World War 2 Battles

Many famous battles took place during World War2 both in the Pacific and European theaters. Both Allied and Axis troops had numerous successful battles and of course losses. Below is a few of the more known battles that took place.

Battle of Bulge:
This was pretty much the last major offensive strike the Germans launched. It came close to succeeding because it caught the Allied troops off guard.

The actual name of the battle is the Ardennes Offensive and it took place from Dec 16, 1944 to Jan 1945. The Germans named this offensive Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein (Operation Watch on the Rhine) but was officially named the Battle of the Ardennes. Over the years, people have come to know the battle as the Battle of the Bulge.

On the 16th of December 1944 at 5:30am, the Germans began that assault with a massive artillery barrage on the Allied troops facing the Sixth SS Panzer Army. By 08:00 all three German armies involved on the offensive had attacked through across the Ardennes. In the north, the Sixth SS Panzer Army assaulted the Losheim Gap and the Elsenborn Ridge in an effort to break through to Liège. In the center the Fifth Panzer Army attacked towards Bastogne and St. Vith, both road junctions held great strategic importance. And in the south, the Seventh Army pushed towards Luxembourg in their efforts to secure the flank from any Allied response attacks.

It was a grand plan but the Allies were able to hold off the German assault. The official U.S. account of casualties lists 80,987. The British losses totaled 1,400. On the German side, the official figure for the battle was 84,834 casualties.

After the Germans defeat with their grand Battle of Bulge offensive plan, the Allied pressed the winning advantage and in early February launched an attack all along the Western front. This was the break out from the Ardennes the beginning of the end for the Germans.

The Battle of Midway:
The battle of Midway was a major naval battle between the Japanese Navy and the US Navy which turned out to be a decisive victory for the Americans. This was one of the most important battles of the Pacific campaign because it ended up permanently weakening the Imperial Japanese Navy and they were never able to reconstitute their naval forces after the loss.

The Japanese Navy had planned to lure America's remaining carriers into a trap and sink them all of them in once last decisive battle. They also wanted to take and occupy the Midway Atoll to stage the for preparatory attacks against Fiji and Samoa, and eventually Hawaii.

The Midway operation, like the attack on Pearl Harbor, was not part of a campaign for the conquest of the United States, but was aimed at its elimination as a strategic Pacific power, thereby giving Japan a free hand in establishing its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. It was also hoped another defeat would force the U.S. to negotiate an end to the Pacific War with conditions favorable for Japan.

When it was all over, 4 of the 6 remaining Japanese aircraft carriers had been destroyed. The battle of Midway was considered the turning point of the war in the Pacific. The decimation of the Japanese Naval fleet sealed their fate.

Just two months after the battle of Midway, the U.S. took the offensive and attacked Guadalcanal, catching the Japanese totally off guard. The Secured Allied supply lines to Australia and into Indian Ocean.

A fantastic movie was made about the Midway battle with Charlton Heston and James Fonda and to this day even though I have seen it at least 5 times, when ever it comes on, I can't help but watch it again.