Battleships Burning at Pearl Harbor: December 7, 1941 the Japanese military launched a surprise attack on the US Naval base at Pearl Harbor. The attack sank or damaged over 14 naval vessels and killed over 2,300 U.S. Military personel. (Photo Credit: Corbis )
Just before 8 a.m. on December 7, 1941, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii. The barrage lasted just two hours, but it was devastating: The Japanese managed to destroy nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight enormous battleships, and almost 200 airplanes. More than 2,000 Americans soldiers and sailors died in the attack, and another 1,000 were wounded. The day after the assault, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan; Congress approved his declaration with just one dissenting vote. Three days later, Japanese allies Germany and Italy also declared war on the United States, and again Congress reciprocated. More than two years into the conflict, America had finally joined World War II
664. Photograph. “MM-5-44-7075”; “Signal Corps photo. Italy. The flag which flew above the White House on Dec. 7, 1941, is lowered and folded in Independence Day retreat ceremony in Piazza Venezia, Rome. Photo by Bell.” Rome, Italy. 4 July 1944
Lt Col Doolittle on Board USS Hornet and Capt Mitscher with USAAF April 1942
Swimming through a rough surf swept by machine gun and mortar fire, Coast Guardsman carried a guide line to the beach of Normandy on D-Day and survived heavy Nazi fire that mowed down many soldiers following the line to the beach. This photo depicts how the soldier wrapped the end of the line around his middle and served as a "human anchor" in the midst of enemy fire. Of the 36 invaders who attempted to follow the line ashore, only six made it. Meanwhile, the ramp of the Coast Guard-manned LCI had been shot away by shellfire
USS Comfort, AH-6, patient capacity 400, entered service in May 44, US Navy-built and operated Hospital Ship, off Los Angeles Harbor, California.
“Slim” Russell is pictured standing on the wing of an F6F Grumman Hellcat Navy fighter he flew shortly after World War II. Photo provided
“At Guadalcanal, I was almost a war hero to the Japanese,” Allard Guy “Slim” Russell of Sarasota, Fla. said with a smile. “I dropped my first 500-pound bomb on the 75-mile long, 25-mile-wide enemy-held South Pacific island.
“I came down in my (Douglas Dauntless) SBD dive bomber in a screaming, 70-degree dive from 12,000 feet at 230 knots and let my bomb go. I missed the whole damn island, and that’s a true story.
“My radio man told me as we were flying away, ‘Sir, your bomb was 200 yards off the beach in the water.’ I couldn’t have cared less. They were shooting at us, and I was just glad to have survived the attack.”
The 84-year-old retired Navy captain comes from a long line of warriors. His father, 2nd Lt. Arthur R. Russell, Company M, 26th Infantry Regiment, 1st Division, received the Silver Star for valor while fighting in the trenches in Western Europe during World War I. He joined the service as an 18-year-old private. By war’s end, after participating in seven major battles on the Western Front, he was discharged as a 2nd lieutenant.
One of the most brutal battles of World War II took place on a tiny Pacific Island known as Guadalcanal. The military battle last six months and took over 7,000 American lives.
Every year in mid-December, WWII veterans and ambassadors from Belgium and Luxembourg, gather at Arlington National Cemetery to honor the 19,000 American Soldiers fallen during the Battle of the Bulge.
Ambassadors and veterans each laid a wreath at the battle’s memorial and at the Tomb of the Unknowns
303rd Bomb GroupTHE 303RD BOMBARDMENT GROUP (H) was activated at Gowen Field, Boise, Idaho, on 3 February, 1942, and lost no time in getting into training for combat
MacArthur, Douglas; Wainwright, Jonathan -- Photograph:U.S. Generals Douglas MacArthur, left, and Jonathan Wainwright watch as Japanese General Umezu Yoshijiro signs a surrender document aboard the USS Missouri on September 2, 1945, ending World War II in the Pacific
Germany surrenders unconditionally to the Allies at Reims
On this day in 1945, the German High Command, in the person of General Alfred Jodl, signs the unconditional surrender of all German forces, East and West, at Reims, in northwestern France.
At first, General Jodl hoped to limit the terms of German surrender to only those forces still fighting the Western Allies. But General Dwight Eisenhower demanded complete surrender of all German forces, those fighting in the East as well as in the West. If this demand was not met, Eisenhower was prepared to seal off the Western front, preventing Germans from fleeing to the West in order to surrender, thereby leaving them in the hands of the enveloping Soviet forces. Jodl radioed Grand Admiral Karl Donitz, Hitler’s successor, with the terms. Donitz ordered him to sign. So with Russian General Ivan Susloparov and French General Francois Sevez signing as witnesses, and General Walter Bedell Smith, Ike’s chief of staff, signing for the Allied Expeditionary Force, Germany was-at least on paper-defeated. Fighting would still go on in the East for almost another day. But the war in the West was over.
Since General Susloparov did not have explicit permission from Soviet Premier Stalin to sign the surrender papers, even as a witness, he was quickly hustled back East-into the hands of the Soviet secret police, never to be heard from again. Alfred Jodl, who was wounded in the assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20, 1944, would be found guilty of war crimes (which included the shooting of hostages) at Nuremberg and hanged on October 16, 1946-then granted a pardon, posthumously, in 1953, after a German appeals court found Jodl not guilty of breaking international law.