Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway was a decisive naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that took place between 4 and 7 June 1942, only six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea. The United States Navy under Admirals Chester Nimitz, Frank Jack Fletcher, Raymond A. Spruance defeated an attacking fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy under Admirals Isoroku Yamamoto, Chūichi Nagumo, Nobutake Kondō near Midway Atoll, inflicting devastating damage on the Japanese fleet that proved irreparable. Military historian John Keegan called it "the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare"; the Japanese operation, like the earlier attack on Pearl Harbor, sought to eliminate the United States as a strategic power in the Pacific, thereby giving Japan a free hand in establishing its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The Japanese hoped another demoralizing defeat would force the U. S. to capitulate in the Pacific War and thus ensure Japanese dominance in the Pacific.
Luring the American aircraft carriers into a trap and occupying Midway was part of an overall "barrier" strategy to extend Japan's defensive perimeter, in response to the Doolittle air raid on Tokyo. This operation was considered preparatory for further attacks against Fiji and Hawaii itself; the plan was handicapped by faulty Japanese assumptions of the American reaction and poor initial dispositions. Most American cryptographers were able to determine the date and location of the planned attack, enabling the forewarned U. S. Navy to prepare its own ambush. Four Japanese and three American aircraft carriers participated in the battle; the four Japanese fleet carriers—Akagi, Kaga, Sōryū and Hiryū, part of the six-carrier force that had attacked Pearl Harbor six months earlier—were all sunk, as was the heavy cruiser Mikuma. The U. S. lost a destroyer. After Midway and the exhausting attrition of the Solomon Islands campaign, Japan's capacity to replace its losses in materiel and men became insufficient to cope with mounting casualties, while the United States' massive industrial and training capabilities made losses far easier to replace.
The Battle of Midway, along with the Guadalcanal Campaign, is considered a turning point in the Pacific War. After expanding the war in the Pacific to include Western outposts, the Japanese Empire had attained its initial strategic goals taking the Philippines, Malaya and the Dutch East Indies; because of this, preliminary planning for a second phase of operations commenced as early as January 1942. There were strategic disagreements between the Imperial Army and Imperial Navy, infighting between the Navy's GHQ and Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's Combined Fleet, a follow-up strategy was not formed until April 1942. Admiral Yamamoto succeeded in winning the bureaucratic struggle with a thinly veiled threat to resign, after which his plan for the Central Pacific was adopted. Yamamoto's primary strategic goal was the elimination of America's carrier forces, which he regarded as the principal threat to the overall Pacific campaign; this concern was acutely heightened by the Doolittle Raid on 18 April 1942, in which 16 U.
S. Army Air Forces B-25 Mitchell bombers launched from USS Hornet bombed targets in Tokyo and several other Japanese cities; the raid, while militarily insignificant, was a shock to the Japanese and showed the existence of a gap in the defenses around the Japanese home islands as well as the accessibility of Japanese territory to American bombers. This, other successful hit-and-run raids by American carriers in the South Pacific, showed that they were still a threat, although reluctant to be drawn into an all-out battle. Yamamoto reasoned that another air attack on the main U. S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor would induce all of the American fleet to sail out to fight, including the carriers. However, considering the increased strength of American land-based air power on the Hawaiian Islands since the 7 December attack the previous year, he judged that it was now too risky to attack Pearl Harbor directly. Instead, Yamamoto selected Midway, a tiny atoll at the extreme northwest end of the Hawaiian Island chain 1,300 miles from Oahu.
This meant that Midway was outside the effective range of all of the American aircraft stationed on the main Hawaiian islands. Midway was not important in the larger scheme of Japan's intentions, but the Japanese felt the Americans would consider Midway a vital outpost of Pearl Harbor and would therefore be compelled to defend it vigorously; the U. S. did consider Midway vital: after the battle, establishment of a U. S. submarine base on Midway allowed submarines operating from Pearl Harbor to refuel and re-provision, extending their radius of operations by 1,200 miles. In addition to serving as a seaplane base, Midway's airstrips served as a forward staging point for bomber attacks on Wake Island. Typical of Japanese naval planning during World War II, Yamamoto's battle plan for taking Midway was exceedingly complex, it required the careful and timely coordination of multiple battle groups over hundreds of miles of open sea. His design was predicated on optimistic intelligence suggesting that USS Enterprise and USS Hornet, forming Task Force 16, were the only carriers available to the U.
S. Pacific Fleet. During the Battle of the Coral Sea one month earlier, USS Lexington had been sunk and USS Yorktown suffered considerable damage such that the Japanese believed she too had
Anti-submarine warfare
Anti-submarine warfare is a branch of underwater warfare that uses surface warships, aircraft, or other submarines to find and deter, damage, or destroy enemy submarines. Successful anti-submarine warfare depends on a mix of sensor and weapon technology and experience. Sophisticated sonar equipment for first detecting classifying and tracking the target submarine is a key element of ASW. To destroy submarines, both torpedos and naval mines are used, launched from air and underwater platforms. ASW involves protecting friendly ships; the first attacks on a ship by an underwater vehicle are believed to have been during the American Revolutionary War, using what would now be called a naval mine but what was called a torpedo, though various attempts to build submarines had been made before this. The first self-propelled torpedo was launched from surface craft; the first submarine with a torpedo was Nordenfelt I built in 1884-1885, though it had been proposed earlier. By the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War all the large navies except the German had acquired submarines.
In 1904 all still defined the submarine as an experimental vessel and did not put it into operational use. There were no means to detect submerged U-boats, attacks on them were limited at first to efforts to damage their periscopes with hammers; the Royal Navy torpedo establishment, HMS Vernon, studied explosive grapnel sweeps. A similar approach featured a string of 70 lb charges on a floating cable, fired electrically. Tried were dropping 18.5 lb hand-thrown guncotton bombs. The Lance Bomb was developed, also. Firing Lyddite shells, or using trench mortars, was tried. Use of nets to ensnare U-boats was examined, as was a destroyer, HMS Starfish, fitted with a spar torpedo. To attack at set depths, aircraft bombs were attached to lanyards. Problems with the lanyards tangling and failing to function led to the development of a chemical pellet trigger as the Type B; these were effective at a distance of around 20 ft. The best concept arose in a 1913 RN Torpedo School report, describing a device intended for countermining, a "dropping mine".
At Admiral John Jellicoe's request, the standard Mark II mine was fitted with a hydrostatic pistol preset for 45 ft firing, to be launched from a stern platform. Weighing 1,150 lb, effective at 100 ft, the "cruiser mine" was a potential hazard to the dropping ship. During the First World War, submarines were a major threat, they operated in North Sea, Black Sea and Mediterranean as well as the North Atlantic. They had been limited to calm and protected waters; the vessels used to combat them were a range of fast surface ships using guns and good luck. They relied on the fact a submarine of the day was on the surface for a range of reasons, such as charging batteries or crossing long distances; the first approach to protect warships was chainlink nets strung from the sides of battleships, as defense against torpedoes. Nets were deployed across the mouth of a harbour or naval base to stop submarines entering or to stop torpedoes of the Whitehead type fired against ships. British warships were fitted with a ram with which to sink submarines, U-15 was thus sunk in August 1914.
RN in June 1915 began operational trials of the Type D depth charge, with a 300 lb charge of TNT and a hydrostatic pistol, firing at either 40 or 80 ft, believed to be effective at a distance of 140 ft. In July 1915, the British Admiralty set up the Board of Invention and Research to evaluate suggestions from the public as well as carrying out their own investigations; some 14,000 suggestions were received about combating submarines. In December 1916, the RN set up its own Anti-Submarine Division but relations with the BIR were poor. After 1917 most ASW work was carried out by ASD. In the U. S. a Naval Consulting Board was set up in 1915 to evaluate ideas. After American entry into the war in 1917, they encouraged work on submarine detection; the U. S. National Research Council, a civilian organization, brought in British and French experts on underwater sound to a meeting with their American counterparts in June 1917. In October 1918, there was a meeting in Paris on "supersonics", a term used for echo-ranging, but the technique was still in research by the end of the war.
The first recorded sinking of a submarine by depth charge was U-68, sunk by Q-ship HMS Farnborough off Kerry, Ireland 22 March 1916. By early 1917, the Royal Navy had developed indicator loops which consisted of long lengths of cables lain on the seabed to detect the magnetic field of submarines as they passed overhead. At this stage they were used in conjunction with controlled mines which could be detonated from a shore station once a'swing' had been detected on the indicator loop galvanometer. Indicator loops used with controlled mining were known as'guard loops'. By July 1917, depth charges had developed to the extent that settings of between 50–200 ft were possible; this design would remain unchanged through
Interwar period
In the context of the history of the 20th century, the interwar period was the period between the end of the First World War in November 1918 and the beginning of the Second World War in September 1939. Despite the short period of time, this period represented an era of significant changes worldwide. Petroleum and associated mechanisation expanded leading to the Roaring Twenties, a period of economic prosperity and growth for the middle class in North America and many other parts of the world. Automobiles, electric lighting, radio broadcasts and more became commonplace among populations in the developed world; the indulgences of this era subsequently were followed by the Great Depression, an unprecedented worldwide economic downturn which damaged many of the world's largest economies. Politically, this era coincided with the rise of communism, starting in Russia with the October Revolution and Russian Civil War, at the end of World War I, ended with the rise of fascism in Germany and in Italy.
China was in the midst of long period of instability and civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China. The Empires of Britain and others faced challenges as imperialism was viewed negatively in Europe, independence movements in British India, French Indochina and other regions gained momentum; the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian and German empires were dismantled, while the Ottoman and German colonies were redistributed among the Allies, chiefly the United Kingdom and France. The western parts of the Russian Empire, Finland, Latvia and Poland became independent nations in their own right, while Bessarabia chose to reunify with Romania; the Russian communists managed to regain control of the other East Slavic states, Central Asia, the Caucasus, forming the Soviet Union. Ireland was partitioned between the independent Irish Free State and the British-controlled Northern Ireland. In the Middle East and Iraq gained independence. During the Great Depression, Latin American countries nationalised many foreign companies in a bid to strengthen their own economies.
The territorial ambitions of the Soviets, Japan and Germany led to the expansion of their empires, setting the stage for the subsequent World War. The Interwar Period is accepted to have ended in September 1939, with the invasion of Poland and the beginning of World War II. However, in Asia, it is considered to have ended with the Marco Polo Bridge Incident and the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Following the Armistice of Compiègne on November 11th, 1918 that ended World War I, the years 1918–24 were marked by turmoil as the Russian Civil War continued to rage on, Eastern Europe struggled to recover from the devastation of the First World War and the destabilising effects of not just the collapse of the Russian Empire, but the destruction of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, as well. There were numerous new nations in Eastern Europe, some small in size, such as Lithuania or Latvia, some large and vast, such as Poland and Yugoslavia; the United States gained dominance in world finance.
Thus, when Germany could no longer afford war reparations to Britain and other former members of the Entente, the Americans came up with the Dawes Plan and Wall Street invested in Germany, which repaid its reparations to nations that, in turn, used the dollars to pay off their war debts to Washington. By the middle of the decade, prosperity was widespread, with the second half of the decade known as the Roaring Twenties; the important stages of interwar diplomacy and international relations included resolutions of wartime issues, such as reparations owed by Germany and boundaries. Disarmament was a popular public policy. However, the League of Nations played little role in this effort, with the United States and Britain taking the lead. U. S. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes sponsored the Washington Naval Conference of 1921 in determining how many capital ships each major country was allowed; the new allocations were followed and there were no naval races in the 1920s. Britain played a leading role in the 1927 Geneva Naval Conference and the 1930 London Conference that led to the London Naval Treaty, which added cruisers and submarines to the list of ship allocations.
However the refusal of Japan, Germany and the USSR to go along with this led to the meaningless Second London Naval Treaty of 1936. Naval disarmament had collapsed and the issue became rearmi
United States Army Center of Military History
The United States Army Center of Military History is a directorate within TRADOC. The Institute of Heraldry remains within the Office of the Administrative Assistant to the Secretary of the Army; the center is responsible for the appropriate use of history and military records throughout the United States Army. Traditionally, this mission has meant recording the official history of the army in both peace and war, while advising the army staff on historical matters. CMH is the flagship organization leading the Army Historical Program. CMH is behind the National Museum of the U. S. Army, under construction at Fort Belvoir and projected to open in 2020; the center traces its lineage back to historians under the Secretary of War who compiled the Official Records of the Rebellion, an extensive history of the American Civil War begun in 1874. A similar work on World War I was prepared by the Historical Section of the Army War College; the modern organization of the army's historical efforts dates from the creation of the General Staff historical branch in July 1943 and the subsequent gathering of a team of historians, translators and cartographers to record the official history of World War II.
They began publication of the United States Army in World War II series, which numbers 78 volumes, in 1946. Since the Center has produced detailed series on the Army's role in the Korean and Vietnam Wars and has begun a series on the U. S. Army in the Cold War; these works are supplemented by other publications on a mix of topics. Since its formation, the center has provided historical support to the Army Secretariat and Staff, contributing background information for decision making, staff actions, command information programs, public statements by army officials, it has expanded its role in the areas of military history education, the management of the army's museum system, the introduction of automated data-retrieval systems. The center's work with army schools ensures that the study of history is a part of the training of officers and noncommissioned officers. Much of this educational work is performed in army museums. Under the direction of the chief of military history and his principal adviser, the army's chief historian, CMH's staff is involved in some 50 major writing projects.
Many of these efforts involve new research that ranges from traditional studies in operational and administrative history to the examination of such areas as procurement and the global war on terror. Those works under way and projected are described in the Army Historical Program, an annual report to the Chief of Staff on the Army's historical activities. All center publications are listed in the catalog Publications of the United States Army Center of Military History, which explains how to access them. In addition, army historians maintain the organizational history of army units, allowing the center to provide units of the Regular Army, the Army National Guard, the Army Reserve with certificates of their lineage and honors and other historical material concerning their organizations; the center determines the official designations for army units and works with the army staff during force reorganizations to preserve units with significant histories, as well as unit properties and related historical artifacts.
CMH serves as a clearinghouse for the oral history programs in the army at all levels of command. It conducts and preserves its own oral history collections, including those from the Vietnam War, Desert Storm, the many recent contingency operations. In addition, the center's end-of-tour interviews within the Army Secretariat and Staff provide a basis for its annual histories of the Department of the Army; as tangible representations of the service's mission, military artifacts and art enhance the soldier's understanding of the profession of arms. CMH manages a system of more than 120 army museums and their holdings, encompassing some 450,000 artifacts and 15,000 works of military art; the Center provides professional museum training, staff assistance visits, teams of combat artists such as those deployed under the Vietnam Combat Artists Program, general museum support throughout the army. Current projects include the establishment of a National Museum of the United States Army at Fort Belvoir, a complementary Army Heritage and Educational Center at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania.
The Chief of Military History is responsible for ensuring the appropriate use of military history in the teaching of strategy, tactics and administration. This mission includes a requirement that military leaders at all levels be aware of the value of history in advancing military professionalism. To that end, the center holds workshop. In this effort, the chief of military history is assisted by a historical advisory committee that includes leading academic historians and representatives of the army school system. Staff rides enable military leaders to retrace the course of a battle on the ground, deepening their understanding of the recurring fundamentals of military operations; as one of the army's major teaching devices, staff rides are dependent on a careful knowledge of military history. Center historians lead rides directed by the Secretary of the Army and the Chief of Staff and attended by senior members of the army Staff, it administers the army's Command History Program, to provide historical support to army organizations worldwide.
In addition, since the first Persia
Imperial Japanese Navy
The Imperial Japanese Navy was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1868 until 1945, when it was dissolved following Japan's surrender in World War II. The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force was formed after the dissolution of the IJN; the Imperial Japanese Navy was the third largest navy in the world by 1920, behind the Royal Navy and the United States Navy. It was supported by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service for aircraft and airstrike operation from the fleet, it was the primary opponent of the Western Allies in the Pacific War. The origins of the Imperial Japanese Navy go back to early interactions with nations on the Asian continent, beginning in the early medieval period and reaching a peak of activity during the 16th and 17th centuries at a time of cultural exchange with European powers during the Age of Discovery. After two centuries of stagnation during the country's ensuing seclusion policy under the shōgun of the Edo period, Japan's navy was comparatively backward when the country was forced open to trade by American intervention in 1854.
This led to the Meiji Restoration. Accompanying the re-ascendance of the Emperor came a period of frantic modernization and industrialization; the navy had several successes, sometimes against much more powerful enemies such as in the Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, before being destroyed in World War II. Japan has a long history of naval interaction with the Asian continent, involving transportation of troops between Korea and Japan, starting at least with the beginning of the Kofun period in the 3rd century. Following the attempts at Mongol invasions of Japan by Kubilai Khan in 1274 and 1281, Japanese wakō became active in plundering the coast of China. Japan undertook major naval building efforts in the 16th century, during the Warring States period, when feudal rulers vying for supremacy built vast coastal navies of several hundred ships. Around that time Japan may have developed one of the first ironclad warships when Oda Nobunaga, a daimyō, had six iron-covered Oatakebune made in 1576.
In 1588 Toyotomi Hideyoshi issued a ban on Wakō piracy. Japan built her first large ocean-going warships in the beginning of the 17th century, following contacts with the Western nations during the Nanban trade period. In 1613, the daimyō of Sendai, in agreement with the Tokugawa Bakufu, built Date Maru, a 500-ton galleon-type ship that transported the Japanese embassy of Hasekura Tsunenaga to the Americas, which continued to Europe. From 1604 the Bakufu commissioned about 350 Red seal ships armed and incorporating some Western technologies for Southeast Asian trade. For more than 200 years, beginning in the 1640s, the Japanese policy of seclusion forbade contacts with the outside world and prohibited the construction of ocean-going ships on pain of death. Contacts were maintained, with the Dutch through the port of Nagasaki, the Chinese through Nagasaki and the Ryukyus and Korea through intermediaries with Tsushima; the study of Western sciences, called "rangaku" through the Dutch enclave of Dejima in Nagasaki led to the transfer of knowledge related to the Western technological and scientific revolution which allowed Japan to remain aware of naval sciences, such as cartography and mechanical sciences.
Seclusion, led to loss of any naval and maritime traditions the nation possessed. Apart from Dutch trade ships no other Western vessels were allowed to enter Japanese ports. A notable exception was during the Napoleonic wars. Frictions with foreign ships, started from the beginning of the 19th century; the Nagasaki Harbour Incident involving HMS Phaeton in 1808, other subsequent incidents in the following decades, led the shogunate to enact an Edict to Repel Foreign Vessels. Western ships, which were increasing their presence around Japan due to whaling and the trade with China, began to challenge the seclusion policy; the Morrison Incident in 1837 and news of China's defeat during the Opium War led the shogunate to repeal the law to execute foreigners, instead to adopt the Order for the Provision of Firewood and Water. The shogunate began to strengthen the nation's coastal defenses. Many Japanese realized that traditional ways would not be sufficient to repel further intrusions, western knowledge was utilized through the Dutch at Dejima to reinforce Japan's capability to repel the foreigners.
Numerous attempts to open Japan ended in failure, in part to Japanese resistance, until the early 1850s. During 1853 and 1854, American warships under the command of Commodore Matthew Perry entered Edo Bay and made demonstrations of force requesting trade negotiations. After two hundred years of seclusion, the 1854 Convention of Kanagawa led to the opening of Japan to international trade and interaction; this was soon followed by treaties with other powers. As soon as Japan opened up to foreign influences, the Tokugawa shogunate recognized the vulnerability of the country from the sea and initiated an active policy of assimilation and adoption of Western naval technologies. In 1855, with Dutch assistance, the shogunate acquired its first steam warship, Kankō Maru, began using it for training, establishing a Naval Training Center at Nagasaki. Samurai such as the future Admiral Enomoto Takeaki were sent by the shogunate to study in the Netherlands for several years. In 1859 the
Guam
Guam is an unincorporated and organized territory of the United States in Micronesia in the western Pacific Ocean. It is the easternmost point and territory of the United States, along with the Northern Mariana Islands; the capital city of Guam is Hagåtña and the most populous city is Dededo. The inhabitants of Guam are called Guamanians, they are American citizens by birth. Indigenous Guamanians are the Chamorros, who are related to other Austronesian natives of Eastern Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan. Guam has been a member of the Pacific Community since 1983. In 2016, 162,742 people resided on Guam. Guam has a population density of 775 per square mile. In Oceania, it is the largest and southernmost of the Mariana Islands and the largest island in Micronesia. Among its municipalities, Mongmong-Toto-Maite has the highest population density at 3,691 per square mile, whereas Inarajan and Umatac have the lowest density at 119 per square mile; the highest point is Mount Lamlam at 1,332 feet above sea level.
Since the 1960s, the economy has been supported by two industries: tourism and the United States Armed Forces. The indigenous Chamorros settled the island 4,000 years ago. Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, while in the service of Spain, was the first European to visit the island, on March 6, 1521. Guam was colonized by Spain in 1668 with settlers, including Diego Luis de San Vitores, a Catholic Jesuit missionary. Between the 16th century and the 18th century, Guam was an important stopover for the Spanish Manila Galleons. During the Spanish–American War, the United States captured Guam on June 21, 1898. Under the Treaty of Paris, Spain ceded Guam to the United States on December 10, 1898. Guam is among the 17 non-self-governing territories listed by the United Nations. Before World War II, there were five American jurisdictions in the Pacific Ocean: Guam and Wake Island in Micronesia, American Samoa and Hawaii in Polynesia, the Philippines. On December 7, 1941, hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Guam was captured by the Japanese, who occupied the island for two and a half years.
During the occupation, Guamanians were subjected to beheadings, forced labor and torture. American forces recaptured the island on July 21, 1944. An unofficial but used territorial motto is "Where America's Day Begins", which refers to the island's close proximity to the international date line; the original inhabitants of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands were the Chamorro people, who are believed to be descendants of Austronesian people originating from Southeast Asia as early as 2000 BC. The ancient Chamorro society had four classes: chamorri, matua and mana'chang; the matua were located in the coastal villages, which meant they had the best access to fishing grounds, whereas the mana'chang were located in the interior of the island. Matua and mana'chang communicated with each other, matua used achaot as intermediaries. There were "makåhna" or "kakahna", shamans with magical powers and "Suruhånu" or "Suruhåna" healers who use different kinds of plants and natural materials to make medicine.
Belief in spirits of ancient Chamorros called "Taotao mo'na" still persists as a remnant of pre-European culture. It is believed that "Suruhånu" or "Suruhåna" are the only ones who can safely harvest plants and other natural materials from their homes or "hålomtåno" without incurring the wrath of the "Taotao mo'na", their society was organized along matrilineal clans. Latte stones are stone pillars; the latte-stone was used as a foundation. Latte stones consist of a base shaped from limestone called the haligi and with a capstone, or tåsa, made either from a large brain coral or limestone, placed on top. A possible source for these stones, the Rota Latte Stone Quarry, was discovered in 1925 on Rota; the first European to travel to Guam was Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan, sailing for the King of Spain, when he sighted the island on March 6, 1521, during his fleet's circumnavigation of the globe. When Magellan arrived on Guam, he was greeted by hundreds of small outrigger canoes that appeared to be flying over the water, due to their considerable speed.
These outrigger canoes were called Proas, resulted in Magellan naming Guam Islas de las Velas Latinas. Antonio Pigafetta said that the name was "Island of Sails", but he writes that the inhabitants "entered the ships and stole whatever they could lay their hands on", including "the small boat, fastened to the poop of the flagship." "Those people are poor, but ingenious and thievish, on account of which we called those three islands Islas de los Ladrones." Despite Magellan's visit, Guam was not claimed by Spain until January 26, 1565, by General Miguel López de Legazpi. From 1565 to 1815, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, the only Spanish outposts in the Pacific Ocean east of the Philippines, were an important resting stop for the Manila galleons, a fleet that covered the Pacific trade route between Acapulco and Manila. To protect these Pacific fleets, Spain built several defensive structures that still stand today, such as Fort Nuestra Señora de la Soledad in Umatac. Guam is the biggest single segment of Micronesia, the largest islands between the island of Kyushu, New Guinea, the Philippines, the Hawaiian Islands.
Spanish colonization commenced on June 15, 1
Singapore strategy
The Singapore strategy was a naval defence policy of the British Empire that evolved in a series of war plans from 1919 to 1941. It aimed to deter aggression by the Empire of Japan by providing for a base for a fleet of the Royal Navy in the Far East, able to intercept and defeat a Japanese force heading south towards India or Australia. To be effective it required a well-equipped base; the planners envisaged that a war with Japan would have three phases: while the garrison of Singapore defended the fortress, the fleet would make its way from home waters to Singapore, sally to relieve or recapture Hong Kong, blockade the Japanese home islands to force Japan to accept terms. The idea of invading Japan was rejected as impractical, but British planners did not expect that the Japanese would willingly fight a decisive naval battle against the odds. Aware of the impact of a blockade on an island nation at the heart of a maritime empire, they felt that economic pressure would suffice; the Singapore strategy was the cornerstone of British Imperial defence policy in the Far East during the 1920s and 1930s.
By 1937, according to Captain Stephen Roskill, "the concept of the'Main Fleet to Singapore' had through constant repetition, assumed something of the inviolability of Holy Writ". A combination of financial and practical difficulties ensured that it could not be implemented. During the 1930s, the strategy came under sustained criticism in Britain and abroad in Australia, where the Singapore strategy was used as an excuse for parsimonious defence policies; the strategy led to the despatch of Force Z to Singapore and the sinking of the Prince of Wales and Repulse by Japanese air attack on 10 December 1941. The subsequent ignominious fall of Singapore was described by Winston Churchill as "the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history". After the First World War, the Imperial German Navy's High Seas Fleet that had challenged the Royal Navy for supremacy was scuttled in Scapa Flow, but the Royal Navy was facing serious challenges to its position as the world's most powerful fleet from the United States Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy.
The United States' determination to create what Admiral of the Navy George Dewey called "a navy second to none" presaged a new maritime arms race. The U. S. Navy was smaller than the Royal Navy in 1919, but ships laid down under its wartime construction program were still being launched, their more recent construction gave the American ships a technological edge; the "two-power standard" of 1889 called for a Royal Navy strong enough to take on any two other powers. In 1909, this was scaled back to a policy of 60% superiority in dreadnoughts. Rising tensions over the U. S. Navy's building program led to heated arguments between the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Rosslyn Wemyss, the Chief of Naval Operations Admiral William S. Benson in March and April 1919, although, as far back as 1909, the government directed that the United States was not to be regarded as a potential enemy; this decision was reaffirmed by Cabinet in August 1919 in order to preclude the U. S. Navy's building program from becoming a justification for the Admiralty initiating one of its own.
In 1920, the First Lord of the Admiralty Sir Walter Long announced a "one-power standard", under which the policy was to maintain a navy "not... inferior in strength to the Navy of any other power". The one-power standard became official when it was publicly announced at the 1921 Imperial Conference; the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 reinforced this policy. The Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom and the Dominions met at the 1921 Imperial Conference to determine a unified international policy the relationship with the United States and Japan; the most urgent issue was that of whether or not to renew the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, due to expire on 13 July 1921. On one side were the Prime Minister of Australia Billy Hughes and the Prime Minister of New Zealand Bill Massey, who favoured its renewal. Neither wanted their countries to be caught up in a war between the United States and Japan, contrasted the generous assistance that Japan rendered during the First World War with the United States' disengagement from international affairs in its aftermath.
"The British Empire", declared Hughes, "must have a reliable friend in the Pacific". They were opposed by the Prime Minister of Canada, Arthur Meighen, on the grounds that the alliance would adversely affect the relationship with the United States, which Canada depended upon for its security; as a result, no decision to renew was reached, the alliance was allowed to expire. The Washington Naval Treaty in 1922 provided for a 5:5:3 ratio of capital ships of the British, United States and Japanese navies. Throughout the 1920s, the Royal Navy remained the world's largest navy, with a comfortable margin of superiority over Japan, regarded as the most adversary; the Washington Naval Treaty prohibited the fortification of islands in the Pacific, but Singapore was excluded. The provisions of the London Naval Treaty of 1930, restricted naval construction, resulting in a serious decline in the British shipbuilding industry. Germany's willingness to limit the size of its navy led to the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935.
This was seen as signalling a sincere desire to avoid conflict with Britain. In 1934, the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Ernle Chatfield, began to press for a new naval build-up sufficient to fight both Japan and the strongest European power, he intended to accelerate construction to the maximum capacity
