INDOPACOM Battle Knowledge Centers

This work compares cases of intelligence failure with cases of intelligence success, using in-depth case studies that help us understand for each case what intelligence was available, and what decision makers thought about at the time. It is difficult to conduct such a study because less information is available about intelligence success than there is about failure. This book posits that the types of intelligence garnered in the case of intelligence successes, is in fact significantly different from that available when intelligence fails.

This definitive history reveals each of the major battles that America would fight in the ensuing struggle against Imperial Japan, from the naval clashes at Midway and Coral Sea to the desperate, bloody fighting on Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Each chapter reveals both the horrors of the battle and the Allies' grim yet heroic determination to wrest victory from what often seemed to be certain defeat, offering a valuable guide to the long road to victory in the Pacific. It is the definitive guide to a unique conflict in history, documenting the rise of naval aviation, spectacular amphibious operations, co-ordinated suicide tactics, and the birth of the atomic age.

December 7, 1941 was one of the single most decisive days of World War II (1939-1945) - the day that brought the USA into the fight. Six Japanese aircraft carriers disgorged their full complements in two waves on the superior US Pacific Fleet as it lay slumbering in Pearl Harbor. Depending on opposing viewpoints, the attack was either a brilliant maneuver of audacious strategy, or a piece of unparalleled villainy and deception by a supposedly friendly power. This revised edition, containing the latest research on the events of December 7, 1941, reveals several previously unknown aspects of the attack and dispels key myths that have been built up around the fateful day - a day, as Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared, that would "live in infamy".

This is an invaluable collection of Japanese primary source material pertaining to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Included are monographs by Commander Minoru Genda, the tactical genius behind the attack; letters of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who conceived the operation and pushed it through to acceptance; plus detailed war diaries that cover shipboard activities throughout the voyage to Hawaii, the December 7, 1941, attack itself, and the return voyage home.

Revealing disconnects in the chain of command, this examines the intelligence tools and techniques that have provided warnings of threats to the U.S. over the past sixty years and why they have often failed to prevent attacks.