53 Days on Starvation Island: How The US Marines Fought on Guadalcanal While Completely Surrounded

53 Days on Starvation Island: How The US Marines Fought on Guadalcanal While Completely Surrounded

On August 20, 1942, twelve Marine dive-bombers and nineteen Marine fighters landed at Guadalcanal. Their mission: defeat the Japanese navy and prevent it from sending more men and supplies to "Starvation Island," as Guadalcanal was nicknamed. The Japanese were turning the remote, jungle-covered mountain in the south Solomon Islands into an air base from which they could attack the supply lines between the U.S. and Australia. The night after the Marines landed and captured the partially completed airfield, the Imperial Navy launched a surprise night attack on the Allied fleet offshore, resulting in the worst defeat the U.S. Navy suffered in the 20th century, which prompted the abandonment of the Marines on Guadalcanal.

The Marines dug in, and waited for help, as those thirty-one pilots and twelve gunners flew against the Japanese, shooting down eighty-three planes in less than two months, while the dive bombers, carried out over thirty attacks on the Japanese fleet. The attacks were led by such figures as Major John L. Smith, a magnetic leader who became America’s top fighter ace for the time; Captain Marion Carl, the Marine Corps’ first ace, and one of the few survivors of his squadron at the Battle of Midway (he would be shot down and forced to make his way back to base through twenty-five miles of Japanese-held jungle; and Major Richard Mangrum, the lawyer-turned-dive-bomber commander whose inexperienced men wrought havoc on the Japanese Navy.

To discuss these stories is today’s guest, John Bruning, author of Fifty-Three Days on Starvation Island.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(1105)

The Boston Tea Party Was a Protest Against the East India Company Being Too Big to Fail

The Boston Tea Party Was a Protest Against the East India Company Being Too Big to Fail

The Boston Tea Party is the most misunderstood event in American history. Every schoolchild learns it was an antitax protest, proof that Americans have always hated paying taxes. But the Tea Act of 17...

23 Heinä 0s

The 1873 Global Financial Meltdown that Cause 20 Years of Deflation and Destroyed 2 Empires

The 1873 Global Financial Meltdown that Cause 20 Years of Deflation and Destroyed 2 Empires

On May 9, 1873, as the Vienna Stock Exchange collapsed and thousands of speculators were wiped out in a single afternoon, young Salbert von Rothschild and two colleagues from the Schey and Goldschmidt...

21 Heinä 0s

Johnny Appleseed's Trees Were for Booze, Not Pies, and He Dressed Like a Hobo for Marketing Purposes

Johnny Appleseed's Trees Were for Booze, Not Pies, and He Dressed Like a Hobo for Marketing Purposes

The Disney version of Johnny Appleseed has a cheerful barefoot man in a tin pot hat scattering apple seeds for grateful pioneers to bake into pies. The real John Chapman collected his seeds for free f...

16 Heinä 53min

All the World’s Empires Became Nations in Less Than 100 Years, and What That Means for the Next 100

All the World’s Empires Became Nations in Less Than 100 Years, and What That Means for the Next 100

For the last 5,000 years, empires ruled the world — Rome administered hundreds of languages across three continents, and the Ottomans governed Christians, Jews, and Muslims under a single legal canopy...

14 Heinä 49min

Five Cambridge Graduates Became Soviet Spies and Built Stalin’s Empire

Five Cambridge Graduates Became Soviet Spies and Built Stalin’s Empire

The Cambridge Five did more damage to the Western Bloc than any other intelligence outfit of the Cold War. They were five Cambridge graduates who drank gin at the right clubs, moved through the right ...

9 Heinä 58min

Washington’s Power Went Beyond President or General – He Was a Full-Fledged Patriarch

Washington’s Power Went Beyond President or General – He Was a Full-Fledged Patriarch

Washington was the perfect man for an impossible moment — aristocratic enough to command the respect of erudite founders like Hamilton and Jefferson, yet only a mid-level Virginia planter who understo...

7 Heinä 54min

Abigail Adams Beat Warren Buffet’s Rate of Return and Ben Franklin Loved Debt: Personal Finance Lessons From Colonial America

Abigail Adams Beat Warren Buffet’s Rate of Return and Ben Franklin Loved Debt: Personal Finance Lessons From Colonial America

Many so-called timeless beliefs about money pitched by financial advisors today (compound interest, real estate, index funds, retiring early) are not timeless pieces of wisdom, but a set of ideas inve...

2 Heinä 54min

The Highs and Lows of Roman Slavery: From the Emperor's Advisor to Suffocating in Sulfur Mines

The Highs and Lows of Roman Slavery: From the Emperor's Advisor to Suffocating in Sulfur Mines

When Julius Caesar conquered Gaul he boasted that he killed a million Gauls and enslaved a million more. This is the truth about the Roman empire: Rome could not function without slavery as it underpi...

30 Kesä 56min

Suosittua kategoriassa Yhteiskunta

olipa-kerran-otsikko
seitseman
sita
siita-on-vaikea-puhua
i-dont-like-mondays
poks
antin-palautepalvelu
hupiklubi
mamma-mia
kaksi-aitia
gogin-ja-janin-maailmanhistoria
kolme-kaannekohtaa
yopuolen-tarinoita-2
aikalisa
ihme-ja-kumma
rss-palmujen-varjoissa
meidan-pitais-puhua
lahko
loukussa
mystista