Whirlwind: The Air War Against Japan, 1942-1945 Overview
WHIRLWIND is the first book to tell the complete, awe-inspiring story of the Allied air war against Japan—the most important strategic bombing campaign inhistory. From the audacious Doolittle raid in 1942 to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, award-winning historian Barrett Tillman recounts the saga from the perspectives of American and British aircrews who flew unprecedented missions overthousands of miles of ocean, as well as of the generalsand admirals who commanded them.
Whether describing the experiences of bomber crews based in China or the Marianas, fighter pilotson Iwo Jima, or carrier aviators at sea, Tillman provides vivid details of the lives of the fliers and their support personnel. Whirlwind takes readers into the cockpits and gun turrets of the mighty B-29 Superfortress, the largest bomber built up to that time. Tillman dramatically re-creates the sweep of wartime emotions that crews endured on fifteen-hour missions, grappling with the extreme tedium of cramped spaces and with adrenaline spikes in flak-studded skies, knowing that a bailout would put them at the mercy of a merciless enemy or an unforgiving sea.
A major character is the controversial and brilliant General Curtis LeMay, who rewrote strategic bombing tactics. His command’s fire-bombing missions incinerated fully half of Tokyo and many other cities, crippling Japan’s industry while still failing to force surrender.
Whirlwind examines the immense logistics and construction efforts necessary to support Superfortresses in Asia and the Mariana Islands, as well as the tireless efforts of engineers to build huge air bases from scratch.It also describes the unheralded missions that American bomber crews flew from the Aleutian Islands to Japan’s northernmost Kuril Islands.
Never has the Japanese side of the story been so thoroughly examined. If Washington, D.C., represented a “second front” in Army-Navy rivalry, the situation in Tokyo approached a full-contact sport. Tillman’s description of Japan’s willfully inadequate approach to civil defense is eye-opening. Similarly, he examines the mind-set in Tokyo’s war cabinet, which ignored the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, requiring the emperor’s personal intervention to avert a ghastly Allied invasion.
Tillman shows how, despite the Allies’ ultimate success, mistakes and shortsighted policies made victory more costly in lives and effort. He faults the lack of a unified command for allowing the Army Air Forces and the Navy to pursue parochial goals at the expense of the larger mission, and he questions the premature commitment of the enormously sophisticated B-29 to the most primitive theater in India and China.
Whirlwind is one of the last histories of World War II written with the contribution of men who fought in it.With unexcelled macro- and microperspectives, Whirlwind is destined to become a standard reference on the war, on multiservice operations, and on the human capacity for individual heroism and national folly.
Customer Reviews
That's the whole history of air attacks on the Japanese islands from 1942 to 1945. There were also other excellent works on various aspects of the campaign, but the most recent attempt Barrett Tillman to include the whole story, nearly every mission against the two main islands of American and British forces flew during the war.
When I heard that this book in the works that I initially thought it would be another lengthy tome on the B-29 thatled the vast majority of bombload against Japan. Instead, I was pleased to see that Tillman, the story has taken on the Doolittle Raid almost 3 months after the attack on Pearl Harbor photoreconnaissance last sortie against Japan after the surrender in 1945.
While the B-29 saga is not the whole book, the plan development, construction and operation are fully covered. Tillman did not hold back anything on the score, as the B-29 was the storyusually a failure by General LeMay made a drastic, almost bizarre in the months change tactic mission after the first bomb fell from a Superfort. The advent of low-level night arsonist attack by massed formations of B-29 literally changed the country of unfulfilled expectations amazingly successful.
Some guests have pounds Tillman is no other history of aviation degrees wrong, because it is something casual writing style and his passion for non-stop action with respect to ascientific approach to the topic. It would be a shame to see that here, as others collect the votes, because it's unique style Tillman, who does a really great read Whirlwind. If you want the scientific history about the bombing of Japan or any other element of the second world war, rich with extensive references. But most of us are not scientists, and little attention to scientific research. Tillman knows it, and writes for an audience that appreciates a historical narrative told in a way that has capturedand holds the reader's interest from cover to cover. Turbine is characterized in that category, while the charge of his case with clarity and completeness.
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