WWII The Pacific Islands

[bdm]

Some really good original photos from WWII

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2011/09/world-war-ii-the-pacific-islands/100155/

[barretcreek]

Some amazing photos. Thank you for posting.

[Art]

Some notes on some of the pictures.

No 2 is a truly iconic picture. I saw it in numerous locations from grocery stores to saloons when I was a child.

No 3 The Nautilus was one of three sort of half sister very large cruiser submarines built in the 1930s whose most distinguishing feature was two 6" deck guns. By WWII their slow submerged speed and lack of underwater maneuverability should have made them a liability. In fact they were very useful and served as attack boats, transports of both men and equipment from the Makin Raid to supplying guerillas in places like the Philippines to instrument of bombardment. Nautilus was the star of the group with a hefty total of Japanese shipping sunk and tons and tons of supplies and men delivered all over the Pacific, as well as attacks on land targets with its big guns. When the Submarine Darter beached during the battle of Leyte Gulf and all attempts to destroy her failed the Nautilus was brought in to destroy her by gunfire and scored over 55 6" hits destroying any usefulness she might have had to the Japanese.

No. 5 is actually the aftermath of "The Battle of The Tenaru River," sometimes called "the Battle of Alligator Creek" in which the Marines destroyed a Japanese regiment in the first attempt of the Japanese to take Guadalcanal.

No. 7 is an attack by Japanese G4M "Betty" medium bombers on the allied shipping off Guadalcanal. The bomber flying very low at the far left was piloted by Jun Takahashi who survived the war and was still alive in 2016.

No. 24 The bomber being destroyed is actually a B5N "Kate" naval attack plane (torpedo bomber mostly.)

No. 34 & 35 is a Yokosuka D4Y3 "Judy" dive bomber piloted by Yoshinori Yamaguchi making a suicide attack on the USS Essex on 11/25/44.

No. 37 is another iconic photo. A bombardment group of the old battleships Pennsylvania (sister of the Arizona,) Colorado and the cruisers Louisville, Portland and Columbia under way.

[togor]

Here is video of that Enterprise bomb hit.


https://youtu.be/yfJ7rEjcaLY

[bdm]

Thank You so much for the video togor and the back ground knowledge Art on each photo i save everything from are past and the history from our country what the older generation did for our country was a great thing

[Art]

On the Enterprise video. both bomb hits were from contact fused high explosive bombs that struck down 75 casualties including the the crews of two 5" anti aircraft guns. Near misses, all that water crashing down on the deck buckled plates causing flooding. This combined with damage sustained at the earlier Battle of the Eastern Solomons, shortly prior to this action, resulted in the "Big E" having to go into the shop for major repairs shortly after this action. This left the Saratoga, which had just come out of the yards for torpedo repair as the only US carrier in the Pacific. We sent an SOS to the Brits who loaned us the carrier Victorious for a few months until the Enterprise was back and the first Essex class carriers were beginning to come on line. For this critical period the Japanese actually had three CVs and one CVL available in the pacific against one or two for the good guys. The Japanese seemed to have no inclination to challenge us at this critical moment though, shortage of aircraft probably had something to do with this.

It has been well said that in WW II the Japanese never had an actual shortage of aircraft carriers but even by the battle of Midway had a shortage of carrier aircraft, and more importantly pilots. Having an aircraft carrier doesn't help much if you don't have aircraft to put on them and even more important, air crews to fly them.