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Rain of Steel: Mitscher's Task Force 58 Ugaki's Thunder Gods and the Kamikaze War off Okinawa
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About Rain Of Steel: Mitscher's Task Force 58 Ugaki's
Product Description The last Pacific campaign of World War II was the most violent on record. Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher's Task Force 58 carriers had conducted air strikes on mainland Japan and supported the Iwo Jima landings, but his aviators were sorely tested once the Okinawa campaign commenced on 1 April 1945. Rain of Steel follows Navy and Marine carrier aviators in the desperate air battles to control the kamikazes directed by Vice Admiral Matome Ugaki. The latter would unleash ten different Kikusui aerial suicide operations, one including a naval force built around the world's most powerful battleship, the 71,000-ton Yamato. These battles are related largely through the words and experiences of some of the last living U.S. fighter aces of World War II. More than 1,900 kamikaze sorties--and thousands more traditional attack aircraft--would be launched against the U.S. Navy's warships, radar picket ships, and amphibious vessels during the Okinawa campaign. In this time, Navy, Marine, and Army Air Force pilots would claim some 2,326 aerial victories. The most successful four-man fighter division in U.S. Navy history would be crowned during the fight against Ugaki's kamikazes. The Japanese named the campaign tetsu no ame ("rain of steel"), often referred to in English as "typhoon of steel." Review " Rain of Steel is a solid book. The reader gains an appreciation of the importance of the Okinawa campaign on multiple levels. The extensive interviews make this a useful work in understanding the experiences of the individual participants. At the same time, Moore has crafted an accessible narrative. That narrative takes the individual battles and actions from 1945 that can seem to be distinct, separate events and weaves them into a fabric that places the battle of Okinawa within a strategic framework. It's an indispensable reference for understanding the Okinawa campaign.... If you want to understand the last year of the war in the Pacific, Rain of Steel is an excellent book with which to start your exploration." --Armchair General "Moore has ... done the hard work in museums, archives, and interviews. He uses his research to insert further detail into some of the campaign's greatest war stories--the hard slog up to Shuri Castle, the Bunker Hill, the Yamato, Hacksaw Ridge, and Ernie Pyle's death are all narrated here with admirable objectivity." --Air Space & Power Journal "The book is well illustrated and, as one would expect, there are plentiful source notes for those who want to research further and a bibliography which runs to thirteen pages, including oral histories and personal papers. For those who want to read about the achievements of Marc Mitscher, his chief of staff Arleigh Burke and Task Force 58's fighter pilots during the Okinawa campaign or, perhaps, to understand the vast expansion of the US Navy and Marine Corps' fighter squadrons to form the core element of the most powerful fleet the world had ever known in the pre-nuclear era, this is a good book and I thoroughly recommend it." --Australian Naval Institute " Rain of Steel is a rare book. It offers a fresh look at a campaign now 75 years in the past. Combining contemporary records, declassified material, newly unearthed source material, and recent interviews, Moore brings the past into the present. He lets readers see the battle through the eyes of the participants." --Ricochet "Moore tells the story of the last great battle of the War in the Pacific with masterful grace. His detailed narrative is factual and specific, and includes dozens of Marine Corps and Navy squadrons, U.S. air groups, task groups, and task forces.... Moore's work is clearly a labor of love, describing a one-of-a-kind, now-unimaginable warfare coordinated by a peerless leader in Adm. Mitscher. This book is packed with extensive notes, references, photos, glossary, and information from both historical records and witness interviews. Moore provides context and nuance in a
