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Brief preface; I'm a history major and my library currently numbers over 1,580 titles. Y'Blood's account of the largest carrier battle in naval history is quite good. It filled a gap (recently supplemented by a similar title from Barrett Tillman) in the chronicles of naval aviation. Mr. Y'Blood gives the reader a very good breakdown of the organization of the USN's fast carrier task forces and their supporting warships. Numerous maps let you follow the course of the battle, especially the searching patterns which were of crucial importance to how both sides conducted the battle. There are plenty of photos scattered throughout the text,mainly concentrating on the subject at hand. The book is well footnoted and makes use of extensive primary source material as well as secondary source materials (books or articles on the subject matter). Of interest is that the USN's TBF Avenger torpedo bombers were used primarily as level bombers than in the torpedo attack mission. Apparently the MK 13 aerial torpedo was still giving the navy problems even though the surface torpedo issues had been remedied by late 1943. While the Battle of the Philippine Sea was a US victory, it wasn't as decisive in the eyes of the carrier commanders and Admiral Nimitz the Commander of the Pacific Fleet. Adm. Spruance came under muttered criticism for not annihilating the entire Japanese fleet. Y'Blood points out that a lot of the blame can be laid on Admiral Mitscher who had overall command of the fast carriers and his task group commanders. They did a piss poor job of searching for the Japanese and when they finally found them had to launch a long range attack late in the afternoon which guaranteed that their pilots would be returning low on fuel at night. The bulk of the US planes lost were due to running out of fuel or crashing at night on carrier decks. Japan's Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa had high hopes going into this battle since he could count on lots of land based air to augment his carrier aircraft. What he didn't count on was his pilots lack of experience and by this time obsolecent aircraft. His land based counterpart Admiral Kakuta certainly did him no favors by exaggerating his planes successes while not being honest with how brutally his losses were. This battle is often termed "The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot"due to the staggering losses in aircraft sustained by the IJN. Yet it appears that most of these losses were against ground based aircraft. My one issue with Y'Blood is he doesn't give a real feel for how many planes were actually lost on either side. The oft quoted number for the IJN is 400, but that appears to be an optimistic figure. How many went down with the three carriers lost versus how many were shot down or destroyed on the ground? What exactly were the USN's aircraft losses? The latter figures are certainly available since each carrier knew what its starting airgroups consisted of. While this battle decisively broke Japanese carrier airpower (and set the stage for the use of the kamikaze), still left a sizeable portion of IJN'surface fleet available to contest the landings at Leyte Gulf in October of 1944. Another legacy of this battle was a seething fury among the aviators to get the remaining carriers which would color Admiral Halsey's decisions at Leyte Gulf four months later. Barrett Tillman's book "Clash of the Carriers" adds more insight to this pivotal battle and should be read in conjunction with Red Sun Setting.Read full review
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