Long war 2 build order full#

He noted that the tunnels were extremely sophisticated. Ww2dbaseMany years later, author James Bradley, son of one of the famous flag raisers (more on the flag raising later), visited the island. May enemy bombs be directed at me, and enemy shells Rear Admiral Toshinosuke Ichimaru, commander of the Special Naval Landing Forces on Iwo Jima wrote the following poem as he arrived at his underground bunker: On Mount Suribachi alone there were 1,000 cave entrances and pill boxes. Some of them had steel doors to protect the artillery pieces within, and nearly all them were connected by a total of 13,000 yards of tunnels. Within Mount Suribachi and underneath the rocks, 750 major defense installations were built to shelter guns, blockhouses, and hospitals. Each defender was expected to die in defense of the homeland, taking 10 enemy soldiers in the process. The aim of the defense of Iwo Jima was to inflict severe casualties on the Allied forces and discourage invasion of the mainland. Ww2dbaseThe defenders under the command of Tadamichi Kuribayashi were ready. Thus, Operation Detachment against Iwo Jima was decided. In the Philippines, the operation on the island of Leyte was pushed up by eight weeks due to lack of significant resistance, which opened up a window for an additional operation.

Finally, the United States could gain an additional airfield for future operations against Japan if Iwo Jima could be captured. Moreover, the Japanese could (and did) launch aerial operations against Saipan from Iwo Jima. First, the Zero fighters based on Iwo Jima physically threatened the bombers secondly, Iwo Jima also acted as an early warning station for Japan, giving Tokyo two hours of warning before the American bombers reached their targets.

The bombers, however, were threatened by Iwo Jima in two ways. Ww2dbaseSince winning Saipan in the previous year, American bomber commander Curtis LeMay had been planning raids on the Japanese home islands from there, and the first of such bombings took place in Nov 1944. Yellow sulfuric mist routinely rises from cracks of earth, and the island distinctly smells like rotten eggs.

Long war 2 build order full#

Iwo is the Japanese word for sulfur, and the island is indeed full of sulfur. Ww2dbaseIwo Jima is a small speck in the Pacific it is 4.5 miles long and at its broadest point 2.5 miles wide.