The Battle of Midway was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that took place on 4–7 June 1942, six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea. The U.S. Navy under Admirals Chester W. Nimitz, Frank J. Fletcher, and Raymond A. Spruance defeated an attacking fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy under Admirals Isoroku Yamamoto, Chūichi Nagumo, and Nobutake Kondō near Midway Atoll, inflicting devastating damage on the Japanese fleet.
At the Arcadia Conference, held shortly after the outbreak of the Pacific War, it was stated that the primary task for the American armed forces would be to deal with Germany, but by no means all senior American officers were of this opinion. Perhaps the most prominent opponent of a defensive strategy in the Pacific was the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Navy, Admiral E. J. King. King could not speak out against the concept of war adopted by the highest levels; to do so would have made him untenable for President Roosevelt as commander of the Navy. Therefore, he adopted a so-called defensive-offensive strategy in the Pacific. Under this theory, it was impossible to give the enemy time to establish a firm foothold in the newly acquired territories in the South Pacific and to build strong naval and air bases there.
On the morning of August 7, 1942, the Japanese, informed of the American landings on Tulagi and Guadalcanal, were deciding how to strike the American expeditionary force. The area commander, Vice Admiral Gunichi Mikawa, acted immediately. He hastily assembled a group of six transport ships in Rabaul harbor on New Britain Island, embarked several hundred men and supplies, and dispatched the group to Guadalcanal in the inadequate escort of one destroyer.
Tokyo's headquarters initially regarded the Allied landings in the southern Solomons as an episodic affair within its strategic interests in the Pacific. The situation changed when the Americans briefly put Henderson Airfield into operation, for at that point Tokyo realized that if it lost Guadalcanal permanently, the air base there would substantially weaken Japan's position throughout the region.
On September 1, 1942, landing boats from the bowels of the transport ship Betelgeuse, which had just arrived from the base Noumeé in New Caledonia on the orders of Vice Admiral Ghormley, commander of the South Pacific area, began to transport to the shores of Guadalcanal to 390 men from the 6th Battalion of Sea Bees and with them engineer material, two bulldozers and six 127mm coastal guns. Many of the Marines, who were helping with the landing or just watching at the dock, watched with interest as the soldiers, not exactly young and many already with hair streaming gray and exuding the confidence of experienced men, stepped off the boats...
On July 5, 1943, another Tokyo Express sailed from the port of Buin to transport reinforcements to decimated Japanese troops in northern Solomon. On the island of Kolombangara, however, an enemy operational alliance of Rear Admiral Ainsworth's cruisers was already waiting ...
After the Battle of Stalingrad and the subsequent surrender of the 6th Army, led by Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus, the Red Army launched a large and not very well-thought-out offensive, heading to the cities of Kursk, Kharkov, Rostov-on-Don. The Wehrmacht responded with a strategic withdrawal from Kuban and tried, under Manstein's command, to stabilize the entire front. On February 15, 1943, the Red Army conquered Kharkov. In the front line, there was a promontory in the area around Kharkov, which the Red Army was not able to adequately cover. During morning of 22.02.1943 the XXXXVIII. tank corps set out for Kharkov from the south and the II. Waffen SS tank corps bypassed from the southwest. During March, the city was back in German hands. And just during the German offensive, during the defense of the entrusted section of the front, was the baptism of fire of the 1st Czechoslovak Independent Battalion, incorporated at the time in the 3rd Panzer Army Voronezh Front, under the command of Colonel General Golikov.
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