Battle of Dutch Harbor was a Indian Wars and Frontier Conflicts engagement fought in Alaska, 1942. It was a Japan (tactical) victory.
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 North America, though Amaknak island is not part of the continental US and was not a state but the Alaska Territory at the time. This was the second time in history that North America was bombed by someone working for a foreign power, the first being the accidental bombing of Naco, Arizona, in 1929.
The Japanese planned to occupy islands in the Aleutians in order to extend their defensive perimeter in the North Pacific to make it more difficult for the U.S. to attack Japan from that area. The air raid on Dutch Harbor was conducted to support the invasions on Kiska Island and Attu Island by the Japanese military under Operation AL.
Dutch Harbor was ringed with anti-aircraft artillery batteries from the 206th Coast Artillery (Anti Aircraft) group of the Arkansas National Guard, and was one of the key targets protected by the Eleventh Air Force based out of mainland Alaska. The 206th CA (AA) was deployed to Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands in August 1941 and had been on station for approximately four months when the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 December. The 206th CA was equipped with the 3-inch Gun M1918 (an older model with a vertical range of 26,902 ft (8,200 m)), .50in (12.7mm) M2 Browning machine guns, and 60 in (150 cm) Sperry searchlights. The 206th had one radar in position at Dutch Harbor at the time of the attack. In the harbor were two old destroyers, King and Talbot, destroyer-seaplane tender Gillis, submarine S-27, Coast Guard cutter Onondaga, and U.S. Army transports President Fillmore and Morlen.
On 3 June 1942 a Japanese carrier strike force, under the command of Rear Admiral Kakuji Kakuta, comprising the carriers Ryūjō and Jun'yō plus escort ships, sailed to 180 mi (160 nmi; 290 km) southwest of Dutch Harbor to launch air strikes at the United States Army and United States Navy facility to support a Japanese offensive in the Aleutians and in the central Pacific at Midway.
Shortly before dawn at 02:58, given the geographic latitude and longitude, Admiral Kakuta ordered his aircraft carriers to launch their strike which was made up of 12 A6M Zero fighters, 10 B5N Kate high-level bombers, and 12 D3A Val dive bombers which took off from the two small carriers in the freezing weather to strike at Dutch Harbor. One B5N was lost on takeoff from Ryujo.
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