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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

Between 1550–1600, Europe witnessed a rapid evolution in the art of ship design which enabled safer and more efficient transatlantic travel. This was the pinnacle of the Age of Discovery and Explorati

As 1942 opened, both Nazi Germany and the Allies were ready for the climactic battles of the Atlantic to begin. Germany had 91 operational U-boats, and over 150 in training or trials. Production for 1

Throughout the first year of the war in the Pacific during World War II the USAAF was relatively ineffective against ships. Indeed, warships in particular proved to be too elusive for conventional medium-level bombing. High-level attacks wasted bombs, and torpedo attacks required extensive training. But as 1942 closed, the Fifth Air Force developed new weapons and new tactics that were not just effective, they were deadly. A maintenance officer assigned to a B-25 unit found a way to fill the bombardier's position with four 0.50-cal machine guns and strap an additional four 0.50s to the sides of the bomber, firing forward. Additionally, skip-bombing was developed. This called for mast-top height approaches flying the length of the target ship. If the bombs missed the target, they exploded in the water close enough to crush the sides. The technique worked perfectly when paired with "strafe" B-25s. Over the first two months of 1943, squadrons perfected these tactics. Then, in early March,

The Destroyer Escort was the smallest ocean-­going escort built for the United States Navy – a downsized destroyer with less speed, fewer guns, and fewer torpedoes than its big brother, the fleet dest