Ghost Soldiers and A Helmet For My Pillow are good ones too
Yeah this is a great thread. I’m very interested in the books about Guadalcanal as my grandfather served there. Every once in a while he would talk about it.
I marked the thread as a favorite.
Thanks guys.
T e d
John Lundstrom’s “First Team” books, about US naval aviation in the first six months of 1942, are excellent books to read. They are, “The First Team”, “The First Team: The Guadalcanal Campaign”, and “The First South Pacific Campaign: Pacific Fleet Strategy, December 1941-June 1942”. I learned about Lundstrom from reading “Shattered Sword”. Parshall and Tully credit Lundstrom with inspiring the line of questioning and research that led them to publish their book.
I’ll second James Hornfisher’s books, too: “Neptune’s Inferno” covering the naval combat in the Guadalcanal campaign; “The Fleet at Flood Tide” covering the Mariannas campaign to the end of the war; and “The Last Stand of the Tin-Can Sailors” on the Battle off Samar. That story should be made into a movie.
I also recommend, “In Harm’s Way”, by Doug Stanton, about the sinking of the Indianapolis.
Reading the Lundstrom books, especially, filled in gaps in what I knew previously about the Pacific War. It’s almost as if the focus in so much of what we read as kids lead one to think that we go from Pearl Harbor, to the Coral Sea and Midway, and Guadalcanal, and then all of a sudden, the Mariannas Turkey Shoot happens, then Leyte Gulf, and then Hiroshima and the deck of the Missouri. There’s a lot in between that didn’t get as much coverage, generally speaking.
Yes, those were favorites of mine, when I was a kid! I took them out of the school library so often the librarian almost told me to keep 'em.
I loved that book Stik. Great selection to read!
Brad,
Thank you for posting this. I was told about this series of books and forgot about it until I saw your post. I’m going to hunt these down. Are they in paperback?
Here is a few from my stacks.
The Fleet the Gods Forgot: The U.S. Asiatic Fleet in World War II by. W.G. Winslow. Covers the early months of the war.
Ship of Ghosts: The Story of the USS Houston, FDR’s Legendary Lost Cruiser and the Epic Saga of Her Survivors by James D. Hornfischer. The Houston was sunk at the Battle of the Sunda Srait, her survivors would then be sent to work on Burma-Thailand Railway, made famous in Bridge Over the River Kwai. The author of The Fleet the Gods Forgot was an officer on USS Houston.
The books that started it off for me were Midway by A.J. Barker and Baa Baa Black Sheep by Greg “Pappy” Boyington. I still have them but haven’t read them since I was a kid.
Hope this helps and enjoy.
For the Aleutian Campaign, you want Brian Garfield’s Thousand Mile War; and John Haile Cloe’s The Aleutian Warriors and Top Cover For America.
Hello!
I’m a bit surprised that nobody mentioned it earlier, but I would like to recomment the book “With the old breed” by E.B. Sledge - a very good account of an infantryman’s struggle in very hard fights on Peleliu and Okinawa.
Have a good read!
Paweł
E.B. Sledge’s book was a reference used in Ken Burns’ The War and the mini-series The Pacific.
Hi, Jeff, sure thing, I hope that helped! Yes, those are all in paperback, and I bought them all online through Amazon. A nice feature of “First Team” is the appendices, too. Lundstrom looks at things like how the camo schemes and markings were applied, and how the Navy trained fighter pilots in aerial gunnery.
Best regards,
Brad
Outstanding Brad,
Thank you for more insight on these books. I just looked and found them on Amazon. I love reading books that are informative on military concepts, and tactics. Thank you again for the information.
I’m currently reading “Killing the Rising Sun” by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard. Very good read about the environment that let to the nuclear bombing of Japan.
I was familiar with the overall reason, this book really fleshes out the history and background.