Accounts of history's greatest conflicts, detailing the command strategies, tactics and battle experiences of the opposing forces throughout the crucial stages of each campaign Corregidor 1945 Repossessing the Rock The islands guarding the entrance to Manila Bay, Luzon, had been seized by the Japanese in May 1942. Just under three years later, US forces were back, and closed in on Manila from the north and south against heavy Japanese resistance. A joint US parachute and amphibious assault was planned to capture the largest island Corregidor, using the much-reinforced 503rd Parachute Regimental Combat Team and elements of the 24th Infantry Division and 2nd Engineer Special Brigade. Facing them were over 6,000 Japanese troops recently evacuated from Bataan, where they had been cut off by advancing US forces. General MacArthur desired the island, once a symbol of American defiance, to be liberated with an emphatic show of force. This superbly illustrated work examines the ambitious US assault on Corregidor, which witnessed the most dangerous and risky parachute drop in airborne history, and vicious, desperate fighting by the defenders as they sought to prevent American troops from taking the island. It also covers the recapture of other islands defending Manila Bay: El Fraile/Fort Drum, Caballo, and Carabao.