Battle of Dutch Harbor | |||||||
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Part of the American Theater of World War II | |||||||
Buildings burning after Japanese air attacks on Dutch Harbor, circa 3 June 1942. | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
United States | Japan | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Robert Theobald Simon Buckner Archibald Arnold | Kakuji Kakuta | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
37th Infantry Regiment 206th Coast Artillery (AA) 1 search light battery 6 anti-aircraft batteries U.S. Marines 30 aircraft |
1 aircraft carrier 1 light carrier 3 cruisers 5 destroyers 86 aircraft | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
43 killed 50 wounded 14 aircraft destroyed 1 barracks ship destroyed |
10 killed 5 captured 8 aircraft destroyed 1 aircraft captured[1] |
The Battle of Dutch Harbor took place on 3-4 June 1942, when the Imperial Japanese Navy launched two aircraft carrier raids on the Dutch Harbor Naval Operating Base and U.S. Army Fort Mears at Dutch Harbor on Amaknak Island, opening the Aleutian Islands campaign of World War II. The bombing marked the first aerial attack by an enemy on the continental United States and was the second time in history that the continental U.S. was bombed by someone working for a foreign power, the first being the accidental bombing of Naco, Arizona, in 1929.