Whirlwind: The Air War Against Japan, 1942-1945

Barrett Tillman

Mar 2010 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

WHIRLWIND is the first book to tell the complete, awe-inspiring story of the Allied air war against Japan—the most important strategic bombing campaign inhistory. From 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 British aircrews who flew unprecedented missions overthousands of miles of ocean, as well as of the generalsand admirals who commanded them.

Whether describing the experiences of bomber crews based in China or the Marianas, fighter pilotson Iwo Jima, or carrier aviators at sea, Tillman provides vivid details of the lives of the fliers and their support personnel. Whirlwind takes readers into the cockpits and gun turrets of the mighty B-29 Superfortress, the largest bomber built up to that time. Tillman dramatically re-creates the sweep of wartime emotions that crews endured on fifteen-hour missions, grappling with the extreme tedium of cramped spaces and with adrenaline spikes in flak-studded skies, knowing that a bailout would put them at the mercy of a merciless enemy or an unforgiving sea.

A major character is the controversial and brilliant General Curtis LeMay, who rewrote strategic bombing tactics. His command’s fire-bombing missions incinerated fully half of Tokyo and many other cities, crippling Japan’s industry while still failing to force surrender.

Whirlwind examines the immense logistics and construction efforts necessary to support Superfortresses in Asia and the Mariana Islands, as well as the tireless efforts of engineers to build huge air bases from scratch.It also describes the unheralded missions that American bomber crews flew from the Aleutian Islands to Japan’s northernmost Kuril Islands.

Never has the Japanese side of the story been so thoroughly examined. If Washington, D.C., represented a “second front” in Army-Navy rivalry, the situation in Tokyo approached a full-contact sport. Tillman’s description of Japan’s willfully inadequate approach to civil defense is eye-opening. Similarly, he examines the mind-set in Tokyo’s war cabinet, which ignored the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, requiring the emperor’s personal intervention to avert a ghastly Allied invasion.

Tillman shows how, despite the Allies’ ultimate success, mistakes and shortsighted policies made victory more costly in lives and effort. He faults the lack of a unified command for allowing the Army Air Forces and the Navy to pursue parochial goals at the expense of the larger mission, and he questions the premature commitment of the enormously sophisticated B-29 to the most primitive 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 a standard reference on the war, on multiservice operations, and on the human capacity for individual heroism and national folly.

Ratings and reviews

This is an excellent book. My father-in-law was a B=29 Aircraft Commander who flew his B-29 off of Tinian Island the last seven months of the war. He is 98 yo today and going strong. I have studied and interviewed him about each of his 35 missions and learned much about B-29s and the War in the Pacific. This book, from it's first page to its last tells an accurate story about how, and why, we fought that war the way we did. The points made by the author concerning everything from political decisions, strategic plans, tactics,to US production efforts are not only well told they match the feeling and the outlook at the time. This book is not a tool for the revisionist historian sitting comfortably in the study pretending to understand a war from 70 years ago. If you read the book you will note a few sentences about a B-29 AC named Stan Black. Black's B-29 became inverted in the plume of a Tokyo fire raid. It was only Black's flying skills that kept them alive. Sadly, Black and his mates died weeks later. Stan Black was my father-in-laws best friend on Tinian Island. I have been hearing about Stan and his crew for 30 years now. Every year since the war my father-in-law goes to church on the anniversary of the deaths of Stan Black and crew to say the Rosary and recite their names. His children will carry that tradition when my FIL is gone so that Stan Balck and crew will never be forgotten.

About the author

Barrett Tillman is a widely recognized authority on air warfare in World War II and the author of more than forty nonfiction and fiction books on military topics. He has received six awards for history and literature, including the Admiral Arthur Radford Award. He lives in Mesa, Arizona.