Operation Hailstone: 500+ US carrier aircraft strike Truk, destroying 250–275 of about 365 Japanese aircraft.
What happened
Operation Hailstone was timed to support US landings at Enewetak. Besides the aircraft, it sank two light cruisers, four destroyers and dozens of auxiliary and merchant ships, and destroyed about 75 percent of supplies at Truk, for US losses of 25 aircraft and 40 men.
Why it matters
Truk was never again used as a major fleet anchorage, and the US decided to bypass it rather than invade.
Related image
Not a photograph of this event itself; the caption says what it shows.
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A heavily bombed airfield at Truk (Chuuk), photographed from a US Navy plane on 26 August 1945, after the Pacific War cease-fire and before Truk’s formal surrender on 2 September 1945. The Navy’s caption notes wrecked Japanese Navy aircraft on its seaplane ramp.
US Navy photograph 80-G-490381, National Archives, via the Naval Historical Center Online Library (HyperWar mirror).
Public domain (US Navy photograph, 17 U.S.C. § 105) Source record