Photo history of the Marines in the Solomons, fighting to neutralize the Japanese fortress at Rabaul and paving the way to victory in the Pacific.

In 1940, the threat of war in the Pacific forced the United States to expand its fleet quickly. This effort included reconditioning and recommissioning "four stackers" from the navy's reserve fleet. Built in 1918 to fight German submarines, the USS Ward earned at Pearl Harbor the distinction of firing the first shot in America's war against Japan. In the three years that followed, it was bombed, shelled, strafed, and finally sunk (on December 7, 1944), yet none of her crew of 125 men ever lost a life in combat. Information is drawn from naval records as well as from interviews with surviving crewmen. Appendices provide Ward technical data, a chronology of major events, listings of citations earned in World War II and of amphibious landings, and a roster of personnel.

This volume attempts to analyze the techniques by which the Allies employed their strength to bypass fortified positions and seize weakly defended but strategically important areas, or, in the apt baseball parlance used by General MacArthur, to "hit 'em where they ain't." It is, therefore, a study in strategy and high command as well as in tactics.

A history of the Navy V-12 Program during World War II. The Program provided opportunities for young men whose families had suffered during the difficult times of the Great Depression. These high school graduates were offered the golden opportunity to attend colleges and universities. At the end of the program, more than 60,000 U.S. Navy and USMC officers had entered the armed forces for the war. Many, also entered the U.S. Naval Reserve in the post-ear period, and served in Korea and Vietnam. With photos -- 80+ pages of biographies of individual members of the program. Many include photos then and now.

ACES IN COMBAT The American Aces Speak Eric Hammel Adding to the acclaimed first four volumes of his exciting, in-the-cockpit series, The American Aces Speak, leading combat historian Eric Hammel comes through with yet another engrossing collection of first-person accounts by American fighter aces serving in World War II and the Korean War. As are the four earlier volumes, Aces In Combat is a highly charged excursion into life and death in the air, told by men who excelled at piston-engine and jet-engine aerial combat and lived to tell about it. It is an emotional rendering of what brave airmen felt and how they fought in the now-dim days of America’s living national history. View the Battle of Midway through Lieutenant Jim Gray’s eyes as he must balance the needs of fellow pilots against the needs of his nation. Share the fear with Captain Charlie Sullivan as would-be rescuers deep in the New Guinea jungle attempt to turn him into a blood sacrifice. Crew a Canadian Mosquito night fighter as Lieutenant Lou Luma stalks the wily Hun—and bags an ace—over an airfield deep in Germany. Share Lieutenant Bud Fortier’s and Major George Loving’s grief when, on missions nearly eight years apart, they look on helplessly as trusted wingmen dive to their deaths in treacherous ground-attack runs. And watch anxiously as Captain Tom Maloney hovers between life and death for ten lonely days after stepping on a mine on an enemy-held beach. These are America’s eagles, and the stories they tell are their own, in their very own words.