Japanese air and sea installations blasted by U.S. naval planes.

Japanese air and sea installations blasted by U.S. naval planes. Japanese ships, fuel dumps and a wharf (background) blaze furiously and an enemy airstrip is pitted with bomb craters, following a raid by American carrier-based planes on Pagan Island, in the northern Marianas of the Pacific. As U.S. ground troops steadily pushed back Japanese defenders of Saipan, second largest island in the Marianas group, American naval aircraft pinned down enemy planes on other bases in the island chain which forms a strategic portion of Japan's inner defenses. The American Pacific Fleet Task Force 58, capable of launching more than 1,000 planes at one time, has the entire Pacific Ocean to the gates of Japan as its striking ground.