On February 17th through the 18th, 1944, an armada of U.S. War ships launched a devastating air attack on the Japanese Imperial Fleet that was situated inside the sheltered waters of Truk Lagoon. The assult was fifteen times more powerful than the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Code named "Hailstorm," the two day operation destroyed an estimated 240-300 tons of ships and 27-275 aircraft. An estimated 60 ships sank in the shallow lagoon. Their cargos of tanks, trucks, airplanes, mines, bombs, machine gun bullets and thousands of other war artifacts including beautiful china are a sight found nowhere else in the world. Declared a memorial, it is prohibitied to remove artifacts from the ships.
