When Japan attacked the United States on December 7, 1941, Americans realized they would be fighting on the largest battlefield in history : the Pacific Ocean. The evolution of this conflict, which started with carrier strikes, made aviation and aircraft carriers the dominant elements of the two majors combatants. Among those deployed by the Americans were elite aviators attached to the Marine Corps from ground-based or embarked units. Fighting in a hostile environment thousands of miles away from home, these men performed courageous exploits daily. Using original source material from the photographic albums and the archives of some of them, here is their history.

The return of Allied forces to the Philippines in the fall of 1944 further throttled Japan's already tenuous pipe line to the rich resources of Malaya and the Netherlands Indies, and with it the last vestige of her ability to meet the logistical requirements of a continuing war. The Battle for Leyte Gulf marked the end of Japan as a naval power, forcing her to adopt the desperation kamikaze tactic against the United States Fleets. The Philippine victories were primarily Army and Navy operations. Marines, comprising only a fraction of the toal forces engaged, played a secondary but significant role in the overall victory. The campaign was important to the Corps in that the Marine aviatiors, who had battled two years for air control over the Solomons, moved into a new role, their first opportunity to test on a large scale the fundamental Marine doctrine of close air support for ground troops in conventional land operations. This test they passed with credit, and Marine flyers contributed materially to the Philippines victory. Lessons learned and techniques perfected in those campaigns form an important chapter in our present-day close air support dotrines.--Foreword.

Americas strategy for complete victory over Nazi Germany called for the utter destruction of major its major industrial areas. These raids were carried out as early as 1942 by hundreds of heavy bombers from the US 8th Air Force, based in England. The descriptions of combat missions flown by B-17 crews over occupied Europe and the Reich are illustrated with official and private pictures taken from the personal albums of pilots, crew members, mechanics and Air Force photographers.