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Historical Article: Action off the Komandorski Islands, March 1943
Posted on: 2014-04-24 17:08:16 One of the last decisive daylight gunfire naval battles in history By John Dudek @ The Wargamer In the cold, predawn hours of 3 June 1942, dozens of Japanese Diahatsu landing craft made landfall along the wave tossed, rock strewn shore. Hundreds of armed, grim faced, Imperial Japanese infantry splashed through the chilly breaker waters in this, the first enemy invasion of sovereign US territory since the War of 1812. Their troops fanned out from the landing beaches, moving quickly inland to take possession of the nearly uninhabited island. This was but one of two scheduled Japanese amphibious invasion operations. As a result, the American islands of Attu and Kiska along Alaska's Aleutian most westerly chain of islands were now firmly in Japanese hands. Read on... |