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Seaman 1st Class Mike Wonderlich USN Signed Naval Art
Naval Art  Signatures S to Z  Wonderlich, Mike |
Seaman 1st Class Mike Wonderlich USN
Joining the Navy in December 1942 he was already a veteran of Guadalcanal, Bougainville and Iwo Jima before taking part in the Battle of Okinawa. He was serving on board the destroyer USS Hazelwood when it took a direct hit from a kamikaze, killing 77 crew.
| Seaman 1st Class Mike Wonderlich USN - Signed Naval Art Naval Crew Signatures |
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Okinawa by Robert Taylor. Following their victory at Midway, American forces had fought a long, bloody and bitter campaign to retake the Japanese held islands in the Pacific. By the end of March 1945, however, they had finally captured Iwo Jima and looked towards Okinawa, a province of Japan itself. But the closer the fighting came to Japan, the greater was the enemy's resistance. The five-week long battle for Iwo Jima had been bloody, brutal and costly with over 26,000 US Marine casualties. Of the 21,000-strong Japanese garrison on the island less than 300 prisoners had been taken; the rest refusing to surrender, preferring to fight to the death or commit 'honourable' ritual suicide. Now the Allied attention turned to the island of Okinawa. Annexed by Japan in the late nineteenth century and less than 400 miles south of its mainland, it was the place from which the Allied invasion of Japan must be launched. Supported by a huge naval presence, including one of the largest British fleets ever assembled, the assault began on 1st April 1945 with the largest amphibious landing of the Pacific war - six US Divisions landed during what has been referred to as a typhoon of steel. Japan's response was ferocious seeing the peak of the kamikaze scourge and the Allied fighter pilots, whilst providing ground support to the advancing infantry, desperately attempted to defend the naval fleet from unrelenting attacks. While the British ships with their steel decks fared much better, the kamikazes took their toll on the US fleet, highlighting a conflict worse than anything seen before. The 82 day battle was one of the most severe and bloody campaigns of WWII, accounting for over 14,000 Allied deaths and five times that number of Japanese soldiers. This painting depicts USMC Ace Dean Caswell and F4U Corsairs from VMF-221, based on the carrier USS Bunker Hill climbing away from the target area after delivering a blistering rocket attack on enemy positions on Okinawa. |
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