South Pacific Air War: The Role of Airpower in the New Guinea and Solomon Island Campaigns, January 1943 to February 1944

by Richard Dunn

In 1943 the Allies chipped away at the defensive outer barrier of the Japanese Pacific empire, particularly in the Solomon Islands. US Marine and Army infantry trudged through bloody jungle fighting on remote South Pacific islands such as Guadalcanal, New Georgia, and Bougainville. The US Navy waged war on Japanese shipping, seeking to prevent reinforcement and resupply for the battered Japanese ground forces. Particularly celebrated are the tiny PT boats, such as John F. Kennedy’s PT-109 , which charged destroyers head on. In this work, author Richard Dunn adds a third dimension to the history of the New Guinea and Solomon Islands campaigns by detailing the pivotal role of airpower. Dunn has formulated his narrative by studying and comparing Allied and Japanese reports, many of which reside in his personal collection.

Genres: World War II

608 pages, Hardcover

Published April 28, 2024

About the author

There is more than one Richard Dunn on Goodreads

See also: Richard Dunn - History of Science

Reviews

[Patrick Pillow · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read many books on the SWPA and the air war in the Pacific. This is one of the sub genre’s of World War Two that will continually fascinate me.

That being said, the first 1/3 of this work was hard for me to pick up. If you are familiar with the South Pacific air war, or have read many of the other books about the Solomons, New Guinea and/or Rabaul, you may initially be very disappointed to begin as I was.

This is not to say that the author has done a poor job; in fact that’s completely the opposite. The wealth of information the reader is given is at times overwhelming. Mr. Dunn’s access to Japanese records offers a “view from the other side.” Once I was able to wrap my head around the author’s premise and approach (roughly around the chapter detailing the Bismarck Sea engagement in March 1943), I found a “second wind” and found details previously unknown to me.

I felt that Mr. Dunn had several important points to make in interpreting this period. While some of them have been said many times before, there are a few that I found compelling. I believe the author brings some new perspectives for us amateur historians to dwell on:

1. AirPower was critical to Allied success in the Pacific War. (Again, nothing new)

2. Logistics was the secret weapon of the Allies. (Nothing new either).

3. Overclaiming for enemy a/c, ship damage or installations neutralized was rampant on both sides of the war. Vietnam was famous for terms like “body count” and having statistics to back up assumed success. This was just as rampant in the Second World War. Mr. Dunn goes into great detail explaining how damage was weighed on both the Axis and Allies side. The ability to fight over one’s own territory was a huge help to both sides in the survival of not only damaged aircraft but especially aircrew. While there is no doubt that success in aerial combat existed (and that several were truly aces and experts at their craft), unless you truly saw an aircraft go down, there is every chance that plane survived.

4. The P-38 Lightning was not as masterful as we were led to believe. While the Lightings speed, power, armament and range were true advantages against the Japanese, the planes weaknesses and maintenance needs meant that in some way, the aura of the Lightning was lost over Rabaul.

5. Allied ability to rotate and rehabilitate aircrew helped to not only protect stressed pilots but also offered a way to share and instruct combat flying to replacements and squadrons/groups. The Japanese lost such a skilled cadre in 1942 and 1943 that by the time of the Truk raid and immediately before the Marianas Turkey Shoot, the core of IJN fliers and army aviation had already been lost in the SWPA.


I could go on but overall, I enjoyed this book. If you are wanting more personal accounts of the air war, this isn’t where I would go first. Instead, this book paints a good overview of day to day operations with a level of detail that is hard to find anywhere other than unit histories.