Truk 1944–45

Angebote / Angebote:

A fully illustrated history of how with Operation Hailstone the US Navy destroyed Truk, the greatest Japanese naval and air base in the Pacific, and how B-29 units and the carriers of British Pacific Fleet kept the base suppressed until VJ-Day.In early 1944, the Japanese island base of Truk was their Pearl Harbor, a powerful naval and air base that had to be reduced and 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. An Allied invasion would be too costly, and long-range bombing against Truk intact would be a massacre. Instead, a plan was conceived to neutralize Truk through a series of massive naval raids, led by the growing US carrier fleet. Operation Hailstone would be one of the most famous operations 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. It also tells the little-known story of how in follow-up campaigns the USAAF used the ravaged base as a live-fire training ground for its new B-29s -- whose bombing raids also ensured Truk could not be reactivated by the Japanese. The pressure was kept up right through 1945, with Truk being used as a target for the 509th Composite Squadron to practice dropping its atomic bombs, and by the British Pacific Fleet to hone its pilots' combat skill prior to the invasion of Japan, in the Royal Navy's only action in the central Pacific.