suribachi. Marines twice raised the American flag on Suribachi's summit. The second flag raising was photographed by Pulitzer Prize-winner Joe Rosenthal of the Associated Press, and his photograph became one of the most famous combat images of World War II.

The 23rd, 25th, and 27th regiments began to measure their advances in yards. The 23rd Regiment managed to take Motoyama 1 by February 24 and Motoyama 2 by February 27, but progressing past that point proved exceedingly difficult. The first main Japanese line of defense lay beyond a sulfur field filled with man-made and natural defenses. Japanese soldiers battered the Marines with artillery by day, and at night they would slip behind the U.S. rear and plant mines along roads to disrupt enemy movements. On February 27 the central regiments, reinforced by the 21st Regiment from the 3rd Marine Division, mounted a massive coordinated assault that broke through the centre of the Japanese line and overran the heights adjacent to the unfinished Motoyama 3 airfield the following day. However, intense fighting continued on the right flank at the Amphitheater, Turkey Knob, and Hill 382, a rise that would be dubbed "the Meat Grinder." From their defensive positions, the Japanese fired on the Marines relentlessly, and U.S. soldiers resorted to using flamethrowers to snuff out every possible defender, but the area remained at a stalemate even after Marines took the Meat Grinder on March 2.

On the northern end of the island, the 28th Regiment fought alongside troops from the 5th Division for control of Hills 362A and 362B, seizing them both with considerable difficulty by March 3. Similarly, the 21st Regiment managed to take Hill 362C near the island's northeast shore, leaving only a small but resilient group of Japanese soldiers in that sector holding out at a site known as Cushman's Pocket. On March 8 Japanese Navy Capt. Samaji Inouye led a nighttime banzai attack against Kuribayashi's orders in hopes of driving the Americans off of their hill. His attack proved futile, however, and the casualties inflicted provided an opening for the Marines. By March 10 U.S. troops had finally cleared the Amphitheater and Turkey Knob of its defenders.

Despite areas of intense resistance at Cushman's Pocket, the northwest coast, and a small area on the east coast, the U.S. declared Iwo Jima secure on March 16. In actuality the island would not be secure until March 26, when a few hundred Japanese troops moved behind enemy lines toward Motoyama 1 and killed about 100 Americans in their sleep before being gunned down themselves. With the other pockets of defenders killed or captured, that night attack marked the last major engagement at Iwo Jima.

Aftermath and criticism

Operation Detachment was one of the deadliest conflicts in U.S. Marine Corps history. The Japanese death toll approached 18,500 soldiers, and some 6,800 U.S. Marines were killed and 19,200 were wounded. Twenty-seven Medals of Honor were awarded at the conclusion of the battle. The fact that Marines were forced to kill the Japanese virtually to the last man is a testament to the iron grip that Japan's military indoctrination had on its servicemen. Even Kuribayashi refused to surrender in the end, by some accounts preferring to commit seppuku rather than fall into American hands alive. Those few Japanese soldiers who survived were often ostracized at home because of their failure to defend the homeland with their lives.

For the United States, the Pyrrhic victory at Iwo Jima provided the AAF with important airfields that would be used throughout the rest of the Pacific War, but the impetus for the battle has drawn criticism from both high-ranking generals and prominent historians. Military historian and Marine Capt. Robert Burrell found that the provision of fighter escorts on bombing raids-the principal reason for Operation Detachment-was minimal overall, as only 10 escort missions ever occurred. B-29 bomber raids did originate from the island and were especially impactful, but these raids were not cited as a justification for the assault prior to the conclusion of the war. The primary postwar justification was Iwo Jima's capacity to provide emergency landings, but, while 2,251 B-29s landed on the island throughout the rest of the war, the majority of them were not strictly emergencies. Most concerning, though, was the fact that the JCOS did not consider either the opinion of the Marines or the doubts of their planners ahead of ordering the invasion. Had they done so, thousands of lives might have been saved.
Myles Hudson

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Battle of Iwo Jima | Facts, Significance, Photos, & Map

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Battle of Iwo Jima (February 19-March 16, 1945), World War II battle fought between the United States and Japan over a strategically important island some 760 miles (1,220 km) south of Tokyo. A photo of Marines raising the American flag atop Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi became one of the Pacific War's iconic images.

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December 11, 1941

This was important as the rationing the people did and the jobs people took, it helped america use the more important materials for the war

Americans rationed and recycled a lot of things as well as growing their own food

https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-american-home-front-and-world-war-ii.htm

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<img src="https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/images/Enemies-Image-1-Let-em-come.jpg?maxwidth=1300&autorotate=false" alt="Color illustration of a white man in a suit and wearing a Civil Defense helmet and armband holding a worried-looking white child. Behind them are suggestions of flames and a representation of the sign that V Homes can display.">

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born June 12, 1929,

died 1945 (exact date unknown)

Anne Frank was a 15 year old Jewish girl during WW2 in Europe

she is famous for writing a dairy while hiding from the Nazis in a secret annex in Amsterdam, Netherlands for 2 years

https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/who-was-anne-frank/

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Born April 20, 1889

Died April 30, 1945

Adolf Hitler was the leader of Germany and the Nazi party and blamed for the cause of WW2

Hitler took over most of Europe during this time

He did this to "pure the German master race "

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Adolf-Hitler

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July 16 1945

a plutonium device was tested

the code name for the test was trinity

the explosion vaporized all the buildings in the area and turned the ground to glass

https://search.usa.gov/search?query=los%20alamos%20explosion&affiliate=usaf_afnwc&utf8=%26%23x2713%3B

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The 1930's

A radar used radio waves to show objects far away

The radar was important in WWII because it would let air defense know when Germany would attack

https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/how-radar-changed-the-second-world-war#:~:text=Radar%20could%20pick%20up%20incoming,masts%20over%20100%20metres%20high.

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The use of radio waves to detect objects beyond the range of sight was first developed into a practical technology by British scientists and engineers in the 1930s. This new equipment, known as radar ('radio detection and ranging'), would play a major role during the Second World War and in subsequent conflicts.

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Born April 22, 1904

Died February 18, 1967

Robert Oppenheimer was an American theoretical physicist and science administrator

Helped develop the atomic bombs that would later be thrown at japan in Hiroshima and Nagasaki

https://www.britannica.com/biography/J-Robert-Oppenheimer

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born 6 December 1878

died 5 March 1953

commander of the soviet union

helped Hitler capture Europe

rose to power in 1922

https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/people/stalin-joseph

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Duck Tape was invented in 1943

Duck tape was used to keep moisture out of ammunition cases

This was important because it would prevent water from going inside ammunition cases and also Duck tape was used to repair air plains.

https://www.groundfloorhomeinspection.com/single-post/2018/08/20/the-history-of-duct-tape

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Duct tape was originally named “Duck” tape and originally only came in green, not silver.Duct tape was originally invented by Johnson & Johnson’s Permacel division during WWII for the military. The military specifically needed a waterproof tape that could be used to keep moisture out of ammunition cases. This is why the originally Duct tape came only in army green. As to why it was originally called “Duck” tape by the soldiers isn’t entirely known. It is commonly thought that because it was

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in 1939, jet engines mostly existed in labs.

Jet engines were used in a jet fighters.

This new form of technology helped advance air to air fights.

https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/ww2/projects/jet-airplanes/planes.html

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Jet Planes and World War II

The Development of Jet Engines During The War

Before World War II, in 1939, jet engines primarily existed in labs. The end of the war, however, illustrated that jet engines, with their great power and compactness, were at the forefront of aviation development.

A young German physicist, Hans von Ohain, worked for Ernst Heinkel, specializing in advanced engines, to develop the world's first jet plane, the experimental Heinkel He 178. It first flew on August 27, 1939.

Building on this advancement, German engine designer Anselm Franz developed an engine suitable for use in a jet fighter. This airplane, the Me 262, was built by Messerschmitt. Though the only jet fighter to fly in combat during World War II, the Me 262 spent a significant amount of time on the ground due to its high consumption of fuel. It was often described as a "sitting duck for Allied attacks." Meanwhile, in England, Frank Whittle invented a jet engine completely on his own. The British thus developed a successful engine for another early jet fighter—the Gloster Meteor. Britain used it for homeland defense but, due to lack of speed, it was not used to combat over Germany.

The British shared Whittle's technology with the U.S., allowing General Electric (GE) to build jet engines for America's first jet fighter, the Bell XP-59. The British continued to develop new jet engines from Whittle's designs, with Rolls-Royce initiating work on the Nene engine during 1944. The company sold Nenes to the Soviets—a Soviet version of the engine, in fact, powered the MiG-15 jet fighter that later fought U.S. fighters and bombers during the Korean War.

The 1945 surrender of Germany revealed substantial wartime discoveries and inventions. General Electric and Pratt & Whitney, another American engine-builder, added German lessons to those of Whittle and other British designers. Early jet engines, such as those of the Me 262, gulped fuel rapidly. Thus, an initial challenge was posed: to build an engine that could provide high thrust with less fuel consumption.

Pratt & Whitney resolved this dilemma in 1948 by combining two engines into one. The engine included two compressors; each rotated independently, the inner one giving high compression for good performance. Each compressor drew power from its own turbine; hence there were two turbines, one behind the other. This approach led to the J-57 engine. Commercial airliners—the Boeing 707, the Douglas DC-8—flew with it. One of the prominent postwar engines, it entered service with the U.S. Air Force in 1953.

The Man Behind The Engine

Hans von Ohain

Hans von Ohain of Germany was the designer of the first operational jet engine, though credit for the invention of the jet engine went to Great Britain's Frank Whittle. Whittle, who registered a patent for the turbojet engine in 1930, received that recognition but did not perform a flight test until 1941. Ohain was born December 14, 1911, in Dessau, Germany. While pursuing doctorate work at the University of Gottingen, he forumulated his theory of jet propulsion in 1933. After receiving his degree in 1935, he became a junior assistant to Robert Wichard Pohl, director of the university's Physical Institute.

Granted a patent for his turbojet engine in 1936, Ohain joined the Heinkel Company in Rostock, Germany. By 1937 he had built a factory-tested demonstration engine and, by 1939, a fully operational jet aircraft, the He 178. Soon after, Ohain directed the construction of the He S.3B, the first fully operational centrifugal-flow turbojet engine. This engine was installed in the He 178 airplane, which made the world's first jet-powered aircraft flight on August 27, 1939. Ohain developed an improved engine, the He S.8A, which was first flown on April 2, 1941. This engine design, however, was less efficient than one designed by Anselm Franz, which powered the Me 262, the first operational jet fighter aircraft.

Ohain came to the United States in 1947 and became a research scientist at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base,the Aerospace Research Laboratories, Wright's Aero Propulsion Laboratory, and the University of Dayton Research Institute.

During his 32 years of U.S. government service, Ohain published more than 30 technical papers and registered 19 U.S. patents. In 1991 Ohain was honored by the U.S. National Academy of Engineering with the Charles Stark Draper Prize as a pioneer of the jet age. Ohain died on March 13, 1998, at his home in Melbourne, Florida.

The Heinkel He 178 was the world's first jet plane.

16-03-2004

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Jet Planes and World War II The Development of Jet Engines During The War Before World War II, in 1939, jet engines primarily existed in labs. The end of the war, however, illustrated that jet engines, with their great power and compactness, were at the forefront of aviation development.

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1942-1945

The Tuskegee Airmen trained in the great Lakes after Graduation

Nearly 200 planes crashed into the Great Lakes during WWII

https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/18aviatorsdown/history.html

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US Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

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World War II Aircraft Lost in the Great Lakes: Aviators Down: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research

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Between June 27 and September 26, 2018, a team surveyed five areas of Lake Huron within and adjacent to Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary, searching for lost World War II aircraft.

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code talkers were people who used their traditional language to transmit secret Allied messages

1940-1945

The US Army was the first branch of the military that began recruiting code talkers

Most code talkers were assigned in pairs to a military unit During battle one person would operate a portable radio while the second person would receive messages in their Native language and translate them into English.

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/american-indian-code-talkers

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1933 - 1945

the Nazis did not immediately start to mass murder Jews. However, they quickly began excluding Jews from German society

By the end of the Holocaust, the Nazi German regime and their allies and collaborators had murdered six million European Jews

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/introduction-to-the-holocaust

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signed on September 2 1945

Japanese representatives signed the official Instrument of Surrender, prepared by the War Department and approved by President Harry S. Truman

It set out in eight short paragraphs

Gen Douglas MacArthur Commander in the Southwest Pacific and Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, also signed. He accepted the Japanese surrender for the United States, Republic of China, United Kingdom, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/surrender-of-japan#:~:text=On%20September%202%2C%201945%2C%20Japanese,Truman.

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1941

The rat bomb was a weapon used by the British

It was created by the SOE (Special Operations Executive)

https://www.military-history.org/back-to-the-drawing-board/back-to-the-drawing-board-exploding-rats.htm

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Back to the Drawing Board — EXPLODING RATS! | Military History Matters

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Exploding Rats By 1941, Germany had already subjugated half of Europe, the Luftwaffe was raining bombs down on the cities of Britain, and U-boats were infli…

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Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site, Chappie James Avenue, Tuskegee, AL

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1941-1945

the Tuskegee Airmen Experiment was an experiment that allowed Black Americans enlisted in the military to be “tested to see if they could be trained as combat pilots and support personnel”

On March 7, 1942, the first class of cadets graduated from Tuskegee Army Air Field to become the nation's first African American military pilots known as the Tuskegee Airmen

https://www.pbs.org/articles/who-are-the-tuskegee-airmen

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January 1942.

The Filipino and America troops eventually surrendered to Japanese troops and were forced into the Bataan Death March

Many troops were beaten to death and even tortured

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/topics/battle-bataan-death-march

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Battle of Bataan | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans

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After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, they invaded Luzon, Philippines in January 1942. Despite insufficient supplies, American and Filipino troops were able to fight for three months. Eventually, they surrendered to Japanese troops and were forced into the Bataan Death March—where some of the most…

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1939-1945

Only 14 countries remained officially neutral throughout the entire war. They included Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Turkey, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan

Belgium and the Netherlands, both had declared their neutrality prior to the war. Their neutral status made a little impression on Adolf Hitler who ordered his forces to invade both states as part of his attack on France in May 1940

https://www.history.com/articles/neutral-countries-world-war-ii

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Manhattan Project Beer Co., Sulphur Street, Dallas, TX

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Manhattan Project Beer Co., Sulphur Street, Dallas, TX

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Manhattan Project Beer Co., Sulphur Street, Dallas, TX

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1942 - 1945

The first atomic bomb was exploded at 5:30 am on July 16, 1945, at the Alamogordo air base

the bomb itself was largely theoretical, based on fundamental experiments carried out at a number of different locations.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Manhattan-Project

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October 1940

ghettos required all Jews that lived in Warsaw to move into a certain area, which Germans sealed off from the rest of the city

The conditions in ghetto was so bad to the point where kids starved and went around begging for food

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/warsaw

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The city of Warsaw, capital of Poland, flanks both banks of the Vistula River. A city of 1.3 million inhabitants, Warsaw was the capital of the resurrected Polish state in 1919. Before World War II, the city was a major center of Jewish life and culture in Poland. Warsaw's prewar Jewish population of more than 350,000 constituted about 30 percent of the city's total population. The Warsaw Jewish community was the largest in both Poland and Europe, and was the second largest in the world, second only to New York City.

Following the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, Warsaw suffered heavy air attacks and artillery bombardment. German troops entered Warsaw on September 29, shortly after its surrender.

Less than a week later, German officials ordered the establishment of a Jewish council ( Judenrat) under the leadership of a Jewish engineer named Adam Czerniaków. As chairman of the Jewish council, Czerniaków had to administer the soon-to-be established ghetto and to implement German orders. On November 23, 1939, German civilian occupation authorities required Warsaw's Jews to identify themselves by wearing white armbands with a blue Star of David. The German authorities closed Jewish schools, confiscated Jewish-owned property, and conscripted Jewish men into forced labor and dissolved prewar Jewish organizations.

Warsaw Ghetto

On October 12, 1940, the Germans decreed the establishment of a ghetto in Warsaw. The decree required all Jewish residents of Warsaw to move into a designated area, which German authorities sealed off from the rest of the city in November 1940. The ghetto was enclosed by a wall that was over 10 feet high, topped with barbed wire, and closely guarded to prevent movement between the ghetto and the rest of Warsaw. The population of the ghetto, increased by Jews compelled to move in from nearby towns, was estimated to be over 400,000 Jews. German authorities forced ghetto residents to live in an area of 1.3 square miles, with an average of 7.2 persons per room.

Conditions in the Ghetto

The Jewish council offices were located on Grzybowska Street in the southern part of the ghetto. Jewish organizations inside the ghetto tried to meet the needs of the ghetto residents as they struggled to survive. Among the welfare organizations active in the ghetto were the Jewish Mutual Aid Society, the Federation of Associations in Poland for the Care of Orphans, and the Organization for Rehabilitation through Training. Financed until late 1941 primarily by the New York-based American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, these organizations attempted to keep alive a population that suffered severely from starvation, exposure, and infectious disease.

The hunger in the ghetto was so great, was so bad, that people were laying on the streets and dying, little children went around begging...
- Abraham Lewent

Food allotments rationed to the ghetto by the German civilian authorities were not sufficient to sustain life. In 1941 the average Jew in the ghetto subsisted on 1,125 calories a day. Czerniaków wrote in his diary entry for May 8, 1941: "Children starving to death." Between 1940 and mid-1942, 83,000 Jews died of starvation and disease. Widespread smuggling of food and medicines into the ghetto supplemented the miserable official allotments and kept the death rate from increasing still further.

Documenting Life in the Ghetto

Emanuel Ringelblum, a Warsaw-based historian prominent in Jewish self-aid efforts, founded a clandestine organization that aimed to provide an accurate record of events taking place in German-occupied Poland while the ghetto existed. This record came to be known as the "Oneg Shabbat" ("In Celebration of Sabbath," also known as the Ringelblum Archive). Only partly recovered after the war, the Ringelblum Archive remains an invaluable source about life in the ghetto and German policy toward the Jews of Poland.

Deportations and Uprising

From July 22 until September 12, 1942, German SS and police units, assisted by auxiliaries, carried out mass deportations from the Warsaw ghetto to the Treblinka killing center. During this period, the Germans deported about 265,000 Jews from Warsaw to Treblinka; they killed approximately 35,000 Jews inside the ghetto during the operation.

In January 1943, SS and police units returned to Warsaw, this time with the intent of deporting thousands of the remaining approximately 70,000-80,000 Jews in the ghetto to forced-labor camps for Jews in Lublin District of the Government General. This time, however, many of the Jews, understandably believing that the SS and police would deport them to the Treblinka killing center, resisted deportation, some of them using small arms smuggled into the ghetto. After seizing approximately 5,000 Jews, the SS and police units halted the operation and withdrew.

On April 19, 1943, a new SS and police force appeared outside the ghetto walls, intending to liquidate the ghetto and deport the remaining inhabitants to the forced labor camps in Lublin district. The ghetto inhabitants offered organized resistance in the first days of the operation, inflicting casualties on the well-armed and equipped SS and police units. They continued to resist deportation as individuals or in small groups for four weeks before the Germans ended the operation on May 16. The SS and police deported approximately 42,000 Warsaw ghetto survivors captured during the uprising to the forced-labor camps at Poniatowa and Trawniki and to the Lublin/Majdanek concentration camp. At least 7,000 Jews died fighting or in hiding in the ghetto, while the SS and police sent another 7,000 to the Treblinka killing center.

For months after the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto, individual Jews continued to hide themselves in the ruins and, on occasion, attacked German police officials on patrol. Perhaps as many as 20,000 Warsaw Jews continued to live in hiding on the so-called Aryan side of Warsaw after the liquidation of the ghetto.

Liberation of Warsaw

On August 1, 1944, the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa; AK), a non-Communist underground resistance army with units stationed throughout German-occupied Poland, rose against the German occupation authorities in an effort to liberate Warsaw. The impetus for the uprising was the appearance of Soviet forces along the east bank of the Vistula River. The Soviets failed to intervene; the Germans eventually crushed the revolt and razed the center of the city to the ground in October 1944. Though they treated captured Home Army combatants as prisoners of war, the Germans sent thousands of captured Polish civilians to concentration camps in the Reich. 166,000 people lost their lives in the uprising, including perhaps as many as 17,000 Polish Jews who had either fought with the AK or had been discovered in hiding.

When Soviet troops resumed their offensive on January 17, 1945, they liberated a devastated Warsaw. According to Polish data, only about 174,000 people were left in the city, less than six per cent of the prewar population. Approximately 11,500 of the survivors were Jews.

Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

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The city of Warsaw, capital of Poland, flanks both banks of the Vistula River. A city of 1.3 million inhabitants, Warsaw was the capital of the resurrected Polish state in 1919. Before World War II, the city was a major center of Jewish life and culture in Poland.