WORLD WAR II IN THE AIR: THE PACIFIC

In 1924, the prophet airman General William Mitchell predicted the Japanese aerial attack on Pearl Harbor with fantastic accuracy. This is the story of how that attack came about, how Japanese planes brutally ripped Allied positions throughout the Pacific and Far East, and how slowly America regained air supremacy in a struggle that produced some of the greatest aerial fighting in history. The individual stories almost make books in themselves. The bungling of the Pearl Harbor defense, the blasting Clark Field took in the Philippines, the organization of the valiant Flying Tigers in China, Doolittle's B-25 raid on Tokyo from the carrier Hornet, the Coral Sea and Midway battles, finally the great B-29 and other fire bomb raids on Japan itself, are all given well-documented, vividly written places in the book. Eyewitness accounts, letters, records, and other official documents (including those from the Japanese side of the fight) are unified into a skilled narrative by a writer who lets his enthusiasm for his subject be tempered by careful scholarship. Another excellent history added to the growing literature of the War in the Pacific.