Drawing on a rich collection of both American and newly discovered Japanese sources as well as official records and wartime diaries, Gordon chronicles the Americans" desperate defense of the besieged islands. For the first time the story of the Navy and Marine Corps in the 1941-42 Philippine campaign is told in a single volume. He also explains why the Navy"s relationship with General MacArthur became strained during this campaign, and remained so for the rest of the war. Gordon offers much new information about the campaign during which the Navy and Marines, fighting in what was largely an Army operation, performed some of their most unusual missions of the entire Pacific War. Sailors fought as infantrymen alongside their Marine comrades at Bataan and on the island fortress of Corregidor. Sailors also manned Army heavy coast artillery batteries during the epic artillery duel between Corregidor and the Japanese guns that were massed on Bataan following the fall of the Peninsula. In these pages, Gordon recounts the only time in history when the Marine Corps lost a regiment in combat when the 4th Marines surrendered on Corregidor, and includes the most detailed account of the attack on Cavite that has ever been published.