Introduction to JavaScript Object Notation

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,

This long-awaited addition to the Campaign series addresses the bloody fighting in Hue, South Vietnam, during theCommunists' 1968 Tet Offensive. Hue was the ancient capital of Vietnam, and as such, had been previously avoided byboth sides, thus it had not seen any serious fighting prior to 1968. All that changed on the night of 31 January that yearwhen four North Vietnamese battalions and supporting Viet Cong units simultaneously attacked and occupied both partsof the city, which straddled the Perfume River. The Communist forces dug in and prepared to defend their hold on the city. US Marines and a small group of South Vietnamese soldiers were ordered to clear the city. An epic battle ensued as thecombat raged from house to house and door to door. It was a bloody fight and resulted in large-scale destruction of Hue.Eventually, the Marines and the South Vietnamese forces retook the city, but it turned out to be one of the most important battles of the war.

This informative study explores the Soviet invasion of Finland, detailing the events of the Winter War of November 1939 to March 1940. The invasion was expected to be swift and decisive, however, the

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

The SBD Dauntless and Zero-sen are two of the most recognizable and iconic aircraft of World War 2 and this illustrated study describes the fighting capabilities of both aircraft when engaged in aerial combat. The SBD Dauntless dive-bomber was a key cog in the US Navy's aerial arsenal throughout the Pacific War. Although a product of aviation design in the mid to late 1930s, the type soldiered on even as more advanced aircraft were appearing from American factories as the war progressed. Despite its classification as a dive-bomber and rather dated appearance, the SBD Dauntless could more than handle its own against the feared A6M Zero-sen -- a regular opponent, especially during the first 18 months of the campaign in the Pacific. The SBD was credited with 138 victories in aerial combat (principally in 1942), 107 of which were fighters and the rest bombers. Seven SBD units claimed five or more aerial victories, with future ace Lt(jg) John Leppla of VS-2 being credited with four victorie

A succinct but detailed illustrated explanation of the techniques by which the ships and aircraft of the US Fast Carrier Task Forces achieved their victories over the Imperial Japanese Navy.Drawing on difficult-to-access wartime documents and other contemporary sources, this is the first compact, illustrated study of the tactics and techniques of the US fast carriers of Task Forces 50, 58 and 38 during the naval war against Japan in 1943--45.This title concentrates on exactly how these highly successful forces actually operated: their composition in ships, aircraft, and men; the essential technology at their disposal; the evolving doctrine for their employment; the opposition and dangers they faced; and how they overcame them at the tactical level. It explains in straightforward terms the intricate details of topics such as how ships maneuvered, how aircraft were deployed and recovered, the formations and approaches used by fighters, dive-bombers, and torpedo-bombers against naval and

USS Iowa (BB-61) was the lead ship in one of the most famous classes of battleships ever commissioned into the US Navy. Transferred to the Pacific Fleet in 1944, the Iowa first fired her guns in anger

In October 1944, the US prepared to invade the Philippines to cut Japan off from its resource areas in Southeast Asia. The Japanese correctly predicted this, and prepared a complex operation to use the remaining strength of its navy to defend its possessions. This is the first in a two-part study of the October 23-26 Battle of Leyte Gulf, which resulted in a decisive defeat for the Japanese. In The Battle of Leyte Gulf, the Imperial Japanese Navy's Center Force, took part in two major actions during the course of the battle: the intense air attacks from US Navy carriers on October 24 (the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea, which accounted for super battleship Musashi), and the compelling action off Samar the following day. A considerable body of myth surrounds the latter, since most accounts of the Samar fighting assume it to have been a crushing Imperial Japanese Navy victor-- in truth, the result was anything but that. This book examines in detail why, following the Samar action, the Imperia

An in-depth look at the struggle between the charismatic rebel commander: Ahmad Shah Masud, The Lion of Panjshir and the Soviet forces who fought to take the Panjshir Valley in Afghanistan. When the Soviets rolled into Afghanistan in 1979, they believed if they took the cities, the country would follow. They were wrong. The Red Army found itself in a bloody stalemate in the Afghan mountains, in the strategically vital Panjshir Valley, where they faced the most able and charismatic of the rebel commanders: Ahmad Shah Masud, the Lion of Panjshir. Time and again the Soviets and their Afghan counterparts sought to take control of the Panjshir, and time and again the rebels either rebuffed their clumsy attempts or ambushed and evaded them, only to retake the valley as soon as Moscow's attention was elsewhere. Over time, the rebels acquired new weapons and developed their own tactics - as did the Soviets. The Panjshir was not just a pivotal battlefield, it also shaped subsequent Afghan civil

This is the pictorial story of the triumph of the human spirit through conflict, starting with the Second Boer War at the start of the 20th century through to the World Wars. These thought-provoking i