| Original caption: “Japanese ‘Zeke’ Type Zero Mark IF leaves flaming trail over Palau.” Grumman F6F Hellcat gun camera still of a Mitsubishi A6M2 Model 21 leaking aviation gasoline and about to catch on fire. Note tracers in top of frame. At the start of World War II, renowned filmmaker Dwight Long (December 27, 1912 – July 3, 2001) enlisted in the United States Navy and joined the Naval Photographic Unit under Lieutenant Commander Edward Steichen (March 27, 1879 – March 25, 1973). The Naval Photographic Unit had 1 objective: focus on photographing the rank and file fighting men. As a documentary filmmaker, Lieutenant Commander Long was tasked with capturing the day-to-day lives of the sailors on board the USS Yorktown (CV-10). His work became an Academy Award winning feature film called “The Fighting Lady” to hide Yorktown’s identity. The film documents the lives of the crew from July 1943 through June 1944, with combat footage and naval aviation featured throughout. The film won the 1945 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Mounting cameras on Yorktown’s fighters and loading them with color film, Long was able to capture realistic dogfighting scenes by running the cameras for a few seconds past the guns firing, creating the illusion of the audience being in the pilot’s seat. The film earned 900,000 dollars in 1944, equivalent to over 16,000,000 dollars today. Long operated more or less independently from the still photographers in the Naval Photographic Unit. Unlike the still photographers, who moved around frequently, Long spent months aboard Yorktown. During 1944-45, United States air forces – Navy, Army Air Corps and Marine aircraft – made repeated raids over the Palau Islands, approximately 500 miles (800 kilometers) north of the equator and 600 miles (a 1,000 kilometers) south and east of the Philippines. The 1st series of attacks occurred in the spring of 1944 in the form of aircraft carrier task force strikes (Operation “Desecrate One”) to prevent the Japanese Army and Navy in Palau from providing flanking air support against MacArthur’s invasion of Hollandia/northern New Guinea. During the summer of 1944, the 2nd series occurred in the form of both carrier task force strikes (operation “Snapshot,” in which future United States President George H. W. Bush (June 12, 1924 – November 30, 2018) famously participated, and 13th Air Force and 5th Air Force Consolidated B-24 Liberator raids. The purpose of these raids were twofold: to prevent Japanese aircraft from flanking MacArthur’s invasions of northern New Guinea and the Philippines and to soften up Peleliu, an island with a large Japanese airfield in southern Palau, scheduled for invasion by the 1st Marine Division on September 15, 1944 (Operation “Stalemate”). Although the rest of Palau was bypassed after the Peleliu invasion as the war proceeded toward the homeland of Japan, the requirement for ongoing American air coverage over Palau was essential to prevent further aggression from the remaining 25,000 Japanese troops stationed throughout the northern Palau islands. As a result, a 3rd series of air actions occurred during and after the invasion of Peleliu, by both United States Marine Corsair fighters (VMF-114, WMF-122, and WMF-121 from Peleliu’s captured airfield) and the Army Air Corps B-24 bombers (7th Air Force from a new airfield on nearby Angaur built to support the Philippines invasion). Each provided independent air support/suppression against Japanese ground forces throughout Palau until the war ended. In the face of the war moving elsewhere, the daily air battles fought over Palau were unaccountably fierce, on the part of both sides, turning into a struggle of attrition with both sides sustaining mounting casualties up to the last day of the war. Palau, because of its strategic location between the Mariana Islands and the Philippines, and because of its deep-water harbors, was the regional headquarters for the occupying Japanese military. Accordingly, it was heavily defended, both in its garrison of around 35,000 troops, 3 airfields and many antiaircraft sites. In the face of some of the heaviest Japanese antiaircraft fire anywhere in the entire Pacific war and with the large number of American air strikes, it was inevitable that American planes would be shot down. Because the Palaus have a barrier reef around the islands, many of the planes fell onto the islands or into waters approachable by conventional scuba diving techniques; however, a substantial portion of these planes and their crews were never found, in spite of an intense efforts by United States Army Graves Registration Units after the war ended. | |
| Image Filename | wwii1645.jpg |
| Image Size | 546.40 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 1650 x 2358 |
| Photographer | Dwight Long |
| Photographer Title | United States Navy |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | July 1, 1944 |
| Location | |
| City | |
| State or Province | |
| Country | Palaus |
| Archive | National Archives and Records Administration |
| Record Number | NWDNS-80-G-476108 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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