Pacific Thunder

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

By: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

Narrated by: Tom Perkins

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.

For the American naval aviators, it would be difficult to imagine that within 24 months of this event, Zuikaku, the last survivor of the Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carriers that had attacked Pearl Harbor, would lie at the bottom of the Philippine Sea north of Cape Engano on the island of Luzon, alongside the other surviving Japanese carriers, sacrificed as lures in a failed attempt to block the American invasion of the Philippines, and that the United States Navy's Task Force 38, composed of 16 fleet carriers, would reign supreme on the world's largest ocean.

©2017 Thomas McKelvey Cleaver (P)2017 Tantor

Excellent WW2 Central Pacific History.

This book provides an extremely detailed account of the US military recovery and massive growth after Guadalcanal and its successes and failures. The author writes about the major high level plans and the senior admirals and generals of both sides, US and Japan, that made them. He also provides careful detail of the men on the line who carried the plans out.
This is history with real war time strategy and tactics, with a window into the men, machines, and materials that fueled and fought the war.
This book is one of the best accounts of the war in the Central Pacific that I have ever read.

The will to win!

Great accounts of the different battles and first hand experiences of the Sailors in WWII

incredible & heart rendering!

such a highly informative account of the naval air war and shi] war from the Marianas Turkey Shoot to Leyte, Manila, & the Battle of Okinawa. highly informative and I highly suggest!

Great Book, story and read

loved it, enough detail to satisfy the historian in me, with new insights and observations

Good listening but to technical when it came to participating ships and their hull numbers.

Okay, a little braggy for my taste

The book was fine honestly its not its fault thats its not really what I expected though I do feel it was very 'ra ra ra america' which just didn't feel necessary we won, we had heroic victories 'tooting our horn' so to speak just seems like bragging just say what happened and let me feel how great we did.

Great first person account; mostly diary/letter

I was leery of a more strategic view, but this had great first person accounts most of which were written in diaries or letters soon after an event

Outstanding!

Very detailed, engaging, and exciting. Any World War II Pacific Theater historian would love it! Highly recommend!

A “just the facts” summation

It fills a few minor details I didn’t already know but if you are new to the subject I highly recommend Ian Toll’s War in the Pacific trilogy in place of this one.

Good book, a little scattered

What made the experience of listening to Pacific Thunder the most enjoyable?

The narrator did a solid job with the story. The personal stories and accounts were excellent.

Any additional comments?

The story is great with first hand accounts and personalizing the war. It does this at the cost of an overall strategic context and story arc. If the author had gone from macro to micro to macro again it would have synced up the stories more succinctly for me. This would have required a longer book though which I would have enjoyed. Great book overall and recommend if you like the individual accounts of naval combat but would not recommend if you want a strategic analysis of the Pacific campaign.