English: U.S. Flamethrowing tank blasts Japanese on Bougainville.
Flames sear a Japanese pillbox as an American soldier emerges from the turret of a flame-throwing tank during the American advance on Bougainville Island in the Northern Solomons in the South Pacific. Tanks with flame-throwing units such as this one, have proved invaluable in the Bougainville fighting U.S. forces expanded their Empress Augusta Bay beachhead on the island's western coast after crushing desperate Japanese attempts to crack the American lines. In March 1944, alone, an estimated 5,000 Japanese soldiers were killed in the fighting on the island, where the enemy, entirely cut off from supplies, faces annihilation or capture.