Category: Sailors

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USS Hornet’s courageous last stand in 1942

"Bomb explodes belowdecks" by Tom Lea. 1943, U.S. Army Art Collection
The Guadalcanal campaign in the autumn of 1942 ranks among the most complex military operations in U.S. history. American forces in the South Pacific were faced with Japan's experienced armed forces. As a result, a kaleidoscopic series battles occurred on land, and in the air and seas of the Solomon Islands. (Left) Associated Press correspondent …

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D-Day on Iwo Jima in color

The campaign for Iwo Jima was one of the best documented in World War II. Marine combat cameramen and photographers accompanied the 3rd, 4th and 5th Marine Divisions through every phase of the battle, A few of their images of D-Day on Iwo follow.

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Podcast – To be a Marine in World War II

New Britain, January 1944. After nineteen days on the line and the successful attack on Hill 660, Pfc George C. Miller (Jersey City, N. J.) trudges wearily to the rear. He served with Company M, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, First Marine Division. USMC Photo
World War II feels like a thousand years ago to many people, but in historical terms, it wasn't really that long ago. In this episode of the Fix Bayonets podcast, I look back in time to examine the world that wartime Marines lived in. To help better illustrate the story, I share a few passages …

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Don’t be like my dad. Fight to live.

My dad was proud of the awards he earned in World War II and later in his Army career, especially his Combat Infantry Badge. Growing up in the 60s, I sometimes snuck into my parents' bedroom to pull the medals and CIB out of the box that my dad kept them stored in. I touched …

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A moment of courage under fire aboard U.S.S. Missouri

The U.S. invasion of Okinawa in 1945 was the largest amphibious campaign of World War II. By this stage in the war against Japan, on paper victory seemed inevitable. Yet the war did not stop. Imbued with a suicidal will to fight, the Japanese refused to quit. As operations on land, sea and air ground …

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Liberators in the Marine Corps – World War II

Mid-1944, Emirau, Bismarck Archipelago. A PB4Y-1 Liberator of Marine Photographic Squadron (VMD) 254 takes off at the start of a long-range reconnaissance mission to Truk Atoll. US Marine Corps Photo
Mid-1944, Emirau, Bismarck Archipelago. A PB4Y-1 Liberator of Marine Photographic Squadron (VMD) 254 takes off at the start of a long-range reconnaissance mission to Truk Atoll. US Marine Corps Photo During World War II, the PB4Y-1 was the was the largest aircraft in the Marine Corps inventory. The Navy version of the B-24 heavy bomber, …

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