Description

Now publishing in paperback, this is vivid narrative history of the final stages of the Pacific War, as the US Navy began to slowly approach the Japanese Home Islands against fearsome opposition from new and terrifying sources, notably the suicidal Japanese airmen: the kamikaze.

The United States Navy won such overwhelming victories in 1944 that, had the navy faced a different enemy, the war would have been over at the conclusion of the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

However, in the moment of victory on October 25, 1944, the US Navy found itself confronting a frightening enemy that had been unimaginable until it appeared. The kamikaze, “divine wind” in Japanese, was something Americans were totally unprepared for--a shocking violation of every belief held in the West. The attacks were terrifying. Regardless of the damage inflicted on an attacking airplane, there was no certainty of safety aboard the ship until that airplane was completely destroyed, as the crew of the USS St. Lo tragically learned.

From best-selling author Thomas McKelvey Cleaver, Tidal Wave combines expert research and first-person accounts to tell the story of the naval campaigns in the Pacific from the victory at Leyte Gulf to the end of the war--a period in which the US Navy would fight harder for survival than ever before.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE: The Final Battle
CHAPTER TWO: October 25, 1944
CHAPTER THREE: The Big Blue Blanket
CHAPTER FOUR: Halsey's Typhoons
CHAPTER FIVE: The Forgotten Fleet
CHAPTER SIX: Tokyo
CHAPTER SEVEN: Iwo Jima
CHAPTER EIGHT: Prelude to Okinawa
CHAPTER NINE: The Fleet that Came to Stay
CHAPTER TEN: The Murderous Month of May
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Admiral Nimitz Writes a Letter
CHAPTER TWELVE: Finale
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Gyokusen
Bibliography
Index

Product details

Published Sep 17 2019
Format Paperback
Edition 1st
Extent 320
ISBN 9781472825490
Imprint Osprey Publishing
Dimensions 234 x 153 mm
Series General Military
Short code GNM
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Author

Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

Thomas McKelvey Cleaver has been a published write…

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