As the Cold War was heightening in the 1970s, the arms race between the USSR and the U.S. was on. Both nations worked to develop cutting-edge military systems, resulting in a range of innovative ...

The Marines landing at Tarawa Island had high hopes for a quick and easy victory. It was November 20, 1943 and for several days before the planned attack Marines had witnessed special task forces pour ...

Lives lost on "Bloody Betio." Sixty years ago today, thousands of U.S. Marines and a handful of sailors began landing on the Pacific equatorial island chain of Tarawa. The primary objective was an ...

The initial landing on Tarawa was chaotic and a near-disaster, with Higgins boats and mechanized tractors getting blasted out of the water or stuck on the coral reef, making them sitting ducks for ...

Here’s What You Need To Remember: Just a few Shermans helped turn the tide of a disaster—but clearly the Tarawa landing had left much to be desired. Even the 75-millimeter guns still struggled to bust ...

Aboard one of the many troop transports plowing the long sea furrows to Tarawa, and later in the hell of Betio, was TIME Correspondent Robert Sherrod. His story: Ship life was dull. The men of the and ...

For months, even years afterward, I would occasionally see a certificate on the wall of someone’s home, or in a store, or, once, glued to the back window of a car. It was a simple piece of paper ...

The last time Leon Cooper saw the tiny Pacific atoll called Tarawa, its beach was littered with bodies. These days, the scene of one of the United States’ bloodiest World War II battles is littered ...