Rate this book

A Dawn Like Thunder: The True Story Of Torpedo Squadron Eight (2008)

by Robert J. Mrazek(Favorite Author)

4.19 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0316021393 (ISBN13: 9780316021395)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Little, Brown and Company

review 1: "A Dawn Like Thunder" is about one of my favorite historical subjects, the Battle of Midway during WWII. These are the facts as history had taught me. On 4 June 1942, just five months and change after Pearl Harbor the Japanese made an attempt to take Midway Island in a gambit to draw out and destroy the American fleet. When the Japanese fleet, including four aircraft carriers, arrived in the vicinity of Midway the United States fleet was waiting in ambush. As Japanese bombers attacked the island several Midway based aircraft, including several US Army aircraft and a detachment of six TBF Avenger torpedo planes from Torpedo Squadron 8 were sent to attack the Japanese but failed to get a single hit on the Japanese ships. The army planes returned to Midway but all of the... more Torpedo planes were shot down but one, a bullet ridden Avenger flown by Albert "Bert" Earnest. Meanwhile, the USS carriers Enterprise, Hornet and Yorktown launched their air groups consisting fighters, torpedo planes and dive bombers, against the massive Japanese fleet. The US torpedo planes, all obsolete slow moving TBD Devastators, found the Japanese first and, in the ensuing attacks, nearly all of the US torpedo planes, 37 of 41, from the three carriers were shot down. It was a slaughter. The USS Hornet's Torpedo Squadron 8, led by John C. Waldron, went in first and alone, without fighter protection. If there is an American "Charge of the Light Brigade" this was it. Everyone of the attacking planes of Torpedo 8 was shot down. Only one man, George Gay, who floated in the midst of the Japanese fleet, using a seat cushion from his plane to hide from the Japanese, lived to tell about it. The sacrifice of Torpedo 8 was not in vain. The Japanese commander, in the middle of arming his planes with bombs for a second attack on Midway Island, realized that the newest attack had to have come from US carriers, and ordered his own planes to switch from bombs to torpedoes. All of that live ordinance covered the decks of the Japanese carriers as the US dive bombers, unimpeded by Japanese fighters which were still wiping out the remainder of the US torpedo planes, arrived and dropped their payloads on the decks of the Japanese carriers. The resulting conflagration, increased by the explosions of Japanese bombs and torpedoes spread about the decks, sank three Japanese carriers. Later the fourth Japanese carrier and the USS Yorktown would join them on the bottom. It was the first great American victory against the Japanese and a set back for the latter from which they would never recover. It was the turning point in the war. Those were the facts but not the entire story.In "A Dawn Like Thunder" Robert J. Mrazek carefully explains what really happened to Torpedo 8. Oh, the heroism and the facts of the attack were found to be true but the facts of what had happened before that had been carefully obscured. On the morning of the battle Marc Mitscher, commander of the Hornet, had sent the Hornet's air group in the wrong direction. Stanhope Ring, commander of the air group and flying that day, refused to change the heading even when John Waldron, who was adamant that he knew where the Japanese fleet was, asked permission to change course. So, violating orders, Waldron and his nine Devastators left the formation and were therefore alone during that first attack. Ring's dive bombers left him a little later but returned to the Hornet without ever finding the battle. Ring's fighters soon left the formation, ran out of fuel and crashed in the ocean. In the end Ring flew on alone. Finally, the true extent of Waldron's heroism that day haw been revealed. I have always thought that he and his men should have gotten the Medal of Honor for their suicide attack now even more so.That is not all, however. Mrazek also wrote of what happened to Torpedo 8 after the battle. The pilots and men of the squadron who did not participate in the attack that day, plus replacements for those lost, were sent to Guadalcanal to fight on with the Cactus Air Force in that desperate campaign. During this time the squadron commander was Harold "Swede" Larsen who was bent on revenge against the Japanese. Larsen was a difficult man to serve under, two of his men actually tried to kill him at different times, and he was probably as hated by the men as much as the Japanese. That any of the men in the squadron survived Larsen AND the war is amazing. The Torpedo 8 men who flew their torpedo planes from Henderson Field, along with the mechanics and crewmen of the squadron, were shelled by Japanese battleships, fought in the line with Marines during suicidal attacks and suffered all the rigors and deprivations as everyone else who fought on Guadalcanal. Finally that part of the story is told. "A Dawn Like Thunder" should be read by every American and I can't recommend it highly enough. Get it and read it, you will be so glad you did.
review 2: It's easy to forget, in this age of easily integrated digitally-fused data and sattelite surveillance, that not so long ago our grandfathers and great-grandfathers flew slow, piston-driven airplanes hundreds of miles out into the open blue ocean to visually locate and attack an enemy fleet of forty or more warships among islands harboring native cannibals and headhunters by lobbing lead, dumb iron bombs and unguided torpedoes at them. (It's also easy to forget that despite technological advances in surveillance and weaponry, much of naval warfare still has this needle-in-a-haystack element to it).By following the exploits of Torpedo Eight, Mrazek does an admirable job of putting a personal face on the operations of a lumbering aerial warhorse, it's pilots, gunners, and maintenance men during World War II. Written, as it is, as a factual account pulled largely from journals and After Action Reports, it's understandably thin on character development and emotion, and is sometimes very dry and matter-of-fact in its description of what surely were very dramatic and harrowing events. But for all that, it's a valuable window into the bravery of a generation that made the most of what they had in a despserate fight for freedom, far from home.It's also valuable, though unintended, support for organizations that keep the Avenger flying - unless you've actually SEEN an Avenger fly, and recognized it as a premier attack weapon of its day, it's really hard to appreciate what its pilots and crews really accomplished. Keep 'em Flying! less

Download links for: A Dawn Like Thunder: The True Story of Torpedo Squadron Eight

Advertising