The Fleet at Flood Tide

The Fleet at Flood Tide: America at Total War in the Pacific, 1944-1945
by James D. Hornfischer

The extraordinary story of the World War II air, land, and sea campaign that brought the U.S. Navy to the apex of its strength and marked the rise of the United States as a global superpower.

One of America’s preeminent military historians, James D. Hornfischer has written his most expansive and ambitious book to date. Drawing on new primary sources and personal accounts by Americans and Japanese alike, here is a thrilling narrative of the climactic end stage of the Pacific War, focusing on the U.S. invasion of the Mariana Islands in June 1944 and the momentous events that it triggered. With its thunderous assault into Japan’s inner defensive perimeter, America crossed the threshold of total war.

From the seaborne invasion of Saipan to the stunning aerial battles of the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot, to the largest banzai attack of the war and the strategic bombing effort that led to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Marianas became the fulcrum of the drive to compel Tokyo to surrender, with consequences that forever changed modern war.

Hornfischer casts this clash of nations and cultures with cinematic scope and penetrating insight, focusing closely on the people who rose to the challenge under fire:

Raymond Spruance, the brilliant, coolly calculating commander of the Fifth Fleet
Kelly Turner, whose amphibious forces delivered Marine General Holland “Howlin’ Mad” Smith’s troops to the beaches of Saipan and Tinian
Draper Kauffman, founder of the Navy unit that predated today’s SEALS
Paul Tibbets, who created history’s first atomic striking force and flew the Enola Gay to Hiroshima
Japanese warriors and civilians who saw the specter of defeat as the ultimate test of the spirit.

From the seas of the Central Pacific to the shores of Japan itself.  The Fleet at Flood Tide is a stirring and deeply humane account of World War II’s world changing finale.