This biography completes a trilogy on the three Navy fighter pilots--Jimmie Thach, Butch O'Hare, and Jimmy Flatley--who developed sweeping changes in aerial combat tactics during World War II. While O'Hare and Flatley were instrumental in making the "weave" a success, Thach was its theoretical innovator, and his use of the tactic in combat at Midway documented its practical application. This portrait of the famous pilot provides a memorable account of how Thach, convinced that his Wildcat was no match for Japan's formidable Zero, found a way to give his squadron a fighting chance. Using matchsticks on his kitchen table, he devised a solution that came to be called the Thach Weave. But as Steve Ewing is quick to point out, this was not Thach's sole contribution to the Navy. Throughout his forty-year career, Thach provided answers to multiple challenges facing the Navy, and his ideas were implemented service wide. A highly decorated ace, Thach was an early test pilot, a creative task force operations officer in the last year of World War II, and an outstanding carrier commander in the Korean War. During the Cold War, he contributed to advances in antisubmarine warfare. This biography shows him to be a charismatic leader interested in everyone around him, regardless of rank or status. His dry sense of humor and constant smile attracted people from all walks of life, and he was a popular figure in Hollywood. Thach remains a hero among naval aviators, his most famous combat tactic still used by today's pilots.

Hailed as one of the finest examples of aviation research, this comprehensive 1984 study presents a detailed and scrupulously accurate operational history of carrier-based air warfare. From the earliest operations in the Pacific through the decisive Battle of Midway, it offers a narrative account of how ace fighter pilots like Jimmy Thach and Butch O'Hare and their skilled VF squadron mates--called the "first team"--amassed a remarkable combat record in the face of desperate odds. Tapping both American and Japanese sources, historian John B. Lundstrom reconstructs every significant action and places these extraordinary fighters within the context of overall carrier operations. He writes from the viewpoint of the pilots themselves, after interviewing some fifty airmen from each side, to give readers intimate details of some of the most exciting aerial engagements of the war. At the same time he assesses the role the fighter squadrons played in key actions and shows how innovations in fighter tactics and gunnery techniques were a primary reason for the reversal of American fortunes. After more than twenty years in print, the book remains the definitive account and is being published in paperback for the first time to reach an even larger audience.

JJ Johnson was born prematurely to a poor family of sharecroppers in northeast Mississippi. He was accepted to Vanderbilt University at the age of 13 years and graduated at the age of 15. He then entered Princeton University on a full scholarship with room and board to study under Dr. Albert Einstein and graduated in 1941 with a PhD in Nuclear Physics at age 17 years. While at Princeton, JJ met and fell in love with Autumn Gamble from the consumer goods corporation, Proctor and Gamble. When World War II broke out, JJ volunteered for the U.S Navy and became a fighter pilot. After participation in four major battles on board the aircraft carriers Saratoga, Lexington, Yorktown and Enterprise, he was transferred to Los Alamos to work on the atomic bomb. In the summer of 1944, JJ returned to action aboard the Enterprise and then the new Lexington. In early 1945, he crashed at sea and after 20 days adrift, he was captured by the Japanese. After a short stint on Chichi Jima, JJ escaped, but was recaptured and transported to Ofuna a prison near Yokosuka on mainland Japan. After supplying fake information to the prison commander about the atomic bomb, JJ was rewarded with visits and services of a beautiful Japanese girl named Asami. As the war continued, JJ and Asami fell in love. After the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese surrendered and JJ was forced to leave Asami and return to America and reunite with Autumn.

Named one of Foreign Affairs' Best Books of 2016 In his magisterial 1,208 page narrative of the Pacific War, Francis Pike's Hirohito's War offers an original interpretation, balancing the existing Western-centric view with attention to the Japanese perspective on the conflict. As well as giving a 'blow-by-blow' account of campaigns and battles, Francis Pike offers many challenges to the standard interpretations with regards to the causes of the war; Emperor Hirohito's war guilt; the inevitability of US Victory; the abilities of General MacArthur and Admiral Yamamoto; the role of China, Great Britain and Australia; military and naval technology; and the need for the fire-bombing of Japan and the eventual use of the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hirohito's War is accompanied by additional online resources, including more details on logistics, economics, POWs, submarines and kamikaze, as well as a 1930-1945 timeline and over 200 maps.

This collection of break-out short stories by Pete Fromm is "another stellar collection that showcases Fromm's impressive dexterity".--"The Seattle Post-Intelligencer".

Found upside down in an Alaskan bog in the eighth month of our war with Japan, a Japanese fighter plane was retrieved and soon test flown by U.S. pilots. Knowledge gained from those flights ended the dominance of the Zero in the Pacific