Book Description
During the last months of 1943, when Allied forces of the South and Southwest Pacific were hammering at islands and airfields in the Bismarcks and Bougainville, Admiral Chester Nimitz organized two massive amphibious operations to capture the strategically vital Gilbert and Marshall Islands. Volume 7 of Samuel Eliot Morison's splendid history describes this mighty sweep of the Pacific Fleet across Micronesia, as well as the warfare in the remote and frigid Aleutian Islands. The campaigns of 1943-44 marked a great advance in the art of war. Fast carrier strikes, new anti-aircraft and airborne weapons, better radar capabilities, and faster fire- and damage-control solutions combined to revolutionize amphibious operations; advances in photographic reconnaissance improved strategic planning; and all-terrain vehicles called amphtracs facilitated beach landings. In addition, the Micronesia campaigns inspired revolutionary innovations in logistics to meet the challenge of supplying and servicing an enormous amphibious force in an area with no large land masses, no labor, and no supplies or facilities of any kind. Similar logistical difficulties characterized operations in the Aleutian Islands, compounded by hazardous conditions including dense fog, almost constant cloud cover, blinding blizzards, and icy seas. Morison tracks the Americans' recovery of Attu and Kiska as well as the gallantly fought Battle of the Komandorski Islands.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

This volume is the fifth in Admiral Morison's history to deal with naval actions in the Pacific, and the seventh in his History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. It picks up operations in the Aleutians where they were broken off after the Battle of Midway and carries them through the capture of Attu and Kiska, including the Battle of the Komandorskis.

The two great amphibious operations covered in this volume are the recovery of the Gilbert Islands and the conquest of the Marshalls. Captain Morison, who took part in Operation "Galvanic," describes in great detail the planning, preparation and execution of the assaults on Makin and Tarawa, with a frank discussion of the mistakes.

The narrative then swings into the Marshalls campaign of early 1944, the most brilliant, massive and successful amphibious operation of the war up to that year.