In the bloodiest of battles in Marine Corps history, 27 Marines and sailors were awarded the Medal of Honor for action on Iwo Jima. No other campaign surpassed that number.

The final nine months were the deadliest in the Pacific theater. 

The National WWII Museum is on the cusp of its 15th Anniversary, and as staff members prepare for the occasion, they’re also celebrating an extraordinary new record – 73,449 Museum visitors in March 2015, a 31 percent increase from March 2014. This new high point for attendance in a single month comes on the heels of two recent achievements for the Museum – more than 515,000 visitors in 2014, a 14 percent increase from the previous year, and the opening of the latest pavilion on the growing campus, Campaigns of Courage: European and Pacific Theaters.

Despite their early agreement on a strategy focused on defeating “Germany First,” the US and British Allies engaged in a lengthy and divisive debate over how exactly to conduct this strategy before they finally settled on a plan for Operation Overlord, the D-Day invasion of Normandy.

The National WWII Museum today announced plans to return restored patrol-torpedo (PT) boat PT-305 to her home waters of Lake Pontchartrain, where she was originally tested by Higgins Industries more than 70 years ago. The Museum launched the first phase of the plan this morning: a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds necessary to move PT-305 to the water, test her for passenger use and, for the first time, offer civilians the chance to take a ride on a fully restored combat-veteran PT boat – the fastest US naval ship in World War II.