Items15The creator’s order
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Attack on Pearl HarborJapan's carrier strike of 7 December 1941 was meant to knock out the US Pacific Fleet long enough for Japan to seize the oil and rubber of South-East Asia. It damaged or sank eight battleships and killed more than 2,000 Americans, civilians among them, for the loss of 29 Japanese aircraft and five…0 - 2
Fall of SingaporeSingapore was the keystone of British power in Asia, and its loss on 15 February 1942 showed how quickly the old empires could fall. Japanese forces advanced down the Malayan peninsula and crossed to the island with a force about half the size of its defenders, then took the surrender of the…0 - 3
Battle of BataanAfter Japanese landings on Luzon in December 1941, more than 80,000 American and Filipino troops withdrew into the Bataan peninsula to hold Manila Bay. Short of food and medicine, and with hopes of relief dashed once MacArthur left on 11 March, they held out until 9 April 1942, when the remaining…0 - 4
Battle of the Coral SeaFought from 3 to 8 May 1942, this was the first direct carrier-against-carrier battle of the Pacific War, with the two carrier forces striking at each other from around 200 miles apart. Japan wanted Port Moresby in New Guinea, a base that would threaten northern Australia.
On points Japan did…0 - 5
Battle of MidwayJapan planned to take Midway and draw out the American carriers that had escaped Pearl Harbor. Codebreakers at Station Hypo in Hawaii spoiled the plan: a false message that Midway was short of fresh water drew a Japanese report that "AF" was short of water, confirming the target.
On 4 June 1942…0 - 6
Kokoda Track campaignWith the sea route to Port Moresby blocked after Coral Sea, Japan tried to reach it overland. A force landed near Gona on 21 and 22 July 1942 and pushed south along a single mountain track through the Owen Stanley Range, until by mid-September it was close enough that Imita Ridge was the last…0 - 7
Guadalcanal campaignUS Marines landed on 7 August 1942 to take an airstrip Japan was building in the Solomon Islands, which became Henderson Field. Guadalcanal was the first battle in the American amphibious campaign to push Japan back across the Pacific, and it turned into six months of attrition on land, at sea and…0 - 8
Battle of TarawaThe assault on Betio, in the Tarawa atoll of the Gilbert Islands, began on 20 November 1943, almost two years after Pearl Harbor. The island is ringed by a reef reaching up to 1,200 yards out to sea, and warnings about the tide were ignored in favour of a fixed timetable, leaving many Marines to…0 - 9
Battle of ImphalFought together with the siege of Kohima, March to July 1944
Japan's Operation U-Go invaded north-east India to destroy the Allied build-up there. On 3 April a force of 15,000 attacked Kohima, where the District Commissioner's house and tennis court saw brutal hand-to-hand fighting, while the main…0 - 10
Battle of SaipanSaipan, in the Mariana Islands, mattered because its airfields could put B-29 bombers within reach of the Japanese home islands. US forces invaded on 15 June 1944, and the island was declared secure on 9 July after some of the hardest fighting of the war.
By most counts the Americans lost more…0
