Review: Lots here for the naval history buff!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 12 27, 2012
Gerald Thomas' Torpedo Squadron Four is a wonderfully detailed memoir of a torpedo bomber pilot, as well as a pretty good unit history of Air Group Four and the service lives of three aircraft carriers. The writing is much better than one expects (fears) in a Kindle book, and while there are places that an editor might have helped out a bit, the book is consistently very readable. What I liked best was the wealth of description of the author's (many) strikes against Japanese ships and shore targets. He uses Navy combat reports and generally gives a detailed and sometimes bomb-by-bomb description of the results, as well as his impressions of the action and what it was like to make the flight, approach, attack, and return. Very detailed, and lots of fun for the naval history buff. As icing on the cake, there is a very very detailed description of the air strike on Bodo, Norway, one about which I had not read. This strike is particularly fascinating in that German and Norwegian sources are added.I should add that the book is well documented with memoirs, interviews, action reports, and the author's journal. A tiny quibble is that the numerous Japanese ships attacked are not identified by name, and these days there is enough information on the IJN to know pretty precisely the names of the individual ships that Mr. Thomas and his squadron/group attacked.Finally, the book is extensively illustrated with photographs. I do not believe that I had seen any of these before, and they are frequently tied to the text so that the reader knows exactly what is seen - whose plane, what targets are shown, etc. Sadly the Kindle doesn't do justice to all of these pictures, but I still saw things that I've not seen before, and described in very precise detail.All in all, if you like naval history, this is a steal! Buyit!