Aircraft Carriers

On the Assualt

        Following the American Victories at Coral Sea and Midway Island the American Navy was now on the offensive. The United States was going to use the strategy of island hopping, only capturing islands that were strategically important, and advancing past others, cutting off their supplies.(1) Guadalcanal was going to be the first of a series of Islands that the United States was going to take from the now hurting Imperial Japanese Navy. If the Marines were going to be successful in taking Guadalcanal they first needed to soften up the Japanese defenses that had been recently created. One of the best ways to break down these defenses was aerial bombing attacks. The dive bombing planes that had been previously used to bomb ships were now used to attack key Japanese positions on the island of Guadalcanal. In addition to attacking the island, the fighters destroyed incoming Japanese ships carrying supplies and reinforcements. The fighters from the aircraft carriers successfully cut off the Japanese supply lines and starved the soldiers of supplies and food.(2)

       With the help of Aircraft Carrier Task Forces, the Islands fell one after another in the Pacific, starting with Guadalcanal. By September of 1944 The Marshall Islands, Saipan, Guam, Peleliu and many other islands had fallen. During one battle in the Marshall Islands that came to be know as “The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot” carrier based fighter planes shot down 243 Japanese Zeros and destroying 3 aircraft carriers while only suffering 29 casualties.(3) The American forces were repelling the Japanese forces, very successfully , back to the mainland of Japan. With the assistance of the aircraft carrier and the carrier task forces, The Marines had now recaptured a large portion of the Pacific. By early 1945 The Philippines and Iwo Jima had been captured by U.S. forces. By then runways had been created on these newly captured islands that were close enough to the Japanese mainland that planes could deploy from. This caused the aircraft carriers to no longer be as crucial. The United States began bombing Japan into submission and eventually dropped the atomic bomb, essentially eliminating the chance of a full scale invasion of the Japanese mainland. It was only a matter of time before the Japanese would surrender.