The Battle of Peleliu: D-Day (Part 1)

In the early hours of 15 September 1944, the guns of an armada of United States Navy warships open fire on a tan, craggy-looking island in the Pacific. This bombardment is followed by waves of carrier based aircraft dropping napalm and firing rockets on enemy positions. The warships open fire again until the US Marines of the 1st Division, nicknamed the Old Breed, begin their assault on the island of Peleliu.

The landings do not go to plan as the Japanese defenders open fire on the landing craft and the Marines struggle to establish a beachhead on the first day of the brutal Battle of Peleliu, one of the US Marine Corps' most bitter of the Second World War.

Thanks to:

• Henry Sledge, the author of ‘The Old Breed... the Complete Story Revealed: A Father, a Son, and How WWII in the Pacific Shaped Their Lives:’
• Joseph Wheelan, author of 'Bitter Peleliu: The Forgotten Struggle on the Pacific War's Worst Battlefield'
• Professor John McManus, co-host of the World War II Live podcast and author of ‘Island Infernos: The US Army's Pacific War Odyssey, 1944’.

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