Highly detailed account of events in the Pacific during the winter of
1944–1945
After the Battle of Leyte Gulf, which crushed Japanese naval power in
the Pacific even more effectively than American naval chiefs were aware at the
time, the US moved against
Japan to liberate the
Philippines. Here, the carrier
actions supporting these operations are told in detail.
Through Admiral Samuel Morison’s eloquence, the half-forgotten,
far-off names of these Philippine battles come to life again, as he tells of the
preliminary bombardments, the assaults over the beaches, and the land fighting
for the islands and Manila, as well as of the countermeasures taken
against the fanatical air attacks of the Japanese. Here too is Admiral Halsey’s
famous raid of Task Force 38 in the South China Sea, ranging from
Formosa to Indochina. Of particular interest to sailors and landsmen
alike is the chapter on the frightful typhoon of 18th December 1944, in which
three US ships went down and over eight
hundred lives were lost.
Additional chapters tell the story of the three amphibious assaults
on Borneo by Australian troops covered by the US Navy; of submarine operations
in the southwest Pacific in 1945; and of Captain Milton Miles’s amazing US Naval
Group, China, which carried out cloak-and-dagger operations on the mainland for
years and fought the last naval battle of the war with sailing
junks.
