Download Whirlwind: The Air War Against Japan, 1942-1945 AudioBook Free
WHIRLWIND is the first publication to tell the complete, awe-inspiring story of the Allied air war against Japan—the most important strategic bombing campaign inhistory. In the audacious Doolittle raid in 1942 to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, award-winning historian Barrett Tillman recounts the saga from the perspectives of American and Uk aircrews who flew unprecedented missions overthousands of mls of sea, as well by the generalsand admirals who commanded them.
Whether talking about the encounters of bomber crews located in China or the Marianas, fighter pilotson Iwo Jima, or carrier aviators at sea, Tillman provides vibrant details of the lives of the fliers and their support staff. Whirlwind takes viewers in to the cockpits and gun turrets of the mighty B-29 Superfortress, the greatest bomber developed to that time. Tillman considerably re-creates the sweep of wartime thoughts that crews endured on fifteen-hour missions, grappling with the extreme tedium of cramped spots and with adrenaline spikes in flak-studded skies, understanding that a bailout would put them susceptible to a merciless opponent or an unforgiving sea.
A major personality is the controversial and fantastic Basic Curtis LeMay, who rewrote tactical bombing practices. His command’s fire-bombing missions incinerated fully half of Tokyo and many other metropolitan areas, crippling Japan’s industry while still failing woefully to power surrender.
Whirlwind examines the tremendous logistics and engineering efforts essential to support Superfortresses in Asia and the Mariana Islands, as well as the tireless attempts of engineers to develop huge air bases from damage.It also identifies the unheralded missions that American bomber crews flew from the Aleutian Islands to Japan’s northernmost Kuril Islands.
Never gets the Japanese aspect of the storyline been so carefully evaluated. If Washington, D.C., represented a “second entrance” in Army-Navy rivalry, the situation in Tokyo contacted a full-contact sport. Tillman’s description of Japan’s willfully limited approach to civil protection is eye-opening. In the same way, he examines the mind-set in Tokyo’s war cabinet, which ignored the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, demanding the emperor’s personal treatment to avert a ghastly Allied invasion.
Tillman shows how, regardless of the Allies’ ultimate success, errors and shortsighted procedures made victory more expensive in lives and effort. He faults the lack of a unified command for allowing the Military Air Forces and the Navy to pursue parochial goals at the trouble of the larger objective, and he questions the early dedication of the enormously superior B-29 to the most primitive movie theater in India and China.
Whirlwind is one of the last histories of World War II written with the contribution of men who fought in it.With unexcelled macro- and microperspectives, Whirlwind is destined to become standard reference point on the war, on multiservice functions, and on the real human capacity for individual heroism and nationwide folly.
