Customer Reviews

Japanese Naval Aces and Fighter Units in World War II

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is a great book for anyone interested in Japanese world war 2 pilots and their squadrons. Great biographies and the most complete listing of Japanese naval aces ever published in an English translation. I highly recommend the book to anyone with interest in Japanese aces or squadrons of world war 2.

This book is written strictly from the Japanese perspective. But unfortunately, after so many years, a lot of the Pacific Air War is still only understood in the West via books written strictly, or pretty much, from the Western perspective. There are now a number of notable exceptions to that statement, books written in English using sources from both sides. However for various episodes involving Japanese Navy fighters, it's still either this translation or nothing, as far as English language books giving the Japanese side. It's an indispensable resource, a must have, for anyone at all seriously interested in the Pacific Air War. I think the low rated reviews completely miss the point of why one would buy this book.

Useful for details of personnel and units, but marred by fantastical inaccuracies in accounting of claims and losses.

A lot of sappy coverage on the pilots... reads like a high school yearbook written by a drunk cheerleader. A lot of motherhood statements and glorified rubbish about the Imperial Japanese Navy. Interesting that the writer claims that the IJN only had a few of its planes shot down during the Mariannas Turkey Shoot. If I were you, I'd just borrow it from the library, worth a laugh.

Hata writes a great book apart from the fact that the sources chosen are overly biased and Hata does not acknowledge this. Also the fact that Hata goes into this foray with a direct intention to discredit Iris Chang with her claims in the Rape of Nanking is damaging to what is otherwise a plausible extrapulation of a complex issue.