Whirlwind: The Air War Against Japan, 1942-1945
Search in google:
The first book to fully cover the air war against Japan, Whirlwind examines the human drama of the most important strategic bombing campaign in history. Publishers Weekly This ambitious and successful work comprehensively analyzes the Allied air offensive against Japan that began with ace pilot James Doolittle’s raid of April 1942. The Army Air Corps’s deployment in 1944 of the long-distance B-29 Superfortresses made basing the planes in the Mariana Islands possible. The U.S. Navy argued that its carrier-based planes could mount a better strategic campaign against Japan with less fuss. The results illustrate the two-pronged approach that characterized America’s war in the Pacific. The range and power of land-based bombers combined with the mobility and precision of American and British carrier planes to devastate not merely Japan’s war-making capacity but its entire infrastructure. The air corps abandoned high-altitude precision strikes in favor of low-altitude area bombing, while the fast carriers dominated Japan’s coastal waters. Together, they swamped a long-neglected, now overmatched air defense. U.S. losses were nevertheless high. Tillman (The Dauntless Dive Bomber of WWII) illustrates that Japan’s civilian leaders finally “acknowledged the primacy of air power in forcing capitulation.” 32 pages of b&w photos, 4 maps. (Mar.)
Prologue 1Ch. 1 Before the Beginning 9Ch. 2 China Skies 31Ch. 3 From the South 67Ch. 4 From the Sea 106Ch. 5 Firestorm 134Ch. 6 Pacific Ponies 174Ch. 7 The Harbor War 194Ch. 8 "A Most Cruel Bomb" 223Ch. 9 Legacy 252Appendix A The Unknown War 273Appendix B Japanese Aircraft by Allied Code Names 276Acknowledgments 277Notes 279Index 303
