The Cactus Air Force Hardback

Description

Using diary entries, interviews and first-hand accounts, this vivid narrative brings tolife the struggle in the air over the island of Guadalcanal between August 20 andNovember 15, 1942.For 40 years from 1961, the late Eric Hammel interviewed more than 150 Americanparticipants in the air campaign at Guadalcanal, none of whom are still alive. Theseinterviews are the most comprehensive first-person accounts of the battle assembledby any historian. More importantly, they involved the junior officers and enlisted menwhose stories and memories were not part of the official history, thus providing a uniqueinsight.The battle of Guadalcanal was the first offensive operation undertaken by the US and itsallies in the Pacific War. "Cactus," the code name for the island, became a sinkhole forJapanese air and naval power, experienced forces whose losses could never be madegood. The three months of air battles between August 20, 1942, when the first Marine airunit arrived on the island, and November 15, when the last enemy attempt to retake theisland was defeated, were perhaps the most important of the Pacific War. AfterNovember 15, 1942, the US never looked back as its forces moved across the Pacific tothe war’s inevitable conclusion.The Cactus Air Force is a joint project between the late Eric Hammel and Pacific Warexpert Thomas McKelvey Cleaver, and is unlike any other of the many histories of thisevent that have been published over the years.Sales and Marketing HighlightsThe battle for Guadalcanal is one of the defining campaigns of the war of thePacific, and the struggle for the control of the air was pivotal to the eventualsuccess of US forces.Based on extensive interviews and using personal sources such as lettersand diaries, this book is packed full of first-hand accounts that bring the storyvividly to life.The Pacific Theatre of World War II is one of the most successful subjectareas of popular military history, and this engaging narrative will appeal to thismarket.