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Author: William L. Ramsey
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0811776689
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 227
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Book Description
When the Japanese attacked Wake Island in December 1941—the same day as the attack on Pearl Harbor—Marine pilot Henry T. Elrod took to the skies in his F4F Wildcat fighter to defend the American military base on the tiny Pacific atoll, battling swarms of enemy planes and ships with rare courage and skill for the next two weeks. Captain Elrod, who had attended Yale and spent his freshman year playing football at the University of Georgia, had arrived mere days before as part of a fighter squadron of twelve pilots. On December 10 and 11, Elrod had two of the most remarkable days of the war for any pilot in any theater: he took on a group of twenty-two Japanese planes—shooting down two—and then bombed and strafed the destroyer Kisaragi, sinking the vessel with all hands and becoming the first American pilot to sink a warship with small caliber bombs delivered by a fighter plane in World War II. Then, once American aircraft were too damaged to fly, the pilots joined the ground defense against Japanese invasion forces. Elrod assumed command of one sector of the beach and led the repulse of repeated enemy assaults until he was killed on the last day of the battle, just before the American surrender. Though unsuccessful, the against-the-odds battle for Wake Island buoyed American morale during a dark period of World War II. Elrod, who became known as “Hammerin’ Hank,” was a key figure in the defense. For his gallantry, he was posthumously promoted to major and awarded the Medal of Honor. A US Navy frigate and a street at Marine Base Quantico were named for him, and a piece of his plane is on display at the National Air and Space Museum. Drawing on research in military archives and materials from Elrod’s family, William L. Ramsey tells Hammerin’ Hank’s full story—which is not only the history of the battle for Wake Island but also the experiences that led him to become a Marine fighter pilot—with drama and verve.
Author: William L. Ramsey
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0811776689
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 227
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Book Description
When the Japanese attacked Wake Island in December 1941—the same day as the attack on Pearl Harbor—Marine pilot Henry T. Elrod took to the skies in his F4F Wildcat fighter to defend the American military base on the tiny Pacific atoll, battling swarms of enemy planes and ships with rare courage and skill for the next two weeks. Captain Elrod, who had attended Yale and spent his freshman year playing football at the University of Georgia, had arrived mere days before as part of a fighter squadron of twelve pilots. On December 10 and 11, Elrod had two of the most remarkable days of the war for any pilot in any theater: he took on a group of twenty-two Japanese planes—shooting down two—and then bombed and strafed the destroyer Kisaragi, sinking the vessel with all hands and becoming the first American pilot to sink a warship with small caliber bombs delivered by a fighter plane in World War II. Then, once American aircraft were too damaged to fly, the pilots joined the ground defense against Japanese invasion forces. Elrod assumed command of one sector of the beach and led the repulse of repeated enemy assaults until he was killed on the last day of the battle, just before the American surrender. Though unsuccessful, the against-the-odds battle for Wake Island buoyed American morale during a dark period of World War II. Elrod, who became known as “Hammerin’ Hank,” was a key figure in the defense. For his gallantry, he was posthumously promoted to major and awarded the Medal of Honor. A US Navy frigate and a street at Marine Base Quantico were named for him, and a piece of his plane is on display at the National Air and Space Museum. Drawing on research in military archives and materials from Elrod’s family, William L. Ramsey tells Hammerin’ Hank’s full story—which is not only the history of the battle for Wake Island but also the experiences that led him to become a Marine fighter pilot—with drama and verve.
Author: Gregory J. W. Urwin
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803295629
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 784
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Book Description
Facing Fearful Odds is based on interviews and correspondence gathered from more than seventy of Wake's American defenders and on research in archival and printed sources. The book covers the planning and political struggles that began Wake Island's transformation into a naval air station and submarine base, the U.S. Navy's eleventh-hour efforts to garrison and fortify Wake, and the various air, sea, and land attacks that resulted in the atoll's capture by the Imperial Japanese Navy. This study attempts to correct the myths that shroud what happened on the atoll. - from preface.
Author: Bonita Gilbert
Publisher: Casemate
ISBN: 1612001416
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345
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Book Description
The story of the Americans who came under attack five hours after Pearl Harbor was hit: “Intriguing, informative, gripping, and at times very moving” (Naval Historical Foundation). This intimately researched work tells the story of the thousand-plus Depression-era civilian contractors who came to Wake Island, a remote Pacific atoll, in 1941 to build an air station for the US Navy—charting the contractors’ hard-won progress as they scramble to build the naval base, as well as runways for US Army Air Corps B-17 Flying Fortresses, while war clouds gather over the Pacific. Five hours after their attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese struck Wake Island, which was now isolated from assistance. The undermanned Marine Corps garrison, augmented by civilian-contractor volunteers, fought back against repeated enemy attacks, at one point thwarting a massive landing assault. The atoll was under siege for two weeks as its defenders continued to hope for the US Navy to come to their rescue. Finally succumbing to an overwhelming amphibious attack, the surviving Americans, military and civilian, were taken prisoner. While most were shipped off to Japanese POW camps for slave labor, a number of the civilians were retained as workers on occupied Wake. Later in the war, the last ninety-eight Americans were brutally massacred by their captors. The civilian contractors who had risked distance and danger for well-paying jobs ended up paying a steep price: their freedom and, for many, their lives. Written by the daughter and granddaughter of civilians who served on Wake Island, Building for War sheds new light on why the United States was taken by surprise in December 1941, and shines a spotlight on the little-known, virtually forgotten story of a group of civilian workers and their families whose lives were forever changed by the events on this tiny atoll.
Author: John F. Kinney
Publisher: Potomac Books
ISBN: 9781574882049
Category : Fighter pilots
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
"Within hours of the Pearl Harbor attack, the Japanese struck the small U.S. garrison on Wake Island. As his squadron's engineering office, Marine pilot John F. Kinney oversaw the repair of damaged planes when he himself was not in the air fighting off the Japanese assault. After the Americans held out for an incredible two weeks, Kinney was captured by the Japanese but eventually escaped in China. Wake Island Pilot is the memoir of a remarkable hero of one of World War II's epic struggles."--Page [4] cover.
Author: Henry I. Shaw (Jr.)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : World War, 1939-1945
Languages : en
Pages : 28
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Book Description
Author: Chet Cunningham
Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)
ISBN: 9780786712250
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
This gritty oral chronicle records with poignant and often disturbing immediacy both the bloody sixteen-day Battle of Wake Island and the forty-four months of hell that followed it. One of the first military engagements in World War II, the battle for this tiny, strategically located atoll in the Pacific began on December 8, 1941, just five hours after Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. It ended on December 23, when the marines—despite diminished forces, incapacitated fighter planes, and no communications—strove to stem an overwhelming Japanese invasion until their commanding officers ordered them to surrender. No sooner had the surviving marines—the author’s eighteen-year-old brother among them—laid down their arms than they were stripped and bound. For two days they sat naked in the hot sun; at night they shivered in the cold. For the next three weeks they slogged in the ruins of their bombed-out camp. They were then jammed into the hold of the ship that would take them to prison camps in China and Japan, where they would endure the cruelest indignities and grimmest tortures until their liberation in August 1945. Hell Wouldn’t Stop tells their often horrific, frequently heroic, and unforgettable if long-forgotten World War II story.
Author: United States. Marine Corps
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Wake Island, Battle of, Wake Island, 1941
Languages : en
Pages : 126
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Book Description
Author: Ed Gilbert
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1780966342
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 140
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Book Description
'Were it not for the Navajo Code Talkers the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima and other places' (Anonymous, Marine Corps signal officer). Ed Gilbert uses personal interviews with veterans to tell their fascinating story. Beginning with the first operational use of Native American languages in World War I, he explores how in World War II the US again came to employ this subtle, but powerful 'weapon.' Despite all efforts, the Japanese were never able to decode their messages and the Navajo code talkers contributed significantly to US victories in the Pacific. Approximately 400 Navajos served in this crucial role. Their legend of the 'code talker' has been celebrated by Hollywood in films, such as Windtalkers, and this book reveals the real-life story of their extraordinary involvement in World War II.
Author: Bill Sloan
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 0553585673
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 562
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Book Description
A gripping narrative of unprecedented valor and personal courage, here is the story of the first American battle of World War II: the battle for Wake Island. Based on firsthand accounts from long-lost survivors who have emerged to tell about it, this stirring tale of the “Alamo of the Pacific” will reverberate for generations to come. On December 8, 1941, just five hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Japanese planes attacked a remote U.S. outpost in the westernmost reaches of the Pacific. It was the beginning of an incredible sixteen-day fight for Wake Island, a tiny but strategically valuable dot in the ocean. Unprepared for the stunning assault, the small battalion was dangerously outnumbered and outgunned. But they compensated with a surplus of bravery and perseverance, waging an extraordinary battle against all odds. When it was over, a few hundred American Marines, sailors, and soldiers, along with a small army of heroic civilian laborers, had repulsed enemy forces several thousand strong––but it was still not enough. Among the Marines was twenty-year-old PFC Wiley Sloman. By Christmas Day, he lay semiconscious in the sand, struck by enemy fire. Another day would pass before he was found—stripped of his rifle and his uniform. Shocked to realize he hadn’t awakened to victory, Sloman wondered: Had he been given up for dead—and had the Marines simply given up? In this riveting account, veteran journalist Bill Sloan re-creates this history-making battle, the crushing surrender, and the stories of the uncommonly gutsy men who fought it. From the civilians who served as gunmen, medics, and even preachers, to the daily grind of life on an isolated island—literally at the ends of the earth—to the agony of POW camps, here we meet our heroes and confront the enemy face-to-face, bayonet to bayonet.
Author: Beth Linker
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226482553
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 395
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Book Description
With US soldiers stationed around the world and engaged in multiple conflicts, Americans will be forced for the foreseeable future to come to terms with those permanently disabled in battle. At the moment, we accept rehabilitation as the proper social and cultural response to the wounded, swiftly returning injured combatants to their civilian lives. But this was not always the case, as Beth Linker reveals in her provocative new book, War’s Waste. Linker explains how, before entering World War I, the United States sought a way to avoid the enormous cost of providing injured soldiers with pensions, which it had done since the Revolutionary War. Emboldened by their faith in the new social and medical sciences, reformers pushed rehabilitation as a means to “rebuild” disabled soldiers, relieving the nation of a monetary burden and easing the decision to enter the Great War. Linker’s narrative moves from the professional development of orthopedic surgeons and physical therapists to the curative workshops, or hospital spaces where disabled soldiers learned how to repair automobiles as well as their own artificial limbs. The story culminates in the postwar establishment of the Veterans Administration, one of the greatest legacies to come out of the First World War.
