Battle Of Leyte Gulf Essay

Before the summer of 1942 the United States fought a defensive war in the Philippines. The change in strategy, was when the U.S. went on a land offensive to defeat the Japanese. They planned to do this by capturing all the islands until their empire was nothing but their Japan itself. The name of the battle that marked the turning point was the Battle of Guadalcanal. Japanese forces reached Guadalcanal in May of 1942. When the Allies noticed construction of an airfield on Guadalcanal, the U.S. did an amphibious landing, and the two forces went back and forth. It became a major turning-point in the war because it stopped Japanese expansion.

According to the TF Mountain intelligence, only a few hundred enemy forces were in the area (Fleri, Howard, Hukill, & Searle, 2003). However, this was a sore underestimate due to a high volume of hiding places in caves located in the mountains. The Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance was very aggressive and did not take into account the surround areas or the possibility of enemy forces planning guerrilla

Similar to the first World War, World War II was a dispute between powers and or countries and involved the death of million of civilians and militants of those disputing countries.There are many events that have made World War II significant and i will show you in this essay.

The Battle of Normandy otherwise known as “D-Day” was one of the most famous battles to be held during World War II and took place over a fifty mile stretch of the Normandy coastline. Allied forces that included the United States, United Kingdom and Canada took over Nazi forces which eventually lead to the mass destruction of the German forces. This intense invasion started on June 6th, 1944 and included parachute landings, air and naval attacks and many different phases of land and sea invasions throughout the day. The Allied forces were equipped with a staggering amounts of weaponry including, fifty thousand vehicles, four thousand warships and over eleven thousand planes ready to send into action. Choosing a supreme commander for this attack was crucial and

Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor is by far one of America’s most remembered events in history. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese dropped bombs on the American base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. This attack is what persuaded President Franklin Roosevelt to join World War 2 and fight on two fronts. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor for many reasons. They attacked because they believed they would create a New World Order, they felt threatened by America and because of the oil embargo.

After the bombing, the United State troops approached the island. At their first sight, the troops thought that they had wiped out all of the Japanese troops. This is because the Japanese had dug a tremendous amount of underground tunnels and hideouts (Chen). This is why the United States had a very limited amount of success with the bombing. The Japanese Imperial Navy was instructed to stay in their positions until all of the beaches around Iwo Jima were full. Once the United States started pushing forward, the Japanese opened

This was the start of the long invasion of Iwo Jima. The Battle of Iwo Jima was fought between the Japanese army and the United States Marine Corps (USMC). The battle, known to the USMC as "Operation Detachment", started on February 19, 1945 and lasted until March 26, 1945 when the last Japanese soldiers were captured or killed. Japan knew that the importance of defending Iwo Jima as its loss would facilitate American air raids against Japanese Home Islands. However Imperial Japanese Navy had already lost almost all of its power and could not prevent U.S. from landing. Also depleting air strength meant the remaining warplanes had to be hoarded to defend Japanese Home Islands. With no available means to defend Iwo Jima, Japan decided to rely on the established defensive equipment in the area and check U.S. by delaying tactics to gain time for defense of the mainland. Japanese Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi was assigned the task of defending Iwo Jima. Knowing he couldn’t win the battle, he aimed at inflicting heavy casualties on American forces to force them to reconsider invasion of Mainland Japan. His strategy was radically different from Japan’s usual strategy of beach defense to face the landings directly. He used Defense in Depth military strategy which seeks to delay rather than prevent the advance of the attacker, buying time and causing additional casualties. A complex and elaborate defense was prepared. Among other things, an extensive system of tunnels was built to connect the prepared positions so that positions which had been cleared could be re-occupied. Numerous snipers and camouflaged machine gun positions were also set up. The Marines were able to cut off Mount Suribachi from the rest of the island by the morning of 23 February. A group of Marines were sent to capture the summit. They were given an American flag to fly to signal its capture. They met with little Japanese resistance and hoisted the U.S. flag over Mount Suribachi: the first

The battle of Pearl Harbor occurred early morning in Honolulu, Hawaii on December 7, 1941. There wasn 't much of a battle considering the fact that it was very unexpected and Franklin D. Roosevelt had just spoke to the Japanese and they seemed to be on good terms. The event only lasted around two hours and in that short amount of time 20 American naval vessels were destroyed, 8 battleships, and 200 airplanes. There were around 2,000 American casualties while 1,000 others were only wounded. The day after this attack the president of the United States declared war on

World War Two caused the death of millions of innocent people and the destruction of thousands of years of civilisation through the viciousness of mankind. World War Two started on the 3rd of September 1939 when the allied forces declared war against Germany after the unprovoked attack of Poland and didn’t end until 1945 with the defeat of the Japanese imperial forces. The battle of Kokoda began on July 21st 1942 when the Japanese imperial army invaded Papua New Guinea with the intent of capturing Port Moresby and using it as a launching point onto Australian soil. The battle ended on January 23rd 1943, resulting in an Allied victory. There were four peoples at war in Kokoda, those were the Australians and the Americans, who were allied. The

Pearl Harbor is a very important battle because it is one of the reasons why World War II started. The battle happened on December 7, 1941 between the Japanese Empire and the United States. As a result of Pearl Harbor, more than 2,500 people lost their lives. This battle took place near Honolulu, Hawaii. Prior to the attack of 9/11, the attack of pearl harbor was greater.

This battle was extremely important to WWII because it liberated Paris, removed the Germans from NW France and was the beginning of the end of the war. The invasion also was a huge psychological blow to Hitler who thought he was impeccable. The Battle of Normandy was also important to naval history because it is the largest amphibious assault in history, having landed 156,000 troops just on DDAY alone. This invasion was also important to naval history because it was the clearest demonstration of sea power. Sea power is by which a nation extends its military power onto the

Bombs fell from the sky from planes with white rectangles and a red dot onto one of the United States’ smallest states. A Japanese admiral of a fleet of both futuristic submarines and deadly warships, plotted to bomb the US’s only Pacific Island state after the Battle of Midway (Chambers, John Whiteclay. The Oxford Companion to American Military History: 2000. Print.). Isoroku Yamamoto was one of the US’s greatest opponents during World War II. He led by example by planning the attack on Pearl Harbor, leading the actual attack, and was faced with the consequences of the US’s retaliation.

In the beginning of the war, the US marines sent about 70,000 soldiers to a island called Iwo Jima. The Marines didn 't know that they will be going up against Japanese soldiers that hid in small bunkers. When the marines were at Iwo Jima, many deaths occurred. Marines had trouble figuring out where enemy fire was being shot from. Eventually, marines figured out that out about the bunkers and took out every enemy that was in them till it was over. The battle of

Imperial Japanese forces were intent on landing a large force in Port Moresby, New Guinea and seize control of air fields on the island. The secondary plan was to also isolate Australia from allied support. “Early in 1942, Japan decided to block the Allies from setting up bases in Australia. Operation MO would send a large invasion force to Port Moresby, the capital of New Guinea. From Port Moresby, the Japanese would be able to project air power beyond the northern tip of Australia and establish bases even further south” (Hearn, Chester G., Carriers in Combat: The Air War at Sea, Stackpole Books: Mechanicsburg, PA, 2005). The objective was for a landing force to sail with troop filled transports, supporting war ships and the light carrier, Shoho. The main Japanese objective in the Solomons was the capture of Tulagi, the colonial capital. “To protect these two invasion fleets, Zuikaku and Shokaku would lead a separate covering force to create a blanket of air protection” (Bennett, Geoffrey, Naval Battles of World War Two, Pen & Sword: Barnsley, UK, 1975, 2003). U.S. intelligence relied heavily on the use of direction-finding equipment to learn where Japanese ships were and where they were heading. For years the U.S. Navy had enjoyed success in penetrating Japanese communication ciphers and codes.

The Raid of Cabanatuan occurred during the U.S. pursuit of Japanese held territory during the Battle of Luzon, Philippines Campaign (1944-1945). The Battle of Luzon was the “largest American campaign in the Pacific War” (Staff, 1966). The Imperial Japanese Army comprised the vast majority of the adversary. Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, Invaded the Philippines, and committed war crimes concerning POWs without a clearly identifiable end state in mind. Japan’s motivation behind their attacks was assumed to be linked to their economy, oil sanctions, and an overall complex of superiority of other nations. However, the U.S. Army War College suggests Japan’s end state was to seize Pacific countries to negate their dependency on U.S. trade and oil for to decrease their deficit (Record,