Japan 1944 45

Author : Mark Lardas
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1472832477
Total Pages : 97 pages
Book Rating : 4.74/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Japan 1944–45 written by Mark Lardas and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-02-21 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The air campaign that incinerated Japan's cities was the first and only time that independent air power has won a war. As the United States pushed Imperial Japan back towards Tokyo Bay, the US Army Air Force deployed the first of a new bomber to the theater. The B-29 Superfortress was complex, troubled, and hugely advanced. It was the most expensive weapons system of the war, and formidably capable. But at the time, no strategic bombing campaign had ever brought about a nation's surrender. Not only that, but Japan was half a world away, and the US had no airfields even within the extraordinary range of the B-29. This analysis explains why the B-29s struggled at first, and how General LeMay devised radical and devastating tactics that began to systematically incinerate Japanese cities and industries and eliminate its maritime trade with aerial mining. It explains how and why this campaign was so uniquely successful, and how gaps in Japan's defences contributed to the B-29s' success.

Author : Max Hastings
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0307275361
Total Pages : 690 pages
Book Rating : 4.63/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Retribution written by Max Hastings and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-03-10 with total page 690 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the summer of 1944 it was clear that Japan's defeat was inevitable, but how the drive to victory would be achieved remained unclear. The ensuing drama—that ended in Japan's utter devastation—was acted out across the vast theater of Asia in massive clashes between army, air, and naval forces. In recounting these extraordinary events, Max Hastings draws incisive portraits of MacArthur, Mao, Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and other key figures of the war in the East. But he is equally adept in his portrayals of the ordinary soldiers and sailors caught in the bloodiest of campaigns. With its piercing and convincing analysis, Retribution is a brilliant telling of an epic conflict from a master military historian at the height of his powers.

Author : Mark Lardas
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1472845838
Total Pages : 97 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Truk 1944–45 written by Mark Lardas and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-12-23 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fully illustrated history of how the US Navy destroyed Truk, the greatest Japanese naval and air base in the Pacific, with Operation Hailstone, and how B-29 units and the carriers of the British Pacific Fleet kept the base suppressed until VJ-Day. In early 1944, the island base of Truk was a Japanese Pearl Harbor; a powerful naval and air base that needed to be neutralized before the Allies could fight their way any further towards Tokyo. But Truk was also the most heavily defended naval base outside the Japanese Home Islands and an Allied invasion would be costly. Long-range bombing against Truk intact would be a massacre so a plan was conceived to neutralize it through a series of massive naval raids led by the growing US carrier fleet. Operation Hailstone was one of the most famous operations ever undertaken by American carriers in the Pacific. This book examines the rise and fall of Truk as a Japanese bastion and explains how in two huge raids, American carrier-based aircraft reduced it to irrelevance. Also covered is the little-known story of how the USAAF used the ravaged base as a live-fire training ground for its new B-29s -- whose bombing raids ensured Truk could not be reactivated by the Japanese. The pressure on Truk was kept up right through 1945 when it was also used as a target for the 509th Composite Squadron to practise dropping atomic bombs and by the British Pacific Fleet to hone its pilots' combat skills prior to the invasion of Japan.

Author : Steven J. Zaloga
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1849083541
Total Pages : 49 pages
Book Rating : 4.46/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Kamikaze written by Steven J. Zaloga and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2011-09-20 with total page 49 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The destruction of much of the remainder of the Japanese fleet and its air arm in the later half of 1944 left the Japanese Home Islands vulnerable to attack by US naval and air forces. In desperation, the Imperial Japanese Navy proposed using “special attack” formations, or suicide attacks. These initially consisted of crude improvisations of conventional aircraft fitted with high-explosive bombs that could be crashed into US warships. Called “Divine Wind” (Kamikaze), the special attack formations first saw action in 1944, and became the scourge of the US fleet in the battles for Iwo Jima and Okinawa in 1945. In view of the success of these attacks, the Japanese armed forces began to develop an entire range of new special attack weapons. This book will begin by examining the initial kamikaze aircraft attacks, but the focus of the book will be on the dedicated special attack weapons developed in 1944. It also covers specialized suicide attack weapons such as anti-tank lunge mines.

Author : Waldo Heinrichs
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190616776
Total Pages : 640 pages
Book Rating : 4.79/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Implacable Foes written by Waldo Heinrichs and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-01 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On May 8, 1945, Victory in Europe Day-shortened to "V.E. Day"-brought with it the demise of Nazi Germany. But for the Allies, the war was only half-won. Exhausted but exuberant American soldiers, ready to return home, were sent to join the fighting in the Pacific, which by the spring and summer of 1945 had turned into a gruelling campaign of bloody attrition against an enemy determined to fight to the last man. Germany had surrendered unconditionally. The Japanese would clearly make the conditions of victory extraordinarily high. In the United States, Americans clamored for their troops to come home and for a return to a peacetime economy. Politics intruded upon military policy while a new and untested president struggled to strategize among a military command that was often mired in rivalry. The task of defeating the Japanese seemed nearly unsurmountable, even while plans to invade the home islands were being drawn. Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall warned of the toll that "the agony of enduring battle" would likely take. General Douglas MacArthur clashed with Marshall and Admiral Nimitz over the most effective way to defeat the increasingly resilient Japanese combatants. In the midst of this division, the Army began a program of partial demobilization of troops in Europe, which depleted units at a time when they most needed experienced soldiers. In this context of military emergency, the fearsome projections of the human cost of invading the Japanese homeland, and weakening social and political will, victory was salvaged by means of a horrific new weapon. As one Army staff officer admitted, "The capitulation of Hirohito saved our necks." In Implacable Foes, award-winning historians Waldo Heinrichs (a veteran of both theatres of war in World War II) and Marc Gallicchio bring to life the final year of World War Two in the Pacific right up to the dropping of the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, evoking not only Japanese policies of desperate defense, but the sometimes rancorous debates on the home front. They deliver a gripping and provocative narrative that challenges the decision-making of U.S. leaders and delineates the consequences of prioritizing the European front. The result is a masterly work of military history that evaluates the nearly insurmountable trials associated with waging global war and the sacrifices necessary to succeed.

Author : Edwin P. Hoyt
Publisher : Madison Books
ISBN 13 : 1461704200
Total Pages : 176 pages
Book Rating : 4.01/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Inferno written by Edwin P. Hoyt and published by Madison Books. This book was released on 2000-10-11 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Did the bombing of Japan's cities—culminating in the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—hasten the end of World War II? Edwin Hoyt, World War II scholar and author, argues against the U. S. justification of the bombing. In his new book, Inferno, Hoyt shows how the U. S. bombed without discrimination, hurting Japanese civilians far more than the Japanese military. Hoyt accuses Major General Curtis LeMay, the Air Force leader who helped plan the destruction of Dresden, of committing a war crime through his plan to burn Japan's major cities to the ground. The firebombing raids conducted by LeMay's squadrons caused far more death than the two atomic blasts. Throughout cities built largely from wood, incendiary bombs started raging fires that consumed houses and killed hundreds of thousands of men, women and children. The survivors of the raids recount their stories in Inferno, remembering their terror as they fled to shelter through burning cities, escaping smoke, panicked crowds, and collapsing buildings. Hoyt's descriptions of the widespread death and destruction of Japan depicts a war machine operating without restraint. Inferno offers a provocative look at what may have been America's most brutal policy during the years of World War II.

Author : Steven J. Zaloga
Publisher : Osprey Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9781846036873
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.79/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Defense of Japan 1945 written by Steven J. Zaloga and published by Osprey Publishing. This book was released on 2010-10-19 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1945, with her fleet destroyed and her armies beaten, the only thing that stood between Japan and an Allied invasion was the numerous coastal defence positions that surrounded the islands. This is the first book to take a detailed look at the Japanese home island fortifications that were constructed during 1941-45. Utilizing diagrams, specially commissioned artwork, and sources previously unavailable in English, Steven Zaloga examines these defences in the context of a possible Allied invasion, constructing various arguments for one of the greatest 'what if' scenarios of World War II, and helping to explain why the Americans decided to go ahead with a nuclear option.

Author : Mike Yeo
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1472829433
Total Pages : 354 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Desperate Sunset written by Mike Yeo and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-12-26 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the middle of 1944, Imperial Japan's armed forces were in an increasingly desperate situation. Its elite air corps had been wiped out over the Solomons in 1942–43, and its navy was a shadow of the force that had attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. But the Japanese had one last, desperate, card to play. The Japanese High Command decided that the way to inflict maximum damage on the superior enemy forces was to get the poorly trained Japanese pilots to crash their explosive-laden aircraft onto their target, essentially turning themselves into a guided missile. The kamikazes announced themselves in the immediate aftermath of the Leyte Gulf naval battles, sinking the USS St. Lo and damaging several other ships. The zenith of the kamikaze came in the battle of Okinawa, which included ten kikusui (Floating Chrysanthemum) operations which involved up to several hundred aircraft attacking the US fleet. Fully illustrated throughout, Desperate Sunset examines the development and evolution of the kamikaze using first-hand accounts, combat reports and archived histories.

Author : Max Hastings
Publisher : HarperCollins UK
ISBN 13 : 0007219822
Total Pages : 708 pages
Book Rating : 4.27/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Nemesis written by Max Hastings and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2007 with total page 708 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The battle for Japan that ended many months after the battle for Europe involved enormous naval, military and air operations from the borders of India to the most distant regions of China. There is no finer chronicler of these events than the great military historian Max Hastings, whose gripping account explores not just the global strategic objectives of the USA, Japan and Britain but also the first-hand experiences of the airmen, sailors and soldiers of all the countries who participated in the Far East and the war in the Pacific. The big moments in the story are chosen to reflect a wide variety of human experience: the great naval battle of Leyte Gulf; the under-reported war in China; the re-conquest of Burma by the British Army under General Slim; MacArthur's follies in the Philippines; the Marines on Iwo Jima and Okinawa; LeMay's fire-raising Super-fortress assaults on Japan; the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the kamikaze pilots of Japan; the almost unknown Soviet blitzkrieg in Manchuria in the last days of the war, as Stalin hastened to gather the spoils; and the terrible final acts across Japanese-occupied Asia.

Author : Mark Lardas
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1472822439
Total Pages : 92 pages
Book Rating : 4.37/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Rabaul 1943–44 written by Mark Lardas and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-01-25 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1942, the massive Japanese naval base and airfield at Rabaul was a fortress standing in the Allies' path to Tokyo. It was impossible to seize Rabaul, or starve the 100,000-strong garrison out. Instead the US began an innovative, hard-fought two-year air campaign to draw its teeth, and allow them to bypass the island completely. The struggle decided more than the fate of Rabaul. If successful, the Allies would demonstrate a new form of warfare, where air power, with a judicious use of naval and land forces, would eliminate the need to occupy a ground objective in order to control it. As it turned out, the Siege of Rabaul proved to be more just than a successful demonstration of air power – it provided the roadmap for the rest of World War II in the Pacific.