Osprey's study of the conflict between Japan and the United States during World War II (1939-1945). The island of Betio in the Tarawa Atoll was defended by the elite troops of the Special Naval Landing Force, whose commander, Admiral Shibasaki, boasted that "the Americans could not take Tarawa with a million men in a hundred years." In a pioneering amphibious invasion, the Marines of the 2nd Division set out to prove him wrong, overcoming serious planning errors to fight a 76-hour battle of unprecedented savagery. The cost would be more than 3000 Marine casualties at the hands of a garrison...

One of the decisive battles of World War II (1939-1945) in the Pacific, Iwo Jima was described by Lieutenant-General Holland Smith, Commander Fleet Marine Forces Pacific, as "The most savage and most costly battle in the history of the Marine Corps" - a titanic struggle that eclipsed all that had gone before. Situated halfway along the B-29 Superfortress route to the Japanese mainland, the island was of major strategic importance to the US Air Force, but also to the Japanese, 20,000 of whom were deeply entrenched in the island. This book provides a definitive account of the battle, from its...