Wings of Gold
The U.S. Naval Air Campaign in World War II
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
From critically acclaimed military historian Gerald Astor comes Wings of Gold, the first account of how the airplane transformed the U.S. Navy and paved the way to victory in the Pacific in World War II. Astor tracks that fateful journey from its humble beginnings in 1910 when Eugene Ely flew the very first plane off the deck of a U.S. Navy ship to the unprecedented air combat missions that helped defeat the Japanese.
Few naval aviators in World War II realized that when they earned their wings of gold they were about to become test pilots for a whole new kind of combat. In their own words, these courageous fliers describe the life-and-death air battles that defined the revolution in naval strategy that rose from the ashes of Pearl Harbor, when fighter pilots watched in horror as Japanese carrier-launched aircraft bombed their planes and airfields into smoking rubble.
While following the pilots’ firsthand reports of air strikes and blazing dogfights across the islands and atolls of the Pacific, Astor explores the ways the U.S. Navy began its momentous transformation before the war. Later, the critical role of aircraft carriers in the stunning U.S. victory at Midway sounded the death knell for conventional naval warfare, yet the public, the press, the Army, and even the president’s advisors refused to recognize the new reality. In fact, only a few in the Navy understood that a new era had begun that would change the face of war forever.
The young Americans who fought the deadly duels against Imperial Japanese forces high over the Pacific gave everything they had to the war effort, and many made the supreme sacrifice. Wings of Gold pays tribute to their courage, daring, and selfless dedication. Vividly told, thoroughly researched, and filled with stirring accounts of the Pacific War’s greatest air battles, Wings of Gold is an important addition to the annals of World War II aerial combat.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This chaotic history gives anything but a bird's eye view of the Second World War. Military historian Astor, author of Terrible Terry Allen, focuses on the exploits of aircraft-carrier pilots in the Pacific from Pearl Harbor to the final attacks on the Japanese home islands, with occasional glances at operations guarding convoys and covering landings in the Atlantic and Mediterranean theaters. The broad outlines tell a story of burgeoning American military might as the colossal U.S. war economy gears up. Initially battling superior Japanese numbers, equipment and skill, by 1943 Navy fliers were shooting down ten Japanese planes for every American lost, the"superabundance" of American planes and pilots was causing air traffic-control problems and fighter pilots were competing for the right to attack ever-rarer enemy planes. Unfortunately, the broad outlines are pretty hard to discern in Astor's rendition. He tells the story mainly as oral history, through pilots' first-hand reminiscences of training, dogfighting, strafing, bombing, ditching and being rescued, and wrangling with hidebound Navy brass. The best of the reminiscences vividly convey the procedure, panic and elation of aerial combat; however, important points are frequently buried in off-hand comments, and the brief stabs at exposition, analysis and perspective are quickly broken up by the next round of cockpit anecdotes. Indeed, their sheer number and repetitiousness at times makes it seem as if Astor wants to reenact the entire war through shot-by-shot micro-narratives of the tiniest duels. Hardcore military buffs will delight in the nonstop action, tactical lore, and clipped flyboy lingo, but many readers will feel shell-shocked. Photos.
