Whirlwind: The Air War Against Japan, 1942-1945 »

Barrett Tillman is a widely recognized expert on air warfare in World War II and the author of more than 40 nonfiction and fiction books on military topics. The former managing editor of The Hook (the magazine of the Tailhook Association), Tillman's is a familiar face on TV documentaries in the United States and Europe. He has received six awards for history and literature, including the Admiral Arthur Radford Award. He lives in Mesa, Arizona.

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 1

Ch. 1 Before the Beginning 9

Ch. 2 China Skies 31

Ch. 3 From the South 67

Ch. 4 From the Sea 106

Ch. 5 Firestorm 134

Ch. 6 Pacific Ponies 174

Ch. 7 The Harbor War 194

Ch. 8 "A Most Cruel Bomb" 223

Ch. 9 Legacy 252

Appendix A The Unknown War 273

Appendix B Japanese Aircraft by Allied Code Names 276

Acknowledgments 277

Notes 279

Index 303