I was reading about the Aleutian Islands campaign fought between Japan and America on deserted Alaskan islands. I was wondering if there were any notable battles or campaigns fought far away from the main theaters.
One of my favorites is the Battle of the Komandorski Islands, which took place so far west that it was in waters that today belong to Russia. It's also significant in that it's one of the last major gunnery battles in naval history, with no aircraft or missiles involved.
If you're looking away from the Pacific Ocean, you might investigate the German practice of establishing weather stations in Greenland and Canada. There also were air battles over Iceland at various times during the war.
In the South Pacific, I'd point you to the Battle of the River Plate, which involved the German cruiser Graf Spee and several British ships fighting in Argentine waters.
Perhaps the month-long (17 April - 14/17 May 1941) siege of the Amba Alagi peak, during which 7,000 Italians managed to hold off some 39,000 Commonwealth troops, can count as such? The place (which is located in the Tigray region of what is today Ethiopia) is quite remote and hard to reach.
This seems really hard to answer - for most Americans, until World War II, the Pacific theater itself (and even the Territory of Hawaii) would have been considered really remote.
To me sitting here today, most of the places where the Flying Tigers were operating seem remote - taking off from airstrips in Burma, and flying missions across what's now Western China. But at the time, Chongqing was a major target for the Japanese, as Chiang Kai-Shek’s provisional capital city. (And today, by population, it’s one of the largest cities in the world.)
I’d love to learn more about what the Flying Tigers were up to – I know they had to fly over the Himalayas (with at least one guy flying over Mt. Everest), which qualifies as pretty remote no matter where or when you are, I reckon.
