CMH Pub 5-11-1. By Roy E. Appleman, et al. Facsimile reprint of the 1948 edition with a new title page and paper cover. Cover title reads: Okinawa, the Last Battle. Also on cover: World War 2 50th Anniversary Commemorative Edition. The maps are in a separate envelope that is sold with the book. Discusses the final battle in the Pacific in World War 2. The battle is also called Operation Iceberg. Okinawa is the most important island in the Ryukyu Islands group. Other related products: United States Army in World War II, War in the Pacific, Guadalcanal, the First Offensive --Print Hardcover format is available here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-029-00067-9 Stalingrad to Berlin: The German Defeat in the East --Print Paperback format is available here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-029-00160-8 When the Akimotos Went to War: An Untold Story Of Family, Patriotism and Sacrifice During World War II is available here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/052-088-00001-1 World War II resources collection can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/catalog/world-war-ii

[Includes 2 tables, 14 charts, 33 maps and 89 illustrations] In the capture of the southern Marianas during the summer of 1944, Army ground and air forces played an important, though subordinate, role to that of the Navy and its Marine Corps. Marine personnel constituted the bulk of the combat troops employed. The objective of this campaign was "to secure control of sea communications through the Central Pacific by isolating and neutralizing the Carolines and by the establishment of sea and air bases for operations against Japanese sea routes and long-range air attacks against the Japanese home land." Its success would provide steppingstones from which the Americans could threaten further attack westward toward the Philippines, Formosa, and Japan itself, and would gain bases from which the Army Air Forces’ new very long range bombers, the B-29’s, could strike at Japan’s heartland. Recognizing and accepting the challenge, the Japanese Navy suffered heavy and irreplaceable losses in the accompanying Battle of the Philippine Sea; and the islands after capture became the base for all the massive air attacks on Japan, beginning in Nov. 1944. In the operations described in the present volume, landings against strong opposition demonstrated the soundness of the amphibious doctrine and techniques evolved out of hard experience in preceding Pacific operations. Bitter inland fighting followed the landings, with Army and Marine Corps divisions engaged side by side. The author’s account and corresponding Marine Corps histories of these operations provide ample opportunity to study the differences in the fighting techniques of the two services. Dr. Crowl also deals frankly with one of the best-known controversies of World War II, that of Smith versus Smith, but concludes that it was the exception to generally excellent interservice co-operation.

[Includes 16 charts, 54 maps and 196 illustrations] Triumph in the Philippines is the story of the largest joint campaign of the Pacific phase of World War II. Devoted principally to the accomplishments of U.S. Army ground combat forces and to the operations of major organized Philippine guerrilla units that contributed notably to the success of the campaign, the volume describes the reconquest of the Philippine archipelago exclusive of Leyte and Samar. The narrative includes coverage of air, naval, and logistical activity necessary to broad understanding of the ground combat operations. The strategic planning and the strategic debates leading to the decision to seize Luzon and bypass Formosa are also treated so as to enable the reader to fit the Luzon and Southern Philippines Campaigns into their proper perspective of the war against Japan. For the forces of General MacArthur’s Southwest Pacific Area the reconquest of Luzon and the Southern Philippines was the climax of the Pacific war, although no one anticipated this outcome when, on 9 January 1945, Lt. Gen. Walter Krueger’s Sixth Army poured ashore over the beaches of Lingayen Gulf. Viewed from the aspect of commitment of U.S. Army ground forces, the Luzon Campaign (which strategically and tactically in-chides the seizure of Mindoro Island and the securing of the shipping lanes through the central Visayan Islands) was exceeded in size during World War II only by the drive across northern France. The Luzon Campaign differed from others of the Pacific war in that it alone provided opportunity for the employment of mass and maneuver on a scale even approaching that common to the European and Mediterranean theaters. The operations of Lt. Gen. Robert L. Eichelberger’s Eighth Army, both on Luzon and during the Southern Philippines Campaign, were more akin to previous actions throughout the Pacific, but the southern campaign, too, presented features peculiar to the reconquest of the Philippine archipelago.

[Includes 4 tables, 3 charts, 27 maps and 90 illustrations] Seizure of the Gilberts and Marshalls deals with amphibious warfare as waged by American forces against the Japanese-held atolls of the Central Pacific during World War II... The atoll operations described in this volume were amphibious from beginning to end. They were not simple seaborne hit-and-run raids of the Dieppe type. The objective was to secure the atolls as steppingstones to the next advance. The islands were relatively small, permitting continual naval and air support of the ground operations. Some outstanding examples of the co-ordination of fire support by artillery, naval gunfire, and air are found in this book. The advantages of simple plans and the disadvantages of the more complicated will stand out for the careful reader. The story of the capture of these atolls of Micronesia offers some of the best examples of combined operations that are available in the annals of modern war. Ground, sea, and air components were always present, and the effectiveness with which they were combined and co-ordinated accounts in large measure for the rapid success enjoyed in these instances by American arms. From the point of view of strategy, the significance of this volume lies in the fact that it tells the story of the beginnings of the drive across the Central Pacific toward the Japanese homeland. This concept of defeating Japan by pushing directly westward from Hawaii through the island bases of the mid-Pacific was traditional in American strategic thinking, but had never been put to test and was seriously challenged in some quarters. As is shown here, the test was first made in the campaigns against the Gilberts and Marshalls, the outcome was successful, and the experience gained was of inestimable value in planning for the subsequent conduct of the war in the Pacific.

With 13 tables, 16 charts, 17 maps, 8 diagrams & 92 illustrations] Strategy is a many-sided word, connoting different things to different people. The author of any work on strategy, therefore, owes it to his reader to define at the outset his own conception of this ambiguous term... In the present volume, the author has viewed strategy broadly, including within it not only the art of military command-the original meaning of the term-but all those activities associated with the preparation for and the conduct of war in the Pacific. Viewed thus, the arena of Pacific strategy is the council chamber rather than the coral atoll; its weapons are not bombs and guns but the mountains of memoranda, messages, studies, and plans that poured forth from the deliberative bodies entrusted with the conduct of the war; its sound is not the clash of arms but the cool voice of reason or the heated words of debate thousands of miles from the scene of conflict...It deals with policy and grand strategy on the highest level-war aims, the choice of allies and theaters of operations, the distribution of forces and supplies, and the organization created to use them. On only a slightly lower level, it deals with more strictly military matters-with the choice of strategies, with planning and the selection of objectives, with the timing of operations, the movement of forces and, finally, their employment in battle. Strategy in its larger sense is more than the handmaiden of war, it is an inherent element of statecraft, akin to policy, and encompasses preparations for war as well as the war itself. Thus, this volume treats the prewar period in some detail, not in any sense as introductory to the main theme but as an integral and important part of the story of Pacific strategy. The great lessons of war, it has been observed, are to be found in the events preceding the outbreak of hostilities. It is then that the great decisions are made and the nature of the war largely determined.

[Includes 2 tables, 33 maps and 56 illustrations] Jungle warfare in the Southwest Pacific provided a unique experience for an army only lately thrust into global war; but as The Approach to the Philippines graphically demonstrates, the rules of war, the problems of leadership, and the opportunities for military success pertain in the steaming hills of New Guinea as well as on the broad plains of Normandy. This volume describes the operations of Allied forces in the Pacific theaters during the approach to the Philippines, April through October 1944. While this is essentially the story of U.S. Army ground combat operations during the approach, the activities of all ground, air, and naval forces are covered where necessary for the understanding of the Army ground narrative. Eight major and separate operations, all susceptible of subdivision into distinct phases, are described. Seven of these operations took place in the Southwest Pacific Area, while one--the Palau Islands operation--occurred in the Central Pacific Area. This series of actions is exceptional in that the operations were executed in such rapid succession that while one was being planned the height of combat was being reached in another and still others had entered the mopping-up stage. Because of the nature of the combat, the level of treatment in this volume is generally that of the regimental combat team--the infantry regiment with its supporting artillery, engineer, tank, medical, and other units. The majority of the actions described involved a series of separate operations by infantry regiments or regimental combat teams, since divisions seldom fought as integral units during the approach to the Philippines. Division headquarters, often assuming the role of a ground task force headquarters, co-ordinated and administered the oft-times widely separated actions of the division’s component parts.

[Includes 2 tables, 3 charts, 21 maps and 88 illustrations] On 3 October 1944 American forces in the Pacific Ocean Areas received a directive to seize positions in the Ryukyu Islands (Nansei Shoto). Okinawa is the most important island of the Ryukyu Group, the threshold of the four main islands of Japan. The decision to invade the Ryukyus signalized the readiness of the United States to penetrate the inner ring of Japanese defenses. For the enemy, failure on Okinawa meant that he must prepare to resist an early invasion of the homeland or surrender. The present volume [Of the United States Army in WWII series] concerns one of the most bitterly fought battles of the Pacific war, in which the Army, the Marine Corps, and the Navy all played a vital part. In order to make the Army’s role and the campaign as a whole as intelligible as possible the historians have treated in detail the operations of the Marine Corps units attached to Tenth Army, and have also sketched the contribution of the Navy both in preliminary operations against Okinawa and in the campaign itself. Another characteristic of this as of other volumes on Pacific campaigns is that tactical action is treated on levels lower than those usually presented in the history of operations in the European theaters. The physical limitations of the terrain fought over in the Pacific restricted the number and size of the units which could be employed and brought into sharp focus the operations of regiments, battalions, and smaller units. A wealth of verified material on such operations is available for all theaters, but it is only that of the Pacific which can be used extensively, since in other theaters the actions of smaller units are lost in the broad sweep of great distances and large forces. The description of small-unit action has the merit of giving the nonprofessional reader a fuller record of the nature of the battlefield in modern war, and the professional reader a better insight into troop leading.