re: On this day in 1945, the U.S. Marines landed on the island of Iwo Jima...

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On this day in 1945, the U.S. Marines landed on the island of Iwo Jima...

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had an uncle that was there on that day

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the American flag being raised on Mt. Kuribayashi.

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uh, son, about that....




jk

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The emergency landings number is highly contested. According to several historians, the majority of B-29 landings there were routine refueling stops.

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Even if the were refueling stops, wouldn't that mean that the island greatly increased the bomber's range. Therefore opening up more targets to attack?

When I was a young boy, paw paw (a WWII marine) told me he knew some of the men that raised the flag on Iwo Jima. I was too young at the time to appreciate that fact but I’ve never forgotten it.

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And one they ultimately didn’t even need.

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A lot of this hindsight should be reserved for Peleliu (a classic example of the USMC's inferiority complex and a pre-Apollo program "Go fever").

Iwo was not a waste. Peleliu was.

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Even if the were refueling stops, wouldn't that mean that the island greatly increased the bomber's range. Therefore opening up more targets to attack?

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Not really. The original intent of the invasion was to neutralize Japanese fighter planes, so the B-29’s would no longer need an escort on their bombing missions. We switched to bombing at night, eliminating the need for escort planes. The refueling justification is a retroactive one.

There are some historians out there that consider the battle a failure because it used Marine resources that could have been used in the Okinawa attacks.

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The original intent of the invasion was to neutralize Japanese fighter planes, so the B-29’s would no longer need an escort on their bombing missions.

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Incorrect. The original intent of the invasion was to give P-51 fighter escorts a launching pad to escort B-29 bombers to Japan. The first such sortie was made on April 7, 1945, when 119 P-51s took off to escort over 100 B-29 Superforts to the Japanese mainland. At that particular time, the Battle of Okinawa was starting up in earnest and the latter island wouldn't be declared secure until June. P-51s and B-29s had been flying into and out of Iwo Jima on missions to Japan for two whole months prior to Okinawa being secured.

Mr George? Last name or first?

Had an uncle who fought the Japs throughout the island hopping campaign & according to my cousin, the only thing he ever said about that campaign was how much he hated the Japs. To the extent he never, post war, ever bought anything made in Japan. My cousin, on his dad's death bed at the age of 64, asked him why he hated the Japs so much.His answer was "Iwo Jima.

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Salute to the greatest generation of men.

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The civil war generation fought a far more deadly conflict. You think men were tougher in the 1940’s than the 1860’s? In calling them that you are misrepresenting them. They were ordinary men who were forced, or volunteered, to do some very dirty and dangerous work. That they did it, makes them the same as almost every generation that preceded them for the last five thousand years. It is the generations SINCE then that are different. And because we are different, we look to that LAST generation who had to actually go to war, as the greatest.

Actually what we call the greatest generation is really the last generation that HAD to carry cold steel into battle. This is what modernity has bought us: for men, the notion that we needn’t risk our lives in battle anymore; for women, the notion that they needn’t risk their lives in childbirth any more. And with this wonderful shedding of risk, has come a loss of higher meaning in our lives, and all the pathos of modern aimlessness and depression.