Fire In the Sky - Eric M. Bergerud

Fire in the Sky focuses specifically on the air war in the South Pacific from early 1942 until around the end of 1943. Bergerud explains that he focused in on that stretch because it was a period of time when the Allies and Japanese forces were on roughly equal footing in both numbers and technology to start. He figures there's more to investigate there as being keys to victory than in subsequent years when the numerical and technological edge held by the Allies grew enormously.

Bergerud focuses strictly on the aviation side of things in this volume (he's done an earlier volume on the ground campaign), and he goes into greater detail on almost all aspects of it than I can recall in any other book I've read on WWII aviation. Basically all those other books will mention many Japanese warplanes lacked self-sealing fuel tanks and that this made it easier for them to be set ablaze from relatively few bullets. This is the first book I remember that bothers to explain how self-sealing fuel tanks work.

Bergerud talks about the planes involved, their strengths and weaknesses. He talks about pilot training, before and after pilots entered the combat theater, as well as morale and the policy for rotating pilots and ground crew off the front lines (the Navy and Marines apparently had a better established system than the Army Air Force, but the Japanese tended to just keep their best pilots flying until they were killed or severely injured). He spends time on engineering in terms of constructing an airfield and maintaining it, on radio communication, the respective search-and-rescue efforts of the two sides (or lack thereof in Japan's case), the development of tactics in fighter combar, bombing, ground attack, even resupply. Apparently prior to the war, the U.S. had no guidelines for how to airdrop supplies to ground units. Which turns out to be kind of crucial when the troops are fighting in the middle of a hellacious jungle on New Guinea and the nearest airstrip is several days trek away.

Bergerud interviewed a lot of veterans as part of his research, and their remarks, as well as transcripts from missions, diaries, or interrogations of Japanese airmen after the war are used liberally throughout. The section of air drops, for example, has a lengthy quote from a cargo plane pilot who discusses the approach they initially tried, before they figured out it was a bad idea and had to try something else.

There's a wealth of information in this book, but at times it's easy to lose track of how it relates to the actual fighting. Until the last two chapters, when it begins to detail the struggles between fighters, and then the bombing and anti-shipping campaigns, there's not much discussion of the campaign in terms of something enabling an Allied advance in one place or another. The attempt is to help lay the groundwork for why things turned out as they did. If the size of forces were not so different, and the Allies were only just starting to gain an edge in the abilities of their aircraft, then what were the key factors?

The first 400-500 pages are all about that, the mistakes and innovations that made the difference, and then for the last 150 pages, he deals with how it actually plays out. It's not a bad approach, but there were more than a few times I wondered what the hell was the point of some of what he was discussing. There's a lengthy digression into the development of the Spitfire and Me109 that I think is meant to detail the major leaps in fighter design and performance they represent, but it felt unnecessary. There's a bit of that in here, but overall the details are relevant and interesting.

'Consequently had one side or the other occupied every square inch of this huge area, it would have helped itself not one iota and done no harm to the foe. The strategic importance of the theater lay entirely in its geographic relationship to other areas. A key by itself is of no value, but what lies behind the locked doorway might be precious indeed.'