The Fleet at Flood Tide: America at Total War in the Pacific, 1944-1945

by James D. Hornfischer

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The extraordinary story of the World War II air, land, and sea campaign that brought the U.S. Navy to the apex of its strength and marked the rise of the United States as a global superpowerWinner, Commodore John Barry Book Award, Navy League of the United States • Winner, John Lehman Distinguished Naval Historian Award, Naval Order of the United StatesWith its thunderous assault on the Mariana Islands in June 1944, the United States crossed the threshold of total war. In this tour de force of dramatic storytelling, distilled from extensive research in newly discovered primary sources, James D. Hornfischer brings to life the campaign that was the fulcrum of the drive to compel Tokyo to surrender—and that forever changed the art of modern war.With a close focus on high commanders, front-line combatants, and ordinary people, American and Japanese alike, Hornfischer tells the story of the climactic end of the Pacific War as has never been done before. Here are the epic seaborne invasions of Saipan, Tinian, and Guam, the stunning aerial battles of the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot, the first large-scale use of Navy underwater demolition teams, the largest banzai attack of the war, and the daring combat operations large and small that made possible the strategic bombing offensive culminating in the atomic strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. From the seas of the Central Pacific to the shores of Japan itself, The Fleet at Flood Tide is a stirring, authoritative, and cinematic portrayal of World War II’s world-changing finale.Illustrated with original maps and more than 120 dramatic photographs“Quite simply, popular and scholarly military history at its best.”—Victor Davis Hanson, author of Carnage and Culture “The dean of World War II naval history . . . In his capable hands, the story races along like an intense thriller. . . . Narrative nonfiction at its finest—a book simply not to be missed.”—James M. Scott, Charleston Post and Courier “An impressively lucid account . . . admirable, fascinating.”—The Wall Street Journal “An extraordinary memorial to the courageous—and a cautionary note to a world that remains unstable and turbulent today.”—Admiral James Stavridis, former Supreme Allied Commander, NATO, author of Sea Power “A masterful, fresh account . . . ably expands on the prior offerings of such classic naval historians as Samuel Eliot Morison.”—The Dallas Morning News

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World War II, Military History, Military Fiction, War, American History

586 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 2016

About the author

James D. Hornfischer was an American literary agent, author, and naval historian.
A one-time book editor at the publishing company HarperCollins in New York, Hornfischer was later president of Hornfischer Literary Management, a literary agency in Austin, Texas.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The battle of artillery…was the Saipan campaign’s first critical fight. [Admiral Richmond] Kelly Turner was coming to a fuller realization of something that had bothered him since Tarawa: that saturation naval bombardment was futile, squandering both time and ordinance. He would compare the effort to destroy his well-entrenched enemy with general area fire to the prolonged artillery bombardments of the Great War. ‘Beyond a certain point, both became ineffective and wasteful,’ he would write. Although heavy naval gunfire tore away most of the wiring that formed the physical grid of General Saito’s communications network, the shaken defenders dug in amid Saipan’s interior hills, valleys, cliff sides, and crevices and held on. The island would have to be taken as contested ground always was: by men on foot carrying guns…”
- James D. Hornfischer, The Fleet at Flood Tide: America at Total War in the Pacific, 1944-45

James Hornfischer’s The Fleet at Flood Tide covers the epic and brutal final year of the Pacific War, but it does so by focusing on what Hornfischer believes are the two crucial events: the taking of the Marianas Islands (Saipan, Tinian, and Guam), and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima (made possible by the long-rang bomber bases in the Marianas).

Though this book seems to promise a broader scope, do not be misled. There is no coverage here of the South Pacific, of MacArthur and the Army, of the Battle of Leyte Gulf or the retaking of the Philippines. Moreover, Hornfischer pretty much leaps over Iwo Jima and Okinawa (and implies the Navy should have done the same), covering those famously costly battles in a cursory manner.

Instead, Hornfischer keeps his eye on his theme: that once Saipan, Tinian, and Guam were in American hands, thereby unleashing B-29 Superfortresses against mainland Japan, all other military action was an insurance policy against the failure of the atomic bomb.

By keeping tight to his thesis, and resisting the urge to take on too much subject matter at once, Hornfischer is able to narrate the envelopment of the Marianas from the sea, the sky, and the ground.

Hornfischer has forged a solid reputation as a naval historian, but here he displays a real talent for dramatic, white-knuckled retellings of aerial dogfights and ship-killing missions. For me, the saga of the skies alone is worth the price of admission. Hornfischer does a masterful job of clearly explaining the technical capabilities of each type of plane; of describing the stomach-flipping tasks required of dive bombers screaming towards a carrier at near-vertical, or a torpedo plane forced to stay low, slow, and steady to deliver their payload; of piecing together the tactics used in a swirling multi-party duel in the clouds. Especially effective is Hornfischer’s portrayal of the American counterattack in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, undertaken at dusk, at extreme ranges. The evocation of weary, mentally fatigued, sometimes-wounded fliers having to find their carriers in the midst of the wide, dark ocean, while flying on fumes in the wide, dark sky, is fabulous (and a bit terrifying).

The naval action is also well done, though considering the state of the Japanese Imperial Navy at this juncture, it lacks the anything-can-happen nature of aerial combat. Nevertheless, Hornfischer excels at providing a full picture of what an amphibious invasion requires. It’s not just the aircraft carriers, whose role was obvious, but it was the transports, disgorging men and equipment onto the beaches, and the destroyers sailing in close to shore to provide fire support. There are countless moving pieces, and all of them need to work in synchronization in order to avoid a massacre on the coral.

Perhaps inevitably, the scenes on land – following Holland Smith’s Marines – are less effective. With a few exceptions, the battles on Saipan, Tinian, and Guam tend to be a bit muddled and confusing. This is exacerbated by the maps, which do not include the level of detail necessary to follow the troop movements that Hornfischer describes in the narrative.

Like any good historian, Hornfischer recognizes this as – above all – a human tale. To that end, he focuses his storytelling efforts around three major players: Fifth Fleet Commander Raymond Spruance; amphibious operations commander Richmond Turner; and the leader of the 509th Composite Group, the man who flew the Enola Gay, Paul Tibbets.

Spruance and Kelly are fantastic choices. The hero of Midway, Spruance was calm, understated, cerebral, and far too often overshadowed by the error-prone Halsey, with whom he shared a fleet (both Halsey and Spruance commanded the same men; when Spruance was at sea, it was the Fifth Fleet; when Halsey was at sea, it was the Third Fleet). Hornfischer builds a strong case for Spruance as the real victor of the Pacific, not Halsey, the media darling who managed a fifth star.

A study in contrasts, Kelly Turner was brilliant, mercurial, and a raging alcoholic. Including him allows Hornfischer to relate the logistical riddles involved in placing men onto contested beachheads, and keeping them equipped and fed.

Tibbets, on the other hand, is not as inspired a choice. Certainly, Tibbets embodies Hornfischer’s belief that war is an essentially amoral arena, in which all means should be in play, and that nobody who – in Tibbets’s words – hasn’t had their “balls on that cold, hard anvil” has a right to disagree. It seems, though, that most of Tibbets’s story is taken from his memoirs, and those memoirs appear to be very clear about the rightful hero of the piece. It’s not my place to judge Tibbets’s memory of certain events; suffice to say, he is always the smartest guy in the room, and comes very close to naming himself the indispensable man of the Manhattan Project (he was not, I should add).

Also included in the cast of characters Draper Kauffman, founder of the Underwater Demolition Teams; David McCampbell, the Navy’s top ace; and Shizuko Mirua and Sakae Oba, a Japanese nurse and soldier, respectively, who both had harrowing experiences on Saipan.

The inescapable point of The Fleet at Flood Tide is that the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary evils. He sets up the potential – and potentially catastrophic – invasion of Japan by detailing the mass suicides of Saipan, which enveloped the civilian population in wholesale self-slaughter.

Deciding whether the dropping of nuclear ordinance on two civilian population centers – targets chosen not for their military value, but for their relatively damage-free state – was “right” or “wrong” is engaging in an exercise in futility. Counterfactuals are notoriously tricky, if not mind-bogglingly impossible to play out. Maybe the heat-blasting of 200,000 people saved two or three or four times that many; or maybe the Japanese nation, strangled by air and sea, were already about to collapse. Maybe a blockade (preferred by Spruance himself) would have done the job without the necessity of the splitting of atoms, the unleashing of the light of a thousand suns; or maybe the blockade would have killed as many, or more, just on a slower basis.

I’m not entirely sure I agree with all of Hornfischer’s arguments, and I certainly think he is too dismissive of evidence or ideas that don’t fit his conclusion. But his writing is undeniably powerful and empathetic, wonderfully capable of plucking the threads of humanity from a maelstrom of carnage.

[Jill H. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to keep this review short since there is just too much to say about what was happening militarily in the Pacific. This is an excellent history of the last year of WWII in the Pacific. Germany was defeated but Japan refused to concede and the US Navy/Marines put all their strength into the Pacific theater. Almost two years of non-stop fighting brought the Navy/Marines to the Marianas and at Saipan, for the first time, they faced a large population of civilians as well as natives and and Japanese. And it changed the complexion of battle as they witnessed thousands of civilian men, women, and children leaping from cliffs to their deaths, preferring suicide to surrender. These horrible acts continued on Tinian and Guam and caused President Roosevelt to issue a statement which condoned a totalistic and merciless approach in the Marianas.

Thus begins this book which describes what the the author calls "a step beyond the moral threshold".........fighting an enemy which preferred death than the dishonor of surrender. He concentrates, without bias, on Commanders Raymond Spruance, Kelly Turner, and Paul Tibbets and their roles in the overall Pacific theater in 1944-45. And, of course, the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, both the decision to use the weapon and the moral/political effects on both Japan and the United States.

Although I have some knowledge of the end years of the war with Japan, this book approached the subject a little differently, touching on the beliefs and consciences of both the Americans and Japanese involved. Highly recommended.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent narrative account of the second half of the war in the Pacific, from 1944 to the end. Its military focus is balanced by the human side of things with character portraits of a select set of participants, including certain Japanese soldiers and civilians. The major topic is the fighting for the Marianas islands (Saipan, Guam, and Tinian) and the bombings of Japan made possible by those victories, the horrific firebombing of major cities and the culmination in the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As much as I or you might want to say we shouldn’t have done these things, it’s important to bear witness and appreciate the mindset of the time. Weigh the argument that hundreds of thousands of more lives on both sides would have been lost if we were forced to fight on the Japanese homeland. Come to some kind reckoning that a large fraction of their people were under some kind of powerful brainwashing to make them willing to keep fighting or die before facing the dishonor of defeat. And as implausible as it sounds to pathologize Imperial Japan as a form of cult, the amazingly peaceful cooperation and harmony they showed under MacAurthur’s occupation forces after Hirohito abdication seems to prove some such sociological phenomenon was at play.

The author’s first volume, “The Last of the Tin-Can Sailors”, covered the battles of Pearl Harbor, the Coral Sea, Midway, Guadalcanal, and Tarawa. This second volume was better for me in the cohesiveness of presentation and in its emotional and educational outcomes. I didn’t expect that to be true. In the period after Pearl Harbor, I felt like I was rooting for the underdog and that with the definitive victories of Midway and Guadalcanal from 1942 to 1943 the tide had turned toward American victory. But this was not like a football game where being a few touchdowns ahead at the half undermines the meaning of the rest of the game. The game metaphor itself turns out to be pathetically inappropriate except where it comes to the idea of the Monday morning quarterback projecting what he would have done to be more “surgical” in defeating the armed forces without inhumane (unsportsmanlike) slaughter of civilians.

Saipan is a mountainous island 20 miles long and 2,000 miles south of Japan and 2,700 west of Pearl Harbor, well prepared with protected artillery emplacements, tanks, and lots of caves to hide the defenders. The assault involved a massive amphibious invasion by 71,000 troops far from any American base, and thus more impressive in some ways than the invasion of Normandy in the same month of June 1944. The underwater demolition teams were especially brave and ingenious at their dangerous work to clear mines and barriers and scout out the routes for the various craft in the flotilla of troop and equipment transports. Despite the more than 100,000 naval artillery shells, aircraft bombs, and napalm poured onto the island, there were still plenty of the enemy safe in the caves, whose story we get from the eyewitness accounts of a civilian nurse and an army captain who kept fighting . Under decree from the Emperor and enforcement by the army, the civilians were pressured and led to join in the fight, often using homemade spears. The American soldiers took recourse in wholesale blasting the mouths of the caves with artillery or using flamethrowers. Very few civilians could be persuaded to surrender. By the time Saipan was secured three weeks later the Americans sustained about 13,500 casualties with 3,400 deaths and the Japanese lost over 23,000, mostly deaths that included many civilians. The author’s preface eloquently captures the special brutality of this battle and significance for the future of the war:
What happened on this unprecedented intersection of cultures would transform the character of the war effort—and stand as a dramatic rationale for the pitiless strategic air campaign that the United States engaged from the Marianas.
Japanese soldiers had been demonstrating their preference for death over surrender since 1942. But a deeper madness revealed itself on Saipan, where Americans confronted the horror of civilians—women, children, entire families—leaping to their death from high cliffs into the sea. The Japanese army had so terrorized them so thoroughly that they, too, preferred suicide to capture. They blew themselves up with hand grenades and killed their own children. When the tragedy repeated itself on Tinian and Guam, it was clear that the horror had been no accident of local circumstance.
American commanders were quickly alive to the implications of this cruel perfidy. They viewed it as a preview of what awaited them further to the west. In response, with a subtle cue from their commander in chief, they passed a threshold into total war. To force voluntary surrender from a people who would resist to the end entailed the crossing of a moral threshold.

There are no monsters served up in this narrative, only many brave men on both sides doing their creative best by the forces of honor and courage that drove them. We spend little time with their political masters and instead stay with the operations of infantry battalions, naval squadrons, aircraft missions. For higher levels of command Hornfischer stays closely with two leaders: Admiral Raymond Spruance, the commander of the Fifth Fleet, who was a technocrat who treated was as an intellectual challenge, but was compelled to stay close to the action; and Vice Admiral Kelly Turner, who tirelessly directed in all the myriad of the joint Marine and Army elements of the amphibious forces, dealt continually with the serious problems of interservice rivalries, and struggled with alcoholism when the action slacked. A lesser focus is given to Admiral Marc Mitscher, who commanded the Fast Carrier Task Force 58. The latter was charged with defending the invasion force and providing air and artillery support of the campaign, but got they called out to defend against a full court attack by the Imperial Combined Fleet, known as the Battle of the Philippines Sea, the biggest carrier battle in history. This was the most thrilling part of the book and quite a clear victory, with the Japanese sustaining three carriers sunk, about 600 aircraft destroyed, and 3,000 lives lost versus American losses of one battleship damaged, about 120 planes lost, and 109 men killed. No wonder the victors came to call it irreverently “The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot.”

Key characters of lesser rank subject to detailed presentation include: Holland Smith, Turner’s corps commander on Saipan and several subsequent campaigns; Draper Kauffman, founder of the Underwater Demolition Teams; David McCampbell, the Navy’s leading ace pilot and air group leader; and, later in the saga, Paul Tibbetts, the Army Air Force colonel who helped with the development of the B-29 Superfortress bomber, planned and led the world’s first nuclear strike force, and personally flew the plane out of Tinian that incinerated Hiroshima, the “Enola Gay”, which he oddly named after his mother. The stories of these men, their personalities and actions, make for powerful reading indeed. In the history of warfare, the work of men like these “brought about the supremacy of U.S. naval aviation, the coming of the age of the Marine Corps, the debut of Navy underwater demolition (a byword for today’s Navy SEALS), and the aborning atomic age.”

Hornfischer especially admires Spruance for his humility in not grubbing for credit and acclaim, in contrast to his counterpart in Admiral “Bull” Halsey, who alternated command of the fleet every few months. Though Spruance did not have the tendency like Halsey to take major risks in pursuing a showdown of a ship-to-ship battle against an enemy of unknown strength, he did take a minor risk for such glory associated with the aircraft attack of the Truk Island stronghold. In pounding a Japanese destroyer until it sank with hundreds aboard, he could not gloat, reflecting such a brutal outcome as “war at its worst.” But when one of his destroyers fatally damaged a Japanese sub chaser and a lieutenant, after failing to get about survivors in the water to come aboard rescue boats, unleashed depth charges to kill them, Spruance did not condemn the action:
If his pursuit of a heavy metal battle line fantasy proved to be quixotic, giving way to the brutish reality of a messily conducted mercy killing, so be it. Philosopher’s ideals about “proportionality in killing” were starting to seem quaint. This had long ago ceased to be a gentleman’s war.

Okinawa proved to be even more costly than Saipan: 12,520 Americans killed in action, 55,162 wounded; for the Japanese about 65,000 regular soldiers killed, 28,000 Okinawan conscripts, and, and 94,000 civilians. With about 2.5 million soldiers on the home islands, the prospects were for more losses on each side than all the Allied deaths in Europe. In the later face of criticism of the necessity of nuclear attacks by the likes of Supreme Chief of Naval Operations Chester Nimitz and others, Spruance’s views were characterized by Hornfischer as the following:
“The sob fraternity” he had called them. There was a war to be won, and it had long since crossed beyond all ethical and moral boundaries heretofore known.

Ultimately, the Japanese government did not concede defeat, but the Emperor did on behalf of the people. The Imperial Army representatives on the Cabinet were of the “fight to the last man” school. The transformation of the defeated Japanese people into a peaceful society and harmonious partner of the U.S. after the war is still somewhat wonderful mystery to me, delved into much deeper than here in the excellent book by Dower on the role of racism in the war, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War. The narrative in the present book steered clear of MacArthur’s campaign as Commander of the Southwest Pacific to take New Guinea and then the Philippines, but it does follow his effective and humane efforts as director of the occupation force, repatriation to Japan of over 5 million Japanese from their Pacific empire and prison camps, and rebuilding of their infrastructure and economy. Hornfischer concludes with this praise:

Douglas MacArthur, whose messianism vexed the Navy all along, commanded the stage at the end. With his deft handling of the surrender and occupation of Japan, working by, with, and through a defeated emperor, MacArthur as anyone else shaped the legacy of the war beyond the end.

The close of Hornfischer’s preface makes a fitting conclusion to his admirable effort with the book:
I wish to avoid a wiser-than-thou pose, for a full consideration of the stakes of the war and of the decisions made in its midst should recommend humility on the part of all. Neither triumphalism, condemnation, nor apology does intellectual or emotional justice to the brute reality of this savage war, the outcome of which could not have been known in the moment. For the narrative historian, recreating those moments is the aim. I want readers to appreciate how fallible, striving human beings responded to them. In the Marianas campaign, and from there on outward, America mastered the vast geopolitics of the Pacific. But all history remains a human story.

This book was provided by the publisher for review through the Netgalley program.

[Tom Mathews · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full disclosure: James D. Hornfischer’s first book, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour is my all-time favorite book about World War II or any war fought at sea. His thrilling narrative focuses on a small yet vital engagement of the Battle of Leyte Gulf and spins a story that makes the defense of the Alamo look tepid in comparison. But being able to tell the story of a battle does not automatically qualify one to tell the story of a war. So it is with great interest that I picked up a copy of Hornfischer’s latest book, ‘The Fleet at Flood Tide: America at Total War in the Pacific, 1944-1945’, which covers the Pacific Campaign starting with the U.S. Navy’s air assault on the Japanese base at Truk Lagoon and running through to the end of the war, focusing largely on the amphibious assaults on the Marianas Islands; Saipan, Tinian and Guam. The conquest of these islands gave the Allies airfields from which long-range bombers could reach the Japanese mainland, unleashing a reign of destruction unparalleled in history. Hornfischer focuses on linking the occupation of the Marianas with the war’s final chapter, the bombing of Hiroshima by Col. Paul Tibbets and the crew of the Enola Gay, which took off from Tinian. While this is not the most exhaustive account of Tibbet’s career and mission, it is considerably more comprehensive than description of the mission given by the colonel on his return from Hiroshima. “We sighted a Japanese city and destroyed it; further details will be released from Washington.”

Other campaigns and battles, such as Iwo Jima and Leyte Gulf are given less attention than one would expect. In his defense, though, these battles have received a lot of attention from historians. Flags of Our Fathers (James Bradley) and The Heart of Hell: The Untold Story of Courage and Sacrifice in the Shadow of Iwo Jima (Weiss) are creditable accounts of Iwo Jima and Sea of Thunder: Four Commanders and the Last Great Naval Campaign 1941-1945 (Evan Thomas) and the aforementioned The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors are excellent accounts of the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

Hornfischer is as adept at describing an expanded war as he is a single battle. His extensive research relies heavily on primary sources ranging from government officials in Washington and Tokyo, officers in Navy wardrooms, pilots in their cockpits, Marines on the beach and even, despite the extreme paucity or survivors, from Japanese soldiers and civilians on Saipan.

Bottom line: Hornfischer’s books read more like a Tom Clancy thriller than a history book. His skill at stitching together a story that contains all the horror and tragedy, sacrifice and heroism is unparalleled. I cannot recommend his books enough.

*Quotations are cited from an advanced reading copy and may not be the same as appears in the final published edition. The review was based on an advanced reading copy obtained at no cost from the publisher in exchange for an unbiased review. While this does take any ‘not worth what I paid for it’ statements out of my review, it otherwise has no impact on the content of my review.

FYI: On a 5-point scale I assign stars based on my assessment of what the book needs in the way of improvements:
*5 Stars – Nothing at all. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
*4 Stars – It could stand for a few tweaks here and there but it’s pretty good as it is.
*3 Stars – A solid C grade. Some serious rewriting would be needed in order for this book to be considered great or memorable.
*2 Stars – This book needs a lot of work. A good start would be to change the plot, the character development, the writing style and the ending.
*1 Star - The only thing that would improve this book is a good bonfire.

[happy · Rating 5 out of 5]

In looking at the final year of World War II in the Pacific, Mr Hornfischer has written a superb account of the Marianas campaign and the ensuing bombing campaign that was launched from those islands, including the dropping the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and finally the early occupation of the Japanese homeland. In telling the story, the author focuses his story on the commander of the US Fifth Fleet, Raymond Spruance and the man who dropped the Bomb on Hiroshima – Paul Tibbets.

In looking at Adm Spruance, the author also looks at the tension between Spruance and his subordinate commanders – esp his carrier admirals in TF58. Spruance took the stance that his job was to protect the invasion forces, while his carrier admirals thought their job was to hunt out and destroy the Japanese Fleet, esp their carriers. Spruance's view is proven correct at what comes to be known as the Battle of the Philippine Sea, AKA The Great Mariana Turkey Shoot. The Japanese aircraft/pilot loses effectively destroyed Japanese Carrier Aviation, even though only the American aviation did not sink any Japanese carriers. Following the Turkey Shoot, Spruance finally lets his carrier admirals have their way when scout planes locate the Japanese fleet. The Americans launch a strike late in the day on the Japanese carriers that results in Spruance’s “Turn on the Lights” order that enables the strike force to find their way home.

One of my favorite anecdotes from the book occurs during the early aerial attacks on the Japanese Naval base at Truk before the Marianas operations. In this attack the pilots of the 5th Fleet virtually destroy the shipping in the lagoon. However one light cruiser and its escorts manage to escape the raids and are located. Spruance decides he wants to join the party and decides to take his flagship, the USS New Jersey, and go hunting. The pilots are given orders not to sink the ships and let the Admiral have his fun. Spruance locates the Japanese at his staff (not the battleships) direct the operations against the fleeing Japanese. While they sunk the enemy ships, they weren't very effective.

Another storyline that I appreciated was Hornfisher’s telling of the development of UDT teams, the forerunner of the modern Navy Seals. In telling this story the author trace the career of the founder of the teams, LCDR Draper Kauffman. This man had a varied career, in spite of being the son of a serving admiral, due to poor eyesight was unable to join the Navy. In spite of this, the British Navy accepted him and he served in mine and bomb disposal. When the war started the Navy decided they needed some experienced Bomb Disposal people and got him back from the British. He then established the Bomb Disposal School. When the Navy realized they had a problem with the coral reefs surrounding many Pacific Islands, they tapped him to set up the UDTs to blow lanes in the reefs to allow landing craft to make successful approaches to the beaches.

The story of the Japanese civilians on Saipan is another excellent storyline. The author tells this story through the eyes of a 17 yr old young lady. She came to the islands with her parents and as the war comes to her home, she is drafted as a nurse for the Japanese Military. As the battle progresses, the Japanese military puts extreme pressure on the civilians to commit suicide along with those soldiers actively opposing the American Marines and Soldiers. This culminates with many civilians, including women and children, jumping off the cliffs at Marpi Point to the horror of the Americans observing.

The author also tells the story of the other two landings in Marianas, Tinian and Guam, but not the depth of the fighting on Saipan. He also really doesn’t cover the landings on Iwo Jima and Okinawa. After the fall of the Marianas, he goes into their development as bomber bases. He discussed the early problems the XXI Bomber Command had in bombing Japan from high altitude, and the shock Curtis LeMay had on the crews when he decided to change tactics and go in at very low altitude and at night. The story of the conventional bombing is mainly setting up the story of the 509th Composite Group and Paul Tibbets. In this narrative, Mr. Hornfischer makes the case for the use of the Atomic Bombs. I felt he was very convincing. The author feels that one of the back ground reasons for the use of the bombs was the civilian suicides on Saipan. He states that when senior American commanders, including Adm Nimitz, saw the bodies bobbing in the surf it changed how they viewed the Japanese people, resulting the acceptance of the wholesale bombing of Japanese cities and ultimately Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Mr. Hornfischer also goes into what the governing councils of Japan were thinking. To sum it up, even after the bombings, they were not about to quit the war under anything but their own terms, including no occupation and the preservation of the emperor. The bombs changed one mind – the emperors. Mr. Hornfischer also makes a good case the bombs not only saved American lives, but Japanese. Even under the best case scenario of blockade and literally starving Japan to surrender, more Japanese would have perished than did with the two bombings. The author also addresses the radiation question. He basically states that no one knew the effects of exposure to gamma rays, so the illness and deaths resulting from the radiation came as a surprise.

The final section of the book covers the early occupation of Japan by MacArthur’s forces and how he remade Japan into what the US wanted.

The only problems I had with this book are rather niggling. Mr. Hornfisher just barely touches on subsequent operations in the Central Pacific, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and totally skips the battles in the Southwest Pacific and the Philippines. He also doesn't really go into the controversy that happened when the Corps commander, Marine General H.M. Smith, relieved the Army's 27th ID commander, Ralph Smith. This affected Marine/Army relations for years and even today there is still some effect. Even with that this is still a 4.5 star read, rounded up for Goodreads.

For any interested, here is a link to Mr. Hornfischer discussing the book

https://www.c-span.org/video/?417270-...

[CoachJim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Saturday, August 3, 2019

The Fleet at Flood Tide
by James D. Hornfischer

I found this book to be an excellent history of a certain aspect of the war in the Pacific. Many people have questioned the decision to drop the Atomic Bomb on Japan. This book, for me, answers that question.

There is an early hint in the first chapter that this book involves the Atom Bomb when the author introduces Paul Tibbets who was the pilot of the Enola Gay that dropped the first Atom Bomb on Japan.

Hornfischer begins the book with a lot of detail that some have said may hide the forest from the trees. He describes the emergence of the Navy as a force after Pearl Harbor. The fact that he chooses this may be because the Navy lost more men during the war than the ground forces in that theater. The emergence of the Navy allowed the rest of the progress in the advances through the Pacific. The Author also notes that Ernest King wrote that without the Navy there would have been no victory over Japan.

He does concentrate a great deal of the book on the battle for Saipan. He uses this battle to illustrate the barbarity of the Japanese. (He mentions that about this time the Supreme Allied Command issued a statement from the Quebec Conference referring to the Japanese as “the barbarians of the Pacific”. page 496) Their refusal to surrender and their coercing the civilian population to commit suicide gave ample evidence that further battles would yield horrible fatalities. The Marines watched in horror as mothers killed their children and then jumped to their deaths from cliffs.

This is not a comprehensive history of the War in the Pacific during the last 2 years. He barely mentions Iwo Jima and other battles, but the battle for Saipan serves as an example of what was encountered in those battles.

As he did in his other book I read (Neptunes Inferno) the author offers a summary and analysis of the events described in the book. This analysis is an interesting and valuable description of the arguments about the Atom Bomb. I doubt this will change anyone opinion about the question, but it serves as a valuable reminder of the consequences in this time when once again the use nuclear weapons is being threatened. It is in this summary that he also mentions something Americans can be proud of.

"In the end, the United States departed from the heritage of war-making handed down to it by the great centurion-states of the West. Unlike Sparta and Rome, America ministered to its enemy with surpassing mercy" … (page 496).

[Sweetwilliam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had been waiting for the release of the Fleet at Flood Tide with great anticipation and this book did not disappoint. This is the fourth book I have read by this author and like the others, the Fleet at Flood Tide deserves each of the five stars that I have awarded it.

In his previous three books, James Hornfischer established that he has his finger on the pulse of Naval campaigns in the Pacific during WWII. In the Fleet at Flood Tide, Hornfischer demonstrates equal skill in describing the land campaigns on Saipan and Tinian as well as the corresponding sea campaign, the Marianas Turkey Shoot. But the Fleet at Flood Tide has a higher purpose than merely describing the air and land campaigns of the Marianas. This book provides the evidence that justifies the use of the atomic bomb. For me, this is the major take away of this book.

Yes, the atomic bomb is a horrific weapon of mass destruction and it was used to destroy two cities. However, Hornfischer states that the invasion of Mainland Japan would have cost 720,000 US casualties. The Japanese casualties – both civilian and military – were predicted to be far worse. The corresponding naval blockade would have starved and brought disease to millions of non-combatants. The dropping of the two bombs broke a stalemate in the Japanese cabinet. The Japanese were prepared to defend themselves and they did not lack manpower. They lacked skilled pilots but they had more than enough aircraft (~10,000) and willing volunteers to crash them into troop transports. Japan also had stockpiles of chemical weapons. It would have been a protracted bloody mess with famine and disease that would have killed most likely millions more than several atom bombs in the name of humane battle ethics.

I have argued that the atomic bombs ended the war without the necessity of invading mainland Japan. Once, someone rebutted my argument by stating that the Japanese contacted the Soviet Union and that they were ready to surrender. This book presents multiple reasons to refute this argument. Hornfischer writes that Japan contacted the Soviet Ambassador on July 13th. Japan desired to send Hirohito's brother to the Kremlin with a letter from the Emperor seeking to end the war. The Kremlin did not want to act as an intermediary because now that Japan was on it's last leg, Stalin wanted to declare war on Japan to claim territory in Manchuria. Also, the Japanese were not willing to surrender unconditionally. They wanted Hirohito left in power and they refused foreign armies of occupation. There is no way that the US and Great Britain were going to accept these terms.

Hornfischer argues that after the bombs were dropped, Hirohito told Togo, "Now that a weapon of this devastating power has been used against us, we should not let slip the opportunity....Tell Prime Minister Suzuki that it is my wish that the war be ended as soon as possible on the basis of the Potsdam Declaration.” There is little doubt that the atom bomb broke the stalemate in the Japanese war cabinet. Hornfischer warns the reader that the history revisionists and other bodies are always going to villainize the United States for using this weapon.

Paul Tibbets was a pilot from the 509th air group that dropped the first bomb over Hiroshima. Hornfischer claims that he never felt any guilt over dropping the bomb. As he got older and the free world became more guilt-ridden, Paul actually became less nuanced in explaining why dropping the Atom bomb was a necessity. Hornfischer asks the reader “was it the job of a combat pilot to educate a free people that were too lazy to read for themselves?" I think these are wise words.

This book is a must read.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent war-history book, if depressing at times. The American conquest of Saipan, and the ensuing mass-suicides of Japanese civilians -- well, I had to put the book down for awhile after that chapter. The Japanese were a formidable enemy, and the militarists who took over Japan, and made it into an empire were, well, "remarkable". A long national nightmare, that collapsed quickly after their surrender. Boy, am I glad I didn't have to fight in that war, or any other.

The author has a very high opinion of Admiral Raymond Spruance, architect of the Marianas victory, who always kept his eye on the ball. He treads more familiar ground in relating the atomic bombs that ended the war, and has little use for critics of that bombing. He ends the book with a quote from Paul Tibbets, pilot of the Enola Gay: "Those people never had their balls on that cold, hard anvil."

Not to be missed, if you're a military-history fan. One of my (current) list of the 100 best books I've ever read.

Here's the best professional review I saw online:
https://www.historynet.com/book-revie...

[Michael Jandrok · Rating 5 out of 5]

James D. Hornfischer’s “The Fleet at Flood Tide,” subtitled “America at Total War in the Pacific 1944-1945," is quite possibly the best naval history that I have ever read, and is an immense contribution to the history of the latter stages to the endgame of the Pacific War in World War II. It’s a vastly enlightening book that takes the reader directly inside the command decisions and the battle lines that shaped some of the most momentous events ever undertaken during wartime. 503 pages of text and maps give the reader a feel for what it was like to there on the front during the battles that raged on land and sea and turned the War in the Pacific from a tumult into a haunting eulogy for the idea of war as a noble and honorable undertaking. This was the advent of the concept of “total war”, one which engaged soldiers and civilians alike, and which ended with the full destructive power of the atomic bombs which were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hornfischer writes in a clear and exciting narrative style that never gets dry or bogs down in unnecessary details. He sticks to the stories as they played out, and the book is extremely well sourced and researched.

Hornfischer smartly decided to focus this book on three of the main U.S. line officers who were instrumental in bringing about the conclusion of the War in the Pacific: Admiral Raymond Spraunce, commander of the Fifth Fleet; Admiral Kelly Turner, commander of the Fifth Fleet’s amphibious forces; and Commander Paul Tibbets, the founder and leader of the world’s first atomic strike unit. Under these men were others who played vital parts in the drama, including Holland Smith, Turner’s corps commander on Saipan and several other invasions; Admiral Marc Mitscher, leader of Task Force 58, the fast carrier fleet; and Draper Kauffman, the founder of the Underwater Demolition Teams, otherwise known as the “frogmen,” and the precursors to the modern day Navy SEALS. Around them buzz other colorful characters, both American and Japanese, including Admiral Nimitz, Admiral Halsey, Admiral Togo, Emperor Hirohito, and of course Douglas MacArthur.

“The Fleet at Flood Tide” is broken up into four sections, comprising 37 chapters. The first section, “Sea,” documents the Fifth Fleet’s engine of siege as it attacks the powerful Japanese stronghold of Truk through to the amphibious landings on Saipan. Part two, “Land,” details the horrendous reality of what total war in the Pacific theater would look like, as the U.S. forces confront a vicious Japanese defense of Saipan, taken to suicidal extremes both for the soldiery and the civilian population alike. Part three, “Air,” tells the story of the development of the 509th Composite Group, the air wing that would bring atomic fire to the Japanese homeland in an effort to avoid a direct amphibious assault on dangerous shores and accelerate the end of the war. Part four, “Earth,” deals with the aftermath of the atomic bombings and the surrender and occupation of a defeated Japan. There are also three sections of photographs, giving visual life to the characters and battle situations that dominate the action.

I knew that this was going to be a good book going in, but I was absolutely stunned at the breadth and scope of the narrative. While Hornfischer rightly focuses his attentions on his cast of American officers and infantrymen, he also manages to tell some of the stories from the Japanese point of view. This awareness of what the First Mobile Fleet and the garrisons that were defending Saipan and the other important islands of the Marianas gives the narrative a necessary balance. Both sides suffered enormous losses during the Fifth Fleet’s march westward, and the view from the ground for both sides is presented in terrifying and lucid terms. The accounts of the amphibious operations on Saipan and Tinian will give the reader pause to reflect upon the sheer horror of close combat operations. Death and injury are omnipresent companions to the soldiers and officers on both sides of the conflict, and the struggle to survive in harrowing conditions is brought home clearly to the reader. I was also impressed with Hornfischer’s accounts of the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot and the subsequent naval Battle for the Philippine Sea. The author brings these operations to vivid life, so much so that you can almost hear the bombs crushing steel and bone. The sheer violence of these campaigns is clearly documented. There is also a heartbreaking account of the mass suicides on Saipan, as the U.S. forces closed in and the badly brainwashed collective of soldiers and civilians decided that death was preferable to capture. It’s difficult to read of entire families hurling themselves off of cliffs or wading out to sea en masse to drown themselves, but that story needs to be told and understood by future generations.

There is also a detailed accounting of the Japanese steps to surrender after the dropping of the Little Boy and Fat Man atomic weapons. Much revisionist history has debated the moral and ethical issues attached to the use of atomic weapons in World War II. Hornfischer makes his case for the use of the bombs clear, as he provides light on the suicidal thought processes of the Japanese hard-liners in the military who insisted on either fighting to the grisly end in a national suicide pact, or seeking a peace without formal surrender and a set of conditions that would preserve Japan’s ability to make future war. The author is solidly supportive of the need to drop the bombs, as this was the only way to ensure that Japan would see the consequences of continued warfare. Emperor Hirohito himself documents his thought processes post Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and credits the dropping of the atomic weapons as a chief reason why he chose to step forward and exert his influence on the Japanese Cabinet so as to put an end to the war and save face for his badly beaten nation. It’s true that the bombs were horrific in scope, but the loss of human life in an amphibious invasion of Japan would have run into the hundreds of thousands, or perhaps to a million or more. Both sides would have suffered enormous casualties, and Hornfischer makes a strong case that the use of atomic weapons on Japan saved countless lives in the end.

World War II, though considered a “just” war, was the final nail in the coffin of the idea of war as a noble act. World War I certainly set that stage, but it was the end of WW II that really demonstrated that war could no longer be fought “cleanly” by soldiers on remote battlefields. This was truly “total war,” one in which civilians were considered fair game and the limits of what constituted morality and humane treatment were pushed beyond any bounds of recognition by all sides. The true cost of war was at last revealed for all to see.

I can’t recommend this book enough, especially if you enjoy history or war chronicles. It’s a handsome piece of work by a gifted historian who clearly relishes his work. Easily one of the best books I have read in a long time.

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a magisterial view of the US Navy in the Pacific from 1944 to 1945. The author points out that were it not for the capture of Saipan, Tinian and Guam, the war would have gone on beyond 1945 with hundreds of thousands more lives, both US and Japanese, lost. The planes that dropped the atomic bombs on Japan took off from Tinian. The author gives a blow by blow account of the invasion of these three islands and of the naval strategy that led to the end of the war. He says that this book is along the lines of "How stuff works."
At one point, he is talking about Navy officers guiding troops going ashore scouting channels for them. There were two officers, one short and one tall marking paths for short and taller men. "After and forevermore, these two officers were known as Low water and High water."
He devotes considerable space to naval styles of two alternating fleet commanders, William Halsey and Raymond Spruance and makes a very good case that Spruance was a much better strategist.

He also addresses the revisionist theory that dropping the atomic bombs was not necessary. He proves this theory to be totally baseless. The idea that Soviet Union would act as a mediator in peace negotiations was "... richly Fanciful, as Moscow had already informed Tokyo that it would not renew the Russo-Japanese Neutrality Pact."
Die hard Japanese militarists refused to surrender after both atom bombs were dropped, and it was only the intervention by the Emperor who agreed to peace terms by the Allies. The author believes that the impact of these bombs on Emperor Hirohito's mind was the crucial element in the surrender of Japan.
I rate this book 4.5 stars out 5(rounded up to 5). Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC ebook.

[Jean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hornfischer’s new book “The Fleet at Flood Tide” is about the U. S. invasion of Saipan. The author details the fighting on shore, which he states inaugurated a new level of violence in the Pacific War. He discusses the ritual suicides of the Japanese garrison and the civilians.

Hornfischer states that the invasion of the Marianas was the critical moment in the Pacific Theatre. It marked the penetration of Japan’s inner ring of defenses, it also triggered the first full-scale fleet engagement since the Solomon Islands campaign. The Battle of the Philippines Sea, the Great Mariana Turkey Shoot and the acquisition of airfields on Saipan allowed the new B-29 Superfortress bombers to reach Japanese homeland cities. Hornfischer called the phase of the war the punishment phase.

Hornfischer is eminently readable and rich in metaphors. The author discusses a number of major characters such as Admiral Raymond Spruance Marc Mitscher and Paul Tibbets. He concludes with a discussion about the use of the atomic bomb on Japan. Hornfischer is an excellent chronicler of the War in the Pacific.

The book is 650 pages and published in 2016 by Random House

[Nooilforpacifists · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometime between "Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors" and this book, Hornfischer morphed from a decent, but hardly exceptional author, to a masterful one, capped by in-depth research. And he's describing battles that I've not only read about but visited the (land) battlefields.

This book is split into three parts: Sea, Land and Air. The first section relates the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot", the carrier battle that destroyed Japan's carrier air arm (though sinking only two carriers). Despite being a "Navy guy," I found this the weakest part of the book--the author did a mediocre job of permitting the reader to visualize the fleet geography and movements. The second, longest section covers the amphibious warfare on Saipan, Tinian and Guam. The first-person accounts Hornfischer collected -- especially from an ethnic Japanese civilian female nurse whose botched her suicide, then was resuscitated by segregated Negro troops -- make the narrative edge-of-your-seat gripping. The final part addresses US Army Air Force B-29 bombings from Saipan and Tinian, especially Paul Tibbets and the events of 6 and 9 August 1945.

Weapons neither are inherently good or bad; it depend on the use and user. The laws of land warfare do demand a proportionate response. But after the suicide charges and civilian suicides of Saipan, the calculus changed: "Even unconditional surrender [is] held as unreasonable under the doctrine of 'jus in bello,' if not under the laws of physics, which demands that every action brings and equal and opposite reaction. What if the surrender that was achieved by use of monstrous devices ended even bloodier predations perpetrated by a militarist regime bent on race conquest?"

Hornfischer concludes that what US Marines (and a few Army units) witnessed on Saipan directly influenced the decision to drop the bomb. Bomb(s), actually, for -- as a Manhattan Project military staffer predicted -- it "was not one bomb, or two, which brought surrender; it was the experience of what an atomic bomb actually will do to a community, plus the dread of many more, that was effective." War-wusses who still argue the decision was immoral -- Japan supposedly being close to surrendering anyway -- disregard Emperor Hiriohito's own Imperial Rescript basing his decision (and it was his) on the bomb. "To dismiss such a direct and contemporaneous expression of motivation in the absence of better evidence is curious practice for a historian." And what firestorm would have arisen half a million U.S. casualties into an invasion of Japan's homeland following disclosure that America possessed a superweapon parked in a warehouse next to Lost Ark?

Were America the villains modern pacifists claim, some trace of vindictiveness would have appeared in the occupation--yet there was none; indeed, compare to the deliberate starvation of Germany in winter 1945-46. "Unlike Sparta and Rome, America ministered to its enemy with surpassing mercy after it had thrown him to his knees with pitiless brutality." I just wish the exhibits at Hiroshima weren't so clownishly one-sided: the over-all impression visiting today is 'we were peacefully minding our own business, when this infernal device dropped from the heavens; we have no idea why.' Japan is lucky it did.

[David Eppenstein · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoy reading history but I have to admit that the history of WWII is probably my least favorite subject area. I think the reasons for this are that this war was too clearly defined in terms of good guys and bad guys and it was too thoroughly documented and recorded. Of course let's not forget the History Channel doing this war to death with exposure. It would appear to me that any author wishing to write anything about this war must first possess the talent of restraint, knowing what to include and what to leave out, maybe for another book. Having said this I will state that this was a good book. It was thoroughly researched and well written. Unfortunately, the author lacked that talent of restraint, especially in the first half of the book. I swear that at several points in the first half of the book I expected the author to discuss whether the Marines were going to be issued boxers or briefs and then discuss the merits of each option. Reading this book I was reminded of the old saying of the guy that couldn't see the forest because of all the trees and that's my big complaint with this book. Was this supposed to be a book about the last year of the Pacific War or was this a book about all the logistical detail that went into mounting the campaigns occurring in that year along with all the front line stories of the Marines and sailors that fought in those campaigns? My assumption was that it was about the big picture events that led to the war's end. The author, however, includes a great deal, a very great deal, of information about how these individual campaigns were put together, even to the point of detailing the evolution of the various amphibious vehicles used for these invasions. Now I'm sure these logistical details are interesting to a lot of readers and may be worthy of book treatment in their own right but they sure made following the major course of the war very difficult. There are 503 pages of text in this book and I think with some serious editing a better book would have resulted at about page 400. Again, this is not a bad book but it is rather tedious to read unless logistics is an interest of yours. The second half of the book is much better because most of the logistical problems have been solved and our Pacific juggernaut became a rather well oiled machine. Without these distractions the reading became easier to follow and more entertaining.

[Mike Kershaw · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is another edition in Hornfischer's telling of the American War in the Pacific. Beginning with the campaign to take the Marianas, he chooses to focus on Admiral Raymond Spruance, the amphibious duo of General Holland Smith and Admiral Kelly Turner and Colonel Paul Tibbets, the Commander of the mission to drop the Atomic Bomb. Along the way, he further develops the story of the "Fast Carriers" Task Forces which came to dominate the Pacific War, introduces us to the Navy Underwater Demolitions Teams and gives us insight into the grueling nature of the fighting experienced by the US Marine and Army units engaged in the Saipan operation. He also manages to present the viewpoints of Japanese participants, including the famed Captain Oba who resists until after the Japanese surrender. I felt, however, that his technique of focusing on a few key actors, battles and ships to capture the narrative theme of each chapter of his trilogy was just too ambitious for this period. The seizure of Saipan dominates the story with the remainder of the campaign -- which will cost the US military over 2/3 of it's combat casualties in the Pacific -- almost a footnote. A good read but not the strongest of this series.

[J.S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been a fan of James Hornfischer since reading The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors several years ago. His writing can be a bit dense and often takes me a while to get into it, but it's well worth the effort.

The Fleet at Flood Tide: America at Total War in the Pacific, 1944-1945 wasn't quite what I was expecting. Although the dates '1944-1945' in the subtitle made me think it would be a history of the war for those two years (similar to the way Ian Toll's excellent Pacific Crucible chronicles the beginning of the war) that's not quite the aim here. Instead, he spends a great deal of time detailing the battles in the Marianas (the "Marianas Turkey Shoot" and the invasions of Saipan, Tinian, and Guam), whereas Iwo Jima and Okinawa are handled in a few pages each. His focus is on what he calls "Total War," which is sort of the way the Japanese fought to the last man, woman, and child - including using civilians as decoys and shields. He argues that "the ritual suicides of the Japanese garrisons, and their predatory brainwashing and murder of the innocent unarmed, has been insufficiently considered as a turning point that shaped the war's final year." He shows how this hardened U.S. resolves to obtain "unconditional surrender," and led to the use of incendiary weapons (napalm) and eventually atomic bombs.

Much of the book focuses on Admiral Raymond Spruance, who had charge of the navy, and Col. Paul Tibbetts, who piloted the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. But he also brings in the recollections of many others, both American and Japanese, and both high and low-ranking, and even some non-combatants. It puts a very human face on the narrative and is often unflinching in its portrayal of the suffering endured on both sides. Unlike several other similar histories I've read, Hornfischer doesn't stop with the atomic bombs and surrender, but continues to explain the rebuilding efforts the U.S. exerted in Japan and their treatment of the conquered nation as administered by Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

It's a fairly lengthy book, and as I mentioned, it took me a while to get into it - probably 150 or so pages - but it's a very rewarding read! His argument isn't entirely dissimilar to Max Hastings' in Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45, but approaches the argument for atomic weapons from a different angle. Highly recommended for those interested in the history of the Pacific War. (I rec'd an advance copy from the publisher.)

[A.L. Sowards · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started listening to this audiobook in July and finished it in September. I guess I didn’t have as much audiobook time as normal this summer (also, it was 23+ hours long). It took me a while to get into it (probably because I wasn’t spending enough time with it), but ended up really enjoying it. I expected nothing less from Hornfischer. His books are so good! If you enjoy nonfiction and have any interest in the Pacific during WWII, you should add his books to your to-read list. My favorite is The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, but all of them are informative, thought-provoking, and well-written.

[carl theaker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Author Hornfischer takes on a vast subject, the US Fleet at war in the Western Pacific from June 1944 and deftly rolls with the waves between the strategic and tactical events, land and sea, personalities from the US and Japanese Admirals to the men on the ships, aircraft, and beaches of both sides, as well as Japanese civilians along with native islanders.

To manage this in a mere 500 pages (with helpful maps and photos), he keeps the focus on several threads, while touching on the situation at a higher level to keep the immensity of it all in perspective, for example the fighting in the Marianas is detailed, while Iwo Jima it is not, also covered may be the details of an activity, such as how to properly load a transport ship for a beach landing, all with the imminent invasion of Japan looming over every decision, It’s a fascinating adventure and I found myself wishing for another 500 pages.

On a personal note- a WW2 Veteran friend of mine mentioned to me he was friends with the author, they go to the same church, would I like to meet him? Heck yeah !

We did lunch at Bert’s BBQ, Jim was a friendly fellow, as he explains it, he is from Massachusetts, but got to Texas as soon as he could. We discussed every day subjects such as how the ethanol in gasoline quickly ruins the small motors in his lawn equipment as well as his sons soon going to college.

For the invasion of Japan, he added what may have occurred, that by then the US would have been producing atom bombs at a steady pace. Since not much was known about radioactive fallout, they would have been used as tactical weapons versus suicidal Japanese opposition. Quite the consideration!

At that meeting I purchased this book from Jim, which he mailed to me inscribed , and he autographed his other books which I had brought with me. A fun day !

[Sherwood Smith]

This extraordinarily well-written history of the second half of the war in the Pacific continues on from an earlier book by the same author (which I have in paperback, and will be reading).

This one begins in 1944. It’s off to a slow start as we get caught up on the details of ships, material, training, and leaders among the Americans, and the background lives of some Japanese, both military and civilian.

The mass of information pays off when we get to Spruance’s fleet encountering the Japanese at last.

I really appreciated the clarity with which Hornfischer describes strategy and tactics on sea, land, and in air, especially the evolving strategic arena concerning aircraft carriers. Admirals themselves weren’t always certain what was going to work, especially in serving basically as moving air bases for an air war.

The air battles are vividly described—exhilaratingly so, capturing the bravado and reckless determination and individualistic humor of the air aces. He draws heavily on reports and memoirs to bring the fight to the individual level before zooming back to show fleet movements, both in air support and in land support when the attack on the islands began.

Equally vivid, and a whole lot more grim was the unflinching description of the yard-by-yard fight for Saipan, made much more horrendous by the Japanese command’s insistence on suicide missions for the honor of the emperor—and on convincing the civilians that Americans would rape all the women and eat their babies. And when the end came, the soldiers used the civilians as shields, and then forced them into mass suicide.

Hornfischer draws on a variety of reports by Japanese from command to civilian, most notably Yoshitsugu Saito of the Imperial Japanese Army, Chuichi Nagumo of the Imperial Japanese Navy, Shizuko Miura, a civilian nurse, and Captain Sakae Oba who held out along with several hundred civilians and military on Saipan until December 1, 1945 when he surrendered. The addition of these people’s stories helped to understand what the Japanese thought during those terrible battles and immediately afterward.

Hornfischer describes the evolution of amphibious operations as well as the invention of newer and more effective weapons, like napalm, who wanted to use them, who didn’t, and why they finally did and where.

Hornfisher is developing a point: the result of what American forces witnessed on those islands—the mass suicides, the many Japanese terms for suicide attacks culminating in the kamikaze attacks on US ships—is that the Japanese high command considered that only total war, to the death, would satisfy their honor.

And so American strategy makers finally came around to the conviction that surrender would only happen if they shocked Japan. The atom bombs would do that—two of them, one after the other, so that the Japanese would believe that America had an arsenal of them.

Hornfischer’s painstaking development of the decision making process behind the atom bomb dropping, and his follow-up about the reactions of those in charge as well as the effect on the Japanese, was sobering in the extreme. Especially considering how relatively blasé people seem to be about mass weapons these days.

Anyway, he finishes up the history with a description of Japan’s reaction to surrender and occupation, after which he gives a follow-up on the lives of his principals (those who survived). There follows an impressive bibliography.

This is easily the most readable, and thoroughly researched, book I’ve read about this portion of the Pacific War.
Copy provided by NetGalley

[Kathy Heare Watts · Rating 5 out of 5]

I won a copy of this book in a Goodreads giveaway and have now passed the book onto my son who is in the military. This book encompasses the final year during World War II and pivotal turning points that helped bring an end to the war.

[Mac McCormick III · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book that may take some readers by surprise, you have to consider the subtitle more than you do the title. Instead of a narrative of the final phase of World War II in the Pacific, it is a book about Total War in the Pacific. Primarily, Hornfischer looks at the Pacific War from the Marianas to the fall of Japan from the perspective of Admiral Raymond Spruance, Admiral Kelly Turner, and Colonel Paul Tibbets (others are included as well, I particularly enjoyed the story of Draper Kauffman). The perspectives of Japanese nurse Shizuko Miura and Army Captain Sakae Oba are also important.

The first part of the book goes over the invasion of the Marianas. It details the preparations and logistics of the operation and gives an account of what happened during the assaults and fights for Saipan, Tinian, and Guam and during the naval battles fought around the invasions of the islands. Hornfischer examines leadership decisions on both sea and land, explaining why they were made. Information presented during the first part about how the Japanese fought in the Marianas and what was done to and by Japanese and Japanese controlled civilians becomes important to the second part of the book.

The second part of the book gets into the Total War that fight against Japan began. The battles for Iwo Jima and Okinawa are briefly explained, showing how the acquisition of those islands would be beneficial to operations against the Japanese home islands. At this point, the Hornfischer gets into what would be needed to defeat the Japanese and bring them to surrender; based on what happened in the Marianas, at Iwo Jima, and at Okinawa it would not be easy and it would not be like the war in Europe was. This second part of the book not only explains how the atomic bombs were used, it goes into why. The final chapter gets into a philosophical discussion on the use of the atomic bombs and ends with how the United States treated Japan in defeat.

The Fleet at Flood Tide is a book I'm glad I read. It's wonderfully written and delves as much into the why as it does the how, which is really what History is all about. It doesn't glorify the victory at the Marianas or the use of the atomic bombs, it presents the tragedy involved as well. If you're interested in why the atomic bombs were used, this is a must read as it lays out the case that the U.S. leadership used and shows what could have happened had there been an invasion of the Japanese Home islands. It also gets into the minds of Spruance, Turner, and Tibbets as well as some of the other personalities involved. The stories of Miura and Oba add much to the book by presenting the Japanese mindset. I highly recommend The Fleet at Flood Tide regardless of how much you have read on or know about World War II in the Pacific.

[Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hornfischer uses primary sources and individual experiences to weave together the vast story of the war in the Pacific starting with the U.S. invasion of the Mariana Islands in June 1941. While the scope of the book is huge, the glimpses into Japanese and American fighting forces helps ground the action in reality, detail and humanity.

Why I started this book: I was thrilled that Hornfischer was writing another book. I had enjoyed his other books The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour and Neptune's Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal.

Why I finished it: This was a massive audio book, my favorite kind. I need to ponder his justifications and reasons for dropping the atomic bombs on Japan. I do agree that there is little way of knowing just what influenced Emperor Hirohito, as he was very careful not to write things down... Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. Paul Ham, an Australian historican argues in Hiroshima Nagasaki: The Real Story of the Atomic Bombings and Their Aftermath that Hirohito and his cabinet didn't care about the bombs, they were worried about Russia. But Russia jumped into the war, because they knew about the bombs from their spies and wanted a piece of the action before Japan surrendered. Hirohito just used the bombs as a face saving excuse. So the bombs did end the war... by influencing Russia to rush in for the kill.
All in all this was a fascinating book and I enjoyed the perspectives from civilians, Japanese militants and American combatants. Plus I liked that it also covered the initial occupation of Japan. For more in depth coverage read Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A solid and exquisitely-written popular history of the Second World War in the Pacific, with the emphasis on naval operations. And yet, much print is devoted to the land and aerial campaigns against the Japanese, highlighting the combined nature of operations in modern warfare. Most of the book is allocated to the invasion and conquest of the Marianas, including the "Marianas Turkey Shoot," along with the development and use of those islands as the major center for bases from which the bombing campaigns against Japan were launched especially the war-ending atomic attacks. Many of the Pacific War's final battles, such as Leyte Gulf or the invasion of Okinawa are but lightly touched upon but I happen to think that Hornfisher's emphasis on the Marianas is right and proper, as this was the battle that burst through the "Final Defensive Perimeter," caused the downfall of the Tojo government in Japan and provided the bases from which LeMay's bombers could wreak their havoc and from which Paul Tibbet's Enola Gay would take off and land (there's a lot of information about the 509th Composite Wing's brief history here, an interesting addition to what could be a pure naval history). While there's a varied cast of sailors, soldiers and Marines to follow and admire (or not), the star of this book is definitely Admiral Raymond Spruance, the modest and cerebral commander of the Fleet that conquered the Gilberts, Marshalls, Marianas, Iwo Jima and Okinawa and was, with the exception of Nimitz, the man most responsible for the defeat of Japan in the Second World War. There is much here to contemplate, and James Hornfischer has done a bang-up job narrating the tale of these vast campaigns.

[Megargee · Rating 5 out of 5]

With the possible exception of Rick Atkinson's Liberation Trilogy, which dealt with the European Theater, The Fleet at Flood Tide is quite simply the best WW II history that I have ever read, and over the last 50 or 60 years I have read a ton of them. Superbly written it documents America's total war effort in the Central Pacific from the naval Battle of the Philippine Sea in which the fast carrier task forces destroyed most of Japan's naval air power, through the amphibious invasions of Saipan, Tinian, and Guam on to the battles for Iwo Jima and Okinawa, which gave the US B-29s the ability to bomb the Japanese home islands with incendiaries and ultimately atomic bomb. The scope of the book ranges from the individual fighter in his fox hole or cockpit through descriptions of combat on land, sea, and air through the diplomatic and strategic discussions at the highest levels from both the American and Japanese points of view. It is well documented with a rich array of maps and photographs.
Hornfischer argues that Tojo's cult of death caused the Japanese to fight to the last person, soldier and civilian alike, committing suicide rather than surrendering, an attitude that would cause horrific casualties if it became necessary to invade the home islands. Only one person, Emperor Hirohito, could end the conflict and he would only do so when confronted with the ultimate horror, the Atomic Bomb.

[Edgar Raines · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautifully written, well researched book, particularly using U.S. Marine Corps and Navy records. It is the story of the landings in Saipan, Tinian, and Guam in 1944 and the consequences that flowed from these victories. The book has two major protagonists, Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, commander of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, and Col. Paul Tibbets, commander of the 509th Composite Bomb Group, which based on Tinian dropped the two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The disparity in rank poses a problem. While the Navy chapters focus on war at the operational and, when the Marines are involved, the tactical level, the Air Force chapters, with Tibbets at the center, has to focus on primarily tactical issues. The author has a real insight into the Navy and Marine Corps as organizations, less, I think, of the Army Air Forces. The Fleet at Flood Tide is well worth reading, and Hornfischer's discussion of the forced (by the Imperial Japanese Army) suicides of Japanese civilians as a key event in the decision to employ atomic weapons against Japan is compelling. This is a very good book that could have been a great one but somehow does not reach that level.

[Kieran Healy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Incomplete account of what happened. I figured some streamlining would happen to make the book if a reasonable length, but entirely skipping Iwo Jima and particularly Okinawa it seemed the writer just didn’t want to be bothered. Great writing but I felt like Hornfisher just picked the stuff he found interesting and provided no basis for why. Great dogfighting descriptions, and I loved learning about the Underwater Demolitions Team. Spruance gets his due in this book, as well. But it all felt like a patchy account of everything without a true focus, and that lack of cohesion left me wondering what was left out, not what I learned.

[Dachokie · Rating 5 out of 5]

America’s Path to Being a Superpower …

This book was reviewed as part of Amazon's Vine program which included a free copy of the book.

My interest in World War II started at age 11 and it is still going strong 39 years later, because of books like this. James Hornfischer’s THE FLEET at FLOOD TIDE takes a unique approach in presenting the US victory over Japan and details the rationale behind the decision to use the atomic bomb.
What makes this book unique is that the author opted to take a more “linear” American path in describing the final year of the Pacific war. Instead of focusing on all aspects of the campaign, he hones in on a series of actions/battles that ultimately led to the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. More specifically, the actions that brought the war to Japan’s doorstep and triggered the deadly Japanese defensive mindset that created the non-conventional approach to defeating Japan.
THE FLEET AT FLOOD TIDE is loosely organized into three segments that comprise the combined-arms aspect of a military campaign (sea, land and air) and focuses on the actions of several key figures: Kelly Turner, Raymond Spruance, Draper Kauffman, Paul Tibbets and “Howlin’ Mad” Smith. We come to understand these individuals’ pivotal roles in the eventual victory, as well as their limitations and personal flaws (Turner was an alcoholic, for example). This “behind the scenes” perspective provides readers with more insight as to how strategic decisions were made, as well as shedding light on some of the lesser-known aspects of the campaign. While exhaustive, Hornfischer’s writing is never dull. There are plenty of first-person accounts of combatants, like the exploits of David McCampbell, who became an “ace” (five aerial kills) in a single day during the “Marianas Turkey Shoot”, the misguided disdain Marine General “Howlin’ Mad” Smith had toward the US Army or the USS Indianapolis’ role as Admiral Raymond Spruance’s flagship to its well-known demise. What makes this book valuable is that it does not take a one-sided perspective. While the bulk of the story is from an American point-of-view, Hornfischer provides ample accounts from the other side of the spectrum as well. The stories of a Japanese civilian surviving the mass suicide on Saipan and the Japanese officer who led a small group of holdouts on Saipan, well after the island was “secured” are extremely interesting. Additionally, we are also made privy to the internal turmoil among Japanese leaders and their varied positions in handling the American juggernaut steamrolling to the home islands of Japan.

Where the book really excelled was its approach to the atomic bomb, both its development, the decision to use it and the aftermath. Hornfischer clearly illustrates that the rationale for using the bomb strengthened as soon as the American military began penetrating Japan’s defensive perimeter. It was the battle of Saipan where the Americans first experienced the full extent of Japanese suicidal defensive tactics – military and civilian alike. The casualty rate from Saipan, followed by Iwo Jima, Okinawa and organized kamikaze attacks, forced strategists to recalculate the casualty rate for the proposed invasion of Japan to come up with the “sinister ratio” (instead of 1 American KIA for every 7 Japanese KIA, this ratio projected a more ominous 1 American for every 2 Japanese KIA). I liked the way Hornfischer parallels the approaching dark cloud (the eventual invasion of Japan) with the stateside activity of Paul Tibbets and the development of the atomic bomb. The detailing of the secrecy and security measures were new to me and quite interesting. I feel that Hornfischer’s writing thoroughly explains the use of “the bomb” as a complex and rational decision as opposed to an impulsive solution to end the war quickly. The author also accounts for the historically unprecedented magnanimity exhibited by the US as victors and more importantly, occupiers. I feel this aspect of America’s role in World War II is often overlooked and more importantly, unappreciated

What I really liked about this book was the cerebral approach the author takes in presenting the material. The last year of the Pacific War is not simply illustrated as a series of battles, but a string of major complexities that involved rapidly changing events on the battlefield and off the battlefield, nature (“Halsey’s Typhoon”), clashing leadership personalities from both sides and the rapid development of the ultimate military trump card (the atomic bomb). This is one of the few books I’ve read about the Pacific War that manages to succinctly narrow a large scope, focus on detail and avoid becoming tedious. Hornfischer’s writing style offers a smooth and quick reading tempo by keeping things interesting from beginning to end.

THE FLEET AT FLOOD TIDE is great read, especially for those interested in how the US planned and executed the defeat of Japan. The book offers a refreshingly new view of the final year of the Pacific War and does so in an exhaustive and engaging manner.

[Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog · Rating 4 out of 5]

Say what his detractors will, James Hornfisher can write page turning history. The Fleet at Flood Tide is hardly an exhaustive study of the entire Navy /Marine Corps effort in 1944-1955 but it is very interesting and at times exciting reading. Many specialists will have exhausted the minutia of this period and find little new in his recitation of events. Indeed much is missing. Beyond the many island invasions and destroyer engagements he skips, Hornfischer has no problem taking definite sides about who he likes and what examples he holds as positive or negative.

Across this book his intention is to follow certain themes rather than to document every engagement.
Staying with the title Hornfischer is definite about the fact that American Industry, technology and superior war fighting doctrine overwhelmed the Japanese. However much the IJA and IJN ran rampant up through Midway and Guadalcanal, by 1994 neither one had any clue how to address the flood of American production and theirown (Japanese) lack of war winning tactical or strategic doctrine. Human wave war fighting against dug in machine guns was a known loser as far back as 1918. Once again a government headed by military men has no plan for admitting defeat. And so Prime Minister General Tojo came to the criminal conclusion that it is the job of the citizenry to die rather than admit that the military has disgraced itself.

I have long felt that two of America’s most over rated war fighting flag ranked officers were Gen. Mac Author and Adm. Halsey. Each certainly has some important wins to their credit. Guadalcanal is a close win for Halsey, even if it was an example of a Post Midway, non-carrier based campaign. Back to back Halsey help to set up history’s last classic battleship crossing of the ‘T’ at Surigao Strait and immediately followed it with what should have been the whole sale elimination of the logistic train backing the invasion of the Philippines. But for the desperate sacrifice by destroyers at the Battle off Samar Island. Add in the questionable American losses in at least two hurricanes and we have the case of a flag saved for PR purposes.

Spruance, clearly an underrated commander, and just as clearly not the darling of the emerging Navy aviator’s club was the man in command at Midway and the author of the Mariana’s Turkey shoot. Admiral Spruance was also the man who was right about the ability of an enemy fleet to flank one whose carriers are not kept focused on the immediate mission.

By turns, Hornfischer also takes what may not be popular stands against the fire bombing missions against Japan and in favor of the atomic bombing of Japan.

Part of the style of Hornfischer is to highlight the first person narratives of individuals who lived through the battles. Of these my favorite is the stories of Commander Kaufman. An example of the kind of people Americans, especially those looking for heroes should have a chance to know. Cdr. Kaufman was a lot of things from a volunteer ambulance driver in Europe and a Bomb Disposal Officer in the British Army- both before Pearl Harbor. And a founder of and battlefield leader in the Navy Underwater Demolitions teams. UDT is father to what we now have as the Navy SEALS.

Against the detractors of The Fleet at Flood Tide, I argue that Hornfischer never intended to write a turn for turn history of the Pacific Theater in 1944-1945. He had specific ideas, people and events he wanted to highlight. He, like Adm. Spruance stayed with his mission and gave us an eminently readable and focused take on what he wishes his reader to remember about this time period.

[Sic Transit Gloria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Have you ever argued with someone over the necessity of dropping the atomic bombs? Have you ever been debated by people whose only source is Wikipedia? Or have you ever become frustrated arguing with uninformed people?

Have you ever gotten so frustrated with those people that you wrote a book on the subject?

"The Fleet at Flood Tide" is James D. Hornfischer's response to the question, "Were the atomic bombs the better option?" I believe the title and subtitle were made up by the editor in order to fit this book into the niche of naval history that Hornfischer has bade for himself. Don't be fooled, though, for the author actually branches out beyond the typical naval combat we're used to and into aerial battles, infantry battles, and even a few tank battles.

I've read both "Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors" and "Neptune's Inferno" and loved them both for two reasons. First, there is a very consistent theme throughout the books. In "Tin Can Sailors", the theme is "resolve", and in "Neptune's Inferno", the theme is "cost". These themes color the story from the beginning to the end in an atmosphere that links the history together into a cohesive whole.

The second reason I enjoyed these two books were for Hornfischer's epic descriptions of action. Both books use multiple perspectives to give a comprehensive view of the battles to readers. Direct quotations are plentiful, and their sources are varied. You'd never be sure if the next piece of information would be from a gunner, a captain, or even a Japanese officer! But throughout the plethora of stories, Hornfischer managed to maintain the integrity of the overall story.

Both of these aspects of "Tin Can Sailors" and "Neptune's Inferno" were downplayed or even absent in "The Fleet at Flood Tide". There is some intensely described action, but only really in the Marianas campaign. The retaking of the Philippines, the invasion of Iwo Jima, the capturing of Okinawa, all of these only take four to five pages of text. The Marianas campaign and several other events are heavily focused, because they support the message of the book.

Yes, message, and not theme. This book sacrifices atmosphere, tone, and an overall theme in order to deliver a message to the reader: The atomic bombs were the best option. The entire last chapter is simply Hornfischer summing up his argument, and towards the end of it, his view of the opposition becomes scathing. I was surprised when Hornfischer ended the book with a quote from Tibbets discussing the existence or lack of genitalia of those who doubted the necessity of the bomb.

"The Fleet at Floodtide" does still manage some notable stories, and can draw you in. (My favorite storyline actually involved a Japanese civilian on Saipain.) But it sacrifices much of its effectiveness and the draw of the other books because this book is focused on the question of the usage of the atomic bomb. Even though it was longer than the the author's previous books, it feels as though there is less content. Even though the book is focused like never before, a general theme is lost. For me, "The Fleet at Flood Tide" was a disappointing read, but only because the author's two other books were phenomenal. Next to "Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors" and "Neptune's Inferno", "The Fleet at Flood Tide" simply doesn't hold up.

3/5

Reread edit: nah it's still gold. 5/5.

[Edward Barrett · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book that I highly recommend to those with an interest in military history or the Second World War.

The big story of WWII in the pacific always seems to focus on Midway, where the tide of war reversed and the US went on the offensive. This volume picks up beyond that turning point starting with the effort to capture the Mariana Islands as a base from which to project American air power into the Japanese homeland, and proceeds at multiple levels.

At one level, it discusses the competing strategies considered by the United States as it pressed its advantage: to focus on the Central Pacific or, as pushed by MacArthur, to move up the Southwestern Pacific through the Philippines. At another level, it focuses on the actual combat experience, both at sea and on land, interspersing the larger narrative with vignettes of individual battles and the experience of average military personnel.

On the macro level, however, it attempts to address the philosophical question of the limits of a just war when confronted with an implacable enemy with a moral code at variance with our own. Confronted by a Japanese death over dishonor ethic that supported ritual suicide for both military personnel and for the civilian population, the harsh treatment of allied prisoners, Kamikaze attacks on both land and sea forces, and an apparent unwillingness on the part of Japanese leaders to recognize that Japan could not withstand American military and industrial might that presaged an apparently high cost for the actual invasion of Japan, how far would our military go to push or violate the limits of just war? When civilians are used as military shields, how can civilians be protected, and should they be? Given the potential cost of a home island invasion, is indiscriminate incendiary bombing of civilian populations justified? How did the kind of combat experienced in the Pacific affect American personnel? Most importantly, is the use of an atomic bomb against civilian targets justified to reduce the total cost in military and civilian lives that would result from an all out invasion?

While Hornfischer does not offer final answers to any of these questions, his focus on the actual, practical experiences in the Pacific may point to his answer: practical reality trumps philosophical debate. His gripping narrative puts the reader in a position to understand and appreciate the decisions that were made at that time and in that context.

Throughout, he also offers interesting and in-depth insights into the thinking of some of the principal commanders in theater -- comparing the styles of Spruance and Halsey, the personal strengths and weaknesses of other major commanders, and the in-fighting and even jealousies that existed.

While not light reading at over 500 pages (not including notes), I never found myself bored or drifting. Highly recommended.

[Curtiss · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished reading “The Fleet at Flood Tide,” a superlative account of the final year and a half of the war in the Pacific, by James D. Hornfischer; author of “Neptune’s Inferno” on the Guadalcanal Campaign, and “Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors” on the Battle of Cape Samar.

In addition to Hornfischer’s ongoing portrait of Admiral Spruance as America’s “indispensable” Fleet Commander, this dramatic tale of the Pacific War incorporates the story of Draper Kauffman, an admiral’s son, who upon graduating from Annapolis, and facing little prospect of a career in the Navy due to poor eyesight, proceeded to volunteer as an ambulance driver in France, during the catastrophic Spring of 1940. After being captured by the Wehrmacht, and repatriated as a Neutral non-combatant, Kauffman volunteered again (his ongoing policy) as a bomb disposal expert, after a British disposal team were killed to a man in the street outside his hotel. Draper Kauffman went on to become the Navy’s “go to” guy for ordinance defusing, disposal and even “design” - losing his top explosives engineer to mysterious unexplained orders; unknown to him, but actually to help design the precision implosion device to trigger the ‘Fat Man’ plutonium bomb, as part of the “Manhattan Project.”

Kauffman was instrumental in organizing the Underwater Demolition Teams, and in developing the procedures they employed to clear the beaches and identify safe approach corridors prior to the Normandy Invasion and the Marianna’s Island invasions; the later of which included having 16-Man teams equipped only with goggles, sheathe knives, reef shoes, writing slates, and grease pencils to record water levels (as measured by lines inked at six inch intervals on each man’s body from feet to arms overhead... as they waded in pairs at 25-yard intervals across the lagoons at Saipan, Tinian, and Guam the day before the landings - in broad daylight, by the way.

Post-War, Kauffman went on to assist in evaluating the effectiveness of the Bikini Atoll hydrogen bomb tests as head of the first team to board the naval vessels exposed to the bombs. Eventually, Kauffman founded the Navy SEALS program. Not bad for a man whose poor eyesight precluded him from a seagoing command... eyesight so bad that he was partnered with another man when crossing the lagoons, who happened to be colorblind, who could point out the proximity of incoming Friendly Fire, while Kauffman then relayed the color of the exploding shell, which indicated the firing vessel.