War In Pacific Skies

Paintings by the renowned aviation artist plus “lots of wartime photographs and plenty of entertaining and informative text. . . . absorbing reading” (Aviation History). Climb in to the cockpit of some of America’s most heralded warbirds, like the P-38 that carried Richard Bong to his forty kills, and fly along with Paul Tibitts in the Enola Gay as it makes its final approach on Hiroshima. This lavishly illustrated book covers the most famous air engagements in World War II’s Pacific Theater of Operation in an exquisite and beautiful fusion of art and history. Paintings by acclaimed aviation artist Jack Fellows are supplemented by color maps, previously unpublished photographs, original artwork, and personal accounts.

From 1941 to 1945 the skies over the Pacific Ocean afforded the broadest arena for battle and the fiercest action of air combat during World War II. It was in the air above the Pacific that America's involvement in the war began. It was in these skies that air power launched from carriers became a new form of engagement and where the war ultimately ended with kamikaze attacks and with atomic bombs dropped over Japan. Throughout the conflict American flyers felt a compelling call to supplement the official news and military reports. In vivid accounts written soon after combat and in reflective memoirs recorded in the years after peace came, both pilots and crew members detailed their stories of the action that occurred in the embattled skies. Their first-person testimonies describe a style of warfare invented at the moment of need and at a time when the outcome was anything but certain. Gathering more than a hundred personal narratives from Americans and from Japanese, Pacific Skies recounts a history of air combat in the Pacific theater. Included are the words of such famous aces and bomber pilots as Joe Foss, Pappy Boyington, Dick Bong, and Curtis Lemay, as well as the words of many rank-and-file airmen. Together their stories express fierce individualism and resourcefulness and convey the vast panorama of war that included the skies over Pearl Harbor, Wake, and Guadalcanal and missions from Saipan and Tinian. As Pacific Skies recounts the perilous lives of pilots in their own words, Jerome Klinkowitz weaves the individual stories into a gripping historical narrative that exposes the shades of truth and fiction that can become blurred over time. A book about experiencing and remembering, Pacific Skies also is a story of unique perspectives on the war.

A chronicle of the Pacific Air War in World War II draws on interviews with surviving veterans of all duties to paint a detailed look at the war in the sky.

The exhilarating epic story of the heroic fighter pilots whose fast - flying, hard - turning planes turned the tide in the Pacific theater during World War II....

Author Jeffrey Cox conducts a thorough and compelling investigation of the Java Sea Campaign, the first major sea battle of the Pacific War, which inflicted huge costs on the Allies and set the stage for Japan's rout across the Pacific and Indian oceans. Few events have ever shaken a country in the way that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor affected the United States. The Japanese forces then continued to overwhelm the Allies, attacking Malaya with its fortress of Singapore, and taking resource-rich islands in the Pacific in their own blitzkrieg offensive. Allied losses in these early months after America's entry into the war were great, and among the most devastating were those suffered during the Java Sea Campaign, where a small group of Americans, British, Dutch, and Australians were isolated in the Far East – directly in the path of the Japanese onslaught. It would be the first major sea battle of World War II in the Pacific.

Lieutenant David Miller has all the right credentials: Annapolis graduate, the gold wings of a naval aviator, and the recent completion of the Navy's counterintelligence school. But he is lacking the most important ingredient in the real and deadly world of espionage-experience. His clandestine assignments use the luxurious Boeing 314 flying boat, operated by Pan American, as a cover and on this trip he is to assure the safe passage of a Chinese Envoy, who is to deliver a secret document from President Roosevelt to Premier Chiang Kai-shek. The new four-engine 'Pacific Clipper' arrives in San Francisco in June 1941, to start the first leg of its 8,000-mile journey to the orient and Miller begins an unintended relationship with one of the passengers, a Japanese-American. His prejudice is tempered by her decidedly 'American' culture and personality but he is unsure of her loyalty to America. While aware of his shortcomings in espionage, Miller is totally unsuspecting of how ill prepared he is for a first serious encounter with a young lady who is aggressive for his affections. Will this relationship compromise the mission?

WINNER OF THE GILDER LEHRMAN PRIZE FOR MILITARY HISTORY An engrossing, epic history of the US Army in the Pacific War, from the acclaimed author of The Dead and Those About to Die “This eloquent and powerful narrative is military history written the way it should be.”—James M. McPherson, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian "Out here, mention is seldom seen of the achievements of the Army ground troops," wrote one officer in the fall of 1943, "whereas the Marines are blown up to the skies." Even today, the Marines are celebrated as the victors of the Pacific, a reflection of a well-deserved reputation for valor. Yet the majority of fighting and dying in the war against Japan was done not by Marines but by unsung Army soldiers. John C. McManus, one of our most highly acclaimed historians of World War II, takes readers from Pearl Harbor—a rude awakening for a military woefully unprepared for war—to Makin, a sliver of coral reef where the Army was tested against the increasingly desperate Japanese. In between were nearly two years of punishing combat as the Army transformed, at times unsteadily, from an undertrained garrison force into an unstoppable juggernaut, and America evolved from an inward-looking nation into a global superpower. At the pinnacle of this richly told story are the generals: Douglas MacArthur, a military autocrat driven by his dysfunctional lust for fame and power; Robert Eichelberger, perhaps the greatest commander in the theater yet consigned to obscurity by MacArthur's jealousy; "Vinegar Joe" Stillwell, a prickly soldier miscast in a diplomat's role; and Walter Krueger, a German-born officer who came to lead the largest American ground force in the Pacific. Enriching the narrative are the voices of men otherwise lost to history: the uncelebrated Army grunts who endured stifling temperatures, apocalyptic tropical storms, rampant malaria and other diseases, as well as a fanatical enemy bent on total destruction. This is an essential, ambitious book, the first of three volumes, a compellingly written and boldly revisionist account of a war that reshaped the American military and the globe and continues to resonate today. INCLUDES MAPS AND PHOTOS

A gripping collection of true stories that capture the bravery of American pilots who helped win WWII. American pilots fought fierce and often deadly battles in every theater of the Second World War, and many overcame incredible obstacles to survive. Meet some of these courageous aviators, including George McGovern, who survived enemy fire that left 110 holes in his aircraft; George H. W. Bush, shot down in the Pacific; Jim Landis, a naval flyer stationed in Pearl Harbor who returned fire even after sustaining a bullet through his hand; Alex Jefferson, a Tuskegee airman shot down over France and taken prisoner; and Betty Blake, one of the little-known women pilots who aided the war effort. Clifton Truman Daniel, a grandson of President Truman, provides the foreword to this collection of carefully researched and vividly told profiles in courage that will transport you to the bullet-ridden, bomb-laden skies of the early 1940s.