Nevertheless, the conversion proved to be an excellent projectile-delivery system capable of good range and a high degree of accuracy, to the extent that the gunners in the field called for more. In order to provide more, the number of 8-in howitzer conversions eventually ran to six marks depending on the original barrel and type of conversion; some of the 8-in barrels came from the United States. The first 7.2 inch howitzers were used in action in North Africa and in Tunisia; then they went on to take part in the long slog north through Sicily and Italy; and were used following the Normandy landings. But by 1944 numbers of British 7.2 inch barrels were being placed on imported American Ml carriages. These excellent carriages proved to be just as suitable for the 7.2-in howitzer as they were for the American 155-mm (6.1-in) gun and 203-mm howitzers, and the first combination of a 7.2-in barrel with the Ml carriage was the 7.2-in Howitzer Mk V.

Specifications

In the Philippines, under the command of General Douglas MacArthur, American and Filipino troops in vain attempted to fight back the Japanese invading forces in the Bataan Peninsula and to defend the fortress on the island of Corregidor, but the local resistance collapsed under the experienced and hardened Japanese soldiers. As a result, at the order of President Roosevelt, MacArthur transferred his headquarters to Australia in February, 1942. But his troops, under the command of General Wainwright, held Corregidor until the following May.

Soon after Japan secured the Philippines, its forces moved into the American-owned Aleutians, a chain of islands that extends westward from the tip of the Alaska Peninsula. Japanese troops occupied the islands of Attu, Agattu, and Kiska for more than a year before American forces ousted them in the spring of 1943. Thus, by the late summer of 1942, the Japanese had occupied 1 million square miles in their triumphant advance, but there it ended.

In the meantime, in April 1942, American bombers B-25 Mitchell, commanded by General James Doolittle, after taking off the aircraft carrier USS Hornet, bombed the Japanese cities of Tokio, Yokohama, and Kobe. This was the first bombing of the Japanese home islands. A few weeks later, in May, American naval and air forces in the Coral Sea stopped an invading force aimed at Australia to the west. The first real defeat for Japan took place in June, 1942, with a rout of a strong Japanese naval force proceeding forward the American-owned Midway Islands, to the northwest of Hawaii.

In August 1942, the Allies launched their counteroffensive in earnest, when American marines, buttressed by air and naval forces landed on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. The following year, in November 1943, the American Marines took the Betio, an islet of the Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands, after ferocious and mad fighting. Thus, for the next two years, the war trend in the Western Pacific was that of the Japanese suffering costly defeats, as island after island fell to the Allied forces. From the Gilberts Islands they moved into the Marshalls, and then into the Carolines and Marianas. After taking Guan and Saipan, they prepared for the reconquest of the Philippines Islands. Americans, under General MacArthur, and Admirals Chester W. Nimitz and William F. Halsey, played a major role in these victories, but they were ably supported by their Allies.

In the spring of 1944, American airplane factories began to produce long range heavy bombers, the B-29 Superfortress, which were designed for long flights and heavy bomb loads. Based on airfields in China, which Chinese labor had built almost without tools, these bombers effectively destroyed the industrial centers of Japan. Through the cooperative efforts of scientists from many of the Allied nations the atomic bomb was perfected through the Manhattan Project. It was the most devastating weapon that the world had ever seen. On August 6, 1945, American airmen dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Approximately 100,000 people were killed. Three days later, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki; there were 80,000 casualties there. Both cities were virtually obliterated.