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James D. Hornfischer

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

by James D. Hornfischer (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

2,377 ratings

Editors' pick Best History

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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 superpower

Winner, Commodore John Barry Book Award, Navy League of the United States • Winner, John Lehman Distinguished Naval Historian Award, Naval Order of the United States

With 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

Editorial Reviews

Review

“This is a masterful account of the barbaric last year of the Pacific War, combining original scholarship, engaging prose, excellent historical judgment, and empathy for the soldier, to explain why defeating the Japanese proved so costly—and how American military forces performed so effectively and, in the end, humanely. The Fleet at Flood Tide is, quite simply, popular and scholarly military history at its best.”—Victor Davis Hanson, author of Carnage and Culture, senior fellow in classics and military history, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University

“Hornfischer is the dean of World War II naval history . . . [and] has a crafted an impressive and fast-paced narrative. . . . In his capable hands, the story races along like an intense thriller . . . with the powerful prose of a poet. . . . The Fleet at Flood Tide is narrative nonfiction at its finest—a book simply not to be missed.”—James M. Scott, Charleston Post and Courier

“An impressively lucid account . . . Mr. Hornfischer crisply and satisfyingly sketches all these figures, and his big Iliad contains a hundred smaller ones, as he propels his complex story forward with supple transitions that never leave the reader behind in the details. . . . At the end of his admirable, fascinating book, Mr. Hornfischer makes a strong case that America’s failing to use the most terrible weapon yet born would have meant many hundreds of thousands more deaths, theirs and ours alike.”—The Wall Street Journal

“The Fleet at Flood Tide is the definitive work on the latter days of the war in the Pacific, diving deeper and with more passion and eloquence than anything written to date on this crucial and defining moment in the history of the U.S. Navy. Hornfischer brings the brutality of total war to full-throated life, from the trenches and amphibious assaults to the mass suicides of frightened Japanese civilians to the horrific but necessary decision to use the atomic bomb. This book is a ticket to watch hell in full session, and serves at once as an extraordinary memorial to the courageous—and a cautionary note to a world that remains unstable and turbulent today.”—Adm. James Stavridis, USN (ret.), former Supreme Allied Commander, NATO, and Dean of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University

“In his latest masterpiece on the Pacific War, historian James D. Hornfischer explores how the shocking lessons of the 1944 Mariana Islands campaign helped compel the United States to unleash atomic weaponry as the necessary means to quell the Japanese Empire. . . . Rich and scholarly military history with fresh critical analysis . . . The Fleet at Flood Tide is a masterful, fresh account of the latter days of the war in the Pacific that ably expands on the prior offerings of such classic naval historians as Samuel Eliot Morison. In his analysis, Hornfischer offers perspective on world conflict and cautions for humanity that can be pondered far beyond the conclusion of World War II.”—The Dallas Morning News

About the Author

James D. Hornfischer is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Neptune's Inferno, Ship of Ghosts, and The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, winner of the Samuel Eliot Morison Award. A native of Massachusetts and a graduate of Colgate University and the University of Texas School of Law, he lives in Austin, Texas.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1

Engine of Siege

Almost two years underway, the war in the Pacific, the Navy’s war, was not yet total. Indeed, some were calling it a phony war. Such a term had been applied to the eight-month period of stasis in Europe between the declaration of war by the Allies and their first major operations on Germany’s Western Front in 1940. In the Pacific, the year 1943 had been, for the Navy, a year of rebuilding and waiting.

The invasion of Guadalcanal, the first Allied offensive of the war, launched in August 1942, had been carried out on a shoestring, using a back-of-the-envelope contingency plan. The six-month campaign of attrition ended in U.S. victory in February, but nine more months would pass before the Marine Corps attacked another Japanese-held island. While General Douglas MacArthur’s troops wore down the Japanese in New Guinea and the Army’s Kiska Task Force retook the Aleutians, the Navy endured an interval of gathering and adjustment, of preparation and planning, recruitment and training, construction and commissioning. Mostly the latter, and the shipyards would tell an epic tale.

The lead ship of the Essex class of aircraft carriers joined the fleet on New Year’s Eve 1942. The 34,000-tonner would emerge as the signature ship of the U.S. Navy’s combat task force. Four more would be launched before 1943 was out. A pair of Iowa-class battleships reached the Pacific that year, too, as four more of the 45,000-ton behemoths took shape in the yards. A horde of new destroyers and destroyer escorts—more than five hundred of them—were launched in the year’s second half alone. But the greatest economies of scale revealed themselves in the building of merchant ships. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had directed the Maritime Commission to produce twenty-four million tons of cargo shipping in 1943. The surge was so great that it might have strained the wine industry’s capacity to make bottles to smash against prows on launching day. Surprising shortages cascaded through the supply chain. When grease was rationed for the exclusive use of combat units, a shipyard in Beaumont, Texas, found a substitute to use in lubricating the skids of their ramps: ripe bananas. Personnel officers, short on applicants, hired women and minorities to work in the yards and looked inland from the traditional recruitment fields of the coasts on the hunch that farmers with wits enough to survive the Dust Bowl might be useful in building ships. Coming out of the Depression, no one missed the chance to earn a better wage.

It was this outpouring of manpower and industry that enabled the Navy’s long-envisioned drive through the Central Pacific to begin. Since 1909, the “Pacific problem” had been an important object of study, premised upon the Navy’s need to retake the Philippines after a Japanese attack. Since 1933, Ernest King had favored a path through the Marianas, which he considered the “key to the Western Pacific.” As commander in chief of the U.S. fleet, based in Washington, Admiral King had been pressing the Joint Chiefs to approve an invasion of the islands ever since the end stages of the Guadalcanal campaign. The size and difficulty of the island objectives seized to date—mere apostrophes of coral with little elevation or terrain—paled next to the Marianas, which lay within what Japan considered its inner defensive perimeter.

In November 1943, as Admiral William F. Halsey’s South Pacific forces attacked Bougainville, Vice Admiral Raymond Spruance’s Central Pacific Force began its oceanic march, falling upon the tiniest and humblest of objectives: Tarawa, a coral atoll in the Gilberts. The sharp, bloody fight was won quickly by the men of the Second Marine Division. The Marshall Islands campaign was next. Spruance took the fleet there in January, delivering the Fourth Marine Division and elements of the Army’s Seventh Division to conquer Kwajalein, an infamous prison island that had been the site of many executions of captured Allied pilots and sailors.

When Nimitz, delighted, asked Spruance for his thoughts about what to do next, Spruance proposed jumping ahead immediately to capture Eniwetok, an anchorage in the western Marshalls. It would be the farthest advance by American forces in the whole war. Spruance said he could do it, but only if the carriers handled an important preliminary matter first. Any ships assaulting Eniwetok, he said, would come within aircraft striking range of the greatest Japanese base in the Central Pacific. Spruance proposed sending the fast carrier task force to strike it. Its name was Truk.

The stronghold had never before been glimpsed, much less attacked. Located in the Caroline Islands, Truk was a massive, multi-island lagoon. Its gigantic outer barrier of coral heads traced a triangle that held eighty-four coral and basaltic islands, most of which were substantial enough to mount antiaircraft artillery. Four of the inner islands had airfields. The lagoon’s harbors and anchorages were deep enough for major warships, and the base’s capacity to support such assets, and its location on the boundary of the Central and South Pacific areas, recommended it as a forward naval base, fleet headquarters, air base, radio communications hub, and supply base as well. From Truk, the Imperial Navy could muster in defense of almost any point on the perimeter of its so-called Southeast Area, all the way into the deep South Pacific.

The question of how finally to deal with Truk would be decided only after Spruance’s raid was over. Two options were on the table. The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff had approved two offensive paths across the Central Pacific: Either the Navy would assault Truk directly and seize it by June 15, to be followed by landings in the Marianas on September 1; or the Navy would bypass it, leaping straight to the Marianas, with D Day on Saipan set for June 15.

Nimitz thought Truk would have to be taken, but his amphibious planners considered it beyond their means. Truk’s barrier reef was a dangerous obstacle to assault, and its enormous radius kept the inner harbor out of range of naval gunfire from outside. The atoll’s principal islands themselves, Eten, Moen, Param, Fefan, and Dublon, were within mutually supporting range of each other and thus formidable objectives. The more Nimitz and his people looked at it, the less they liked the odds.

On February 12, Spruance and Mitscher led nine aircraft carriers to sea from Majuro, an anchorage in the Marshalls. Their mission was to stick an arm into the hornet’s nest that was Truk and rate the potency of its sting. If the raid, code-named Operational Hailstone, went well, no Japanese planes would remain on Truk to interfere with the landings on Eniwetok. The results would bear, too, on the choice of the next strategic objective.

Though Spruance had a reputation as a battleship man, he had won his greatest fame leading carriers. In June 1942, in the Battle of Midway, he exercised tactical control over the Enterprise, Hornet, and Yorktown while their aviators destroyed four Japanese carriers. For the loss of the Yorktown, the United States won a victory that would resound in history. Elevated thereafter to serve as Admiral Chester Nimitz’s chief of staff, Spruance commanded a desk at Pearl Harbor. It wasn’t until August 1943 that he returned to sea to command the Central Pacific Force. Its fast carrier element acquired its muscular size nearly coincidentally with Spruance’s rise. It dwarfed in every dimension the carrier group he had led at Midway. The Essex-class carriers were made mighty by their association with an air group of ninety planes, made up of a fighter squadron, a dive-bomber squadron, and a torpedo bomber squadron. By 1944 these squadrons used best-in-class aircraft, the F6F-3 Hellcat, the SB2C-1 Helldiver (or the older SBD-5 Dauntless), and the TBF-1c Avenger, respectively.

The argument about how to employ the Navy’s multiplying roster of carriers—singly, as in the past, or in groups—was settled not so much by persuasion or battle experience as by the surging output of the yards. As far as combat tactics went, the standard assumption that they had to hit, then run, because they were impossible to save against a determined air attack, was yielding to a new reality. Quantity was not merely a luxury but a revolution. By concentrating their aircraft and flak defenses, the carrier task force could hold an air attack at bay. Their planes had radio transponders that enabled specially trained fighter direction teams to recognize them and direct them using long-range search radars. New shipboard combat information centers collated and communicated this critical information. With common doctrine governing the use of combat air patrols, ship formations, and air defense tactics, the carrier task force acquired a flexibility that multiplied its reach and staying power. Several groups of three or four carriers, operating together, could quite well take care of themselves. Approaching Truk, Spruance and Mitscher were about to prove it.

They had arranged their nine carriers in three task groups, each steaming just over the horizon from the next. Spruance flew his three-star flag in the battleship New Jersey, riding in a great circle with the carrier Bunker Hill and the light carriers Monterey and Cowpens. Over the horizon to his north was the group built around the Enterprise, the Yorktown, and the light carrier Belleau Wood. To his south came the Essex, with the Intrepid and the light carrier Cabot. Deployment in groups allowed concentration or dispersion as a mission might require. Typically the force could be seen in its totality only in an anchorage. At sea, such a spectacle required a few thousand feet of altitude.

Ninety minutes before sunrise on February 16, the fleet closed to within ninety miles of Truk and, on order from Mitscher, as tactical commander of the carriers under Spruance, turned into a force-five wind and began launching planes. One by one, with the release of chocks and the roar of Wright radial engines, a swarm of F6F-3 Hellcats took wing over the spray of onrushing whitecaps.

At the break of morning light, the leaders of each of the five participating fighter squadrons led their flights in a wide turn to the west and circled, allowing the others to join up. After the seventy Hellcats had gathered, they turned out on a heading that would take them west, harbingers of a two-day operation to neutralize Truk as a threat to U.S. ambitions in the Pacific.

The swarm had droned along for less than an hour when their target appeared before them. Illuminated by the sun just above the eastern horizon, it resembled a cluster of mountains contained in a huge coral-fringed tub. Truk’s barrier reef, a round-cornered triangle, encompassed a lagoon. As they came nearer, twelve planes from the Bunker Hill flew high cover at twenty thousand feet, while two divisions of four ranged more widely as scouts. Two dozen Hellcats from the Enterprise and the Yorktown, Mitscher’s flagship, formed the low-attack group. Like-sized contingents from the Intrepid and Essex came in at medium altitude. The boss of the Bunker Hill air group, Commander Roland H. “Brute” Dale, flew separately as the strike coordinator. His job was to make sure the remaining forty-eight planes, his strikers, found the right targets to strafe, assisted by three other air group commanders who served as target observers.

Twelve planes from the Intrepid’s Fighter Squadron Six circled the atoll at a distance, waiting for their high cover to reach its station. A pilot from this group, Lieutenant (j.g.) Alex Vraciu, was mystified to find no Japanese planes in the air to intercept. Little did the U.S. pilots know that the base’s naval commander had just relaxed his guard, a decision that was almost coincident with the arrival of enemy carriers off his shores. For the previous two weeks, Truk had been on high alert, ever since American search planes reconnoitered it on February 4. Knowing that his pilots were exhausted, Vice Admiral Masami Kobayashi, commander of the Fourth Fleet, had ordered most of them to shore leave in the barracks district located across a causeway from the main airfield at Dublon. The subsequent lapse in air search allowed Spruance to approach Truk undetected and left a sizable portion of the available fighters on the ground when the American swarm arrived overhead before sunrise.

On a fighter sweep, U.S. Navy tactical doctrine boiled down to this: Keep your Hellcats high. Concentrate them in force. Clear out the enemy fighters first. Then get after the airfields. Don’t circle and tarry; it only gives the enemy a chance to scramble. Save for the initial five or so minutes of circling necessary to allow the Hellcats assigned to high cover to take station, this was exactly what Dale and his pilots did, if not necessarily in that order. It wasn’t until Fighting Six was pushing over to strafe that they discovered that some enemy fighters were airborne after all. Pacific Fleet intelligence had estimated that not fewer than seventy-five fighters would be on hand to defend Truk, along with twenty-eight scout bombers, twelve torpedo planes, twelve medium bombers, five large patrol planes, and fifty-eight floatplanes, a total of 190 aircraft. “Not less than” proved to be the operative word. The Japanese pilots indeed did in the end get to their planes. U.S. fliers would count more than three hundred of them in the air and on the ground during the day.

As flak puffed the sky around him, Alex Vraciu, with his wingman, Lou Little, found himself in the tail of a spiral of Hellcats bearing down on Moen Island, the site of one of Truk’s principal airfields. Ten Hellcats ahead of him were into their dives when, to be safe, Vraciu looked back over his shoulder. No rookie, he knew the clouds offered nooks and crannies for enemy pilots to use as cover for ambush. His caution likely saved his life. There he saw it at last, the dim form of a Mitsubishi A6M Model Zero, known as a Zeke, diving, its cowling and wings twinkling with gunfire.

Vraciu pulled back his stick, and Little followed him into a climb. Turning sharply toward the enemy plane, Vraciu maneuvered to bring the plane into his gunsight, then fired a burst that forced the pilot to break off and dive. That’s when he noticed the enemy planes above him—a gaggle of dozens that included every model the Japanese flew. The fight was on.

Alex Vraciu was just one among many similarly situated young pilots, full of ambition, in thrall of their tribe, in the grip of their squadron’s logo and mojo and full of stories about the wise old hands who had forged them. He entered pilot training while he was still a senior at Depauw University in Muncie, Indiana. Joining his first squadron at North Island, San Diego, Vraciu was singled out as a talent by the commander, Butch O’Hare, who made the rookie his wingman. The skipper proceeded to hand down the lessons of air combat as they had been taught to him—via the “humiliation squad.”

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01BJSJMHI
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bantam; 1st edition (October 25, 2016)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 25, 2016
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 152.4 MB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 586 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #226,617 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
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James D. Hornfischer

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James D. Hornfischer's books have led reviewers to rate him as one of the most commanding naval historians writing today. His awards include the 2018 Samuel Eliot Morison Award, given by the Board of Trustees of the USS Constitution Museum for work that “reflects the best of Admiral Morison: artful scholarship, patriotic pride, an eclectic interest in the sea and things maritime, and a desire to preserve the best of our past for future generations.”

His most recent book is “The Fleet at Flood Tide: America at Total War in the Pacific, 1944–1945”. Recipient of the Navy League’s 2017 Commodore John Barry Book Award, it is a major narrative of the U.S. Navy’s Central Pacific drive in World War II, covering the air, land and sea operations that seized the islands of Saipan, Tinian and Guam, as well as the strategic air operations conducted from the Marianas that ended the war.

“Neptune’s Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal” (2011), a New York Times bestseller, was chosen as a best book of the year by numerous book reviews. “Ship of Ghosts” (2006) told the story of the cruiser USS Houston (CA-30) and the odyssey of its crew in Japanese captivity. “The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors” (2004), a combat narrative about the Battle off Samar, received the Samuel Eliot Morison Award from the Naval Order of the United States and was chosen by the Wall Street Journal as one of the five best books on “war as soldiers know it” and by Naval History magazine as one of “a dozen Navy classics.” Hornfischer has also collaborated with Marcus Luttrell, the bestselling author of “Lone Survivor,” on Luttrell’s second autobiography, “Service: A Navy SEAL at War” (2012).

All of Hornfischer’s books have been selections of the Navy Professional Reading program, managed by the office of the Chief of Naval Operations (OPNAV). He is a regular contributor for the Wall Street Journal and has written for Smithsonian, Naval History, Naval Institute Proceedings, and other periodicals. He has lectured at the U.S. Naval Academy, Marine Corps University at Quantico, the National WWII Museum, the National Museum of the Pacific War, and other venues.

Hornfischer's motivation to write about the U.S. military reaches back to his childhood, from his explorations of the school library's 940.54 Dewey Decimal section, building Monogram and Revell model ships and aircraft, watching "Black Sheep Squadron" on NBC (sublimely ahistorical but redeemed by Robert Conrad's portrayal of Major Gregory "Pappy" Boyington of VMF-214), and absorbing the epic intonations of Laurence Olivier in "The World at War" on PBS.

A native of Massachusetts and a graduate of Colgate University and the University of Texas School of Law, Hornfischer lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and their children.

Author photo: © Mark Matson, www.matsonphoto.net

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Customers find the book well-written and compelling from start to finish, with detailed descriptions of battle scenes and landings. Moreover, the history quality receives praise as one of the best histories of the Pacific War, and customers appreciate its exhaustively researched content. Additionally, the book receives positive feedback for its leadership analysis, with one customer highlighting the effectiveness of naval battle group commanders. However, the accuracy receives mixed reviews, with some customers noting factual errors.

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295 customers mention "Readability"287 positive8 negative

Customers find the book well written and engaging, noting it reads almost like a novel, with one customer describing it as a real page turner.

"...My anticipation of another thoughtful and elegant account of our Navy’s role in the defeat of Japan was not disappointed...." Read more

"...All things considered, this is military writing at its best and a fine book, and one that I highly recommend to anyone with an interest in World War..." Read more

"...analysis of total war, the story of the actual campaigning was well done...." Read more

"...This book is an excellent account for the period of US Navy operation in the Pacific Theater for the final 2 years of WWII...." Read more

207 customers mention "History quality"198 positive9 negative

Customers praise the historical content of the book, describing it as one of the best histories of the Pacific War, with one customer noting its balanced blend of history and biography.

"...of the Battle of the Philippine Sea and its significance in the eventual defeat of Japan...." Read more

"...of the Tin Can Sailors", and thought that was an exceptional book on The Battle Off Samar...." Read more

"...It gives a portrayal of fascinating personalities and the technicalities of war and policy of the time in an enlivening manner...." Read more

"Hornfischer is an outstanding author, especially skilled on the subject of the US Navy in WWII...." Read more

148 customers mention "Information quality"148 positive0 negative

Customers find the book insightful and exhaustively researched, with wonderfully detailed examinations and interesting descriptions throughout.

"...He also includes some informative descriptions of how the fleet supported the landings...." Read more

"...Hornfischer puts an incredible amount of research into his books, and he has a writing style that is a joy to read...." Read more

"...It gives a portrayal of fascinating personalities and the technicalities of war and policy of the time in an enlivening manner...." Read more

"...It portrays American spirit at its finest and is well detailed by an excellent author...." Read more

133 customers mention "Detail"110 positive23 negative

Customers appreciate the book's detailed approach, with specific battle scenes and landings receiving particular attention, and one customer highlighting the thorough coverage of the Battle of Saipan.

"...high drama of the flight of the Enola Gay provide an eloquent and persuasive coda to what it took to end a hopelessly savage war and avoid the more..." Read more

"...As well as the details of planning and the experiences at all levels from the flagship, to the beaches to the field hospitals...." Read more

"...Fascinating intricate indepth descriptions of the challenging amphibious operations characterizing the Pacific invasions of the Marianas Islands..." Read more

"...appreciated his explanations of military structures, doctrines, strategies, communications and practical problems in the filed and how they were..." Read more

57 customers mention "Entertainment value"57 positive0 negative

Customers find the book entertaining, describing it as compelling from start to finish and just as thrilling as "Tin Can."

"...was prudent and very effective, as you really gain an insight into just what kind of military effort it..." Read more

"...and the technicalities of war and policy of the time in an enlivening manner...." Read more

"...is crisp and clear, and the story he tells is authoritative and fascinating...." Read more

"...All in all, a fine work--I will find myself returning to it multiple times to cite various passages." Read more

14 customers mention "Leadership"14 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's coverage of leadership, with one review highlighting how it delves into leadership styles, while another notes the bravery of American military personnel.

"...Finally, the exceptionally able gunnery enthusiast, Willis A. Lee, was a Vice Admiral, not a Rear Admiral during the periods covered in the book...." Read more

"...in sinking a fast, well-armed warship [the destroyer USS Callaghan] suggested to the Navy the grave..." Read more

"...Very formidable enemy when death is preferable to surrender. He covers interactions among the top brass...." Read more

"...The reason and thought behind the various decisions, profiles of the decision-makers, and those who carried out the attack at Saipan, Tinian, and..." Read more

10 customers mention "Pacing"7 positive3 negative

Customers appreciate the pacing of the book, with one noting how it draws together the cause and effect of ships, while another highlights its detailed coverage of amphibious landings and their strategic consequences.

"...He clearly depicted the savagery of the combat, the amphibious landings and what it was like on each island and how people were dying across the..." Read more

"...This work is not like that. This work drew together the cause and effect of ships, aircraft and men in the latter portions of the war in the..." Read more

"...The pacing is a little odd. The Marianas are covered in great detail, Iwo Jima and Okinawa very little...." Read more

"...Reads quickly and nicely illustrated." Read more

9 customers mention "Accuracy"6 positive3 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the accuracy of the book, with some praising it as an excellent account of WWII while others point out factual errors.

"...book puts you right in the thick of the action surrounded by the actual body counts, timetables and personalities of those who prosecuted WW2 on..." Read more

"...There were a few factual errors, but none worth mentioning. It is a FIVE-STAR read!..." Read more

"...A perfect combination of hard facts, numbers and war stories, I wish he had written even more about other theatres of war. 6 stars" Read more

"Mr. Hornfischer is a superb historian and story teller who gives an engrossing and layered account of the Marianas conquest...." Read more

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Charles
Articulate Insight into a Pivotal Event in the Pacific War
Reviewed in the United States on February 8, 2017
Verified Purchase

Based upon my appreciation of Mr. Hornfischer’s superb Neptune’s Inferno, I pre-ordered this book as soon as I learned it was to be published. My anticipation of another thoughtful and elegant account of our Navy’s role in the defeat of Japan was not disappointed. In the interest of complete disclosure, I will say that I was taken off guard by the book’s title. I had focused on “The Fleet at Flood Tide” and was surprised to find that the book includes much information that does not relate to the to “the Fleet.” The detailed descriptions of what the Marines endured ashore in subduing the Marianas and the high drama of the flight of the Enola Gay provide an eloquent and persuasive coda to what it took to end a hopelessly savage war and avoid the more brutal “peace” that would have been the inevitable result of a longer war.

Among the author’s achievements is his compelling case for the use of the atomic bomb. By 1944-45, it was clear that Japan had lost the war; yet, her leaders refused to accept reality, and many Japanese and American lives were needlessly lost. The author explains how conquest of Tinian in the Marianas and the development of the B-29 provided the means to attack the Japanese homeland regularly. The success of the Manhattan Project added a weapon so devastating that the Japanese finally acknowledged the inevitable. Mr. Hornfischer’s account of the way these momentous events played out provides some new details about how they were perceived by the Japanese that are very worthwhile. His account of the how the Japanese literally fought to the last man in the Marianas includes descriptions from the Japanese point of view that are illuminating.

But what of the Fleet? The author includes a thorough description of the Battle of the Philippine Sea and its significance in the eventual defeat of Japan. He also includes some informative descriptions of how the fleet supported the landings. Later he provides a cursory treatment of Leyte Gulf and the taking of Iwo Jima and Okinawa – including the impact of the Kamikazes. Yet to be frank, I finished the book thinking that the coverage of these momentous events had been a bit slighted. I believe I understand the author’s intent to focus on the pivotal role played by the conquest of the Marianas, but on balance, I would have preferred a second volume to give these other details more attention. Mr. Hornfischer is such a good writer that a second volume would have been welcome.

In a book of this breadth, a few mistakes or omissions are inevitable. I generally agreed with his portrayal of Terrible (Kelly) Turner as an irascible genius, but I think it would be fairer to fault him with oversights in the days before Pearl Harbor while he was still back in Washington rather than to blame him for the debacle at the Battle of Savo Island. In any case, I could not make sense out of his statement on p. 28 that Admiral King exonerated Turner in a letter to CNO Harold Stark. By August 1942, the date of this disaster, Betty Stark had been shunted aside to command our meager naval forces in Europe (COMNAVER), and Admiral King was clearly at the top of the Navy’s totem pole as COMINICH -- Commander in Chief, the senior uniformed officer in the Navy. Accordingly, King would not have written to Stark after Savo Island to exonerate Turner. Something is amiss here.

The battleship Tennessee, even her post-Pearl Harbor modernization, had a single catapult on her somewhat narrow fantail – not two (p. 89). MacArthur was driven out of the Philippines in 1942, not 1941 (p. 330). The description of “Ultra radio transcripts” (p. 420) should have been to “Magic,” the name given to our code breaking in the Pacific. “Ultra” refers to the British breaking of the German codes. I don’t recall Nagumo ever having had battleship Nagato as his flagship (p. 492), at least during the critical moments of the War. She was Yamato’s flagship during the raid on Pearl Harbor before Yamato was commissioned. Finally, the exceptionally able gunnery enthusiast, Willis A. Lee, was a Vice Admiral, not a Rear Admiral during the periods covered in the book. If details are important enough to mention his precise rank, then they should be correct.

These minor points aside, I liked Mr. Hornfischer’s description of the key commanders. Among other things, I share his admiration for Admiral Spruance and was glad to see him get the credit he is due. The plentiful and useful maps were another strength of the book. Although this was not the book I was expecting from its title, it is a very fine work of history. One of the rewarding things about reading history is to encounter a new and different perspective on events that were already familiar supported by new sources of information. Mr. Hornfischer’s book does precisely that and is very rewarding to either a generalist or a serious student.

Opinions about using the atomic bomb, the attack on Pearl Harbor, comfort women, and savagery with prisoners of war will haunt any discussion of the Pacific War forever. Nevertheless, because of the way the war ended and the reconciliation that was possible after it, the United States and Japan are trusted and valued allies to this day. There are no good wars, but some wars have good endings. Mr. Hornfischer makes a persuasive case that the Pacific War was one of them.

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David N. Currey
James Hornfischer at His Masterful Best
Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2017
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"The Fleet at Flood Tide" is the fourth Hornfischer book I've read, and this is perhaps his best yet. I read his first one, "The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors", and thought that was an exceptional book on The Battle Off Samar. Hornfischer puts an incredible amount of research into his books, and he has a writing style that is a joy to read. This book concerns the latter part of the war starting with the assault on Saipan and The Battle of the Philippine Sea. It covers Guam and Tinian as well, but the focus is on Saipan and the B29 assault on Japan that began in earnest with the completion of air bases on the islands that enabled B29s to reach most of Japan.

He writes with great empathy, so much so, that the parts of the book about Shizuko Miura, a Japanese nurse on Saipan, really captured my concern, and I felt compelled to do something I never do: Halfway through the book, using the index, I jumped ahead and read all the pages concerning her, because I wanted to know what her fate was. After doing that, I then went back and completed reading the book where I'd left off.

You won't find much about the Battle of Leyte Gulf, or the invasion of the Philippines, or other slug-fests on islands such as Okinawa and Iwo Jima. But I think his concentrating on the invasion of Saipan (and the bombing campaign that the capture of Saipan enabled) was prudent and very effective, as you really gain an insight into just what kind of military effort it took to wrestle one of these Pacific islands from the Japanese, from not only the American perspective, but the Japanese as well. If he had covered all these other island invasions in as much detail as he covered Saipan, the book would have been at least a four-volume monstrosity.

I had a particular interest in the Saipan part of the book as my Dad, Billie George Currey, served in the Army Air Corps as a weather observer on the island, and I have some photos he took there. His job was coordinating with other observers on other islands so they could triangulate severe weather storms and route the B29s around them. The photo shows my Dad in front of the V Square 29, serial# 42-24688, which flew 43 missions with primarily the 499th Bomber Group, including a few missions with the 500th. 42-24688 replaced another plane (42-24638) also known as the V Square 29 that was lost in a ditching. The plane survived the war and was scrapped at Pyote Air Force Base.

My only caveat, and a minor one, was that the chapter titles do not lend themselves to going back later to review something written about earlier in the book. But there is an excellent index that helps in that matter.

All things considered, this is military writing at its best and a fine book, and one that I highly recommend to anyone with an interest in World War II in the Pacific, and especially Saipan. I look forward to his next book with bated breath.

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David N. Currey

James Hornfischer at His Masterful Best

Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2017
"The Fleet at Flood Tide" is the fourth Hornfischer book I've read, and this is perhaps his best yet. I read his first one, "The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors", and thought that was an exceptional book on The Battle Off Samar. Hornfischer puts an incredible amount of research into his books, and he has a writing style that is a joy to read. This book concerns the latter part of the war starting with the assault on Saipan and The Battle of the Philippine Sea. It covers Guam and Tinian as well, but the focus is on Saipan and the B29 assault on Japan that began in earnest with the completion of air bases on the islands that enabled B29s to reach most of Japan.

He writes with great empathy, so much so, that the parts of the book about Shizuko Miura, a Japanese nurse on Saipan, really captured my concern, and I felt compelled to do something I never do: Halfway through the book, using the index, I jumped ahead and read all the pages concerning her, because I wanted to know what her fate was. After doing that, I then went back and completed reading the book where I'd left off.

You won't find much about the Battle of Leyte Gulf, or the invasion of the Philippines, or other slug-fests on islands such as Okinawa and Iwo Jima. But I think his concentrating on the invasion of Saipan (and the bombing campaign that the capture of Saipan enabled) was prudent and very effective, as you really gain an insight into just what kind of military effort it took to wrestle one of these Pacific islands from the Japanese, from not only the American perspective, but the Japanese as well. If he had covered all these other island invasions in as much detail as he covered Saipan, the book would have been at least a four-volume monstrosity.

I had a particular interest in the Saipan part of the book as my Dad, Billie George Currey, served in the Army Air Corps as a weather observer on the island, and I have some photos he took there. His job was coordinating with other observers on other islands so they could triangulate severe weather storms and route the B29s around them. The photo shows my Dad in front of the V Square 29, serial# 42-24688, which flew 43 missions with primarily the 499th Bomber Group, including a few missions with the 500th. 42-24688 replaced another plane (42-24638) also known as the V Square 29 that was lost in a ditching. The plane survived the war and was scrapped at Pyote Air Force Base.

My only caveat, and a minor one, was that the chapter titles do not lend themselves to going back later to review something written about earlier in the book. But there is an excellent index that helps in that matter.

All things considered, this is military writing at its best and a fine book, and one that I highly recommend to anyone with an interest in World War II in the Pacific, and especially Saipan. I look forward to his next book with bated breath.

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Richard Williams
James D Hornfisher a Great Author
Reviewed in Australia on September 9, 2021
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Another Must Read from J.D.Hornfisher.
I find James D Hornfisher books difficult to put down once Ive started. This book is a great insight into the latter years of the War in the Pacific

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Paul Davies
Popular History at it's Best
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 8, 2020
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James Hornfischer is one of those historians who doesn't forget that wars are fought by real human beings.Sometimes military histories can be a catalogue of facts,figures and statistics. Although this book gives an excellent overview of events,it is full of the individual stories of the individuals who took part,from the frontline infantrymen,airmen and sailors to the generals and admirals.Many of the characters described are extraordinary people in extraordinary times.This book really brings history to life. I look forward to reading this author's book about one of the most heroic and amazing episodes of the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

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Teepauli
Hervorragend
Reviewed in Germany on March 26, 2024
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Auch dieses Werk von Hornfisher ist absolut beeidruckend.
Nun habe ich ALLE seine Bücher im Regal stehen.
So schade, dass nun nach seinem frühen Tod (bis auf das Buch mit seinem Sohn) nichts mehr erscheinen wird....

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David Reeder
Exceptionnel
Reviewed in France on November 8, 2018
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Un tour de force!

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Eric Beaudan
Excellent piece of historical writing!
Reviewed in Canada on September 23, 2017
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I was quite impressed by the vivid descriptions of the landings in Saipan and the fighting that engulfed the Marianas in 1944 and 1945. The book has an academic title but actually takes you into the frontlines of the Marine and US Navy units that participated in the last battles of the war in the Pacific, and makes you understand why the US felt no choice but to use the atomic bomb against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The author also tells the moving stories of nurses and Japanese civilians who endured the fighting. A remarkable tale of human sacrifice and endurance.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Articulate Insight into a Pivotal Event in the Pacific War

5.0 out of 5 stars James Hornfischer at His Masterful Best

James Hornfischer at His Masterful Best

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5.0 out of 5 stars James D Hornfisher a Great Author

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5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent piece of historical writing!

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Articulate Insight into a Pivotal Event in the Pacific War

James Hornfischer at His Masterful Best

James D Hornfisher a Great Author

Popular History at it's Best

Hervorragend

Exceptionnel

Excellent piece of historical writing!