Conceived as a visual record rather than a definitive history, The Steel Wedge is a substantial photographic archive—246 photos, many never before published—focused on the coming of age of U.S. Marine Corps tanks, tank destroyers, and armored amphibian tractors through the Pacific island-hopping campaign from earliest pre-war development to Okinawa in 1945. A slice of the Marine Corps experience in the Pacific Theater during World War II, The Steel Wedge employs explanatory captions and narrative text to supplement its large and broad array of combat photographs. It is the first book ever to focus mainly upon this outstanding photographic record.