In the first two years of the Pacific War of World War II, air
forces from Japan, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand
engaged in a ruthless struggle for superiority in the skies over
the Solomon Islands and New Guinea. Despite operating under
primitive conditions in a largely unknown and malignant physical
environment, both sides employed the most sophisticated technology
available at the time in a strategically crucial war of aerial
attrition. In one of the largest aerial campaigns in history, the
skies of the South Pacific were dominated first by the dreaded
Japanese Zeros, then by Allied bombers, which launched massed raids
at altitudes under fifty feet, and finally by a ferocious Allied
fighter onslaught led by a cadre of the greatest aces in American
military history. Utilizing primary sources and scores of
interviews with surviving veterans of all ranks and duties, Eric
Bergerud recreates the fabric of the air war as it was fought in
the South Pacific. He explores the technology and tactics, the
three-dimensional battlefield, and the leadership, living
conditions, medical challenges, and morale of the combatants. The
reader will be rewarded with a thorough understanding of how air
power functioned in World War II from the level of command to the
point of fire in air-to-air combat.
關於作者:
Eric M. Bergerud is professor of military and American history
at Lincoln University in San Francisco and the author of Touched
with Fire: The Land War in the South Pacific, Red Thunder, Tropic
Lightning and The Dynamics of Defeat.
目錄:
The Three-dimensional Battlefield
* Defining the Battlefield: Air-Base Networks
* The Land and Air Machines and Men in the South
Pacific
* Japanese Warplanes
* Allied Aircraft
* Airmen in the South Pacific Blood in the Sky: Air Battle in
the South Pacific
* Deadly Geometry: Fighter Warfare in the South Pacific
* Making History: Bombers in the South Pacific
* Conclusion