Following air and naval bombardment, 20,000 US Marines invade Saipan on June 15, 1944, soon followed by 105,000 more troops.

Within three days, the assault splits Saipan’s 32,000 Japanese defenders in half.

A mobile Japanese task force arrives on June 19 to effect the destructio on the US fleet supporting the invasion.

The ensuing Battle of the Philippine Sea is the war’s biggest carrier engagement thus far.

US submarines sink two Japanese carriers, torpedo aircraft sink a third, and in what American veterans will later call “the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot”, US aircraft destroy over 350 Japanese planes.