Hell At Tassafaronga

The acclaimed, bestselling author of "The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors" now delivers a riveting, character-focused narrative of the United States Navy's bloodiest, most pivotal campaign of World War II.

Presents battlefield accounts and first-person narratives from over 200 Allied and Japanese veterans of the battle on Guadalcanal Island between August 1942 and February 1943.

The author of A Return to Glory constructs a compellingly detailed and panoramic history of the fateful day that ushered the United States into WWII. Using long-established historical records and contemporary journals, as well as recently released wartime documents, Bill McWilliams has created a brand-new minute-by-minute narrative of the Day That Will Live in Infamy. Told from the points of view of dozens of characters, from generals and admirals and politicians and diplomats down to deckhands and private soldiers and innocent civilians at all levels, this panoramic overview of one of the most traumatizing and shocking events in American history puts the reader in a position to understand the big picture of strategy and tactics, as well as the intimate details of what the chaos, violence, and presence of death felt like to people immersed in the surprise of an armed attack on American soil. December 7, 1941, was a turning point in the history of the United States, which had been teetering on a decision between isolationism and intervention. One might argue that every US military engagement since then has been affected by what happened when America learned that it could not stand by and watch war among strangers without potentially becoming involved—whether we wished to or not.

Looking toward the heavens, the destroyer crew saw what seemed to be the entire Japanese Air Force assembled directly above. Hell was about to be unleashed on them in the largest single-ship kamikaze attack of World War II. On April 16, 1945, the crewmen of the USS Laffey were battle hardened and prepared. They had engaged in combat off the Normandy coast in June 1944. They had been involved in three prior assaults of enemy positions in the Pacific-at Leyte and Lingayen in the Philippines and at Iwo Jima. They had seen kamikazes purposely crash into other destroyers and cruisers in their unit and had seen firsthand the bloody results of those crazed tactics. But nothing could have prepared the crew for this moment-an eighty-minute ordeal in which the single small ship was targeted by no fewer than twenty-two Japanese suicide aircraft. By the time the unprecedented attack on the Laffey was finished, thirty-two sailors lay dead, more than seventy were wounded, and the ship was grievously damaged. Although she lay shrouded in smoke and fire for hours, the Laffey somehow survived, and the gutted American warship limped from Okinawa's shore for home, where the ship and crew would be feted as heroes. Using scores of personal interviews with survivors, the memoirs of crew members, and the sailors' wartime correspondence, historian and author John Wukovits breathes life into the story of this nearly forgotten historic event. The US Navy described the kamikaze attack on the Laffey "as one of the great sea epics of the war." In Hell from the Heavens, the author makes the ordeal of the Laffey and her crew a story for the ages.

“Stephen L. Moore offers what will soon be ranked a major military classic... A major, first-rate, authoritative contribution to the literature of WWII.”—Leatherneck From the author of Pacific Payback comes the gripping true story of the Cactus Air Force and how this rugged crew of Dive-Bombers helped save Guadalcanal and won the war. November 1942: Japanese and American forces have been fighting for control of Guadalcanal, a small but pivotal island in Japan’s expansion through the South Pacific. Both sides have endured months of grueling battle under the worst circumstances: hellish jungles, meager rations, and tropical diseases, which have taken a severe mental and physical toll on the combatants. The Japanese call Guadalcanal Jigoku no Jima—Hell's Island. Amid a seeming stalemate, a small group of U.S. Navy dive bombers are called upon to help determine the island's fate. The men have until recently been serving in their respective squadrons aboard the USS Lexington and the USS Yorktown, fighting in the thick of the Pacific War's aerial battles. Their skills have been honed to a fine edge, even as injury and death inexorably have depleted their ranks. When their carriers are lost, many of the men end up on the USS Enterprise. Battle damage to that carrier then forces them from their home at sea to operating from Henderson Field, a small dirt-and-gravel airstrip on Guadalcanal. With some Marine and Army Air Force planes, they help form the Cactus Air Force, a motley assemblage of fliers tasked with holding the line while making dangerous flights from their jungle airfield. Pounded by daily Japanese air assaults, nightly warship bombardments, and sniper attacks from the jungle, pilots and gunners rarely last more than a few weeks before succumbing to tropical ailments, injury, exhaustion, and death. But when the Japanese launch a final offensive to take the island once and for all, these dive-bomber jocks answer the call of duty—and try to perform miracles in turning back an enemy warship armada, a host of fighter planes, and a convoy of troop transports. A remarkable story of grit, guts, and heroism, The Battle for Hell's Island reveals how command of the South Pacific, and the outcome of the Pacific War, depended on control of a single dirt airstrip—and the small group of battle-weary aviators sent to protect it with their lives.

The life of a sailor experiencing the horrors and exciting times that accompany life aboard ship during WWII in the Pacific.