War has played a key role in the history of the United States, from the nation's founding

right down to the present. War made the U.S. independent, kept it together, increased its

size, and established it as a global superpower. Understanding America's wars is essential for understanding American history.

Welcome to Key Battles of American History,

a podcast in which we discuss American history through the lens of the most important battles of America's wars.

Here is your host, James Early.

Music James Early. Welcome back to Key Battles of the Pacific War.

This is James, your host as always.

Excited to be with you, as always.

And we are moving right along.

In our last episode, we talked

about several operations that occurred between July of 1942 and August of 1943, as the Allies

begin to start chipping away at the Japanese Pacific Empire, taking an island here, an island there,

and so on.

And that process is going to continue in this episode.

In this episode, we're going to talk about, in particular, the U.S.

inaugurating a Central Pacific offensive, and in particular taking the Solomons, the Gilbert's, and the Marshall Islands.

As always, my buddy Scott Rank is with me.

Scott, how are you this morning? All right. Ready to see what happens here.

All right. Well, why don't you kick us off today? You've got some good stuff on Robal.

Right. So we'll be looking at an operation called Operation Cartwheel, and America has had some successes here. A lot of what's happened is conquering Japanese islands that are on the outer reaches of their offensive perimeter, their islands that Japan had only recently conquered, and at the very end of their supply lines.

Now what's going to be happening is America will be going into areas that have been held by Japan and were strongly fortified and also strongly supplied.

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