Also known as "leap-frogging", island hopping refers to the strategy employed by the United States armed forces in the Pacific Theater of World War II. Island hopping bypassed and isolated heavily fortified Japanese positions and instead concentrated the limited Allied forces on less well defended but strategically important islands capable of supporting the United States' drive to Japan. This strategy was possible because of the considerable distances between islands and island groups in the Pacific. Only that force with superior sea and air power could succeed in the long run maintaining the resulting isolated and far-flung bases. This superiority in the Western Pacific, after the Battle of Midway, gradually swung to the Allied side.
