Pacific Skies: American Flyers in World War II
Jerome Klinkowitz | 2004-06-04 00:00:00 | University Press of Mississippi | 285 | 20th Century
From 1941 to 1945 the skies over the Pacific Ocean afforded the broadest arena for battle and the fiercest action of air combat during World War II. It was in the air above the Pacific that America's involvement in the war began. It was in these skies that air power launched from carriers became a new form of engagement and where the war ultimately ended with kamikaze attacks and with atomic bombs dropped over Japan.
Throughout the conflict American flyers felt a compelling call to supplement the official news and military reports. In vivid accounts written soon after combat and in reflective memoirs recorded in the years after peace came, both pilots and crew members detailed their stories of the action that occurred in the embattled skies. Their first-person testimonies describe a style of warfare invented at the moment of need and at a time when the outcome was anything but certain.
Gathering more than a hundred personal narratives from Americans and from Japanese, Pacific Skies recounts a history of air combat in the Pacific theater. Included are the words of such famous aces and bomber pilots as Joe Foss, Pappy Boyington, Dick Bong, and Curtis Lemay, as well as the words of many rank-and-file airmen. Together their stories express fierce individualism and resourcefulness and convey the vast panorama of war that included the skies over Pearl Harbor, Wake, and Guadalcanal and missions from Saipan and Tinian.
As Pacific Skies recounts the perilous lives of pilots in their own words, Jerome Klinkowitz weaves the individual stories into a gripping historical narrative that exposes the shades of truth and fiction that can become blurred over time. A book about experiencing and remembering, Pacific Skies also is a story of unique perspectives on the war.
Reviews
There have been many memoirs and histories of the air war in the Pacific published. Some are by famous fliers like Pappy Boyington and George Kenney; others by less well-known Pacific vets. Some were published during the war; others decades later. University professor Jerome Klinkowitz takes over 100 such narratives and weaves them into a unique chronicle of air combat.
PACIFIC SKIES, published in 2004 by University Press of Mississippi, offers a fresh and fascinating look at American fliers in combat. He incorporates the reminiscences of various combatants within a framework that sets the stage for that veteran's narrative and then provides perspective and commentary on what that person wrote. In some cases the individual's take on "what happened" was wildly inaccurate as to results actually achieved. In other cases wartime censorship shaped what was presented. Perspectives and attitudes changed as the years passed and so on.
Many of the works referenced in Klinkowitz's book - CARRIER COMBAT, BAA BAA BLACK SHEEP, GRIM REAPERS, I COULD NEVER BE SO LUCKY AGAIN, IRON EAGLE, DAUNTLESS HELLDIVERS and PUSHING THE ENVELOPE - are considered classics in the field. Klinkowitz's learned commentary on each makes for fascinating reading and provides new insights into the original.
While PACIFIC SKIES isn't your conventional "I was there" military history, it is a marvelous, entertaining and thought-provoking read. As I was reading it, I kept thinking of Paul Harvey's tag-line: "And now you know...the rest of the story" and how much that fit PACIFIC SKIES. Highly recommended.
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