World War II, or the Second World War, was a global military conflict. It began as the joining of what had initially been two separate conflicts, with the first beginning in Asia in 1937 (the Second Sino-Japanese War) and the other beginning in Europe in 1939 (the German and Soviet invasion of Poland).
The war split the majority of the world's nations into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. It involved the mobilization of over 100 million military personnel, making it the most widespread war in history, and placed the participants in a state of "total war", which erased the distinction between civil and military resources and resulted in the complete activation of a nation's economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities for the purposes of the war effort. Over 70 million people, the majority of them civilians, were killed, making it the deadliest conflict in human history.
The Allies won the war, and as a result, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as the world's leading superpowers. This set the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 45 years. The United Nations was formed in the hope of preventing another such conflict. The self determination spawned by the war accelerated decolonization movements in Asia and Africa, while Europe itself began moving toward integration.
Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima is a historic
photograph taken on February 23, 1945, by
Joe Rosenthal. It depicts five
United States Marines and a
U.S. Navy corpsman raising the
flag of the United States atop
Mount Suribachi during the
Battle of Iwo Jima in
World War II. The photograph was extremely popular, being reprinted in thousands of publications. Later, it became the only photograph to win the
Pulitzer Prize for Photography in the same year as its publication, and ultimately came to be regarded as one of the most significant and recognizable images of the war, and possibly the most reproduced photograph of all time.Of the six men depicted in the picture, three (
Franklin Sousley,
Harlon Block, and
Michael Strank) did not survive the battle; the three survivors (
John Bradley,
Rene Gagnon, and
Ira Hayes) became celebrities upon their identification in the photo. The picture was later used by
Felix de Weldon to sculpt the
USMC War Memorial, located adjacent to
Arlington National Cemetery just outside
Washington, D.C.
The
Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress is a four-engine
heavy bomber aircraft developed for the
U.S. Army Air Corps (USAAC). Competing against
Douglas and
Martin for a contract to build 200 bombers, the Boeing entry outperformed both the other competitors and more than met the Air Corps' expectations. Although Boeing lost the contract due to the prototype's crash, the Air Corps was so impressed with Boeing's design that they ordered thirteen B-17s. The B-17 Flying Fortress went on to enter full-scale production and was considered the first truly mass-produced large aircraft, eventually evolving through numerous
design advancements, from B-17A to G.The B-17 was primarily employed in the daylight precision
strategic bombing campaign of
World War II against
German industrial, civilian and military targets. The
United States Eighth Air Force based in
England and the
Fifteenth Air Force based in
Italy complemented the
RAF Bomber Command's nighttime area bombing in
Operation Pointblank, to help secure air superiority over the cities, factories and battlefields of Western Europe in preparation for
Operation Overlord. This machine was nicknamed the "Flying Fortress" because of its eight machine guns and three cannons.
The
Battle of Tassafaronga, sometimes referred to as the
Fourth Battle of Savo Island or, in Japanese sources, as the
Battle of Lunga Point (ルンガ沖夜戦?), was a nighttime
naval battle that took place November 30, 1942 between
United States (US)
Navy and
Imperial Japanese Navy warships during the
Guadalcanal campaign. The battle took place in
Ironbottom Sound near the Tassafaronga area on
Guadalcanal.In the battle, a US warship force of five cruisers and four destroyers under the command of
Carleton H. Wright attempted to surprise and destroy a Japanese warship force of eight destroyers under the command of
Raizo Tanaka. Tanaka's warships were attempting to deliver food supplies to Japanese forces on Guadalcanal.Using
radar, the US warships opened fire and sank one of the Japanese destroyers. Tanaka and the rest of his ships, however, reacted quickly and launched numerous torpedoes at the US warships. The Japanese torpedoes hit and sank one US cruiser and heavily damaged three others, enabling the rest of Tanaka's force to escape without significant additional damage but also without completing the mission of delivering the food supplies.
