Deschutes Public Library

Pacific Thunder, The US Navy's Central Pacific Campaign, August 1943-October 1944, Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

portraitsillustrationsmapsplates

index present

non fiction

Pacific Thunder

bibliography

957139635

Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

The US Navy's Central Pacific Campaign, August 1943-October 1944

On 27 October 1942, four "Long Lance" torpedoes fired by the Japanese destroyers Makigumo and Akigumo exploded in the hull of the aircraft carrier USS Hornet (CV-8). Minutes later, the ship that had launched the Doolitte Raid six months earlier slipped beneath the waves of the Coral Sea 100 miles northeast of the island of Guadalcanal and just north of the Santa Cruz Islands, taking with her 140 of her sailors. With the loss of Hornet, the United States Navy now had one aircraft carrier left in the South Pacific, USS Enterprise (CV-6), herself badly damaged in the two previous days of the Battle of Santa Cruz, the fourth Japanese-American carrier battle since the Battle of the Coral Sea five months and three weeks before. Of the prewar carrier fleet the Navy had struggled to build over 15 years, only three were left: Enterprise licked her wounds at Espiritu Santo while USS Saratoga (CV-3) lay in dry dock at the Bremerton Navy Yard, victim of a Japanese submarine torpedo two months earlier. USS Ranger (CV-4) was in mid-Atlantic on her way to support Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa

US Navy's Central Pacific Campaign, August 1943-October 1944U.S. Navy's Central Pacific Campaign, August 1943-October 1944United States Navy's Central Pacific Campaign, August 1943-October 1944