Скачать или смотреть OPERATION ICEBERG: BATTLE OF OKINAWA (FINNTROLL 1984'S WAR TALES #53 WW II CODWWII)

finntroll 1984 OPERATION ICEBERG: BATTLE OF OKINAWA (FINN'S WAR TALES #53 WW II CODWWII)
In this episode I explain the story of Okinawa, an island to the west of mainland Japan that is a part of the Ryukyu Islands. From April 1 until June 22, 1945, there was inexhaustable resistance from the dug-in Japanese troops during the American Operation Iceberg. Naval assistance from UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada provided even more strength in numbers for USA so Okinawa was a lost battle from the start for the Japanese Imperial Army. The Japanese had a complex tunnel systems in the island mountains hidden away from the beaches. 3 coast-to-coast defensive line tunnels had been dug in early 1944 to fire from covered openings, pillboxes, fox holes and machine gun positions. The 10th US Army and the 3rd Amphibious Corps faced the 32nd Japanese Imperial Army with commanders Ushijma, Yahara and Cho supported by Admiral Ota. Op Iceberg began with the largest amphibious deployment in history on April Fool's Day. The beaches of Hagushi in West Okinawa were invaded while a dummy demonstration in the east created mass confusion. However, the islands seemed quite abandoned because the Japanese defenders had been instructed to lay low inside the mountains until the American troops were very close to the gun positions. The north was sealed off on April 7 along with the demise of Japan's mighty Yamato battleship during Japan's Operation Ten-Go. The entire northern region seemed abandoned but between April 13 and April 18, there was a heavy fight for the Motobu peninsula with Japanese gunners in the rocky ridges of Yae-Dake. A dangerous ravine location with a twisted mass of ridges. Ie Island was secured on April 21 despite Ushijma's success with nightly infiltrations but he was outnumbered by enemy troops. At the end of April, the Machinato defensive line was broken and a Japanese counter-attack was stopped on May 4 with US counter-battery fire. A week later, General Buckner launched an intense 10-day battle with important victories in Chronical Hill, 476 feet above ground level and defended by 1,000 Japanese, and also in Sugar Loaf Hill. The southern city of Shuri seemed an easy target thanks to the capture of both hills but the advance was stopped by nature. Monsoon rains at the end of May 1944 turned the roads into mud and created a toxic setting with litter and dead bodies everywhere. Thanks to 3-day shell fire by the USS Mississippi, the Americans were able to break down the last defences at Shuri Castle. The Oroku peninsula was attacked on June 4 with 4,000 Japanese suicides on June 13 as a result. All of them where sailors and even their commander Admiral Ota had joined them in death. Ushijma's remaining forces were driven into a pocket and on June 21, the last remnants of the 32nd Japanese Imperial Army fell. Both Officer Cho and General Ushijma followed the ancient ritual of Seppuku: self-disembowlment followed by swift beheading. Colonel Yahara had been ordered to escape so the Okinawa story would live on and after being caught as a POW, Yahara wrote a book about the Typhoon of Steel. Okinawa was a vital objective to establish new US airbases for a possible invasion of mainland Japan. Nevertheless, the Japanese combatants managed to hold it out for 82 days, earning this battle the nickname 'Typhoon of Steel'. 20,000 Americans and 110,000 Japanese and Okinawans died. General Simon Buckner was killed in action near the end. finntroll 1984:    / @finntroll1984cod