Eighty years ago, during World War II, the United States operated full-scale military operations worldwide while planning how to wage peace once the guns fell silent.
United States President Franklin Roosevelt (FDR), Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Winston Churchill, and Secretary General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Josef Stalin met in Yalta, Crimea, in February 1945 to discuss Europe's postwar reorganization.
They were looking over the horizon. The overwhelming forces they represented were exerting full-bore pressure on the enemy.
The Allied forces—Great Britain, the U.S., and the Soviet Union—were close to capturing the last major cities of the Axis powers—Germany, Italy, and Japan—in World War II. Rome, for example, had already been taken by the Allies in 1944, but the fighting in Italy continued.
At that point, no one knew how the war would end.
The U.S. attacked Berlin in early February with 1500 aerial bombers and hundreds of fighters escorting the force.
The force that went after Berlin was massive and would have been impossible to deploy even a year before. The introduction and deployment of the P-51 Mustang, which had the range to fly with the bombers for the entire mission, altered the European air war.
Iwo Jima
The first week of February '45 also saw the U.S. Navy’s Task Force 58 sail for the tiny island of Iwo Jima, Japan.
In the Pacific, American B-29s had been flying long-range missions from the Marianas Islands since November of the previous year. The islands were 1500 miles from Tokyo. It became apparent that an island with an airbase somewhere in the middle of that expanse was essential.
Damaged bombers needed a haven to land, and the escorting fighters would be based there.
That was Iwo Jima. The Japanese were also aware of that and prepared a grim battle... to the death.
The Task Force carrying the invasion forces arrived near the island on February 18th. The amphibious invasion began the next day. For weeks, the Army Air Forces had been attacking the island, and for several days prior, the Navy pummeled the island with carrier-based combat aircraft. The naval surface ships began massive barrages. However, the enemy was dug in deep.
The U.S. Marines took the island, but at a terrible cost. The casualties were enormous, and for the Japanese defenders, nearly all the force was killed. Only just over 200 came out of a force of over 18,000. The U.S. forces suffered over 20,000 wounded, and 7,000 were killed.
Even as the Marines took control of the island, the SeaBees, the engineers, and the construction troops were expanding the airfield and carving out new runways.
On March 4, 1945, just 2 weeks after the invasion, the first damaged B-29 landed on Iwo Jima. By war's end, a total of 2,451 B-29s made forced landings on the island. This figure represented an estimate of almost 27,000 flight crewmen, many of whom would have perished at sea.
One U.S. B-29 pilot said, "Whenever I land on this island, I thank God for the men who fought for it.”
The war in Europe
The war in Europe ended on May 8, 1945. FDR had died in April about 2 weeks before. Churchill was voted out of office in July, and the war ended for good in September. Stalin retained his grip on the Soviet Union till he died in 1953. Their look over the horizon at Yalta included the creation of the United Nations.
U.S. General Douglas MacArthur said at the September 2, 1945, surrender ceremony, “The issues involving divergent ideals and ideologies have been determined on the battlefields of the world.”
The ceremony ended when MacArthur said, “These proceedings are closed.”
From February of 1945 until the end of the war, the U.S. suffered approximately 100,000 military casualties, with around 25,000 killed in action.
Blue Skies and Tailwinds is presented by SNC, a global aerospace and defense firm, with support from the Wright State University Aviation Science and Technology Program. The series is produced at the Eichelberger Center for Community Voices at WYSO.
