Field Notes Blog
Six Months for an Airfield: The Battle of Guadalcanal
On August 7, 1942, U.S. Marines seized an unfinished airstrip on an island most Americans had never heard of. Holding it would take six months, six naval battles, and thousands of lives — and force...
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The Five Minutes That Changed the Pacific: The Battle of Midway, June 1942
On the morning of June 4, 1942, American dive bombers broke through the clouds above the Japanese carrier fleet northwest of Midway Atoll. In the five minutes that followed, three fleet carriers we...
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Seventy-Six Hours on Betio: The Battle of Tarawa and the Lessons Written in Blood
On November 20, 1943, the 2nd Marine Division assaulted Betio Island across a reef no intelligence report had adequately charted. Standard landing craft grounded hundreds of yards short of the beac...
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The Battle of the Bulge: Germany's Last Offensive in the West
On December 16, 1944, Germany launched its final major offensive on the Western Front — a massive armored assault through the Ardennes forest of Belgium and Luxembourg. The Battle of the Bulge beca...
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World War I and World War II: What the Maps Tell Us
The Somme's trench maps and Iwo Jima's assault charts are not the same kind of map. What the cartographic record of each world war reveals — and why it matters.
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