One Damned Island After Another - The Saga of the Seventh Air Force in World War Two

One Damned Island After Another - The Saga of the Seventh Air Force in World War Two By: Clive Howard, Joe Whitley, ISBN 10: 1724014439 ISBN 13: 9781724014436 ISSN: ISFDB Publication Record # ASIN: B07HM79SXZ British National Bibliography System Number: 016139777 Canadian National Catalogue (AMICUS) Number: 31868421 Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication: National Library of Australia Bib ID: 2444605 OCLC Number: 568308427 (OCoLC): 834164 eISBN 10: eISBN 13: Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 47030014 Publisher: Brigadier Books/The University of North Carolina Press (2018) WWII, The combat history of the Seventh Air Force from Pearl Harbor to the end of the war against Japan, This is the official history of the Seventh Air Force. It is not a "brass hat" story; it is told from the point of view of the men themselves, often in their own words, with realistic vigor and with the lively sense of humor that made it possible to achieve victory in the Pacific. On 19th October 1940, the Hawaiian Air Force, later known as the Seventh Air Force, was established to provide air defense of the Hawaiian Island and to engage with threats in the Pacific. Just over a year later the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor devastated this force. Out of a total of 231 aircraft of the Hawaiian Air Force, 64 were destroyed and not more than 79 were left usable. Out of the inferno emerged the newly reformed Seventh Air Force. It faced, in the central Pacific, the largest water theater in the world - sixteen million square miles, five times the size of the United States. The Americans patched up their planes as best they could and began to fly the "Atoll Circuit," the low-lying, white sand atolls and the first stepping stones on the long road to Tokyo. In this huge area and against a fearsome opponent, the men of the Seventh were forced to fly the longest missions in any theater of war, entirely over water and, at first, without fighter escort. They fought at Midway, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Kwajalein, Eniwetok, Truk, Saipan, Palau, the Philippines, Iwo Jima, and finally Tokyo. Clive Howard and Joe Whitley's history of this remarkable air force covers from the events at Pearl Harbor through to V-J Day, covering every single island that the force landed on in between. They listened to demand of Corporal Earl Nelson's article " Heroes Don't Win Wars ", that criticised the press and radio that only recorded the fantastic achievements of men who wore medals; "Why don't they talk about the guy who is just a soldier?" So with humor and insight Howard and Whitley and provided us with a history of the Seventh Air Force that doesn't focus on only the glorious achievements of some men, nor does it simply record the accounts of the "brass hats", but instead gets to the heart of what the men of this extraordinary force did and thought. Clive Howard and Joe Whitley were both sergeants and served as correspondents for the Seventh Air Force. They were there; they saw it happen. Their book One Damned Island After Another was first published in 1946. . All I can offer is this was a book in our family library, but because of a horrific fire, we lost all of our family's physical history. My father is named in the book, Technical Sgt. Carlyle Connor Elrod. He was the top turit gunner in a B-17 and the book is a history of his unit, the Seventh Air Force in World War II. His plane was shot down during the 1st Wake Island Raids in 1941-1942. He survived the crash and given a medical discharge in 1942. I know the unit trained prior to being sent to the Pacific at a now extinct base near Soap Lake in the State of Washington. Dad always said they had to build their own runways. One additional note, sometime in the mid 60's, my Mother went to a book signing for a former Japanese soldier who published his "side of the story" for the flip side of this book, again, everything was lost.