Overview

One of America's preeminent military historians, James D. Hornfischer has written his most expansive and ambitious book to date. Drawing on new primary sources and personal accounts of Americans and Japanese alike, here is a thrilling narrative of the climactic end stage of the Pacific War, focusing on the U.S. invasion of the Mariana Islands in June 1944 and the momentous events that it triggered. With its thunderous assault into Japan's inner defensive perimeter, America crossed the threshold of total war. From the seaborne invasion of Saipan to the stunning aerial battles of the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot, to the largest banzai attack of the war and the strategic bombing effort that led to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Marianas became the fulcrum of the drive to compel Tokyo to surrender-with consequences that forever changed modern war. These unprecedented operations saw the first large-scale use of Navy underwater demolition teams; a revolution in the fleet's ability to sustain cross-hemispheric expeditionary warfare; the struggle of American troops facing not only a suicidal enemy garrison but desperate Japanese civilians; and the rise of the U.S. Navy as the greatest of grand fleets. From the Marianas, B-29 Superfortresses would finally unleash nuclear fire on an enemy resolved to fight to the end. Hornfischer casts this clash of nations and cultures with cinematic scope and penetrating insight, focusing closely on the people who rose to the challenge under fire- Raymond Spruance, the brilliant, coolly calculating commander of the Fifth Fleet; Kelly Turner, whose amphibious forces delivered Marine General Holland Howlin' Mad Smith's troops to the beaches of Saipan and Tinian; Draper Kauffman, founder of the Navy unit that predated today's SEALs; Paul Tibbets, the creator of history's first atomic striking force, who flew the Enola Gay to Hiroshima; and Japanese warriors and civilians who saw the specter of defeat as the ultimate test of the spirit. From the seas of the Central Pacific to the shores of Japan itself, The Fleet at Flood Tide is a stirring and deeply humane account of World War II's world-changing finale.

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9781101889541

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Advance praise for The Fleet at Flood Tide This is a masterful account of the barbaric last year of the Pacific War, combining original scholarship, engaging prose, excellent historical judgment, and empathy for the soldier, to explain why defeating the Japanese proved so costly and how American military forces performed so effectively and, in the end, humanely. The Fleet at Flood Tide is, quite simply, popular and scholarly military history at its best. Victor Davis Hanson, author of Carnage and Culture, senior fellow in classics and military history, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University We have here a carefully researched and well-written account of key stages and events in the final portion of the war in the Pacific that includes a careful look at the Japanese side as well as the American. The campaign in the Marianas and the background and reality of the atomic bomb are exceptionally thoughtfully presented. Gerhard L. Weinberg, author of A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II, professor emeritus of history, University of North Carolina The Fleet at Flood Tide is the definitive work of the latter days of the war in the Pacific, diving deeper and with more passion and eloquence than anything written to date on this crucial and defining moment in the history of the U.S. Navy. Hornfischer brings the brutality of total war to full-throated life, from the trenches and amphibious assaults to the mass suicides of frightened Japanese civilians to the horrific but necessary decision to use the atomic bomb. This book is a ticket to watch hell in full session, and serves at once as an extraordinary memorial to the courageous and a cautionary note to a world that remains unstable and turbulent today. Adm. James Stavridis, USN (ret.), Supreme Allied Commander, NATO, and Dean of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University The Fleet at Flood Tide is a majestic account of the decisive moment of the Pacific War an epic land, air, and sea struggle like none other in history told with poetic power by one of our most distinguished historians. It puts the reader right there, in the eye of storm on the decks of the great carriers, in the caves of the savagely contested islands, in the cockpit of the four-engine machine that delivered the war-ending bomb. Donald L. Miller, author of D-Days in the Pacific From the Hardcover edition.

Author Information

James D. Hornfischer is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Neptune's Inferno, Ship of Ghosts, and The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, winner of the Samuel Eliot Morison Award. A native of Massachusetts and a graduate of Colgate University and the University of Texas School of Law, he lives in Austin, Texas.

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