Germany had prepared its aggression carefully and long in advance. It is clear from Hitlers many statements and from his book Mein Kampf that the Führer regarded the Soviet Union as his main enemy and the essential obstacle to his domination of Europe and, subsequently, of the world. The circumstanc
The success of Flintlock led Americans to reduce their program of operations. Admiral Turner decided to carry out the attack on Eniwetok Atoll on February 17, which took the name of Operation Catchpole (record).The main objective was by three islands chosen among the 40 of the atoll:Engebi in the no
The insufficiency of the number of LVTs was at the origin of the delay which the operations took on February 1, because the machines which had been used for the landing of the 25th marines, the day before, were the same which were to be used by the 24th marines in Roi . After being pushed back sever
Admiral Kogas Combined Fleet, whose P.C. was installed in Truk, was responsible for the total defense of the Marshall Islands. But he had little to add to the forces on the islands themselves, since his carrier air force had been decimated over Rabaul the previous November. He could not attack the A
During the first studies concerning Flintlock, the objectives retained had been the atolls of the eastern chain of the Marshall Islands. But, on December 7, during a conference bringing together the main officials, Admiral Nimitz proposed to strike a blow in the heart of the western chain, on Kwajal
After the hard-won occupation of Tarawa, the state Admiral Nimitzs major was able to proceed immediately to the realization of the second part of his program:the attack on the Marshall Islands, considered as . the only way to advance the war”. The operation took the name of Flintlock (rocket gun). T
The supplies followed, drop by drop, brought by a detachment of pioneers and reinforcements arrived, under the relative protection of the long pier. The courage of these men was exceptional; the Japanese couldnt stop them!This endless day gave way to an endless night, illuminated by the glow of the
Once the jetty was neutralized, the assault waves began to s approach. Fire support, with the exception of a few ships that could follow the amtracks, was cut off. A few sporadic Japanese mortar fire then hit the barges and the artillery began to fire over the heads of the men. The machine guns soon
By the time Admiral Hills ships had reached their post off Tarawa, at dawn on November 20, the Japanese garrison troops must have realized that their days were numbered. The imposing deployment of warships and transport did not prevent them, however, from giving proof of their courage. At 5:07 a.m.,
After gathering his troops and rehearsing at Vaté aux Nouvelles- Hebrides, Admiral Hill set course for his objective. Hundreds of miles away, Admiral Turner was heading for Makin. One hundred miles separate the two atolls and the two attacking forces followed two roughly parallel routes.In Makin Ato
On the island of Betio, the works had lasted more than a year. There was the Japanese headquarters of the Gilbert system and the only airfield in the archipelago, not to mention an incredible accumulation of defenses. The island was five kilometers long and at most 500 meters wide. Its entire shorel
This battle was to dominate the headlines of the American press and the cursed beach of Tarawa was one of the favorite themes of American war correspondents. Few images did as much to drive the war into the minds of the American people as the pictures of the corpses of marines being slowly washed up
Strategic position of primary importance in the center of the Pacific, Midway constituted, at the same time as the western Aleutians, the privileged target of the Japanese who, at the beginning of June 1942, sent there an armada of 8 aircraft carriers, 11 battleships, 13 heavy cruisers and 11 light
Before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the ratio of naval forces in the Pacific was only slightly in favor of Japan:1 1 Japanese battleships against 1 0 allies, 1 1 aircraft carriers against 4, 34 cruisers against 35, 110 destroyers against 90. In the spring of 1944, this gap had widened considerably:th
Nobody wanted to give in and, for weeks, the discussions were tight. Eventually Churchill overrode and Repulse and Prince of Wales were sent to fend for themselves as best they could. In Singapore, everyone welcomed this decision, with the exception of some who passed a pessimistic judgment on a fle
On September 1, Hitlers Panzer Division invaded Poland and, a few days later, the victorious Russian armored vehicles from Khalkhin-Gol resumed the Trans-Siberian in the direction of the new Soviet-Polish border... as a simple precaution.Hirohito faced much more than the shock of a military disaster
Zhukovs VictoryAll day long a handful of tanks without silencers drove around in the front lines, so that their noise became familiar to the Japanese. Zhukov distributed to his troops the official manual entitled What the Soviet soldier should know about defense. On Sunday, August 20, unbeknownst to
At the beginning of July, 38,000 men, 135 tanks and 225 aircraft were concentrated on the Japanese side of the border, east of Khalkhin-Gol. The Soviet and Mongol forces numbered only 12,500 men, but Zhukov had 186 top-class tanks and 226 armored vehicles. He was going to need it. The Japanese plan
From now on, in Moscow, anxiety reigned. Despite precise intelligence on Japans long-range plans from his undercover spymaster Richard Sorge in Tokyo, Stalin was understandably beginning to contemplate the dreaded possibility of a war on two fronts, against Germany and against Japan. Consequently, n
On May 11, 1939, a few hundred horsemen from Inner Mongolia (or occupied Manchuria), accompanied by their Japanese advisers from the 23rd Komatsubara Division, crossed the border and galloped to the village of Nomonhan. The inhabitants did not even have time to alert the border guards stationed in a
During the days of September 20, 21 and 22, the operations on the front of the 2nd C.A. had no other objective than to clarify contact with the adversary.Starting from the road Lure Isle-sur-Doubs, the 1st D.F.L. General Brosset does not go more than 3 to 4 km before coming up against a continuous l
Egypts Antiquities Minister Khaled El Enani announced, from Giza, the discovery of an Old Kingdom necropolis, approximately 4,500 years old. According to Mustafa Waziri, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities and director of the team of the Egyptian Archaeological Mission that made
The act, whose morning session took place in the Association of Spanish Writers and Artists, opened with an interesting round table on historical comics with the participation of Alberto Pérez, co-editor of Desperta Ferro Ediciones, and Pedro Cifuentes, author of Historia del arte en comic, moderate
In the article that we dedicated to the Persian Royal Road, we said that Darius had established 111 stations or posts along the entire route that connected the Achaemenid empire, equipped with refreshment horses, where the royal messengers could carry out relays, and even spend the night if necessar