The Formidable Japanese Air Force

Japanese Zero

The Japanese Zero was the workhorse of the Imperial Japanese Naval Air Service. Built by Mitsubishi, it was designed to be a carrier-based fighter-bomber plane and was one of the first Japanese warplanes to see action in the Pacific. 

Japanese Navy pilots prepare a ditch around their airbase. Pictured here are crewman stationed in Formosa, Taiwan. 

Fighting reaches the Pacific

USAFFE (United States Armed Forces in the Far East) forces prepare a hastily assembled force of Filipino regulars and a few hundred American officers strung along thousands of miles of coastal areas. This file photo shows one of the heavy guns defending Corregidor Island, just across Manila Bay. The battle for the Philippine islands was the costliest for the Japanese, costing them 40,000  killed and wounded for the first three months alone. 

Tora! Tora! Tora!

Japanese planes composing the first wave of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese Zero was a versatile fighter plane converted to assume the role of a fighter-bomber. 

"A day that will live in infamy..."

".....As we approached Pearl Harbor, huge columns of smoke could be seen arising and I, like the others, assumed the oil tanks had been bombed. On arrival at the dock we learned it was my ship, the West Virginia, from which the smoke emerged. She had been hit hard and was afire. From the landing Ens. Smith staggered up completely covered in oil and he told us the West Virginia had been abandoned and was completely surrounded by oil fires. He also told us of the death of our captain. On the dock was a milling crowd of blue jackets and across the way could be seen a capsized battleship. Smith told me the West Virginia had fired all the ammunition she had ready but an early torpedo had put the ammunition supply out."
                                                                - Lt. Richard Mueller Nixon, USN