Destined for Glory: Dive Bombing, Midway, and the Evolution of Carrier Airpower [Hardcover]

Thomas Wildenberg (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1557509476 | ISBN-13: 978-1557509475 | Publication Date: November 1998

On 4 June 1942 three squadrons of U.S. Navy Dauntless dive bombers set fire to three-quarters of Japan's carrier strike force at Midway and changed the course of the war in the Pacific. Japan was never able to recover its offensive initiative. As Thomas Wildenberg convincingly demonstrates in this book, the key ingredient to the navy's success at Midway was the planning and training devoted to the tactic of dive bombing over the previous seventeen years. Examining how political, economic, technical, and operational factors influenced the development of carrier airpower between 1925 and 1942, he shows why dive bombing became the navy's weapon of choice - why it was emphasized over all other methods of aerial warfare and finally brought to bear to stop the Japanese advance. He also pays tribute to the select group of naval aviators and senior leaders whose insights and determination drove the evolution of carrier tactics in this formative period.

Editorial Reviews

From the Author

Destined for Glory is the first book to thoroughly document the development of carrier air power in the United States Navy during the interwar years. Aviation enthusiasts and naval historians alike will find a wealth of previously unpublished data on the development of carrier aircraft and their tactical doctrine. Readers will discover new material related to the evolution of the fighters, torpedo bombers, and scout planes that made up the carrier air groups in World War II.

Although several excellent books have been written about the Battle of Midway, none has focused on how the U.S. Navy came to develop the one aerial weapon*dive bombing*which proved to be the decisive instrument of victory. For it was dive bombing, and only dive bombing, that turned the tide of Japanese expansion in the Pacific.

Introduced and developed in the interwar years, dive bombing became the corner stone in the navy's efforts to secure command of the air. Although the development of the dive bomber played an extremely important role in the advance of naval aviation during the interwar period, it is only part of a much broader story that illustrates an important lesson for historians: what comes before the battle is as important as the battle itself. It will become evident from reading the text that the aerial successes of 1942 were unequivocally rooted in the tactics and equipment developed during the previous seventeen years.

From the Back Cover

"A Midway, a handful of Dauntless dive bomber crews changed the course of World War II in the Pacific and the thrust of naval power forever. Destined for Glory tells the story of how a few tenacious visionaries forged the capability that made this possible. It's Never been told better." --Capt. Robert L. Rasmussen, USN (Ret.), director of the National Museum of Aviation

"Thomas Wildenberg has done a superb job of filling in the blanks on the development of tactics and advances in technology that led to the success of the carrier strike forces in World War II." --Capt. E. T. Wooldridge, USN (Ret.), coauthor of Night Fighters over Korea

"This book deals with an extremely important subject little covered in the existing literature. It presents a sound, comprehensive analysis of the development of U.S. carrier aviation." --John B. Lundstrom, author of The First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Naval Institute Press (November 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1557509476
• ISBN-13: 978-1557509475
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #435,038 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The background to how the USN developed Dive Bombing, February 17, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Destined for Glory: Dive Bombing, Midway, and the Evolution of Carrier Airpower (Hardcover)

DESTINED FOR GLORY: DIVE BOMBING, MIDWAY AND THE EVOLUTION OF CARRIER AIRPOWER. The title is a bit missleading, Midway is barely covered. Instead Thomas Wildenberg creates an excellent story on the development of dive bombing as a weapon and doctrine.

Unfortunately when he comes to the first six months of WWII he goes flat. The chance to tie all the operational and tactical developments together and relate them to Coral Sea and Midway is muffed. The two chapters dealing with the first carrier battles are little more than simple walk throughs of the action. I sense the editors at Naval Institute Press told him to cut a hundred pages or so. Good thing he cut the battle stuff (if he did) as the first 17 chapters as invaluable in understanding the VS and the VB way of war. If you've read Lundstrom's Coral Sea and Midway chapters then this book will give you the back ground to understand those actions even better.

This book goes on my must read list for those wishing to understand more than teh surface of the naval war in the Pacific.

Ben Those who fail to study History are doomed to never get the joke.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Needs 2nd Edition, February 11, 2000

By 

Dennis Reilly (Concord, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Destined for Glory: Dive Bombing, Midway, and the Evolution of Carrier Airpower (Hardcover)

DESTINED FOR GLORY seems to be a well researched book on the development of dive bombing in the USN during the `20s and `30s. Unfortunately, the book contains numerous errors, probably the result of sloppy proof reading rather than ignorance of the subject. I hope that Mr. Wildenberg will correct the errors and that a corrected version of DESTINED FOR GLORY will be published. It is an important book. However, the recognizable errors cause me to wonder how much of it is documented fact.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Down the hatch, June 1, 2008

By 

Harry Eagar (Maui) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Destined for Glory: Dive Bombing, Midway, and the Evolution of Carrier Airpower (Hardcover)

Pilots who fly low enough and slow enough to aim at a defended target get killed. So they don't aim.

There was an exception for a short time and in a limited space. From mid-1941 to 1945, a few pilots had a doctrine and a platform that allowed them to aim, hit and survive.

The technique was dive bombing, and Thomas Wildenberg, a fellow of the National Air and Space Museum, tells the backstory in "Destined for Glory."

America was the only nation to develop dive bombing: the German Stuka and the Japanese Aichi 99 (called the Val) were really glide bombers.

They story begins on Oct. 22, 1926, when a daredevil Navy flyer, Lt. Cmdr. Frank Wagner, nosed his Curtiss Hawk fighter into a vertical, full power dive. The overengineered Hawk survived.

Though Wildenberg does not speculate, who knows? Perhaps Japan lost the Pacific War because in the '20s it didn't offer its pilots a plane they could trust as much as Wagner trusted his Hawk.

It took more than a decade to develop a weapon and a technique usable against real targets. The great moment for the dive bombers came at Midway in June 1942. Dropping out of the sun from more than three miles up, unseen and unstoppable, they shattered the decks of Japan's four big fleet carriers.

The six minutes at Midway are well known, but the background has seldom been told before now. What "Destined for Glory" leaves out is the drama.

There have been several memoirs by dive bomber pilots, from Clarence Dickerson's wartime "The Flying Guns" to Hal Buell's later "Dauntless Helldiver." But no pilot (to my knowledge) has ever conveyed what it felt like to "nose over" from 18,000 feet up and dive at full power in the fastest machine yet devised by man.

In an afterword reassessing naval aviation's contribution to American victory, Wildenberg decides that "only dive bombers and the aerial doctrine under which they were deployed were ultimately responsible for sinking the enemy ships of the Imperial Navy's First Carrier Strike Force."

His argument is sound but, unfortunately, he does not put it in context.

In almost all histories of the dispute between Army Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell and the Navy over bombing, the nod goes to Mitchell. The fact is that the kind of bombing advocated by Mitchell never sank, or even inconvenienced, a capital ship steaming at war readiness.

Dive bombing, though, really was a war winning weapon.