Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942

If volumes 2 and 3 reach the level of non-fiction story telling Ian Toll has achieved with "The Pacific Crucible," a new standard in Pacific War history will be set. This book is extremely well written and factual. Toll is blessed with the story teller's gift. This is a very solid work of non-fiction, but written with a style and cohesiveness that emphasizes the "story" in "history." There are no parts that are dry, or academic or drag. It is a thrilling tale very well told. I'm a history buff and have read a lot on World War II. One of the pleasure's of Toll's book is that even with that pedigree, I learned a lot. Not only about small actions like the Halsey raids with the Enterprise right after Pearl Harbor, but also great facets of the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway (about which I have read a fair amount). This is a volume that explores all levels of the struggle. National and military leadership and personalities are plumbed as well as the actions of individual pilots, crew members and soldiers. Toll does an excellent job of leaving the strategic level and enlivening execution of plans with a strong focus on the individuals who actually had to do something other than write and pass along papers. His background on Japanese military thinking and training as well as a very good examination of the political morass that led Japan to war (and the always fascinating story of inter service rivalry in Japan) are about the best I've read and validate the decision making and actions of Japanese during the conflicts covered (validate in terms of their rationale becomes clear given their culture). Also satisfying is that the author has produced a vast number of individual Japanese remembrances and commentary on the events and actions covered in this tome. Having both sides perspectives rounds out the conflicts well. Yammato and Nimitz are the primary strategic level actors and the backgrounds on both are short enough to not lead the reader astray of a fast paced story, but long enough to give the reader a sense of the man. Also well done is Toll's examination and telling of the great role American code breakers played in giving the (in the early war) over-matched Americans an equalizer by having a good idea where and when the Japanese would move. I can't be more positive about this book. It is excellent history well-told. Definitely compares well with and is similar to Rick Atkinson's marvelous trilogy on the American Army in the ETO.

History the way it should be written. As much time is spent from the Japanese point of view as the American so you really get a full picture of what is going on during the period covered by the book. It reads like a novel, well written and researched with copious footnotes. I look forward to the remaining books in the series.

Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942. Ian W. Toll. 2011. Kindle ed. Writing this book was a massive undertaking and it is very well done. Toll used a vast number of sources but weaves it all together in a well-ordered story. He had to make choices, what to include, what to leave out, and he made the choices well. Reading the first pages, I thought it started out slow, with stuff about life at the Naval Academy, the influence of Alfred Thayer Mahan on naval strategic thought in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and Theodore Roosevelt. Then Toll jumps to Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. No mention of Japan’s invasion of China and Korea, the war in Europe, the ban on steel and oil exports to Japan, or Japan’s planning of the attack. Nothing on the failure of radar operators to recognize the attack. Toll focuses on the reactions of people in Honolulu, Pearl Harbor, and the White house. There are grizzly details of the wounded sailors. There are fine details of FDR’s study, how he began the afternoon, how the admirals, generals, and Eleanor were reacting. There are other books that give many more details about the Day of Infamy. Soon after the Pearl Harbor attack, Churchill arrived at the White House for a three-week visit, which Toll describes in great detail. Churchill’s overriding goal was to get Roosevelt committed to the war and victory. They worked out arrangements for how the Pacific war would be run by the Combined Chiefs of Staff, CCOS. Toll tells a lot about Admiral King. He is kinder to King than some historians. After the excitement of the Pearl Harbor attack, Toll backtracks to give many details about Yamamoto, Japan’s relations with the western powers before the war, the rivalry between Japan’s army and navy, and the increase of power of young Japanese officers. FDR ordered Nimitz to go to Oahu and take command, having fired Admiral Kimmel. Nimitz was promoted over many other admirals. He was the chief of the Bureau of Navigation, which was the navy’s personnel department. Toll gives good descriptions of Halsey’s attack on Japanese air bases in the Marshall Islands, the Japanese attacks on the Philippines, Singapore, and Java, mistakes made by MacArthur, and the Doolittle raid on Tokyo. The last half of the book is about the Battle of Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway, including an excellent description of the intelligence work that broke the Japanese codes and identified the Japanese plan to attack Port Moresby, Midway and Alaska. The description of the Battle of Midway is mostly complete and very engaging with many details. I would have liked to have read more about why Stanhope Ring took the wrong heading and failed to find the enemy fleet, and why the torpedo bombers didn’t get protection from the F4F Wildcats. Maybe there just aren’t answers to those questions. There were two great scandals of the Battle of Midway. The American torpedo bomber attacks were failures, but not for lack of courage of the aircrews. The TBD bombers were slow and outdated, the torpedoes had insufficient range and often did not work, and the TBDs did not have fighter support. The bravery of the TBD crews, in spite of these shortcomings, was spectacular. Almost all of them died trying to attack the Japanese carriers. They contributed to the victory by keeping the Zeros and carriers occupied and distracted until the SBD dive bombers came in to kill the carriers. The other scandal is how Commander Joseph Rochefort was treated after the battle. He was in charge of Hypo, the Combat Intelligence Unit for the Pacific Command. Without his work on decoding messages, the battle would have been vastly different. After the battle, Captain John R. Redman and his elder brother, Rear Adm Joseph R. Redman, managed to take credit for the intelligence coup and to punish Rochefort for proving them to be wrong. In the weeks before the Battle of Midway, the Redmans disagreed with Rochefort’s assessments and opposed Nimitz’ plan to ambush the Japanese at Midway. John Redman was chief of OP-20-G, the Washington-based Navy Radio Intelligence Section. Joseph Redman was director of naval communications. Joseph Redman was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, Rochefort was denied his and was recalled to Washington to waste his talents. I highly recommend this book and I am eager to read the other two volumes by Toll. It is better than Shattered Sword or Miracle at Midway, and about equal to Incredible Victory.

This is a very good account of the War in the Pacific up through the miracle at Midway. The book gives a nice account of the defense of Wake Island, strategy making on both sides, critical analysis, and of course, Coral Sea and Midway. Ian Toll gives credit to the code breakers in Hawaii as the only major advantage that the USN had over the Japanese at the start of the war. This is the 11th book that I have read on the Pacific theatre in the past year. One of the books I read and reviewed for Goodreads previously was Lunsford’s The First Team. Lunsford’s focus in his masterpiece is the small family of carrier based aviators during the same timeframe. Please allow me to compare and contrast the First team with Pacific Crucible. First, Toll’s Pacific Crucible covers the same ground as the First Team but in a lot less detail. For example, Ian Toll mentions that the USN adopted the new Grumman F4F-4 Wildcat with the folding wings which allowed the fleet to add an additional 9 planes per carrier. Then Toll mentions that the new Wildcat could only fire its .50 caliber Browning machine guns for 23 seconds instead of 40 seconds as before. What Toll did not explain is that this is because the new Wildcat contained 6 machine guns due to the insistence of the British. The British used the same plane on their carriers and called it the Martlet. Grumman thought the British knew better because they had more experience. The extra two machine guns and the hydraulics on the folding wings (which were unnecessary) added weight. The USN was furious. Toll doesn’t explain any of this. Also, Toll makes mention of the poor performance of the Hornet’s air group at Midway. He mentions that not one of the Hornet’s fighter group VF-8 made it back to the carrier after the battle. That is all that Toll mentions of fighter group VF-8. Lunsford explains that fighter group VF-8 was circling the Japanese fleet waiting for the Hornet torpedo group to attack. Fighter group 8’s elevation was so high they didn’t observe any of the failed torpedo attacks. They circled the Japanese fleet for a long period of time and then tried to make it back to the carrier rendezvous point and ditched having accomplished nothing. Also, Toll describes the planning for the Pearl Harbor attack but not the attack itself. He barely mentions the exploits of Butch O’Hare. The point is that Pacific Crucible lacks this level of detail. If you want this than read Lunsford’s The First Team. What Pacific Crucible does provide is more strategy and critical analysis. For example, the experienced Japanese fleet could launch a coordinated attack with torpedo planes, dive bombers and fighter support while the USN had far less experience and attacked piecemeal. The IJN torpedo plane was twice the speed of the obsolete American Devastators etc. etc. However, the Japanese offensive spirit was ironically a weakness that day. They did not practice good hygiene on decks and left land base bombs on bomb racks which caused secondary explosions that day. The IJN did not have foam for fighting fires as the USN did and relied on mere water. This was much less effective. Pacific Crucible also gives plenty of background information and character development on the strategy makers of both sides. A few times there is too much detail. I had a tough time getting through all the background info on Yamamoto for example. I could care less about his feelings toward his Geisha. I could have done with a little less detail and I struggled to get through these sections. Toll is lukewarm on Halsey and Fletcher and makes Spruance out to be a hero. He also was highly critical of Yamamoto at Midway. Thank God for Rochefort and the code breakers in Hawaii. This book finally gives them their due. All-in-all, Pacific Crucible was a very good read. If you are a fan of the war in the Pacific you will enjoy this book. However, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of Lunsford’s the First Team on E-Bay or Amazon.

I so thoroughly enjoyed Mr Toll’s second volume in this series that I decided to read his first installment and I am very glad I did! Many good reviews have been written so instead of a review I would like to indulge in a little critique but I would like to make clear that just because Mr Toll did not fashion his story to include a few things that I think important and just because he indulges in a theme that I think is a red herring does not detract from his wonderful narrative. The red herring theme is not really a very important part of the overall story. The author makes reference a few times to a supposed rivalry or competition between naval air and the battleship folks. It comes across as if the “black shoe” navy did not really trust that aircraft could make any meaningful impact in war. On page 57 (paperback) he says: “The fate of Force Z…settled old and bitter arguments. …it was a conceptual triumph within naval circles all over the world for the cause of aviation, and did more than even Pearl Harbor to undermine the power of the Mahanian ‘big gun club.’” There was no power to undermine. The navy, to include the “black shoe” admirals, had fought hard to keep control of its investment in its air wing. They wanted aircraft and the platforms to launch them. In the run up to the attack on Pearl Harbor it was the Japanese carrier fleet that was getting all the attention. President Roosevelt, the War and Navy Departments all were concerned about the tremendous threat posed by the Kido Butai. This was before Pearl Harbor and before the demise of Force Z. The fate of Force Z was a Churchill decision against the advice of his admirals. That those two attacks had a major influence on “the cause of aviation” is a story that has been retold over and over. The thing is, history, facts and naval spending going on in America in the run up to war show that to be wrong. A fiction. A myth. Back in 1940 Carl Vinson, Chairman of the House Naval Affairs Committee said, "The modern development of aircraft has demonstrated conclusively that the backbone of the Navy today is the aircraft carrier. The carrier, with destroyers, cruisers and submarines grouped around it[,] is the spearhead of all modern naval task forces." He had just got a massive naval spending bill through the House. It called for 18 Essex Class carriers and the planes to stock them. It is called the Two Ocean Navy Act. Mr Toll mentions that bill but he gets the amount of expenditure wrong. The proposal CNO Admiral Stark delivered to Vinson was for 4 billion but Vinson bumped it to 8 billion. The above quote from Vinson came from the news conference after passage. Reporters wanted him to explain why the government was spending so much money. The government and the navy would not invest so much treasure and resources unless the navy really wanted naval air power and the carriers to launch it. Among other classes of ships, the bill also called for 2 Iowa Class battleships and 5 Montana Class battleships. The US Navy wanted a powerful modern force that would not ignore the battleship but it did want a preponderance of carriers that would be the backbone and spearhead of the modern task force. The navy was committed to air power to be the decisive striking force of the fleet well before that terrible week in December 1941. Since the aircraft carriers, and the six major carrier duels between the US and Japan, had such a tremendous influence on the fighting and the outcome of the Pacific War it would have been nice if the author could have told the reader what the two carrier forces looked like at the start. And, since his narrative refers to the doctrine and influence of Mahan, it would have been nice to get a picture of the battleship fleets of both countries as well. For the sake of taking stock of the US Navy’s actual combat doctrine he should have also investigated the influence of war gaming at the Naval War College and fleet exercises conducted in the 1930’s. The author discussed the importance of Theodor Roosevelt to modernizing the navy in his day but did not mention Carl Vinson once, the man responsible for the navy that won the war in the Pacific. In the epilogue to this fine book the author does a superlative job of summarizing the Battle of Midway and the fate of Joe Rochefort. He does a fine job of illustrating how Rochefort is remembered by historians but does not paint a complete picture of how he is remembered today by his country. He was posthumously awarded the Navy Distinguished Service Medal in 1985, he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1986 by Ronald Reagan and he was inducted into the National Security Agency/Central Security Service Hall of Fame in 2000. Then the author continues with the carriers vs battleships theme: “Now [after Midway], somewhat belatedly, the Japanese navy acknowledged the primacy of carriers over battleships and other surface units. Hulls that had originally been laid down as battleships were converted on the stocks to new carriers.” I know of only one battleship that was converted to a carrier after Midway, the Shinano, a Yamato Class battleship. No other battleships or battlecruisers were laid down. There was a plan for a super Yamato Class but those plans did not get very far. Meanwhile the Japanese planned for six Taiho Class carriers, 1 was built, and 15 Unryu Class carriers, three were built. The Unryu Class were laid after Midway. It seems the evidence points to the Japanese really wanting carriers but that does not fit in with the author’s desire to depict a preference for battleships. That said, I think Mr Toll has still produced a richly detailed story that does a great job of examining the issues that influenced Japan’s decision to make war with the US and the events of the first six months of the war. This is, I think, a very necessary contribution to Second World War literature. There are many books covering the war against the Nazis but not so many that cover the war against Japan. A very curious thing about the paperback edition I received: the text is missing the notes citation numbers. I have a nice list of notes in the back of the book but I have to really struggle to figure out which part of the text they refer to. I am considering buying the hardcover.

This is the first of three seminal books by Ian Toll on the largest major naval-driven war in history. He is meticulous on laying the groundwork for why the Japanese believed they needed to start the war in the Pacific, and guides the reader through those first agonizing 18 months for the U.S., Australia, and all the small island nations. Toll is one of the small number of historians who is also a gifted writer and researcher, and he rewards the interested reader on almost every page with conversations, strategy, tactics and discussions of the context and mood of the aggressors and the defenders. An amazing work. If he only wrote these three books and nothing else, his place would be set among historians in general, and naval historians specifically. Luckily for us, the man continues to write.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It included the back story of the British, the Japanese and the American political and cultural environment and how that played into the decision making. The book wove in the decision makers from FDR, Tojo, Yamamoto, Nimitz and Spruance. The personal stories from the sailors and airmen that lived the early battles of the war keep this book from being a dry retelling of historical facts, it makes the story come alive.

"I can run wild for 6 months....after that, I have no expectation of success" was Admiral Yamamoto's oft-cited remark to the war planners in the Japanese government prior to Pearl Harbor, and Ian Toll's book very capably describes the enormous expansion of Imperial Japan along almost all points of the compass in the first 6 months of the war until they were checked at Coral Sea and decisively beaten at Midway. Toll writes in a very readable style and his historical judgements are well-reasoned and sound. If you're an armchair strategist, you'll enjoy this book, and if you like exciting accounts of naval battles, you'll love this book, and happily you get both. Toll gives somewhat balanced attention to both sides with the U.S. understandably receiving the greater weight (I would have preferred more attention to the Japanese side since the U.S. side is more familiar, but of course the publisher undoubtedly envisioned a predominant U.S. readership.) The author indicates that most of the Japanese militarists recognized the superior economic power of the U.S. but believed that their superior "fighting spirit" would overcome such material disadvantages. The precise timing of the Pearl Harbor attack coming an hour before the diplomatic note was delivered to Cordell Hull certainly galvanized America and heightened the U.S.'s own "fighting spirit". I particularly enjoyed Toll's comparison of the Japanese and U.S. Navies with the former emphasizing offense and night actions while the U.S was superior in air reconnaissance, damage control and firefighting (the superiority of which were evident at Midway). The vivid descriptions of carrier warfare with their unique tactical imperatives was fascinating. My understanding is that this kind of naval warfare was unique to WW II, and that we'll never see warfare involving carrier-based fleets searching for other carrier-based fleets on the earth's oceans again. The author shows the influence of massed fleets and the overriding importance of the big-gun battleship in both navies before WW II, and interestingly enough, how battleship proponents had a stronger influence in the Japanese Navy than the U.S. Navy even into the war itself. (There's the usual speculation that perhaps Pearl Harbor dealt a fortunate blow to the U.S. Navy by decimating the Pacific Fleet's battleships but preserving its carriers, who were at sea that day, and thus almost forcing a re-orientation toward naval air warfare.) Toll often seems to compare favorably the sober realism of the Japanese Navy with the fanaticism of the Imperial Army, and that's fair to a point, but we shouldn't forget that the Japanese Navy made the critical decision to force Japan to withdraw from the 2nd London Naval Conference in late-1935 when its "fleet" faction prevailed over the "treaty" faction, whose few remaining members were quickly retired from service, and a naval arms race commenced in earnest. To simplify, the Navy wanted to go south and east against the U.S. and Britain, while the Army wanted to go west and north against China and the Soviet Union, and the Navy's argument for acquiring the resources of the East Indies for resource-poor Japan prevailed. Some reviewers have criticized the omission of Guadalcanal and ending the book with the momentous battle of Midway. I believe that Midway -- and the book covers Midway in fascinating detail -- is the appropriate endpoint; after all, Midway has been described elsewhere as the greatest naval turning point since Trafalgar, and to paraphrase Churchill (when talking about El Alamein) Guadalcanal may have been the "beginning of the end", but Midway was the "end of the beginning". Admiral Yamamoto hoped to lure and destroy the U.S. carriers at Midway and thereby expand Japan's defense perimeter, which might force a negotiated peace; instead, he lost four frontline carriers and Japan was faced with a prolonged war of attrition it could not hope to win.

Una descripción detallada, a veces con el apasionamiento de una novela, que refleja esos años de incertidumbre

Ian Toll has written a first-class history of the first stage of America's war in the Pacific, from 1941-42. War in the Pacific during World War 2 was incredibly complex, even though for the Western Allies it began nearly 2.5 years later than war with Germany. Toll has wisely decided to divide his history of America's Pacific War into 3 separate volumes, of which "Pacific Crucible" is but the first. It is well written and includes many of the smaller, but significant, human details of individual lives and experiences that makes for an attractive page-turner. Even though many books on this subject have previously appeared, I still learned interesting new things that I had not seen in at least a dozen other books by well known and lauded writers. Ian Toll's second volume in this series, "The Conquering Tide", covering the war from 1942-44, is now available and I am about half way through reading it. It too is an absolutely splendid read! One must keep in mind, however, that given the complexity of the subject, even Toll's use of three volumes to cover 3.5 years of war experience only results in a "relative synopsis" of the Pacific War. Entire volumes as long and longer than Toll's have been written on each of the major battles he covers in his books, and Toll has provided a good bibliography of many of the best of these works for the reader who wishes further details. Toll's books are an excellent place to start for the budding student of America's Pacific War, and a great read for the more experienced historian as well!

5 Sterne für 5 tolle Qualitäten des Buches: 1. Kompakt gegliedert, straff geschrieben, keine Längen. 2. Ein toller Sprachgebrauch begünstigt ein flüssiges Lesen, ohne flapsig zu werden. 3. Es wurde so viel zu dem Thema geschrieben und trotzdem erfährt man interessante Neuigkeiten. 4. Menschen entscheiden Kriege. Er schaut auf die Menschen hinter den Epauletten. 5. Obwohl ich das Ende aller Schlachten kenne, hatte ich einen Lesedrang, wie bei einem guten Thriller.

Esse é o primeiro volume da trilogia de Ian W. Toll que é, talvez, a "bíblia" da Guerra do Pacífico. Três livros que, juntos, fazem mais de 2.000 páginas que nos permite aprofundar em tudo que se refere a esse episódio trágico e heróico da Segunda Guerra Mundial. Existem livros mais simples e mais acessíveis a esse evento? Sim, existem. O de Karen Farrington, "Vitória no Pacífico", por exemplo. Bom livro. Mas, se você já sabe o básico, aqui encontrará ainda mais detalhes. Poucos, talvez, se aventurem a encarar o livro de Ian W. Toll mas, na minha humilde opinião, vale a pena. Uma lástima que nenhuma editora brasileira tenha tido a coragem de publicar esse trabalho. E acredito que nunca será publicado em português devido ao tamanho e abrangência. Espero estar errado. Quem se vira no inglês e tem vontade de saber muito mais sobre a épica Guerra do Pacífico...já encontrou, nessa trilogia de Toll, a obra magna.

This is an account of the Pacific War at sea from Pearl Harbor to Midway. It is, apparently, the first of a trilogy going all the way to the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay and beyond. It starts with an explanation of the Big Battleship paradigm of the great Naval thereorist, Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914), developed in his masterwork, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 (1890). Don't be put off by this, as it is vitally important to Toll's main theme, which is that the Japanese and American navies, steeped in Mahan both, were quite slow to realise that the war at sea in WW II was going to be won by submarines and aeroplanes, not the huge battleships on which so many of their resources were lavished in the 1930s. Once it really gets going, after Pearl Harbor, the book is unputdownable. Toll is good on everything - strategy, tactics, intelligence, materiel, the personalities involved (FDR, Churchill, Nimitz, King and Yamamoto especially) -and the battle sequences are vivid, clear and thrilling. He has an eye for detail that brings the scene to life in an instant - the smell of paint burning on the flight deck, the roar of a Zero overhead, the colour of a sunset the night before battle - and a gift for lucid explanation that makes it easy to follow what happened and why. He is something like Beevor and Hastings in this, but his prose is more supple, his focus broader and his tone more relaxed. He is also less judgmental than Hastings and less preoccupied with atrocities than Beevor. In short, this reads like a great novel. Really like War & Peace at times. You feel like you are living as well as understanding it. If only all history books were like this! I cannot wait for the next two.