Whirlwind: The Air War Against Japan, 1942-1945
Tillman, who has written many books on WWII aviation, scales from histories of particular types of warplane up to, in this volume, a history of an entire air war. Spanning the American air campaign against the Japanese home islands, which began with the famous Doolittle Raid of April 1942 and concluded with several conventional attacks mounted after the obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Tillman centers on the B-29 bomber as the war-winning weapon. Hampered by technical problems in development, the plane’s effectiveness was also limited by its initial basing in India and China and its operators’ doctrinal fixation on high-altitude “precision” bombing. As Tillman recounts, only when based in the Mariana Islands and commanded by a general (of whom Tillman is a biographer, LeMay,2005) who firebombed enemy cities from low altitude did the B-29 vindicate its fearsome potential. Also recounting attacks by American carrier aircraft and the atomic bombings, Tillman tenders his verdicts on controversies about their strategic utility or justification, and embeds combat experiences in a narrative sure to engross WWII readers. --Gilbert Taylor