Fire in the Sky

In the first two years of the Pacific War of World War II, air forces from Japan, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand engaged in a ruthless struggle for superiority in the skies over the Solomon Islands and New Guinea. Despite operating under primitive conditions in a largely unknown and malignant physical environment, both sides employed the most sophisticated technology available at the time in a strategically crucial war of aerial attrition. In one of the largest aerial campaigns in history, the skies of the South Pacific were dominated first by the dreaded Japanese Zeros, then by Allied bombers, which launched massed raids at altitudes under fifty feet, and finally by a ferocious Allied fighter onslaught led by a cadre of the greatest aces in American military history.Utilizing primary sources and scores of interviews with surviving veterans of all ranks and duties, Eric Bergerud recreates the fabric of the air war as it was fought in the South Pacific. He explores the technology and tactics, the three-dimensional battlefield, and the leadership, living conditions, medical challenges, and morale of the combatants. The reader will be rewarded with a thorough understanding of how air power functioned in World War II from the level of command to the point of fire in air-to-air combat.

• Touched with Fire: The Land War in the South Pacific
• Fortress Rabaul: The Battle for the Southwest Pacific, January 1942-April 1943
• Whirlwind: The Air War Against Japan, 1942-1945
• The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942-1944
• War at the End of the World: Douglas MacArthur and the Forgotten Fight For New Guinea, 1942-1945
• The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won
• Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943
• The Fleet at Flood Tide: America at Total War in the Pacific, 1944-1945
• Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle
• Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942