In the 72 hours after Pearl Harbor, a tiny V-shaped coral atoll in the middle of the Pacific became the site of the Japanese Navy's first real tactical defeat of World War II. Wake Island was not a fortress. It was a bustling construction site staffed by roughly 1,200 civilian contractors fresh off projects like the Hoover Dam and Grand Coulee, a Pan Am Clipper layover with a hotel and Chamorro staff, and a garrison of about 450 Marines under Major James Devereux armed with five-inch guns salvaged from a World War I battleship, no radar, and just 12 F4F Wildcat fighters.

This deep dive traces the whole arc: the December 8 raid that destroyed eight Wildcats on the ground under cover of rain squalls and surf noise, the December 11 ambush that sank the destroyers Hayate and Kisaragi and inflicted over 400 casualties, the wooden decoy guns buil ...