The Pacific Theater Of World War II

Starting in the early 1930’s, the Japanese began to display their great imperialistic dreams with ambition and aggression. Their goal was to create a "Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere" where they controlled a vast empire in the western Pacific.1 In September of 1939, Japan signed the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis Treaty, allying themselves with Germany and Italy in an effort to safeguard their interests in China from the Soviet Union. Japan’s only major obstacle left lay in the significant size of the United States Pacific Fleet. To rid themselves of this, Japan attacked the United States Pacific Fleet in hopes of crippling it enough to prevent any further hindrance from the

Just after midnight on June 4th,1942, the United States attacked a fleet of Japanese transport ships. One American torpedo plane took out fleet tanker "Akabono Maru". Later that morning at about 6:30am, Japanese planes began bombing midway island installations, though causing minimal damage to the U.S. naval

Returning to their aircraft carriers to refuel and rearm the Japanese bombers noticed the U.S. fleet and prepared for their attack. Sent from the aircraft carriers were Devastator Torpedo Bombers and Dauntless Dive Bombers. The first to attack were the Torpedo Bombers, flying low to the sea the Japanese were able to defend their ship’s with ease. The Japanese destroyed 35 Torpedo Bombers, only 6 made it to their target destination which was one of the four Japanese aircraft carriers, but to their surprise none of their torpedo’s hit the intended target. Although the Torpedo Bombers did not hit their target their sacrifice was not in vain. High above the Dauntless Dive Bombers were closing in on their targets without any resistance. With just enough cloud coverage the Dive Bombers were able to approach their targets with ease. Within the first day the Japanese carriers Akagi, Kaga, and Soryu, were hit, set ablaze, and abandoned (). According to ..: Over the next two days, the US Navy and US forces on Midway continued their attacks, forcing the Japanese to abandon the battle and retreat to Japan. The Japanese lost approximately 4,800 men, four carriers, one cruiser, and hundreds of aircraft, while the United States lost approximately 307 men, one carrier, one destroyer, and over 100 aircraft.

The Battle of the Philippine Sea was an engagement between the United States Pacific Fleet and the Japanese navy in World War II. This Battle occurred started on June 19 and ended on June 20 in 1944. The Japanese goal at the very beginning of this conflict was to discourage American forces by incurring such great damage to the military that the public majority would become weary of the war and discontinue its support of the war. The loss of support from the public would then cause the US Government to retract its forces from Japan.( Willmott, H.P. June 1944. New York, NY: Blandford Press, 1984. ISBN 0-7137-1446-8) Willmott 1984, p. 143.)

The Battle of Luzon, fought in the Pacific Theater in early 1945, is remembered as the World War Two battle which had the highest net casualties. After Luzon, the largest island of the Philippines, was captured by the Japanese in 1942, General MacArthur believed that it was extremely important to recapture it. This took some time, but in 1944, a new campaign to recapture the Philippines was created. The campaign started with attacks on Leyte and Mindoro, which prepared for Luzon. The US, working together with the Commonwealth of the Philippines, successfully used multifaceted assault tactics—including the use of air force, naval, and ground troops—to advance from the Lingayen Gulf to the capital city of Manila. After the capture of Manila,

"Midway thrust the warlords back on their heels, caused their ambitious plans..........to be canceled, and forced on them an unexpected, unwelcome, defensive role". -Samuel Elliot Morison, the United States Navy's official historian of World War II, on the Battle of Midway in June 1942. The danger of Japanese power in the Pacific lingered over the heads of the Americans and endangered the safety of their homeland in the years from 1903 to 1942. That power lasted until the Japanese made the mistake of attacking the island of Midway in the second great carrier battle of the war. At 4:30 in the morning on June 4, 1942, the Japanese attacked the U.S. naval base at Midway in an attempt to destroy their aircraft carriers that escaped Pearl

The japannese sent their airplanes in two waves, about 45 minutes apart. In the first wave, B5N2 bombers, that the U.S. use to call “Kates” attacked the battleships like the uss arizona, California, Oklahoma, and West Virginia. The B5N2 bombers was the largest aircraft on Japanese carriers. Most of the battleships that were sunk in the Pearl Harbor were sunk by torpedoes.

On August 7, 1941 the American Marines landed on the coast of Guadalcanal, looking for their first victory in the Pacific War. The battle took the Americans six months to win. “The Japanese, was to turn an classic battle of attrition (Guadalcanal).” During most of the battle the Japanese maintained control of the island until while building an airfield suitable for fighter planes. “These systems could target and generally wreck havoc (Battle).” The United States unanimously won the battle due to the number of deaths they caused to the

The Japanese, however, figured that the Americans were coming when they were attacking Midway, which caused them to change plans immediately. They had to a launch more planes to sink the U.S navy who were already attacking them at that time. The Americans were proven to be very clever. The U.S dive-bombers caught the Japanese carries while they were refueling their weapons, which left them helpless and vulnerable. This caused the Japanese to lose four of their carriers, which were their main strength (Akagi, Soryu, Kaga, and Hiryu), along with 322 aircraft, more than five thousand sailors in that battle and their heavy cruiser, Mikuma.

In the beginning of war, Japanese victory in Pacific terrified West Cost Americans. Partial victory for Americans appeared when Japanese capital Tokyo was bombed. It was less of a material loss but huge in terms of psychological attack. It was followed by the Battle of Coral Sea in May 1942 and after that the decisive Battle of Midway Island took place. U.S. aircraft carriers destroyed three out of four Japanese carriers that sabotaged their further plans of invasion and they adopted a defensive strategy.

Typical of Japanese naval planning during the Second World War, Yamamoto's battle plan was quite complex.[15] Additionally, his designs were predicated on optimistic intelligence information suggesting USS Enterprise and USS Hornet, forming Task Force 16, were the only carriers available to the U.S. Pacific Fleet at the time. USS Lexington had been sunk and USS Yorktown severely damaged (and believed by the Japanese to have been sunk) at the Battle of the Coral Sea just a month earlier. The Japanese were also aware that USS Saratoga was undergoing repairs on the West Coast after taking torpedo damage from a submarine.

The date is June 4, 1942 and raging in the blue Pacific Ocean around a small atoll named Midway, a battle is being fought for survival and complete victory. Late in the day on June the 4th, United States Navy “helldivers” scream down from the heavens to rain hell upon the Japanese fleet carriers below. Within minutes, three of the Imperial Navy’s great carriers are sent to the bottom of the Pacific in great fireballs. The massive destruction was wrought by the well-known Douglas SBD Dauntless dive-bomber of the Second World War. The “slow but deadly” SBD Dauntless served the United States Navy well for most of the Pacific War and was eventually replaced by the newer and improved SB2C Helldiver or simply “the beast”. These two planes share

There were many battles that occurred in the Pacific during World War II, the most significant ones being the Battles of Midway, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. The Battle of Midway, an American naval victory in June 1942 is considered a significant point in the Pacific war with the Japanese fleet sustaining heavy losses and having to retreat. The Battle of Midway is significant as it firstly, “only lost one carrier… and it meant that four carriers (Enterprise, Hornet, Saratoga, and Wasp) were available when the U.S navy went on the offensive during the battle of Guadalcanal.” Secondly, subsequent to this battle, the Japanese would react to the Americans, and not the other way around, this meant that the “operational initiative” had passed

Some of the bloodiest fight of World War II came in the Pacific. Much of that fighting came at the Battle of Guadalcanal. A remote island in the Solomons Island chain, Guadalcanal was not thought of as important, prior to 1942. For several reasons, Guadalcanal was the most significant battle of the war in the Pacific. The Battle of Guadalcanal was the first offensive the United States took in World War II. Because of its location, Guadalcanal pushed back the Japanese defensive ring, and put the U.S. in an aggressive mindset. As an intangible factor, the victory at Guadalcanal provided a much needed morale boost to U.S. servicemen, who had not had a decisive triumph against the Japanese. Most importantly, the U.S. gained control of an important airstrip on Guadalcanal that the Japanese had been trying to utilize.

The first thing that should be noted was the reason why the Northern Force was used to lure the 3rd Fleet away from the Philippines. Four months earlier in June 1944 the battle of the Philippine sea took place. This was the Japanese attempt to defeat the US Carrier Force with everything they had. The end